A rough week

March 8, 2015

Hey everyone, 

I don't have internet at the moment, so this post has been written in Word and I'll post it on the blog as soon as I rejoin the digital community!

So I am sitting in my new apartment this fine but freezing Sunday night – and it’s cold, dark and empty. This last week has been seriously difficult and I miss home. I knew before I left that I probably wouldn’t be able to avoid a few days of homesickness along the way – Greenland is just too different and too far away from what I know that it’s entirely expected. And it’s also perfectly understandable, if we look at the facts of my situation right now. Because there are three reasons for this homesickness (as you may be able to tell, I’ve had time on my hands during the evenings to really analyse the situation!):

1. My new apartment has next to no furniture – meaning I have a bed (I have borrowed bed sheets and one very hard pillow from a colleague, Elena, at the school. She must like it, but I’m used to having two big fluffy ones, so I have trouble falling asleep at night). I have a small dining room table and two creaking dining room chairs borrowed from the school’s student dorms – I fear they may break one of these days. One of these chairs functions as a bedside table at the moment. The previous tenant, Ivalu who is another colleague from work, left her closet in the bedroom, which was a very welcome surprise. It keeps my clean clothes off the floor. I have no lamps, except for in the bathroom and the one ceiling light in the small entrance hall, which is why I’m writing this in darkness only disturbed by the light from the laptop screen.

Not having my own things around me – having almost nothing, in fact, let alone my own stuff – is turning out to be quite a trial. If I don’t fancy lying down in bed the minute I come home from work, the only other alternatives are the creaking, uncomfortable dining chairs or the floor. Personally I prefer the latter, so every day I’ve brought my duvet (plus one hellishly hard pillow) into the living room. I sit right next to the heater in the corner, otherwise I’d freeze in my own apartment. Which brings me to the second reason that I miss home these days –

2. It’s extremely, excruciatingly, nightmarishly cold this week. And I suspect the absence of furniture makes it difficult for the heaters in my apartment to do their job properly. An empty room must be more difficult to heat up than one filled with sofas and carpets and tables and chairs and such… right? I try to stay beneath my duvet as much as possible, since it’s the only way to stay properly warm.

Temperatures have shown an average of (-18)-(-22⁰C) all week. With strong winds blowing, and no sunlight, weather people report that it feels 10⁰ colder. You do the math. The few times I decided to walk to work (as opposed to taking the bus) I got to really experience the cold. Walking against the wind feels like your cheeks are being cut by razors; your eyes water against the wind and the drops instantly freeze to ice on your cheeks. Most people wrap a handkerchief round the entire bottom half of their faces. Thankfully my clothes are warm enough, but face and hands are the weak chinks in my armour.

The other day I met Rie, the girl now renting the extra room at Hans Henrik and Tobias’ apartment where I stayed in my first week here. We were both going to work but, unlike me, Rie is seriously cool and tough and she made the trek over Mount Everest, despite the cold. When I saw her, her eyebrows, her lips, her eyelashes, were completely glazed over by ice. She looked like an old woman with white hair and blazing red cheeks. I don’t know if I looked the same. If I did, we must have looked like two old women stopping to chat and gossip in the middle of a snowstorm.

Last week I noticed a kind of fog out over the fjord, like brilliant white clouds hanging just a few metres above the waters’ surface. It was far away, over by the Northland, and I didn’t think much of it, except to wonder briefly what it was. The next day the entire fjord was completely covered by the same mist/fog/clouds/whatever you want to call it. It made the fjord look like one big hotspring, as if the waters had warmed overnight and now steam was hanging like a flying carpet across the water. I thought “Whoa, what the hell happened overnight” and asked about it at work. Turns out it’s called ‘frost ice’ or 'smoke ice' (depending on who you ask) – it’s when the air becomes so cold that the water actually starts to vaporise – so I wasn’t all wrong! According to my colleagues it only happened a few times last winter, but now it’s been here all week.

Warship emerging from frost-ice

Another testament to how cold it is, is the fact that even the old dogs at my work – you know, the people who have lived here for the last twenty years and are rarely surprised by anything – even they have begun to complain about the cold. The standard remark seems to be “It’s no fun anymore”. This winter has been colder and snowier than ever. Apparently it’s rare to experience this kind of weather in March.

So, being outside is just no fun these days – and the sun hasn’t shown its face for days either, which means that all the breathtaking surroundings, all the mountains, are hidden and they make me forget one of the more spectacular aspects of living in Greenland: nature.

3. Reason, numeró trés, for my homesickness is also the reason that I’m writing this in a Word-document at the moment. No internet! Being cut off means that whenever I’m home, I’m completely isolated and have absolutely no contact to anybody. For someone who hasn’t lived alone, ever, this is a challenge. I’m used to having people around me when I come home from somewhere!

And before you say anything, yes I know, I’ve been talking for ages about how great it was going to be to have my own place, with my own stuff, not having to share the kitchen, being totally in control of my own little sphere, yada yada yada. And that’s all probably going to be great later… when I actually have my stuff here to control. Because at the moment, it sucks. Turns out, I’m bored when I’m alone! I have nothing to do besides watching the few DVDs I brought with me or reading the e-books on my iPad, which of course I’ve already read. My beautiful brother gave me an external harddisk before I left, stocked with tons of downloaded films and TV-shows; I was happily making my way through the first season of ‘House of Cards’ – and then Friday night the harddisk broke… *Sigh*

So yes, I am a product of the digital age and I am scarily addicted to the joy that is a WiFi connection. I’m not afraid to admit it! One week without a ready access and I’m about ready to crawl out of my skin.

There have been bright spots this week as well, of course, and I need to mention them before I sign off. Otherwise I’m going to sound like a whining, ungrateful little jerk-off, who has lost sight of all the amazing things I’m experiencing too.

Work is great! The colleagues I’ve met so far are all really nice, funny, helpful and down-to-earth people. I mostly expected them to be, because let’s be honest, most people are nice, funny, helpful and down-to-earth, especially when you greet them the same way. The great positive surprise has been the students – they’re so nice! They’re mostly terrible at their subjects, haha, but they’re polite and funny and sweet and shy, and mostly they do want to learn. Like I’ve mentioned before, their own inadequacies are only due to a failing primary school system, not their own abilities.

This week I met a new class for the first time. As I walked into the room, I groaned inwardly and thought “Oh god”. The entire back row of the class was occupied by 5-6 young men who were sitting there with their baseball caps and their smartphones, with a headphone in one ear while laughing at some Reddit or Youtube-clip on their friend’s laptop. If this had been my class back when I was in high school, you could just bet that these guys didn’t give a crap about your teaching and that they’d mess around for the entire lesson, making it impossible for any of the other students to get any work done. That’s what my class was like some times when I was in high school – sometimes I was one of the people messing it up for everybody else because I just couldn’t be bothered!

So I had misgivings when I walked into the classroom. And those misgivings were shot to hell once the kids started working on a grammar exercise. The entire back row of tough-looking guys sat quietly and worked individually. One of them raised his hand and I went down and looked through his assignment for him. As he was trying to understand the grammatical rules I was explaining, he started laughing self-consciously at his own mistakes and almost apologising for not getting it right. He was so cute! They all were! I was shocked; and even though I’m getting used to it, sometimes I’m still amazed how well-behaved they all are. Of course, there are exceptions. Many of the students live in dorm rooms right next to the school, because their families come from many tiny settlements out in the wilderness and the only way to travel is by helicopter – basically, the kids live on their own with a minimum of parental authority. They are young to have that kind of responsibility and it goes wrong sometimes; for example, when a boy doesn’t sleep until 5am because he played computer games or partied all night, so he decides to sleep in class instead. In a situation like that, motivation is a foreign and very distant phenomenon. But you get those cases all over. Most of the time though? These kids are fantastic.

Another bright spot is, and will continue to be, my cousin and the two people he lives with, Hans Henrik and Rie. I spent both Saturday and Sunday over at their place. In fact I just came from there tonight before starting this blog post. I’ve been going over there to abuse their internet, use their washing machine and eat their lasagne. I wouldn’t have survived this week without the bit of social interaction I get from them.

This post is starting to take on enormous dimensions, so this is where I leave you. Hopefully, by the next time I write, my furniture will have gotten here! I heard a rumour at work that the container ship arrived in the harbour yesterday…

Love you all. Miss you all.