Today's Recap

Last night when I got home from work, a heard a loud pounding on the front door. When I answered it, my cab driver who drives me to work almost every morning was there and seemed very excited. He said that there was a polar bear hanging out on the beach and to hurry he would take me to get pictures. (He asked why I was here on that first day cruising around Barrow and I obviously replied, "to take my picture with a polar bear in the wild."Now when I call for a cab in the morning, he says "good morning dr jill. you see polar bear yet?) Anyway, by the time we got to the beach, there were 3 cars stopped taking pictures but the polar bear was scared away by the gaming police's gunfire. I obviously missed some high drama. The cab driver showed me the tracks, but I told him that I already peed in one last week so that was a little anti-climatic. He said he will "drop on the door" if he sees anymore. Hopefully that means he will come get me again if he sees another one.....drop on the door could imply a flaming bag of polar bear dung on my doorstep as well. Let's be honest, either way, I will be excited.

Today I ate carbibou jerkey. The other dentist here went hunting last weekend with the primary goal of killing a caribou. The visibility on the tundra last weekend was minimal...I described it as a complete white out. You could not tell the Arctic ocean, from the sky, from the road in front of you. So he took his Garmin out so that he would not get lost. After patiently waiting and watching, he decided to be more pro-active and stalk and kill the caribou. I wasn't there for any of it so he could have simply purchased this jerkey at the store, but the receptionist did confirm that she saw him dragging it behind his snow mobile on Saturday. Either way, I enjoyed two pieces of caribou jerkey today. I then drank 90 ounces of water because it was so salty.

I am also seeing lots of patients and staying very busy in the clinic, which is the second reason why I came here. Most of the patients have been super cooperative and fun to work with so all in all, things are looking up in Barrow.