Winter in September

The days are getting shorter and colder now. There has been snow on the mountains around Reykjavik for a week or two now. It looks very beautiful and I need to take a picture of it. There were flurries yesterday. I was walking to the language lab to catch up on the self-directed icelandic course and there were tiny snow flakes coming down. And it was bright and sunny, gorgeous day, though I think it went down to 2°C. Weird to have winter coming so quickly, though apparently this is unusual. Some icelandic people were telling me that even August was a lot colder than it usually is. Leif and I were talking about how we (the Canadians) can take the cold, but we haven´t really been dressed for the weather yet. Psychologically we´re used to pushing off wearing our winter jackets until maybe November, and we don´t want to accept the fact that we have to in September (I actually wore it in August). Even back home I would avoid wearing my winter jacket until it was just unbearable.

Well, it isn´t quite winter yet because there are still leaves on the trees (more so bushes, most trees planted here were coniferous). I´ve been impressed though because some of the bushes have very brightly coloured leaves. But it´s definitely not the same as seeing large forests back home with bright red, orange and yellow. We are trying to find where we can buy a pumpkin for Halloween. They don´t celebrate Halloween here, but the guy who painted our kitchen told us that sometimes there are people who will sell them, so maybe we´ll be in luck. I think around Christmas they have something like Halloween where people dress up and go around to people´s houses and get treats or gifts. Christmas is suppose to be a huge thing here, so I´m looking forward to seeing that. It will be weird though because most of the friends I have met are only staying for one semester so they will be gone in December. It will be quite sad but hopefully I can stay in touch with them afterwards.