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Hanging with Inuits:
On my first full day up in Pond, I just walked around the town to get a feel for the beautiful scenery and town. As I walked around, the local Inuits would stop to chat with me, tell me about their lives up in Pond Inlet and many people just tagged along with me to show me around. I have never felt so welcomed by a group of complete strangers – it was really shocking to see. Coming from a big city where everyone more or less keeps to themselves, up in a small tight-knit community like Pond Inlet, everyone was so warm and receptive to a tourist like myself.
As I was wandering around the town, I passed three young children who were just playing around in the streets. They walked up to me and just told me, “We’re going to follow you”. So, as I went through the streets of Pond Inlet, I had these kids running behind me and asking me a whole bunch of questions about life outside of the Arctic. At first, I was a little taken aback wondering why these little kids were just roaming around the streets without their parents. But soon after one of the children’s parents walked by us, told me that he hoped his kids weren’t too much of a trouble and just walked on by. I quickly realized that all of the kids in Pond are simply allowed to roam free in the town whenever and however they please. When I stopped to grab some lunch, I met a local artist, Josie, and a group of kids around a basketball court who were around my age. They invited me to come along with them to Salmon Creek, about an hour walk outside of town. We hung out on the hilltops outside of the town for a while and then ventured out onto the sea ice. The ice goes over the ocean for hundreds of kilometers . We ran off towards an iceberg in the distance, jumping across the cracks and pools in the ice.
