This time has been pretty challenging for us to be away from each other, but we know it’s a sacrifice to make now so we can both have our dream careers in the future (but after Dan comes to Alaska, we are NEVER doing this again!). If you would have told us three years ago that we’d have one car and one apartment in Alaska and one car and one apartment in Iceland, we would have thought you were Michele-Bachmann-crazy. It is hard to split your life between two places, let alone two cultures. There are definitely downsides, like missing friends’ weddings and baby showers (Cat obviously wrote this part). But everywhere we go, we seem to meet good, kind, amazing friends that have similar goals and worldviews as us, and we look at these experiences as insurance against a mid-life crisis. Around every turn things just keep getting more and more exciting, and maybe one day when we win the lottery, we can fly all of you who have impacted our lives, and who we love so much, to one place and you can meet each other and put a face to the names of all the stories we’ve told (a lot of you appear to have met at our wedding but no one seems to remember anything and there are few pictures, go figure). Life is very very good, and it’s because of the love of our friends and family. So, Happy Christmas, and we hope 2010 is a year that you make the changes you need, but also reinforce the good things about yourself that you never need to change.
Now that the cheesy holiday card part of this thing is finished, I can get down to business.
When I left Alaska, Cat and I planned on us not seeing each other until Christmas, but since Cat has great karma (enough to cover both of us), we were able to arrange a pretty cool little rendezvous in Finland. Cat ended up getting NSF funding to go to a conference on Northern peoples and Arctic environments in Rovaniemi, Finland. Because I live in a nearby Nordic country, Cat thought it made sense that she and I meet up. George and Patty (Cat’s folks) got me a ticket to Helsinki as an early Christmas gift, which I am eternally grateful for. Cat booked her flight to arrive in Finland before her conference, and we were able to spend five days together in Helsinki.
Since we only had a few days together, we spent most of our time just going around Helsinki. We looked into daytrips to Russia and Estonia, but they appeared to be too time consuming, so we had to pass. We were, however, able to take a ferry to a sea fortress called Suomenlinna, which is comprised of a small set of islands. It was built in 1748 by the Swedish to protect against Russian invasion, and then surrendered to the Russians in 1808 during the Finnish War. It was used in World War I to fortify Saint Petersburg, and finally became a part of independent Finland after World War I. Now it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Temppeliaukio Kirkko (Church of the Rock) was right by our hotel:
Jean Sibelius is probably the most famous Finnish person. His seven symphonies helped establish Finland’s national identity. We went to Sibelius Park where there are a couple monuments dedicated to him:
We also went to the national stadium where the ’52 Summer Olympics were held:
Opera House is home to the Finnish National Opera. We looked into going to a show, but I forgot my tux in Iceland, and I refuse to rent:
Helsinki Cathedral (under construction):
Ferry ride to Suomenlinna (island fortress described above) and pictures from around the island:
These are from the Rovaniemi leg of the trip, which Cat did solo. Jätkänkynttilä bridge:
Mural of the city of Rovaniemi in the Church of Rovaniemi:
Drunk guy passed out in mural (apparently this is famous because it is so out of place for a church):
This is the Arctic center where Cat’s conference was:
The next time we saw each other was Christmas. I left home on December 19th to go to Reykjavik, so I could pick Cat up at the airport on the morning of December 20th. When I left home, there was no snow on the ground. When we got back from the airport around noon on the 20th, there was about a foot of snow. This worked out nicely because Cat got me cross-country skis for Christmas.
At first, since there was only a foot of snow, we were able to break a pretty good trail for ourselves through some fields across from our apartment:
We went out skiing three days in a row beginning on the 21st (solstice).
We’re in the four-hours-of-daylight-per-day phase of the year right now. Our valley is very dark, because there are huge mountains all around, so the sun literally does not come out from behind the mountains for 3-4 weeks before and after the solstice. Cat took this picture at 11:00 a.m. on the solstice:
On the 24th, we decorated our Christmas branch, which served as a tree:
Cat also made a tree on a skyr (sort of like yogurt) cake that she made:
It’s either a tree or a rocket ship taking off.
We spent Christmas indoors because it started snowing like crazy on the 24th. It’s a good thing that our door opens inward:
Our entire valley filled in with really deep snow overnight:
One of Cat's favorite things about Iceland in the winter is the snowy horses.
We cleaned our car off on the 25th. You can see how deep the snow was on top:
By nighttime on the 25th, the car was completely covered again:
The next morning, it was really deep again as you can see from our flipped-up windshield wipers:
We ended up getting about four feet of snow in three days, so it didn’t work out so well when we tried going skiing again:
Since we couldn’t go skiing, we did what people do when they get too much snow:
This included hiking around the valley and watching the horses eat snow:
We built a snow fort to defend our part of the village:
Unfortunately, our fort got buried in fresh snow the day after we built it.
After some local farmers drove their tractors on their paths, we had some new ski trails:
The best thing about all the snow was the outdoor beer fridge that Cat made for me:
This was this year’s New Year’s bonfire:
Update from Cat:
This blog is supposed to be about the Hairy American’s experience in foreign countries, but Alaska is enough like a foreign country to necessitate talking about it for a bit. I can hear a lot of Japanese and Russian being spoken in the grocery store, and I have learned so much about all the different Native Alaskan cultures.
I started my PhD work in August during a three-week course at UAF’s Kasitsna Bay laboratory across from Homer in Kachemak Bay. It was great to be thrown into marine sciences and the course content was actually pretty intuitive after having so many years of freshwater ecology. We had a bunch of great field trips, including salmon fishing, exploring the intertidal zone at a big low tide, visiting an oyster farm, charter halibut fishing, visiting the famous Salty Dawg Saloon, and getting a tour of the Rainier, a big NOAA research ship. Halibut fishing was amazing; the captain was a really neat guy to learn from. He picked us up in Kasitsna Bay, and we headed out to the deep water. Once we passed a rip tide near Koyuktolik Bay, we were officially fishing in the Gulf of Alaska. Click here for a map of some of these spots.
We were fishing past the three islands you see on the map. The waves were quite big, but we all met our limit (2 fish per person), and it was a beautiful day. There was a black bear foraging on the beach near us, and we also spotted Steller sea lions and a humpback whale. Other sightings on our trips to Halibut Cove, Sadie Cove, and Jackalof Bay include killer whales, harbor porpoises, seals, tufted puffins, loons, sea otters, cormorants, and a 1975 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from an old-timer in Halibut Cove named Clem Tillion.
The captain:
Halibut:
Steller sea lions:
Other than a sustainability conference in Phoenix and the conference in Finland, most of my time has been spent at libraries and coffee shops in Fairbanks. Fairbanks is definitely a strange town, with a mix of military, hippie, academic and redneck inclinations that appear to coexist peacefully. I’ve seen several moose in my neighborhood and on campus. The campus is unique because it has free groomed ski trails, so once the snow falls, you can take advantage of the few hours of sunlight on your lunch break and hit the trails.
This spring semester, I’ll take another three courses and a seminar, and I won’t fly again until March for spring break in Seattle. In June, I’ll be taking off to Juneau and Sitka for a two week short course, then straight to Iceland from there, where I will be doing an eight week internship until late August. Then it’s straight back to Juneau for a department retreat. Basically 2010 is pretty much planned for me except Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s too bad I’ll be missing Fairbanks in the summer, but an average PhD takes 8.2 years (I hope to be an over-achiever and finish mine in under five), so I think we’ll have enough time to explore Alaska (and enough time for you to come visit). In the fall of 2010 and spring of 2011, I’ll finish up my classes and also teach. Then summer of 2011 and on, I’ll be working on my dissertation research. Many of you have asked about my specific research plans, and because I’m only one semester into it, I just have some basic ideas. This program is very exciting because we design our dissertation research from scratch, and this next semester I’ll really buckle down and fine-tune my plans. So you’ll just have to wait a bit longer.
Update from Dan:
I'm still just plugging away on the microscope. I'm still planning to try to finish up in August. I went to a conference in November, and I have two more coming up. I will be going to one in Iceland in February, and I will be going to NABS/ASLO in Santa Fe in June.
I watched a stream of the Orange Bowl last night, so that was pretty nice. Go Hawks. Usually I watch sports by having Cat point her computer at her television while we videochat:
I don't know how much more stuff I'll have to throw on here in the future, but there will definitely be a farewell post when I have to move away, so there will be at least one more update to look forward to.
Thanks for reading,
--Cat and Dan (The Hairy American)
