Last night I went to an amazing concert at the Cultural Center. An orchestra from Denmark had been here a week doing friendship teaching with musicians in Nuuk. The frustrating part about the concert was not understanding a word that was said. A woman introduced each piece of music and also 2 special guests (mayor of Nuuk and mayor of city in Denmark). The conductor spoke in Danish about something, then back to the woman speaking in Greenlandic. The first 2 pieces had the interns playing with the orchestra, then the rest of the concert was by the Danish orchestra. There was also a male and female singer. I can't upload the video to this blog because I have the basic version of the blog and they don't allow uploads of videos. Today we left Nuuk ... read more

Greenland is not for sale no matter what Trump thinks. The Danes got a good laugh out of that one. This morning our ship arrived in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. From Wikipedia: Nuuk (Greenlandic pronunciation: , Danish: ; Danish: Godthåb) is the capital and largest city of Greenland. It is the seat of url=https://en.wi... read more

Today we had a pleasant day in Qaqortog. We had a leisurely morning and met at 10 a.m. Jan took us to the tannery where we had a tour. I have difficulty with this because it is a tannery for seal skins. I understand the subsistence aspect of it and that Inuit have been making sealskin clothing for eons, but I don’t like the fashion part of it. I remember years ago Greenpeace would try to block people from clubbing the young harbor seals. There was so much protest the sales of sealskin products decreased. This tannery sells their products to Greenland, Iceland, and Europe only. The sealskins are brought here (the only tannery in Greenland) by the hunters, and are processed here, taking 3-4 weeks before they are ready for sewing. The skins can come ... read more

Today 4 of us took a 10 mile hike to see Qooroq glacier. Sheila and John dii not go (John did hike a short distance with us and then turned around) because Sheila’s knee is hurting a lot. In the beginning we were hiking on the road, which is quite rocky, and I walked on the grass next to the road. My toe got stuck in a lump of grass and I pancaked face first in the grass. I wasn’t hurt, just embarrassed. This was Fall #1. Angela, Rick, Jan, and I continued on the road up to several small lakes, then climbed up to a ridge. The fohn winds had arrived during the night and were blowing about 35 miles per hour. Jan told us it would get worse. We arrived at the viewpoint where ... read more

Greetings from Greenland! Today has been a fabulous day. I took a taxi from the AirBnB to the domestic airport and met the Greenland tour group – 5 of us and our leader Jan (pronounced “Yen”). A couple from New York City: John and Sheila, and a couple from Australia (somewhere north of Sydney): Rick and Angela, and me. Jan said the tour was almost cancelled due to the low number of participants, but they decided to allow the trip to go. Whew – dodged a bullet there. You may be wondering, why Greenland? I've been wanting to come here for about 5 years. Every time I flew to or from Europe I would see the south tip of Greenland and wonder what it would be like to visit there. Then my friend Ellen tells me ... read more