On my last evening in Ulukhaktok Suzie and Julia took me to the old town where they all used to live before the community needed more space.  Every once and a while I'd turn my back to the wind to keep my face from freezing off.  But I stuck to the plan, braved the cold and we had a tea party in a blizzard.  The next morning they told me that they thought that maybe I was turning around in longing for my warm home.

This is us (less Cora and Diane) right before I left for my flight on the last day.  I'm wearing my atikaluk (a-tee-ka-look), a gift Mary made me, and the quiviuk hat the ladies made me on the knitting machine.  Some of the ladies in the picture are wearing the hats I made them for the awards ceremony we had had the day before.  Ada (far left) was the program coordinator.  She often picked me up in the mornings and took me to work on her snow mobile.  Even though it was only two blocks away,  I was very thankful, especially on cold windy mornings.  Sometimes it was as cold as -30, brrrrrr. 

This picture is of me wearing a polar bear head purse in an Inuvik art store, it has the actual bear nose partially still intact.  Can you believe it?  This is a rare find even in the Arctic.  Although I didn't see any polar bears while I was there, a grolar bear (polar grizzly hybrid) was killed the week before I arrived in Ulukhaktok.  It had been going through abandoned houses and destroying things, so it was definitely a threat to the community.  Read about it here and here.  Below is a pic of the taxidermied grolar bear in the Ulukhaktok Community Center.