29 May 2004

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 84

May 29, 2004

Weather: Cloudy

Sunrise: 1:29 a.m.

Sunset: 11: 54 p.m.

# of daylight hours: 22 hours 25 minutes

High Temp: 3 °C 37°F

Low Temp: -7°C 19°F

Average Temp: -2°C 28°F

Precipitation: Yes

Form: Snow

How Much: 1 cm—but it would melt as soon as it hit the ground

We continued sampling today. Pretty much duplicated the same procedure as we did yesterday. In the next couple of days, under Activities and Experiments, you will find some instructions so that you can do some water testing yourself. Each of the tests will help you measure important features of water that will help you learn more about it, just like the scientists are working to do here.

We also had the opportunity to go to the school here and share our project with the community and students from the school.

There has been one student from Zhigansk that has been helping Max by collecting samples throughout the year, and other students and teachers are interested in being part of the project as well. Max and I are trying to think of ways to bring kids into actually doing part of the work for the project, not just here but also at the MacKenzie River testing station and the Yukon testing station. We are also trying to brainstorm a way that through this testing, these different villages in the Arctic can be connected. We spoke with the principal about the idea and I also shared the pictures that Salisbury students drew of nature scenes around our school (notice the pictures on her desk).

Before we introduced ourselves and the science project to the school, some children at the school, dressed in traditional clothing, did a dance for us that was really cute. The people here are really proud of their traditional culture and it is so great to see them keeping it alive, not only through their performances but also by the fact that the traditional language is still so strong.

We each shared with the school community who we were, why we were on the expedition and then we answered questions. The whole community was really interested in the project and what the scientists had found out so far with the research and what else they were going to find out. People were also very interested in my position on the research team and what teaching was like for me in the United States. I have been invited to several different teachers’ houses and also back to the school for several visits. As long as it doesn’t interfere with the water sampling this should be a great way to spend some time. In fact, Max and I spent the afternoon at the home of one of the teachers. She and her husband treated us to a traditional lunch of raw frozen fish (which I ate) and tons of other food. They were super nice people and we had a fantastic time.

I also passed out letters for the students at Zhigansk from the students at Salisbury. The students here are very interested in communicating with Salisbury kids. Hopefully, I’ll have a notebook of letters to bring home.

If there are other classrooms out there that would like to communicate too, just post a Question in the Ask the Teacher section and I will send some to you as well!!

The river is getting higher and higher each day as you can see from the photographs. Today was really cold though, so I don’t know if that might affect the timing of the ice breaking up. Here is a picture taken from the same place yesterday and today so that you can see the difference. I will try to continue to do this everyday.

May 28 Morning

May 29 Morning

One final thing—if you look at the temperatures here in Zhigansk for the last several days, you will see that temperature is highly variable. Yesterday, it was in the 50’s and today it is really cold again. All the locals say that once the ice breaks, the weather becomes and stays nice. An interesting hypothesis--we’ll have to see what happens.