Gamli Garður

I moved into residence yesterday. It wasn´t too hard because I don´t have too much stuff and Christian Z helped me. It felt really weird moving out. I found it harder than moving TO Iceland. I guess it finally struck me that the language course is over and I may not see many people from the class anymore and have to move on. You spend a month with a group of people and you get pretty close and then its done. I feel kind of bad but I didn´t even really want to meet anyone in my rez because I have spent the last month meeting new people and making friends and I have to do it all again. Strange feeling.

I have already met some really nice people here though. We realised that this residence is for all the international students that needed a visa, so basically all North Americans and Asians. One cool thing is there are two french Canadians and one girl from France who is studying in Oaklahoma, so I can try and practise my french. They are all really cool people, the transition is just strange. You finally get comfortable in one place and with a group of people and then you have to start all over. It is kind of nice that I have been here for the past month so I know my way around, got all the hard stuff out of the way (like getting my ID number, register, get a bank account, sign up for my courses) AND I can actually pronounce most street signs now.

Tom from Trent came today. His plane was suppose to come in at about 6:30am and I told him I would meet him at the bus terminal and take him to rez. The plan was he would phone me from the airport when he got in and I´d walk over and meet him but he never phoned, but I figured he couldn´t find a phone, I don´t really remember phones at the airport, so I wondered over around 7:30 and he finally arrived at about 8:45. He had met a girl Jessica from the US on the bus and she was also moving to Gamli Garður so we all walked together in the mud and rain. It is kind of funny though because when I arrive here a month ago it was sunny, would only mist a bit once in a while but hardly ever rained. I think we may have had 3 good days of rain and then random showers on some days. Now it has been raining for the past 3 or 4 days, when the rest of the international students are arriving so their first impression is of a cold and wet Iceland. Hopefully it clears up this weekend because Stebbi and Gunnhildur were planning on taking me (and maybe Tom) to þingvellir to go hiking. I think it is a national park. Should be fun, if the weather is nice. It is clearing up a bit now and it stopped raining so that is good at least.

My attempt with the icelandic language

Yesterday I attempted ordering a pizza in Icelandic. It was going ok, for the first second when I just said hello and told him I wanted the pizza special, then he asked me in icelandic where I wanted to pick it up but I didn't understand so had to ask in english. After figuring out the street name, he asked what I wanted on it, so I try again in icelandic, but he says they didn't have the one topping, but I didn't quite understand that so it was back to english. I finally got all the toppings and everything set, he told me it would be about 20mins. So I look on the big map of Reykjavik trying to find out where the hell this pizza place is. It took me a while to find but when I finally did I realised that it was on the opposite end of Reykjavik, which would probably take me almost an hour to walk there! So I ended up phoning back and telling him to cancel my order... After all that Nicola and I decided to try the popular burgar joint down by the harbour. It was really tastey though it was twice as expensive and you got half the portions as back home.

I suppose it was an ok first attempt. My problem is I seem to speak alright, I just don't understand when icelanders talk to me. So hopefully with classes and meeting more icelandic people I can practise just listening to icelandic. I've been quite surprised though that when I do try speaking in icelandic the person generally responds in icelandic. I've been told my a few people that my accent is pretty good, so I guess I deceive people really well.

I think I will move into residence today. I finally got my key yesterday and looked around a bit. It is actually pretty nice and it will be cool to meet more people. It seems that the majority of people living in the residence are north americans (which I guess is ok but it would be nice to meet different types of people and perhaps practise other languages). The R.A or don is french though so perhaps I can practise french with him. He seems more friendly and easier to talk to than Nicolas (the French guy from my course). I hope I'll be able to keep in contact with most people from the course, I met a lot of really cool people there and we had a lot of fun together. It will be more difficult with school starting but hopefully we'll manage.

Tom, the other exchange student from Trent, is coming Wednesday morning and I am going to meet him at the bus terminal to take him to rez. I will have to show him around though I still don't know the names of a lot of places and some streets, I won't be much of a tour guide. I am really glad that I did do the course though because I have been able to get quite comfortable with Reykjavik and have travelled a fair bit in the short time I have been here. I have also made many friends, so school should flow quite nicely (hopefully).

Flea Market

I found the equivalent to the St Jacob's Farmer's market here. The one here though is smaller, completely indoors, they only have a small meat section (no produce) and a lot of the stuff looked used and old. It was still neat though and things there are a lot cheaper. It is only open on Saturday and Sunday.

A word of advice for anyone who ends up going to the Blue Lagoon, don't put your hair in the water. It will take you almost a week to wash out all the minerals. My hair has felt like horse hair, very coarse and knotted ever since I went. It's not so bad today but I miss my smooth hair. My hair feels dead. I might try and trim it a bit and maybe that will help.

fyrsti fótboltaleikurinn minn

So I had my exam yesterday. It went fine, if the marks mattered I definitely passed. The first part was really easy, just conjugating verbs based on the pronoun and subject, and saying what some objects were. At the end we had to have the write definite articles and put words into nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive and I still don't understand that part so I didn't so as well on that part. It's kind of sad it is over, it has been a great experience but I'm looking forward to the new experience of the university life of Rekjavik.

I've been having problems with my laptop and it won't recognize my digital camera anymore, saying that the USB has malfunctioned so at the moment I can only post new pictures. But Once I have internet I'll be able to put all my pics already on my laptop online. I have put some already, at my site www.kedly.yafro.com. It has a variety of photos but there will be more soon.

I went to my first "professional" soccor game yesterday. I went with Hannes, Christian P, Mads, Bettina, Isabel and Leif. It was actually a lot of fun. Most of the excitment was in the stands where the fans were cheering. I found it strange because most of their cheers were to tunes of songs I have heard before but they are in German (It was Mainz, Germany vs Keflavik, Iceland). I was on the German side because Isabel is actually from Mainz and 3 out of the 4 of us were German. I kind of was cheering for Keflavik but there was more energy on the German side. Keflavik had drums and trumpets and a brown bear mascot, which was pretty cool.

At one point each side would cheer their own team's name, back and forth and then at one point they would switch and be saying the opposite team name. Though the fans from Keflavik couldn't say the Mainz' teams name very well. Near the end of the game, Mainz fans were chanting "Keflavik!" (pronounced Keblavik) because they were leading 2-0. In the end they did win.

It was a neat experience, though I was freezing cold. I need to buy myself a better hat and gloves and a scarf. Tonight is the party to celebrate our last day of class. Should be fun.

Blue Lagoon

Went to the Blue Lagoon today. We were really only there an hour, but it was really beautiful and fun. The water is actually more white than blue but from a distance it looks almost blue. It makes your hair really coarse but it is suppose to be good for your skin. They had some white silica mud you could put on your face and let sit for 5-10 mins. It was funny to see everyone with white faces.

Nicola and I hadn´t seen our thrid roommate Toby in a while. We thought he vanished and decided to leave all his stuff here. But Sunday afternoon he came back. He had been in Germany for the past 11 days to visit family and his parents came back with him so he was spending the days with them here. He is a really nice guy, just too bad we hardly ever see him. He forgot his apartment key in Germany, so we see him more now because we have to let him into the apartment when he gets back from work around 11pm. Still don´t know what he does but he works like 10-11 hour days.

We also have another ''flatmate'' if we can call her that. For the past week there is this lady (in her late 30´s to mid 40´s) who lives on the 5th floor but uses our fridge, bathroom and washing machine. She is also from Germany, but she´s kind of creepy. It is kind of weird to share a place with random people though, but fortunately we are moving out in a week or two.

This is our last week of the course. We have an exam Thursday, written and oral, but I heard it isn´t too bad, and it is really for yourself, because if you fail you don´t have to take the course again. I think the course went fairly well. We have learned a fair number of verbs, and have been concentrating on grammar for the past few classes. We´ve learned country names, how to tell time, clothing, food, say our birthdays and even horoscope. We still have to learn adjectives, so we´re having a crash course tomorrow on them. Some people have been complaining it wasn´t well organized or it was too hard, but I think it was ok. It´s a start and it´s really up to us what we do with it.

I´ve been looking at more courses to take (I registered for a few but some aren´t available, which you don´t know until you try and add them because the course catelogue is a year old). I´m going to attempt to take an icelandic course and see if I can do the exam and essay in English. So far most of the courses I enquired about aren´t even being offered, which is frustrating but I´m sure something will come up. I think it would be a good chance to practise my icelandic because I don´t really get to hear much of it because my friends and I mostly speak english.

There´s a big buzz about that Björk is in town. A few of the Danish girls in my class even saw her sitting in an organic cafe with someone. And apparently she shops at the small grocery store which is across the street from our course. So people are keeping their eyes open for her. A few friends were actually playing chess on the chess board and Bobby Fischer apparently plays at also. It´s in front of a used book store (though they are about regular price for back home). Haha so a lot of celebrity spots.

We are going to the Blue Lagoon on Thursday. The big tourist trap, as it´s called. Should be exciting though. I think I heard that it was made by accident by the excess water from a power plant or something that built up in the lava rock, though it´s not dangerous it´s actually suppose to be good your skin. And the water actually looks blue from what I´ve seen in pictures, but I´ll be able to say more after I have gone.

I am off to go watch another icelandic film. I have seen Sódóma and 101 Reykjavik, but kind of weird but pretty good. If you are able to you should try downloading them. I hope we watch Angels of the Universe today, because it´s the one I actually heard about before and it is suppose to be really good. It´s about a guy who goes crazy from unrequited love and is put in an insane asylum and meets some people there, one who think´s he is Hitler, one who think he wrote the songs for the Beatles, and someone else.. Tell you more about it later.

Sjáumst

Reykjavik Culture Night

Saturday was the Culture Night. There were bands playing, shows and exibits going on all over town. I met up with some people from the course and we walked around. We went to the art museum, which was kind of interesting, it was very contemporary art, and there were a few girls all in their own colour dancing around this one room. In one of the rooms there were tvs all along the one wall and each showed a different view of this old man just doing his normal things in his day. It was kind of strange. It showed him writing at his desk, getting dressed, going to the bathroom, and eating. After the museum we walked towards the library, where Nicola and I bought a library card so then we could take out books, like children's books and try and practise reading icelandic.

We met up with Mads and Paco and headed down Laugevegur (the main street). On one of the balconies, there was a man singing opera, and we came to the Skrifan (the big cd store) and there was a icelandic metal band playing outside. They looked like they were about 10 years old but they were playing this hard music and screaming in the microphone. Inside Skrifan there were belly dancers. We only stayed a short while because we had to meet up with some people near the harbour. There was a big concert at the harbour, and Hjalmar (the icelandic reggae band that I heard last year) played and that was really cool. It started raining though but being in such a large group it wasn't too bad. I headed home after Hjalmar to get some food then came back with Nicola for 11 to see the fireworks. The whole area was so crowded. There must have been all of Reykjavik out on the streets. We finally found our friends right when the fireworks began. They were amazing, it was almost 10 minutes straight of fireworks. They were quite beautiful.

When they were done we had to attempt our way back downtown among the mob to get to Victoria's place, because her roommate was having a party. By then it was pouring rain (luckily my new shoes are semi-water proof, which was nice), and we bumped into Gunnhildur and Stebbi, they were on their way home. We made our way to Victoria's place but when we got there she hadn't arrived yet. Hannes (an icelandic guy I met on the internet) phoned me and we found out he was coming to the same party, he was friend's with Victoria's roommate. So I finally met him and his girlfriend. Nicola ended up getting into a big discussion about American policy and religion with some Icelandic guy, named Biggie. I felt kind of bad because people kept attacking her about Bush and such, and everyone thinks that americans are really stupid. We ended up getting kicked out of the place because some lady downstairs was threatening to call the police, and Victoria wasn't suppose to have brought so many people so we had to leave. We headed back downtown and went to the bar 22, but I didn't stay long and got soaked in the rain on the way home. But overall it was a good day.

a whale of a tale

Ah it was annoying, I had a good long post that I typed up a few days ago but then my internet cut out just when I tried posting it and I lost it.. so I'll attempt to write it again.

Thursday was whale watching. We went with Elding Whale watching company and the boat used to be an old rescue ship. The weather was quite nice, bright and sunny, and relatively warm (relatively is a popular word to describe anything icelandic) though it got really cold when we were out to sea. We went by Puffin Island, though there was mostly seagulls there, the puffins are already starting to migrate but there were a few puffins still there. We also saw some bird that I don't know what they are called in english, but Magnus told me that translated from Swedish they are called "Sea Soles". They were white with big wings and big feet though a narrow beak, and they would dive deep into the sea to catch fish.

One of the crew members stood at the top of the boat and spoke on a speaker phone to announce where whales were (12 o'clock, 6 o'clock, between 1 and 2 o'clock) and also told us some information about Iceland, the currents, about whales and the weather. When he yelled out where a whale was people would run back and forth trying to see a whale, though many people would be too slow and the whale would be back under water. We spotted a big humpback whale and out boat started a chase after it. On the way we saw many minke whales and some smaller humpback whales. Some even came fairly close up to the boat. The boat manuevered through the waves, at some points we were right against the currents and the boat rocked back and forth, people sliding and bumping into each other. Victoria, one of the spanish girls, was sitting in one of their plastic lawn chairs and was sliding to and fro on the deck. At the finale of the excursion we finally caught up with the humpback whale and we saw its dorsal fin and tail come out of the water. After almost 3 hours of whale watching we headed back to shore.

When we were back on land I headed back to my apartment and Gunnhildur and Stebbi (the two exchange students I met last term) came to pick me up. They drove me around Reykjavik and the surrounding towns. They bought me some icecream from a popular icecream joint, it was really good, kind of like a Blizzard or McFlurry but you got to pick your own toppings from a wide variety of candy and fruit. It was getting cold so we got back in the car and they drove me to the edge of town and around the smaller towns. We went up this one large escarpement, where you could see the whole landscape and it was quite beautiful with the street lights and the sun setting. They told me that place was really popular for people to come and party on New Year's eve because you were able to see all the fireworks (I am really looking forward to seeing their New Year's). On the way back towards the city they drove me by the president of Iceland's house, it was on its own little penisula in the centre of all the towns. They would say all the town names and things but I don't really remember any of them. It was helpful to see the road signs and here them say it so I could picture it better.

On Friday, Silvia held a party at her place and almost everyone from the course came. Everyone was to bring authentic foods from their home country. It ended up being great night. There was so much food and all very delicious. There were a lot of pasta and salads, there were perogies (from Poland), nachoes and fajitas (from Texas), salmon and heiring, rice dishes (from Spain) and much more. There were also a lot of deserts, cakes and pies and struddles. I brought maple syrup and did the sugar shack thing, where I boiled the syrup and then poured it over crushed ice and then it carmelized. It was actually a big hit, but I was surprised how many people didn't even know what maple syrup was (I was even able to buy actual Canadian maple syrup as well). Many people wanted to try the maple syrup and most of them (except Magnus) really liked it. At about 11 or so we were kicked out of Silvia's place by her landlord, apparently she wasn't allowed to have a party, and we headed downtown to the bar Pravda, which was ok, they had some live music for a little while, then they started playing dance music. We headed to Kaffibarinn to meet up with more of our people and we stayed there for a while. It was really crowded though. I met an Icelandic girl (I think her name was Solar) who said while she was in Denmark for a language course she met a 63 year old Canadian women, who told her she was in a tribe and was shot in the back with an arrow and the scar was like a badge to show everyone she was strong and other tribes would give her housing and food. Solar then went on about how she thought Canada was a great country for thinking for themselves and not being influenced by America. I've talked to several people and most really don't like the States but love Canada, but I sometimes think that people wouldn't like Canada either if they didn't have the States to compare them to. But it is nice to have people like your country.

icelandic pony.. I mean, horse adventure

Yesterday I went horseback riding on the outskirts of Reykjavik. I went with a small group from the course, and we were driven out into the country, away from 'civilization'. It was raining a bit so they gave us rainpants and boots and jackets to wear. The horses here are very cute. They´re quite small, I think they are breaching the pony end of the scale, but they are very friendly. Mine was a white mare, though I never learned her name. She was kind of frisky and always wanted to be near the front, and I think she may have been sisters or something with this other white mare, who Magnus was riding because they always seemed to want to be near each other or would race each other. There was a group from the States that had been in Iceland for a week and that was their last day here, and I think they were off to Sweden for a wedding.
My horse was really friendly, though she bit one of the American guys in the foot. She had a itchy nose and kept scratching it with her leg and when I was on the group she used me as a scratch post, nearly pushing me over.
At the beginning of the ride I realised my saddle was really loose so I was trying to stop her os could fix it and then I fell off. It didn´t hurt, it was more funny than anything.
We got to see a lot of beautiful country side from horseback, which was nice. It was hard to take pictures though because of the bumpyness. It was quite lovely and I realised I really miss horseback riding. I haven´t done that in a long time.

Tonight is whale watching, and hopefully we will see something. The weather is quite nice, very sunny and clear sky, so even the boat ride might be nice. I have only really ever seen dolphins and manitees in Florida so it would be neat to see an actual whale.

I bought a cellphone the other day, and it´s nice to finally feel connected. I also bought some new shoes yesterday. They have really neat shoes. The ones I bought make my feet look so small, but I guess I´ll get used to it. A lot of shoes are like slippers, they´re very comfortable and some even look like ballet slippers with laces up the legs. And Adidas and Puma are the most popular, though Nike is somewhat big, but I found out that Adidas is actually German and the guy who started Puma is the brother of the guy who started Adidas (and adidas is for Adi Das... something, whatever his last name was). Some of you probably knew that but I didn´t and thought it was neat.

But I have to head out and get some lunch, then movie, then whale watching then out on the town with the icelandic exchange students!

Bless bless

Vestmannaeyjar

This past weekend I went to Vestmannaejyar (Westman Islands) and it was an amazing time. The weather was very nice, sunny and fairly warm Friday and Saturday. We took a ferry to Heimaey (the main island) and then were bussed to the house (though it was like a chalet) on the south edge of town. It was a nice place, and they supplied us with mattresses to sleep on the floor so it was fairly comfortable. After dropping our things off we were bussed back into town then walked to the grocery store and liquor store (and I even asked the bus driver how to get there in Icelandic). There were two barbeques at our place so we all bought some hotdogs (pylsa), hamburgers (hamborgari) and lamb steaks (lærisneið). After eating a few of us took a walk towards the coast. The place is quite beautiful. There are mountains, volcanoes, steep cliffs into the ocean and scattered islands in the distance. We sat at the coast looking at the puffins dive in and out of the water and circle around trying to find the entrance to their caves and watched the sunset. We also saw the wheels and axel of an old tractor or truck in the side of the cliff (I hope the driver survived). When we got back to the chalet more people were back and were drinking and partying outside. Leif, Mads and Magnus rotated playing guitar (spila gítar) and a few people joined in singing. In side people were dancing and blaring loud music on the stereo (that later ended up breaking). Once the music died the party started slowing down and people went to sleep.

I ended up freezing in the night because I didn´t have a sleeping bag or blanket, thinking I would be warm in my sweater and jacket, so I didn´t get much sleep and my cold was getting worse. Nicola had the same problem so Saturday morning we walked all over town trying to find a place that had sleeping bags (svefnpoki). After asking someone in a store ''hvar finnst svefnpoki'' we managed to buy two and some cold medicine. On our way back we bumped into a bunch of our friends heading to the liquor store and then to the volcano. So we dropped our things off and caught up with them. It was a fun hike, though I was exhausted (I didn´t think I was going to make it). We hiked up Eldfell, the world´s newest mountain, and some parts you could feel the warmth. I was really nervous walking along the top of the volcano, because the edges were pretty steep and you were walking on about a foot of flat surface. So what do I do? I slide down the volcano. We decided to take the more direct route back and went down the side of the volcano without a path. I decided it was more fun and felt safer sliding down on my butt than my feet and slid all the way down, only scratching up my hands a bit. After that we walked towards the coast to see if you could find any puffins. We saw a few and some seagulls that were circling close over our heads. I found an opening in the cliff that looked like you could climb all the way down to the beach but wasn´t sure if I´d be able to get back up again. So instead we just layed in the soft grass on the edge watching the sea.
We were getting hungry and tired so headed back home. We had another bbq and then a football match (I actually get annoyed when the europeans call it soccer to me now, because it is football to all of them), of the Nordic countries against the rest of Europe (and me). It was a lot of fun, though I haven´t played soccer in a long time, and was never really good but I did ok. At first we were winning but then the Nordic team gained two more players and won I think by one goal.
After that we partied inside with candles and again guitar playing and attempting to sing along.

On Sunday it rained. It was cold, windy and wet. So we all pretty much stayed inside until we had to walk to the ferry (and we got soaked) and then ferried back to the mainland. It was an amazing time and both Nicola and I said we´d love to live there. It almost reminded me of Prince Edward Island, but with mountains and black sand. It was very quiet and peaceful.

Vamos a playa!

There´s a large group of spanish people in the course so I try and practise my spanish but I have forgotten most of it. I understand a bit when they talk but can´t think of what to say.

But swimming is very popular here. They have many pools and hot tubs (I think they´re called hotpots) around. I went last night with a few friends (Mads, Hannes, Christian and Paco -Paco the Lover! (jonny.. ;). We did some laps and then played a bit of water volleyball and the fútbol though it was more like basketball, trying to get the ball in a tube. It was a lot of fun. At first it was 3 on 2 but Paco asked a guy in the pool if he wanted to join us and he said alright, but then their team won. The guy we met was named Eill, or Egll (I don´t know how it´s spelt) but he was from Iceland and was really nice.

It was the Pride Parade in Reykjavik on Saturday so a bunch of us went to that. I´ve never been to a pride parade before so it was kind of neat to experience that but it was pretty short. It was very colourful though and I think most of Reykjavik was in the streets to watch it. Afterwards there was a concert with many bands from Iceland playing. I couldn´t understand what they were singing but they were pretty good (don´t know any of the band names) but they were pretty poppy sounding. I didn´t stay too long before it was getting cold and we were suppose to meet later to go to the bars that night. I ended up going to the Sirkus with some friends, a really small bar, that´s in a house and it took about 30 mins to get into it. Once you got in there though it was packed, but they played some cool Euro dance music. Upstairs in the place they had a lounge area with bus-type seats to sit in, it was less crowded up there so we hung out there for most of the time. It was only 3am (haha) when we got out and tried finding another place to go but everywhere was packed with long line-ups to get it. Everyone here parties until like 7-8am in the morning. I haven´t attempted doing that yet but the night really only lasts from maybe 11 to 3 and even then its not completely dark.

Well this weekend most of the class is going on a trip to the Westmen Islands, in the southern part of Iceland. It´s named the Westmen islands after Irish men who were living in Iceland that stole the women of some village and tried hiding on these islands, but the leader of Iceland at the time found out their whereabouts and killed them and brought their women back to the main land. And Ireland at the time were known as the Westmen, being the western most place that they knew about. There will be some tours of the islands planned, and apparently they can bake bread in the lava fields. There are also a few museums on their folklore and culture and swimming pools as well. Saturday night there will be karaoke, haha so that should be fun as well.
Next week will be the whale watching and horse back riding, which I´m looking forward to as well.

One thing interesting about spending time with people all over who speak other languages and may not speak english very well you start talking differently, well I´ve noticed I do. You talk slower and more precise perhaps, so my blog entries might sound very formal but its how my brain has been functioning lately. I also find I get a bit of an accent from just hearing so many other accents its hard to talk in my normal Canadian accent. I don´t know if anyone else finds that happen when in other countries. It´s kind of amusing though because many of the exchange students chose Iceland to actually learn English, because a lot of people here do speak English. Friends of mine from Germany ended up being housed together with other Germans and they were frustrated because they didn´t come all this way to speak German so they decided they´re only allowed to talk in English. That´s the thing with most of the people here. So I think what I´ll try is to speak only French with my roommate Nicola and perhaps with Leif so I´m working at a language as well. I think soon we´ll be trying to speak in Icelandic though which will be better. My problem though with learning other languages is I´m shy to begin with and horrible with small talk so I don´t even know what I would say to a person in English, let alone trying to think of something to say in another language, so I tend to sit and listen to people mostly. That´s why I think I have a lot of trouble learning language just because of my timidness. I hope I can kill that part of me and be more outgoing but its hard to stop very old and unconscious habits.

Well I think I have said enough for now.

Sjáumst!

Trip inside Iceland

We went on a fieldtrip with the course to south Iceland. We went through a few small town, one with many greenhouses and hot springs, and waterfalls. There really are only trees in the towns and cities here so we really only saw moss and shrubs for vegetation. But we saw a lot of mountains, lava fields, and lakes and rivers. We stopped at a beach on the ocean and the sand was black. I took pictures but I´ll try and post them later if I can. It was all very beautiful.

I´m kind of tired right now because I partied with some friends from the course last night. Leif busted out his guitar and he played some tunes and we tried to sing along to most of them. It´s kind of cool how we are such a global community and some songs most people know and can sing a long with, but even still there were many people didn´t know. The big hits were radiohead, coldplay, pink floyd, the beatles and nirvana (though we couldn´t quite remember all the lyrics to some so there was a lot of mumbling). Then we went to a bar downtown and danced the night away,, or almost. I finally left around 2:30am and it was still dusk out. Well that will probably change soon.

The weather has been really nice here, with blue skies and relatively warm. It was really windy the other day and it spits for short periods of time. I found out on the tour yesterday that every month in the year Iceland gets about the same amount of rain, and we get exactly the world´s average in a year. And the temperature is very mild throughout the year so it never gets very cold and never gets too hot. And the tour guide said that the average temperature in iceland is about the same as a fridge, and a fridge is used to keep food fresh, so icelandic people are fresh and last longer lol. Well that´s nice to know I won´t age a bit being here.

sjáumst.

This is just a quick hello because I´m at the library and it closes in 10 mins. So I made it! The past two days were hectic, a lot of airports and waiting around. I was exhausted, luckily I was able to get on the 1pm flight instead of the 9pm flight so I got in to Iceland around 4. Got to my apartment but had to find a phone first to call my landlord to let me in. The place is really nice! It´s a cute apartment and I´m living with another girl who´s in my course, Nicole from Texas, and I think two other people but I haven´t met them yet. I started the course today and it was really cool, it only goes from 9am to 12 and we have a break after every 45 mins or so so it goes really fast. I walked across town today to get register into the country but I needed my acceptance letter as well so I have to go back tomorrow. But I bumped into a few people from my course Leif who is from Ottawa and Mads who is from Denmark, and Cristian from Germany. We wandered around Reykjavik for a while, looked in a record store, prices are insane, cds are about $40 each, then we found a liquor store (also expensive), then headed home. We´re meeting to go to a pub tonight at 8pm, which will be fun. Everything is great and Iceland is beautiful. I don´t have internet but I´ll just wait until I move into residence, but the library is across the street from me so I can just use the computers here. I should go though, the library is closing.

Bæ!

Well I am off to London tomorrow night and then Iceland tuesday night. It will be an exciting but tiring excursion, and I cannot even imagine what I will experience on the way. I have almost everything organized: passport (check), visa (check), ticket (check), icelandic currency (check), my sanity (in process). Anxiety levels are lowering back down to about a yellow after getting up to an orange and even a red through out the week.

I get into Iceland at about 11pm Tuesday and begin my course bright and early at 9am Wednesday and some point in there need to move into my temporary living space for the month. I haven't heard if I will have internet access at this place so it may be a while before I will be able to write another post but when I do I should be starting to have pictures and posting them up. So until then take care and enjoy the heat.