Nunavut notes - on the 6th day she sang with delight

This morning is stunningly lovely. An icy white mist softens the hard lines of the frozen bay, and adds a hint of citrus smudge as it picks up the warm glow of sunrise spilling over distant hills.

Sunrise carries on for hours, and soon enough becomes a drawn-out sunset. And it has been cold, but I've quickly acclimatized. I don't think I've really felt cold since the first day, and this probably because I've learned to dress for these temperatures. In fact, most of the time outside I'm swelteringly hot beneath my layers and layers of insulation.

Yesterday, Steve & I found time to wander about town for the afternoon. We visited the museum, which has lovely artwork and objects of lives past and present to explore. The Cape Dorset prints and carvings are stunning - wish I could go there to see more! There are works by artists from many of Iqaluit's 27 communities here, and a print that Steve & I have our eye on (if I'm to buy something here, I should try to do so before the 50+ pilots and other Boeing engineers and tech folk descent here for a week of cold-weather testing of the new 800-seater airbus!).

Upstairs, at the museum, there are several large photo albums with pictures from the 1920's, the '50's and the '70's. This little place has been completely transformed in that time. From a Hudson's bay trading store and sparse tent settlement, to a landing strip and ?geological survey operation, the erection of a few buildings (igloo-shaped church, pre-fab space-station-esque school building), to what is now a busy, if still improbable community of oil-heated, electrically-wired homes, a hospital (and a newer replacement in the works), several schools, and even an 8-story 'high-rise' with a public swimming pool inside. We continued walking a little after the museum - besides the over-priced NorthMart, there's an Outdoor Survival shop, which warm gear and guns, and at Arctic Ventures, the competing over-priced grocery store, we found Bollywood classics blaring loudly to entice passers-by into the shop. Apparently, some people order their produce weekly from Montreal (at normal prices), and then pay to have it flown up here in order to save money! Hard to imagine that it's worth it until you've seen mark-up on goods that the bi-opoly has managed.

and other tidbits:
Each house is uniquely numbered here, so taxis ($5 per passenger, flat rate no matter the journey) need not worry about street names and such. There is a red light at the front of every home - when the water tank is empty, the light goes off and the water truck, which drives up and down the streets all day, comes to fill the tanks (too cold for water or sewage pipes here!).