Nunavut IV

OK, so really, to be completely honest, the main reason why I wanted to come up here is because the babies are soooooo freaking cute!!! Also, there are tons and tons of them; I'm delivering one every two days or so, although this hospital averages about 1.5 per day or so. They are sooo round and soft (I mean, I've been told that I'm pretty soft myself, but these kids feel like goose down or something :) )! I'm trying to remember to take some pics of the kids, cause frankly they're funny in their fur hats and their kamiks :)...
Some of you have been asking what the heck I've been eating out here: caribou? Polar bear? walrus?? etc etc... good question! :P Actually, they are incredibly gracious to me here and provide my meals in the hospital caf, which is actually totally not as bad as it sounds. A lot of town comes here to eat for their meals actually; today I had striploin steak for lunch... I think that's nutty! :) It's quite nice as you get to meet a bunch of folks from town over lunch... However, I have had arctic char a lot (which is apparently a cousin of the salmon, and they do taste quite similar), I've tried caribou too (I dunno; tastes like chicken?? Maybe a musky beef? I dunno... everything tastes like chicken, doesn't it?). Muktuk is another story... (that's seal blubber)... apparently I will get a chance to try it (so the guys in the caf promise me), as long as I'm prepared to chew for a couple of hours... apparently it's like licorice, but you can't really chew through it, you just kind gotta let it slide down.... uhhh, that doesn't sound terribly appetizing nor nutritious, for that matter...
At any rate, the guys in the kitchen are great here, and incredible gentlemen, which is just as well, since food prices here are extravagant at best... part of it is b/c there's really only one store to buy your food at, so being a monopoly helps at jacking up prices, as well as transportation costs to bring fresh produce etc up here. Most food costs about 2-3 times more than it would down south. I went for a tour of the store (it's the biggest store in Iqaluit, possibly all of Nunavut... I can't believe I was a tourist in a supermarket in Canada, now that's sad and pathetic, possibly comparable to visiting IKEA, right??? ... :P ) the other day: Bananas cost about $1 each, my precioussss Vector cereal costs $15 a box, a loaf of Wonder bread costs $7, a ten piece bucket of KFC is $30... crazy crazy... one of my friends up here says that buying $600-700 worth of groceries a week for a small family is not surprising...
Pop and chips, however, are only marginally more expensive than they are down south, which makes me think conspiracy theory all over the place. The Inuit have notoriously high rates of obesity, diabetes and realllllly bad dental problems (Nathan, Steve... they could use you up here!), which I KNOW the pop and chips are not helping to prevent... sadly, for some reason, babies start getting pop in their bottles when they hit about 5 or six months, which I totally don't understand... So they're still really really really cute... just that their teeth start rotting before they've even come up... ewwwww....
Hope you're all well! Love you!
julia