Piuraagiaqta 2011 - Barrow Spring Festival

The spring festival has been going on this weekend here in Barrow and it has been quite a treat. We have gone to many events and even participated in a few. It started Friday morning but we were in school of course. That evening there was a cross country ski "race" that I participated in. Everyone tagged along to watch and we drove around the starting site for 20 min. trying to figure out where the race was. Eventually Mayor Bob showed up along with three other racers. They decided the where the loop should be (an out and back across the vast lagoon to an arch in the pipeline). While it ended up being more of a ski and chat, rather than a race, it was a fun hour on the snow, minus the part on the way back where we were being whipped in the face by the wind.

Meredith and Kristian went to the Friday Nite Fever at the roller rink for some music and dancing. That night I was awaken from my somber sleep by a knocking on the door at 2am in the morning. It was Meredith telling me that she saw the northern lights outside. So I threw on my jacket and ran outside to see nothing! Shortest display of northern lights apparently. Thanks Meredith.

We started Saturday at the Heritage Center Museum. There were some great displays about whaling and the Inuit culture. Below is a picture of a rifle is used to shoot the explosive into the whales when whaling. Above the rifle are spear points that where found in whales and have helped scientists conclude that whales may live for up to 150-200 years.

Then we went to the parade, which was awesome. It consisted of people in decorated trucks throwing out handfuls upon handfuls of candy. There were even full size candy bars. Best parade I've ever been to.

While Meredith, Trevor, and Britt went to some science lectures Kristian and I went to the middle lagoon for an assortment of races by the whaling crews. We watched a 2 x 4 race, harpoon throwing, cooking contests and an umiaq race (where the whaling crews load their boats onto their sled and push it across the snow).

We got to sleep in on Sunday because the events did not start until 3pm that day. We watched the whaling captains sled race, whaling crews tea race (where they race each other to melt ice and make tea), and snowmobile races.

While we were waiting for the snow mobile race to start we made a little snow shelter to block the wind. It worked very well and kept us warm.

It was a great weekend filled with many fun activities. But now we start a new school week. Which will be fun as well because it will be the first real school week since we had testing last week.

Bye for now - Cassandra