Jazz, melting snows and a farewell

Been a while since my last blog post, mainly due to the fact that I ran out of bandwidth on the 24th last month. Apparently I had used up my monthly quota of 110 GB - so when they advertise that my subscription is "unlimited", I guess I should take that with a grain of salt! So this month, less of the 5-hour skype-sessions I've been having with Birgitte ;)

Greenland continues to take my breath away.

But! Now I'm back and I've got lots of stuff on my mind. Saturday was an interesting night - Rie, Tobias and Hans had invited me to a jazz concert, so first we ate at the Thai restaurant, Charoen Porn, and then walked over to Katuaq (the concert hall). The Borealis Band was made up of three musicians from Greenland, three from Iceland and three from the Faroe Islands, who only just met each other 10 days before the concert. They put together a show and these days are touring around the Nordic countries (they'll be playing in Copenhagen, too). The music was alright - they were clearly very talented musicians and singers (the trombonist has played with the Icelandic band Sigur Rós, which I LOVE, and the drummer usually plays in the Greenlandic band, Small Time Giants, which is pretty popular in Denmark, too). The music didn't seem very jazzy to me, though. Some of the songs had more of a reggae sound, and a Latin sound, which was strange. And then there were the 15min that one dude from Iceland spent alone on stage, making weird and "alternative" sounds with his synthesizers, keyboard and piano. He was a very, very good piano-player but what he did was pure garbage, in my humble opinion. I just don't get how a bunch of pling-bing-dum-sounds and highly discordant notes could ever be described as music... Tobias really liked it; he said he had tried to embrace the experience and really understand what the guy was trying to show with his twisted melodies and off-rhythms. But while Tobias sat listening intently to the "music" on stage, Rie and I whispered together, wondering when it would be over, and Hans went to get a cigarette... So evidently, my dear cousin was the only one who had the imagination and creative skill to truly understand what was being conveyed on stage! One part was very impressive though: One of the singers performed the traditional Greenlandic drum dance, while singing in her very beautiful voice. After a few minutes, the other musicians joined in with a jazzy sound and graually it transformed into a jazz number, while the girl continued her drum dance and ululating, seductive song. It was very beautiful and very cool how they merged two such different genres. I liked it a lot! And filmed most of it on my phone, even though I wasn't allowed. Shh.

Sorry if the video is lagging, I can't tell with my slow internet conncection whether it's worth watching...

After the concert, we spent the night drinking beer - I was forcefed shots against my better judgement. While Hans went to a colleague's birthday party in Qinngorput, the rest of us had a few beers at Taquzz, the bar where all Danish academics go to have a beer after work. We watched extremely drunk people dance polka (a very popular hobby in Greenland) and one man, who risked his life by jumping up onto the bar to play air guitar. He was extremely wasted and I have no idea how he came down again without dying... Hans came back into town with a friend of his and we all met at Kristinemut across the road. This bar is hilarious. The decor is Western-themed, so it's all dark wooden beams, and antlers on the walls, and posters of cowboys and the prairie etc. There are also Western names and phrases burnt into the wood, stuff like Idaho, Rocky Maontains and John Wahne. The dear owners really need some extra English classes... 

I danced all night with several very drunk, middle-aged and very sweet Greenlandic men, had way too much to drink (actually it wasn't that much, but I almost never drink alcohol so I get tipsy after a single beer - and Tobias, Hans and Ole kept chucking shots at me!). Sunday, my voice was gone from all the shouting and singing and it was even worse the next day, so my students screamed with laughter when I confessed in class Monday morning as to why I sounded like a croaking toad. That was a little embarrassing.

Sunday night I had dinner with Rie, Tobias and Hans. We watched a movie called Moon, and Rie and Hans both fell asleep during. To be fair, we were all pretty tired, since we hadn't come home until 4-5am that morning. It was Rie's farewell dinner, since she was flying back to Denmark on Monday morning. She was heartbroken that she had to leave. She has fallen completely in love with Greenland during her two months here. I don't blame her at all for feeling sad about leaving right when things are starting to get interesting. The snows have finally started to melt and once they're gone, that's when you can really go out and experience things that were impossible during the winter. I think Tobias especially misses her, since they got pretty close during the two months they lived together. Thankfully she lives in Aarhus, so I'll be seeing her in July when I go home :)

By the way, their apartment stinks of dead animal these days, because one of Hans' friends sold him a polarbear skin and he has been tanning it himself in the apartment. When I got there, it was laid out on the living room floor, drying. He did move it out onto the balcony when it was time to eat. It really is stunning - snow white fur, which is incredibly soft, and that huge head. I'd love to have one of my own for my future living room floor!

So, work-related stuff: I've gotten way more confident as a teacher. In most classes (both ones where I'm assisting a main teacher, and ones in which I'm on my own) I feel relaxed and in control. I've been taking over quite a few classes in both English and Danish, whenever a teacher has been absent. However, the extra English class (the one that I alone am responsible for, and where the students have very big problems with English) that class is turning out to be extremely challenging - more so than expected. I mean, I knew that it was going to be difficult to teach these kids much in just eight lessons, but it's turned out that many more challenges have arisen since the start, which weren't expected and would have been completely avoided, if the people involved (myself included) had just communicated better. I'd rather not get into specifics, but it has turned out to be quite draining. Oh! And also! I baked brownies for last week's class and they turned out spectacularly bad! Doughy on the inside and burnt on the outside. I actually had to promise my students that next week I BUY snacks/cake. Oh, the embarrassment...

Like I mentioned earlier, the snows have slowly started to melt and people are cautiously expressing a hope that summer might be on its way now. I've come to find that with the melting of the snows, follow injuries! First my dear colleague, Yvonne, slipped on the ice and broke her hand - she ended up having surgery, it was that serious. She just had her stitches removed today, in fact, while I took over her class this afternoon. Yesterday, Tobias slipped quite badly on the stairs outside his workplace, fell hard on his elbow and cut his hand on the metal stairs. About a week ago, I had a very embarrassing fall (which thankfully no one saw) as I was walking home from work. My foot fell through some half-frozen ice, so I slipped and sat down with a hnng. In ice-water, I might add. So yes, I walked the rest of the way home with a wet ass. You are not permitted to laugh at me ;) A former friend of mine suggested I start wearing a butt-cushion when I go outside - I did not find this very funny, which is why he is now a former friend... 

But seriously, it has actually become quite difficult to walk in certain areas because of melting snow. The problem is that the snow will melt during the day, then freeze over again overnight, and the next day the snow will have been replaced by smooth and lethal ice. Melt-water will drip from the rooftops of buildings onto the sidewalk and then freeze as well, so entrances to buildings have become particularly tricky. On the bright side, most roads are now completely free of snow and ice. I've seen actual asphalt for the first time in months! I've become this asphalt-freak who is completely addicted - whenever I see it, I head straight for it and have actually walked back and forth on a stretch of asphalt a few times, just to really savour the feeling of a sure footing. Surprisingly, even after I took off the spikes underneath my boots (my "pensionist-søm"), I'm walking quite well. I seemed to have the easiest time on Saturday night, when the four of us were walking from the Thai restaurant to Katuaq. Tobias even commented on it. Although, yesterday I climbed up a small snow drift to get a better camera angle, as I was photographing Sermitsiaq in the morning light. When I jumped back down I felt/heard a small click in my knee. It didn't really hurt at the time but since then it has swollen up and is quite sore today. Typical for something like that to happen, just when you're getting confident, eh?

Last bit of news before I sign off: the first narwhales have been spotted (and killed) up by Upernavik, a settlement further up the coast. Narwhales are only slightly larger than dolphins, but they have this very long tusk protruding out in front of them like a spear (lots of Greenlandic art is carved from narwhale tusk). They migrate between Canada and Greenland during a year's cycle, so this means they are returning to Greenland now and we might get to see them in Nuuk soon! Tobias and I have an agreement to call each other on skype if we spot one at home - we're practically neighbours after all.