Craig and Diane

Hi everyone–

The link below is to our holiday letter. It’s a .pdf file, so should open fine if you have Adobe Acrobat.

If you can’t read it and would like a copy, send an email to Diane at dhirshberg@gmail.com and I’ll email you a copy directly.

holiday-2009-sm

We’ll post more photos from this year soon!

–Craig & Diane

Well, we’re no longer in Greenland. A bit sad about it, very happy about our time there. Diane, Diane and Brit presented at the conference, and it went well – Diane, Diane & Craig later that day went over to the Institute on Arctic Education that is heading a major reform effort for Greenland schools and had a good conversation with institute leadership. On Wed., Diane Diane & Craig were lucky enough to take an all day boat ride out one of the fjord arms. It included a stop at a village that was “closed” in the 70s in a forced relocation program by the Danish government – it now is a summer vacation village for some of the Nuuk residents. We saw tons of icebergs, one huge mountain-side glacier and one of the two huge glaciers that calve into the waterways. We also saw a seal…and our fjord guides tried to bring him home for dinner, with no luck. Not the usual activity one expects on a glacier tour! Craig got to try his hand at fishing Greenland style and was successful within minutes. We also saw a humpback whale on the way back to town. We’ve got lots of stories to share and tons of photos – we’ll do our best to get more up soon. (Can you say muktuk sushi in the Thai restaurant?)

–Diane & Craig

Hi all

Short on time and on internet access, so a quick note – we’ll post more on what we’ve been up to, but in short Craig presented, big dinner with entertainment, ditched the conference for a few hours for a whale watching tour, visited museum (with mummies!), Craig hiked while Diane went to more sessions, and tomorrow Diane presents.

Oh and it’s so beautiful it’s quite unbelievable.

And windy. And a bit cool… but sunny and gorgeous.

More tomorrow…

Enjoy the pics – sorry for random order, but if you read photo titles at least you’ll get an idea what is what. Maybe?

–Diane and Craig

We’re here after a long day of travel back toward Anchorage – seems silly to fly all the way to Europe only to turn around and fly back over the Atlantic to the west coast of Greenland, but that’s the only way to get here…

Yesterday we had a lovely day at the Louisiana museum in Denmark, on the coast north of Copenhagen. From the grounds you can see Sweden, and there is art everywhere, in and outside of the buildings.

Today it was all about getting to Nuuk, via Kanderlussuaq, which is an old WWII U.S. Air Force base converted to an airport/town. The views of the ice fields spanning Greenland were spectacular, as were the views coming into Nuuk. The land is very very different from Alaska, much older harder rock under vast ice fields, and no trees whatsoever. The cliffs near Nuuk are dramatic and we hope to get out on a fjord boat tour to see them up close.

Tomorrow Craig presents at the conference, so it’s off to bed for us, but more soon!

–Craig & Diane

So check out “Hi from Copenhagen” down in the left hand column under “pages” for our first update!

Next time I’ll post in the other spot. Still learning… –Diane

We’re off to the International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS) VI. Four years ago it was in Fairbanks, and this year it’s Nuuk, Greenland. Craig is presenting about using technology in bringing science research to science education, while Diane is presenting on three of her research projects (with colleagues for two of the papers) on Alaska Native education issues. The conference website is:

http://www.icass.gl/

More soon…

Hi all-
Just another hurdle on my way to geekdom…