my first real post

I have to start writing in this blog somehow, so it is going to start this way… with me in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. The first words always seem to be the hardest for me. I imagine that it will flow a bit better once I have more interesting things to write and get the hang of this blog thing. I was trying to upload a picture but it wasn't working.

I arrived in Inuvik yesterday, after a day and a half in transit (with a night in Yellowknife). The weather has been nice – I think the temperature went over 10 degrees today and it is apparently supposed to go to 20 degrees tomorrow. While I am in Inuvik for the next couple of weeks I am staying in a house set up for researchers, such as myself, to stay in. There are two other guys staying in this house with me at the moment. One is a professor and the other is one of his masters students. They are really nice and clean up after themselves – which I really appreciate. They are doing research on grizzly bears and I have already learned some good stuff from them.

For the last two nights I went to sleep around 11:30 and the sun was showing no signs of descending beneath the horizon. To ensure that I get some good rest I bought some aluminum foil at the store yesterday and taped it to my window. Aluminum foil is one of several popular methods for blocking out the long daylight hours - some people pin up a blanket or have really good curtains. I didn’t have enough tape last night to go around all of the edges so my room wasn’t completely dark last night. Hopefully tonight will be a bit better since I bought more tape. This all means that my room will be in constant darkness but I think that I can live with that. The room is so tiny that I can’t spend any time in there anyway.

I am going to start counting the number of consecutive days that I go without seeing night-time darkness. This may seem completely ridiculous, and I may forget about in a day, but I think that it might do some justice for illustrating one aspect of life here. Anyway, the last time that I experienced the absence of sunlight was the night of May 27^th, which makes tonight my third night with no darkness.

I think that I have completely exhausted the topic of sleep and night. I will write some more tomorrow or later with what I have been up to. So far, there hasn’t been anything eventful.