Final Journal Entry?
Tuesday, October-16-07

While I already thanked a few people in my previous journal entry, I feel as though there are a few more people that need recognition. Firstly, once again I’d like to thank Partners in the Park for sponsoring me, without them I would not have been able to experience this once in a lifetime opportunity. I would also like to thank the facilitators who did an amazing job both learning and teaching as the students did. All those who contributed their time and money to make sure our experience was all it could be, the museums, the hotel staff, Hudson Bay Helicopter pilots, the staff at Gypsies, and all the others, thank you! I’d like to send a big thanks out to the Buchanans. They were inspirational and loving to all; without them none of this could have happened. I’m sure we will stay in touch and I look forward to seeing them next year at the Winnipeg dinner for the 2008 camp. Thank you Frontiers North as well. Stephen Harper gets no thanks for his absense, thankfully for the next election I’ll be of age to vote against him. And thanks to everyone else who helped out!

However of all the people to thank I have to thank the students who ventured alongside myself into this trip. We hardly knew each other but of all the things that amazed me this trip, the closeness the group achieved in a matter of only nine days, I found to be the most stunning.
That said, here’s to:
- friends around the world
- uniting four nations to battle one global issue
- saving the arctic
- ridiculous sing-alongs
- getting no homework done and being totally screwed for school when I came back
- Our late night discussions
- The northern lights, particularly that one night
- the first time a polar bear stood up aganist a buggy
- my first helicopter ride

We may not see one another in person for a very long time, but through the Internet we’re staying in touch. That’s a start. Maybe someday we’ll all meet up again. Just because we don’t have each other in person doesn’t mean we’re no longer a team. And if the Prime Minister of Canada can’t come answer a list of questions this team put together, who or what can stop us? We can make a difference, we just need to know that even though it may not seem like it, everyone one of us is right behind the other, backing each other up when we need it.

Thanks again
Love and Peace

Sean Fainman
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Denmark ‘08?

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Our last day on the lodge. The Internet has been down since my last blog so excuse the absences. I’m not saying the Internet is working, it isn’t, but I’m doing a blog none-the-less.

Today was good. We began with a regular breakfast followed by a hypothetical press conference. All the facilitators had prepared questions for individual students and we had to do our best to answer them without any prep time. My question was something like, “Why should I care or take action on global warming since I live in Denmark and global warming is warming up my city making it nicer and I don’t have to pay as much for my heating.” It was something like that. While everyone had 90 seconds to answer, mine took about 20 minutes (we had a bear break mid. answer because two were sparring, out first time seeing that). I was satisfied with my answer.

After the press conference we experienced one of the highlights of our trip. In a very wicked awesome fashion, five helicopters swooped down on to the tundra to take us to a maternal den. The helicopter ride was very cool, we got one of the nice new helicopters, only two or three of the five were like ours (we rule). One of the coolest parts was us having these headset walkie-talkies to communicate. The den was really cool there was lots of pictures taken and we had a big snow ball fight.

We came back and had some free time and then came the most powerful moment of the day, of our trip, and possibly of my life. Ms. Charlotte Arnold (the facilitator from my school) led us in an exercise that Michael brought over for us from Australia. It began with us closing our eyes and getting comfortable. Reading off of Mike’s script, Ms. Arnold took us through several images in our minds all leading up to us envisioning what we would like to achieve after this trip is done. By the end, we all stood in a tight circle and shared what we thought and nearly everyone began crying. I lost it when Cesar thanked us for giving him such an experience and being so nice to help as well as being so patient with him and helping him learn so much. It was extremely emotional and I think everyone learned a lot about themselves. I want to thank Mike for helping us with this activity. I know I’m a lot more convinced that I will actually go out and try to follow up with what I’ve learned here. Once all was done, much like PBI has a mission statement (conservation through research and education) we made a mission statement for ourselves: Inspiring change through passion and awareness.

After this activity we had lots of time to chill, a bunch of the guys took it easy near my bunk and eventually Mike and I fell asleep. When we awoke it was dinner time. Our dinner was all the left-overs and we watched a slide show of our pictures while we ate. We concluded the meal with some sing-alongs and songs that were made at camp. John the buggy driver did a presentation for us with pictures he had taken throughout his career. Mostly they revolved around mother bears and their cubs. We concluded the night with a few student-made videos of our trip.

I cannot stress the inspiration felt behind Mike/Ms. Arnold’s activity. I only wish it could have all been filmed so we could show it to people, I am certain it would be as emotional for others as it was for us.

I do not know if we will be blogging tomorrow. That said I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Partners in the Park for sponsoring me. On a much more personal level, I’d like to thank Ms. Arnold as well. Being in first year university I’ve been very overwhelmed with school so far. As of two weeks or so, I was seriously considering dropping out of this trip and not coming. I approached her to discuss how I was feeling, however I did not tell her that I was so stressed to a point I was considering not coming. She explained to me that your future can be created not only by the training and experience you get in school, but also the life experiences you go through. Her words were beautiful and she also told me she would be coming on the trip too, I didn’t know that up to that point. With that encounter, I somewhat reluctantly came. I know now that I would have missed out on a fabulous once in a life time opportunity. So thank you Ms. Arnold, I appreciate it more than you know and I wouldn’t have done this without you.

Love and peace.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Today was a day filled with adventure. It was my group’s day to do the cooking, meaning we had to wake up at six thirty. We had eggs, bacon, and toast to prepare. Unlike the other cooking groups to have gone so far, we decided to theme our meals and spruce up the atmosphere. We decided to do a restaurant feel for breakfast. We asked people what they wanted to eat from our choices and we brought it to them as opposed to the usual buffet. All went well.

We went onto the tundra buggy following breakfast for the first time today. There, we watched a bear for a while and discussed the schedule over the next few days, no spoilers for you, wait tight, sorry. We had a discussion on carbon offsetting. This is something along the line of paying extra money for environmental causes when flying for example. So a flight here could be an extra 50 dollars for your “carbon offset” certificate, this saying you’ve paid off what emissions you put out. Don’t hold me on that, it was an early morning, I was in and out of sleep. We came back and had frozen pizzas for lunch, theme-less for the most part.

We went out on the buggy again after lunch. We were on the buggy all day because it was ands down our most beautiful day so far, sunshine all the way through. Viewed lots of bears and discussed some more about the next days to come. We then went to peninsula on the tundra and for the first time were allowed to leave. It was excellent being on the tundra, our first time on real ground in days. We dipped our hands in the Hudson Bay (or Michael who put some in his mouth then violently coughed it all out once realizing how it tasted), took lots of pictures, and looked at the snails and mussels on the beach. We came back for dinner.

Dinner was our all-out meal. Everyone was supposed to bring dates (plutonic) and dress as well as we could with the clothes we had. We had appetizers of left over pizza bites from lunch and orange juice – sprite drinks. There was also live entertainment for the crowd. Shortly after, everyone was brought into the eating car into a dimmed light setting for lasagna, salad, and garlic toast. It was fine dining and Michael after dared the next cook group to best us (impossible he claims). We concluded with ice cream and cookies for dessert, however I had none as spectacular northern lights came out, illuminating the sky on all sides of the buggy. I watched them for quite a while, all for now.

Peace

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

The morning we woke up at a regular time, not that I know what that time is. We quickly were moved into the eating area to have breakfast. There we ate pancakes and sausage patties and I ate a lot of peanut butter and honey toast. Omar saw it fit to make me a large Mickey Mouse pancake that everyone saw, he also made me a heart shaped one underneath; but that was just for me to know (sorry bud).

After breaky we went over safety protocols on the Buggy and then broke off into our groups to work on that afternoons presentations. The other three students in my group are Jess and Michael, the Ozzys and Annie the Alaskan ambassador. We had to perform a mock-presentation in front of a “corporate business” on the “World Wide Implications” (of global warming) chapter from our Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA, this is how it’s now known so grow used to the acronym) book. We decided we’d present two satirical commercials to a tourist company. The first was of skiers going to ski however the mountain where their resort is located, ends up being covered in dark mud; no longer snow. The second was of people lying down on the beach at a southern resort but then getting drenched by the tide from increasing water levels. Michael played the mud and then the water, he was our comic relief. Our presentation got lots of laughs, however was probably more suited for middle students as opposed to a corporate business. The other groups all did an effective and interesting job with their presentations. No need to go into depth, there are plenty of blogs that will.

We had a fuzzy white visitor come visit us for most of the afternoon (hint: it wasn’t Rob’s beard). The bear stayed for a long time and it acted as a nice break from the presentations.

On a much more important note; I finished my song. The lovely Ms. Arnold will be accompanying my guitar and we should hopefully have a clip of us performing it.

It’s still early in our fog-filled day so excuse the short entry. If you are appalled, I’ll let you know that as of late the tide has gone down.

Peace



White and fuzzy visitor?

Monday, October 1, 2007

Six minutes until lights out, you all have sixteen blogs to read so I’ll just cut to the chase…

The morning went regularly, here are some words to sum it up: early, rushed, presentations.

We left on the very large Tundra Buggies with all our stuff, we were “flying” down the “road” at a heart pumping 15-25 km/h. You would understand why I’m putting road in quotations if you could see it. We’ll continue with our theme of descriptive words: rocks, water, no real road.

While making myself sick doing physics homework (very unsuccessfully) we came across this and that, the odd bird/animal. The Arctic Hare was actually kind of cool; bigger than I had expected. We saw our first polar bear from a far distance away, it was tough to see (disappointing) and a caribou heading towards it. Much to my dismay, the caribou caught scent of the bear and ran away, no duel to the death (more disappointing). All and all a real “meh”.

Now that I’ve made you all depressed, let me discuss the pinnacle moment of my day, the moment that made me start writing songs again and lift my poor physics-filled mood. Nearing the Tundra Lodge, we saw two males in the distance, fairly spaced apart, we proceeded to pull up next to one a good 50 yards away. After a few minutes, the bear came up to the rear of the Tundra Buggy which happens to be an outdoor compartment. We all rushed to the back and in the cold watched the pair as he watched us from below, no more than two meters or so away. After a while people got cold and went inside, on my second trip outside I started jokingly insulting the bear who, to my surprise, reacted. He went up on his hind legs and put his paws up on the Buggy. Face to face with a polar bear, I couldn’t have been more then four or five feet from him. Had he swiped, he probably would have hit me, fortunately for him he didn’t have the guts to try, right? The second bear eventually came on up and scared the first one away. Once again I tried insulting the bear and it seemed to work as the second bear reacted like the first. I guess they are sensitive or something. Eventually we left our friends and headed to the Tundra Lodge.

Getting late here, so here we go:
- dinner: hot dogs, etc.
- prepping for presentations
- one more bear outside the lodge
- pretty cold outside

Peace

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Today was a particularly exciting because we left Winnipeg and flew to Churchill (finally). Wake up was unfortunately at 6:30 by atleast there was a nice buffet breakfast downstairs waiting. At the airport I was able to see my family once more as they came to drop off my luggage and say goodbye. The toughest decision of my day was about to occur. While checking in with Calm Air, I was asked which piece of luggage was my "priority" (not an encouraging question). I had to choose from my guitar or my bag with all my clothes in it. It took about ten minutes but I reluctantly chose the clothes (needless to say I was very relieved when I saw the guitar in the Churchill airport). In the terminal we tossed around a frisbee which I really enjoyed. The flight here went smoothly however I couldn't finish my Sudoku - dissapointing. The further north we flew, we saw more and more small lakes. I never realized just how many there were.

Once we arrived we took a quick bus ride to our hotel where I am once again living with Michael the Australian student. Back at the Winnipeg airport he ordered the wrong coffee and donut because I wasn't there to help him like the other evening. We need to make a rule that when we're at Tim Hortons, I'm supervising him, I'm only kidding. After Michael and I put our bags in the hotel room we went on a chilly walking tour of Churchill. This tour consisted of going to the port, then to the Hudson Bay coast, then to the town's school/recreational centre. My favourite part of the tour was the coast. While I was already cold, dipping my hand in the water made the rest of my body feel warm by comparison. The water was very cold.

Everyone else is out at the store, however I can hear them coming back. I'll write more tommorow.

Saturday, September 29, 2007:

Today was the first full day of our program. We began with an early wake up and a good breakfast. The first Churchill related event we experienced was having a photographer named Rob Taylor come and share his pictures and life story with us. He is a photographer that has made four books out his pictures and mostly takes shots up in the Arctic. He went through a PowerPoint presentation and thoroughly explained every slide; most of them had an interesting story behind them. Personally, my favorite clip was a close up of a purple flower immediately after rainfall. The flower’s beauty and detail were captured flawlessly and the tiny droplets of rain on it only added to the picture. Kudos Rob.

We soon after grabbed our lunches and headed out to the Winnipeg zoo. There we first looked at the bears and then discussed the advantages and disadvantages of having these bears in captivity. It was a tough question and I heard persuasive points from both side, in the end I could not make a decision. I’m a fence sitter on this one I guess. After this discussion we were given some time to explore on our own around the zoo. After the zoo we went on a quick bus tour of Winnipeg. Being from Winnipeg this turned into a quick nap.

After the tour we went back to the hotel and were given some nap time. Following we were given time to work on our blogs; I played guitar. We shortly after ate a yummy dinner. There I was “double-dog dared” to eat the curry seafood pot pie sort of dish, it was surprisingly good. We then heard from the Director of Conservation of Wildlife in Manitoba about the political importance of the polar bear, he and his wife after presented us with an agenda, a nice polar bear key chain and a pen. That’s our day for now. Off to sleep.