5/30/2012- Language (Nuuk, Greenland)

One of the things which has had the biggest impact on my short time in Greenland so far is the concept of language. As I had mentioned before Greenlandic is one of the most complicated languages in the world—but, in my opinion, the most beautiful. Concepts and ideas form words, combining them into long stretches of consonants often starting with or ending with the guttural, soft q. Pauses in speech and intonation alterations pull you in, and as I hear people speaking I feel almost as though they have a secret—even if they are simply speaking about the weather or groceries. The most beautiful speaking I have heard was from a Greenlandic girl about my own age while filming a short video to promote tourism to the country- http://bit.ly/JPerNW starting at 2:45 in (and Tupaarnaq, if you’re reading this, sorry for being awkward!) After hearing her speak, and the others in the video afterwards, I was drawn in by the soul behind the words and have strived to listen to anyone possible speaking Greenlandic just to capture the essence of the linguistics.

Danish is widely spoken in our office as it is the common language known by everyone in our two locations (Copenhagen and Nuuk)—not everyone working at Visit Greenland speaks Greenlandic or even is from here. In fact, a lot of the business people from Greenland are Danish by descent and have come here for the opportunities the country affords. Even those growing up in Greenland now often speak Danish but not Greenlandic, showcasing the change in culture happening right before our eyes. The majority of signs are in both languages, and businesses often have their information in three—English, Danish, and Greenlandic. After being in Copenhagen the last month I can pick up on and read more Danish than I was thinking I would be able to at this point, making life a bit easier as there is no feasible way to even start learning Greenlandic for an English speaker.

Faroese—the language of my host—is one I have not yet gotten used to hearing. As Roar plays traditional folk songs and sings in his powerful deep voice, I have learned to focus on the music itself and the meaning behind it rather than the words. His obsession with music from his homeland has been comforting in a lot of ways my first few days here, providing me with a songtrack to my own journey far from home in a land vastly different from my own.

And, of course, English. The language I hear while speaking with Sarah, when the office is talking to either of us or feeling kind and speaking in our presence, and on a scarce few programs on one of the four channels available on our TV in Nuuk. The Danes in Greenland are almost all fluent in English in a way that puts our language skills to shame—however the people who work in everyday places, who have deep roots to Greenland, often cannot understand a word I am saying. My first trip to the grocery store ended in mass confusion for the girl taking my money as she could not convey to me the reason why she had her hand out still after I had handed her 350 kroner for a 335 bill—and to this point, I still do not know what she wanted or why she stared so blankly at me.

I had thought I would feel partially helpless knowing limited Danish only and with a lot of the population not speaking English at all or, if they do, as a third language—especially after living in Denmark where as soon as I smiled and said ‘hello’ everyone and anyone would change tone and switch languages as though it were nothing—however, the lifestyle here has culminated in such a kind and relaxed atmosphere that the differences in understanding one another are nothing to be concerned about, and are not taken as a problem. The fact that outsiders so rarely come, especially Americans—everyone I have spoken to can identify only two Americans living in Nuuk in total—not speaking the language or being confused in a situation hasn’t resulted in shame or embarrassment as it would in another country where people would roll their eyes and think to themselves ‘stupid American’ (as at least the scene plays out in my own head), but a genuine curiosity and kindness exists. Here, speaking English and being American doesn’t bring the exasperated sighs or the immediate stereotyping (that I can see outright as in many other places), but in fact gives the opposite—a simple acceptance and aid if necessary, a symbol of the people in the Pioneering Nation that is Greenland.

5/28/2012- Musings from Greenland (Nuuk, Greenland)

Two things said by Anne Mette caught me off guard and made me think.

“If you’re sick just go to the hospital, and don’t even bother trying to show them insurance—they wouldn’t know what to do with it and it would just complicated the matters. Simply give them your address in Nuuk, and you’ll get all the medication and service you need for free.”

“Feel free to sign out the company car and drive anywhere. You don’t need an international driver’s license; the police if you were stopped wouldn’t know the difference between your US license and the international, so you’ll be fine. Oh, and be careful at the two traffic lights—they’re the only two in all Greenland, and often people from the settlements driving here will stop in the middle of the road confused at what to do when they see it or not stop at all because they have no idea what it is.”

I’m making a point to not be political in any conversation I am having while here but rather to simply listen in, and this blog will be no different. What I took away from these two statements wasn’t an idea of one government system being superior or inferior to another, but a representation of how simple and pure life can be here. Hearing these comments made me realize what I had heard about hiking was correct—you can hike anywhere in the country outside the national park as no one owns any of the land, not even what your house is on. Land belongs to the people, and anyone can enjoy it.

My second day in Greenland after a morning chatting with the man I am staying with, Roar (and this is not an alias; he is from the Faroe Islands—though his name is quite possibly one of the coolest in the world,) I walked from my home in Nuussuaq to work on the coast, about a 30-40 minute trip. It took longer than that, about an hour, since everyone was outside to enjoy the weather on the holiday and would stop to greet everyone passing them on the street. Nuuk has a population of around 15,000 people, making it one of the smallest capital cities in the world, and unlike in the US when you’re often asked ‘you’re from Brookfield? Oh, do you know so-and-so’ when you know for a fact that no one will ever know who is being spoken about—here, the answer is generally yes. For example, to explain where we are living to the office Sarah and I gave our host family’s first names, and everyone immediately knew who they were and what they did. Even when I remembered nothing about the man I spoke to on the plane at Kulusuk, everyone I have spoken to here about him could infer who I was speaking about by knowing that he owned a business in Paamiut and lived in Nuuk.

After arriving at the office I sat on the rocks outside which separate the ocean from the road. Boats of all sizes shot by while families gathered to have a smoke and watch for whales nearby, and I enjoyed watching the contrast of people out on the water to the colored houses outlined by snowcapped mountains behind them for a good while. Ever since Semester at Sea I have found myself calmest and most at peace when I am looking out over the ocean, hearing the waves and knowing the power of what is before me—sitting on the rocks rivaled being in the middle of the ocean under the stars for me. I could only imagine sitting there in the dead of winter during the three month darkness that envelops the Arctic region, watching the sky light up and dance.

I’d wondered how I would enjoy being in a place where internet is so costly its prohibiting, grocery stores stock what can be shipped in from abroad and are subject to the weather, and few people speak my language. Admittedly, my opinions could possibly change in the coming months. However this move has already clearly been the best thing for me at this point in my life. The purity of the air and the break from ‘reality’ are saving me from the neurotic, dependent, type-A personality I had slowly been becoming while working full time and working on my Masters. My days these past few years had consisted of waking early to sit at a desk for a job that I had no passion for, not moving until it was time to ‘go home’, when I would walk a few buildings over and sit another few hours for class. I’m eternally grateful for the opportunities the job and degree have afforded me, and always will be—however, I could see myself becoming comfortable.

Comfortable... that is the word I’ve avoided like the plague. In my opinion, when you become comfortable, it’s time to move on, try something new, jump off a new cliff into a new ocean, lest you become stoic and settled.

I truly hope that I’m never comfortable in my life.

…and that, my friends, is how you skip conversation topics and write what’s on your soul.

5/27/2012- Second Impressions (Nuuk, Greenland)

I’d heard the two former interns from Visit Greenland, SungHa and Natasha, say countless times how beautiful Greenland is and how much of an effect it has on you being there. I believed them to an extent—believed that it was in fact beautiful, but that it would compare to other destinations I had been to previously, such as Alaska.

It took me two minutes, a thousand feet above the ice pack and mountains outside Kulusuk, to understand what they were talking about.

Silently and in awe I watched out the tiny window as we passed over the receding ice pack, putting all stories, pictures, and BBC specials I’d seen about it to shame. It went on for miles upon miles, with icebergs and sheets flowing out and away from the mountains inland. It looked something like a puzzle of white ice among a dark blue background, with the pieces of differing sizes and shapes. The mountains in the background framed the picture, jutting out from the coast and covered in snow, like something out of an apocalyptic end-of-the-world image. As we maneuvered around and through the mountains to land in Kulusuk, I thought to myself calmly that if I died, if the worst case scenario happened and our tiny plane hit a bad wind and crashed into the side of one of the majestic mountains, I would be okay with it because I had seen something so otherworldly. The tight grasp I had had on the seatback in front of me out of fear was loosened and my entire body relaxed.

After landing we exited the plane so they could refuel, and laughed at four foreign men who fell to their knees and prayed that we had landed safely (which made me feel better than I was not the only one bothered by the turbulence and the impact it had on our tiny plane). The six or so of us continuing on to Nuuk waited in the airport, which consisted of two rooms separated by a small shop. I spoke with one of the Danish visitors, who has been working in Greenland for years and has been asked to run tourism in one of the settlements, Paamiut. He told me a few stories about his settlement and we relaxed until the plane was ready to take off once more.

Upon boarding the plane again, we were surprised to note that it was now full with East Greenlanders, mostly natives who were boisterous and had moved our things about the plane to sit together. I ended up in back next to an older Inuit woman, who didn’t speak a single word of English yet took great glee in pointing at things out the window and sharing the Greenlandic names with me. When I pulled out a map to continue memorizing the names of all settlements, she got even more excited and grabbed my arm, pointing to herself and then pointing at a city wildly, giving me a toothy grin as her family sitting around us all laughed. After a few minutes of me looking around her she gave me her seat so I could watch out the window, though due to wind issues, after a short time we ascended above the cloud cover. For the entire two hour flight I watched out, excited to see through breaks in the clouds and catch glimpses of the endless snow and mountains below.

When we descended below the cloud cover, winds overtook the plane and we started to be thrown about. Despite the beautiful scenery outside I grasped the armrests and the woman beside me rubbed my back, trying to comfort me. I was amused at the scene—a native Greenlander wearing traditional jewelry and clothing, who did not look as though she traveled much from home, and she was comforting someone who had flown over ten thousand miles the previous year on varying flights.

There was no customs and baggage claim consisted of a single looped conveyor belt which whipped bags out at a speed I thought impossible, flinging a bag out at one point and into the waiting crowd of children and adults crowded into the tiny room. Anne Mette then took me from the one roomed airport and to my home for the next four months—a beautiful light wood apartment with white walls to capture as much light as possible during the endless night winter months (as the sun does not rise for about three months in Nuuk). What enticed me most were the views—mountains reaching into the clouds surround the ‘city’ (and I put that word lightly, as Nuuk is one of the smallest capitals of the world by population at just around 15,000), capped in snow, while each building is painted brightly in colors spanning beyond the rainbow. My room looks out directly to the mountains with houses decked in colors at the base, with snow banks melting into rivers below. Although it is not yet summer, the snow is melting and the sun is out for twenty or so hours a day, giving precious little time to sleep in darkness before the sun comes up over the horizon once again at around 0200.  

Time to enjoy for that 'precious little'. Night!

5/26/2012- First Impressions (Kulusuk, Greenland)

I suppose the ‘proper’ way to start (or in this case, restart) a blog is to introduce the situation I’m in, and what reason I have for starting a blog when there are oh so many ranging all topics from what to do if your cat decides to start barking like a dog to steps in adopting a pet zebra. So, here goes.

My name is Sharon Clay Testor, and I’m 24 years old. I’ve spent the past two and a half years working full time while taking night and weekend graduate school classes. I graduated with a Masters in Tourism Administration and a concentration in Sustainable Destination Management from The George Washington University one week ago, and am currently on a flight from Keflavik Airport in Iceland to Nuuk, Greenland, where I will be living for the next four months and working as an intern with Visit Greenland—the national tourist board for the country. I spent the month of April and the start of May in Copenhagen, Denmark while working in the Visit Greenland representation office to train for and prepare for these next four months. While in Greenland, I’ll be working on a variety of projects, mainly focusing on the cruise and coastal sailings sector—i.e., how to plan for, market for, and manage ships from less than 100 passengers up to large cruise ships which call on Greenland in a sustainable manner.

I’m currently on my flight- a Dash 8-200 Air Greenland plane which holds 37 passengers and has only 14 of us onboard. It’s stopping in Kulusuk in eastern Greenland, then taking off again to bring the rest of us to Nuuk, the capital city. The door to the cockpit has been open the entire flight and security in Reykjavik, Iceland didn’t notice Visit Greenland had reserved my ticket under Sharon Clay while my passport said Sharon Testor—and somehow, on top of all else, they gave me a boarding pass for Mr. Richard Travis. Compounding my confusion was the fact that security checked my documents, and had no problem believing that I was Mr. Travis (with a passport clearly stating I was American and female—only Sarah—the other intern for Visit Greenland—and I are American on this flight).

I don’t know what to expect when we get to Nuuk, Greenland. I know nothing about the person I am living with other than his name, and have met only Anne Mette and Anders S. from the Visit Greenland office (Anne Mette while recruiting for the office in Washington, DC and Anders S. while working in Copenhagen when he flew in to celebrate Visit Greenland’s website, visitgreenland.com, winning the Webby Award- People’s Choice for best tourism website in the world). I speak very little Danish which I picked up while in Denmark and promptly butchered by adding a Puerto Rican accent (my father is from Puerto Rico and always added that accent when teaching my Spanish, so I unconsciously add that accent onto any languages I learn—Russian with that accent was particularly exasperating for my professors), and no Greenlandic whatsoever, though that will not change as the language is one of the most difficult worldwide. (Try Uummannaq on for size).

If anyone has any questions, comments, rants, whatever—please feel free to comment. As we pay per usage in Greenland for internet I may not respond instantly, but I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

However, we’re just starting to fly over Greenland for the first time and so I can see the pack ice and mountains, so I’m heading to stare out the window in wonder! Until next time!

Tak!

Sharon