Day 26-Grábrók

   January 30-We were all surprised at how early 7 am came today!  Nonetheless, we all got up, the kids went to their respective schools, Sally lectured, and Shan did the laundry.  Since the girls got off an hour early, as is normally the case on Mondays and Fridays,  they got home in time to videoconference with Anna and their cousins, all of whom were just getting ready to start school in Colorado!

Grábrók as seen from our apartment.

   Shan was the only member of the family who joined the gönguklúbbur today for the weekly hike.  We hiked around the east side of Mt. Grábrók, which is the cinder cone that sits just to the north of Bifröst.  We then followed a well-maintained trail, complete with wooden stairs, up the northeastern side of the mountain.  Snow covered about half of the trail, but the blizzard last week had packed it in so tightly that we could mostly walk over the snow and not fall through.  After making the loop around the crater, we hiked down the north face and then returned to Bifröst by circling around the west flank. 

Grábrókarfell, a cinder cone that lies to the west of Grábrók.

   Iceland straddles the mid-Atlantic ridge, which is the boundary of the North American tectonic plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate.  Because the plates are moving away from one another, magma rises at the boundary and breaks to the surface, resulting in the volcanoes that comprise the ridge.  Consequently, all of the mountains in Iceland are volcanoes, including Grábrók and Grábrókarfell.  Since these two cinder cones last erupted 3400 years ago, people assure us that they are safe now.  Another member of gönguklúbbur cautioned, however, that this assumption may be incorrect.  He lived on Heimaey Island off the southern coast of Iceland when one of its volcanoes erupted in 1973.  The volcano, Eldfell, had lain dormant for 5000 years and had been presumed safe also.  He and the island's 5000 other residents only survived the eruption because the fishing fleet was fortuitously in port and could transport them to safety in Iceland.  His family's house, however, was buried in ash.  I suppose that every place has its dangers.  It's just a case of knowing the dangers and being properly prepared for them! 

Bifröst as seen from the top of Grábrók.  Our apartment is in the building on the opposite side of campus with the checkerboard pattern of lights. 

Day 25-Akranes and swimming

   January 29-One advantage of the late sunrise is that you can sleep in after a late night of partying and not feel like you are being a slacker.  What I mean is that it is easy to convince yourself that it must not be morning, since it is still dark outside, so it must be proper to still be in bed.  This may help explain the penchant for Icelanders to party until late at night.  In any event, we all got up late and were pretty lazy all morning long. 
   The weather reports indicated the rain should start to let up around mid-afternoon, so around noon we decided to go exploring.  About halfway between Borgarnes and Reykjavík is Hvalfjörður, or whale fjord.  It used to take an hour to drive around it, but a 3.5 mile tunnel was built under the fjord in 1998.  The toll to drive through it is 1000 kronür (about $8) which is well worth the hour saved in driving.  We had always zoomed through here in our past trips between Bifröst and Reykjavík, so this time we drove to the tunnel, but stayed on its north side and explored the Akrafjall peninsula, including the town of Akranes.  Akranes has a population of 5200 people, making it one of the bigger towns in Iceland.  We did not do any shopping on this visit, but we understand that some people from Bifröst will do their "big-town" shopping in Akranes, if Borgarnes lacks something that they need.  This makes sense, because it only takes around 40 minutes to get to Akranes on excellent roads.  We took a little longer, because we stopped in Borgarnes at our favorite bakery for some coffee and hot chocolate.

Playing at Breið in Akranes

Bakery in Borgarnes that overlooks the fjord.

  

   We did not really have any specific goal in mind, so we just drove around Akranes until we came across two lighthouses and some tidal pools on a spit of land, called Breið.  The rain had basically ended and it was low tide, so we poked around in the tidal pools and watched the waves roll in.  Once we had had our fill, we drove to a bakery in Arkanes and bought some whole-grain bread, a loaf of olive, cheese, and onion bread, some cheese, and some cinnamon rolls, which we ate as we drove back to Borgarnes.  The Hays family loves Icelandic bakeries!

Mt. Akrafjall, the extinct volcano that overlooks Akranes.

The Hays ladies have fallen in love with the Icelandic horse.

   Iceland is known for its hot springs, which are a byproduct of its volcanic origins.  It is therefore a little embarrassing that is taken almost a month for us to finally get to a thermal bath as a family.  The girls have been able to enjoy the thermal bath at Varmaland as part of the school curriculum, so it has been the rest of us who have "suffered" from this delay.  The outside facilities at the sports center in Borgarnes include three big plastic slides, a kiddie pool, a lap pool, and three hot tubs maintained at 99, 102, and 108 degrees Fahrenheit.  There is also another pool, a basketball gym, a sauna, and a weight room inside the sports center.  The entire facility is open year-round.  We headed straight there and soaked, swam, and played until it closed at 5:30.  Sally did a little grocery shopping and then we came back home.

Day 24-þorrablót

   January 28-The weather has warmed here and rain fell much of the day.  Consequently, the snowpack that was obvious in pictures from recent posts has dwindled dramatically.  The girls' snowpeople are completely gone and our apartment now looks out over a sea of lichen-covered lava rocks, rather than an undulating field of snow.  Because of the weather we all stayed inside today, and Alex ran off in the afternoon to play with Sigurlaug Sól for a short while.
   Magnús and Signý came by a little after 8 pm to pick up Sally and me, so we could attend the þorrablót at the gymnasium that is part of the girls' school in Varmaland.  Þorrablót is a celebration that dates back 1000 years when the Norse gods were still worshipped here.  Ostensibly, it was meant to convince the gods to allow the Sun and spring to return.  After enduring two months of the darkest months in Iceland, I imagine it also was a good opportunity for communities to come together and cheer each other up as winter stores dwindled and the possibility of starvation loomed large.  Today, the þorrablót feasts still allow communities can gather together, feast, and party.  The fear of running out of food no longer exists, but the modern Icelanders pay homage to their ancestors during the þorrablót by mostly eating  historical foods that they no longer eat on a regular basis.  One reason for the change in diets is modern affluence.  It is no longer necessary for them save every edible (and inedible) part of an animal that is butchered in order to survive through each winter.  Also, one of the biggest wintertime gastronomical changes between the modern Icelancers and their forbearers came about due to the arrival of modern freezers.  Most of the food that their Viking ancestors would have had available to eat at this time of year would have had to have been preserved in some manner, most likely by being desiccated, salted, smoked, pickled, or buried.  Now that we can simply throw food in the freezer to store it for long periods, these methods have become less necessary and the tastes that they impart to food have become less common.
   Hákarl (shark) is the most prominent food that people associate with þorrablót.  As I understand it, fresh shark meat is actually poisonous, so to make it edible, it is buried and left to rot for three months or more.  When the time comes to eat the shark, it is disinterred, cut up, and served.  Yep, you read that right.  The food most closely associated with þorrablót is putrefied shark meat and it was the first food we got served when we walked in the door.  We were given a toothpick to spear a small cube of hákarl and a shot of brennivín, the traditional Icelandic schnapps, to chase it down.  For all the hype surrounding it, hákarl was not that terrible, although Signý told us that this was fairly mild-tasting hákarl.  Nonetheless, I did not go back to fill my plate with it like some of the natives did.  Brennivín deserves mention here as well.  Sally and I had bought a small bottle of it during a trip to the liquor store in Borgarnes (which is state-owned, like all liquor stores in Iceland.)  Therefore, we had had the chance to try it previously.  We would say that the brennivín is almost worse than hákarl.  Descriptions of it say that it has a caraway seed flavor and is high in alcohol content.  I don't know much about the first part, but I would agree with the second part, because it burns a path from the mouth to the stomach when you drink it.  That probably explains its pairing with the hákarl!
   This particular þorrablót is for the small rural communities that surround Varmaland.  There were about 15 attendees who hailed from Bifröst, and we knew about half of them, including the cook and Spencer's teachers from kindergarten.  We were all seated together at the Bifröst table and again people were more than willing to converse in English to include us in the conversation.  A number of presentations were given in which the speaker poked fun at locals and satired events that had transpired locally and nation-wide during the preceding year.  In some ways, it sounds like the Icelandic version of the yearly Sonofagunn plays that the Gunnison Arts Center puts on.  The speakers must have done a good job, because there was lots of laughter and applause, although we did not understand more than a dozen words spoken over the course of a couple hours.  We had also been given song sheets and Sally and I tried our best to read the words and somewhat sing along.  At one point a woman gave a short speech and then the ladies all rose and sang a song to the men.  The lady's husband then gave his own speech and we men all rose and sang a song to the ladies.  Based on my rudimentary translations of the songs, we simply sang each other's praises.
   The main meal was served buffet style, so we actually chose to put all of the following food on our plates and eat it:
-svíd: Half of a sheep's head (cut down the middle between the eyes) that was burned to remove the wool and then cooked.  We used our forks to pull meat off of the face.  It was actually quite tender and tasty, with a smoked taste.
-mashed turnips: yummy!
-pickled ram testicles, pressed into meatloaf-style cake: not particularly flavorful, but not particularly bad, either.
-slátur, which is basically the same thing as Scottish haggis: probably our least favorite dish
-pickled whale blubber: pretty tasteless and rubbery.
-rye bread with butter: really yummy.
-blood pudding: also not particularly tasty.
-meat cooked in pectin or gelatin to make a loaf: pretty good
-baby potatoes in a sweet cream sauce: yummy.
-smoked lamb: very tasty.
-harðfiskur: dried fish, which is widely available and eaten by most Icelanders like we eat potato chips in the States;  Sally and I do not find it to appetizing, although Magnús informed us that night that they are much tastier (and much less healthy) when smjör (butter) is spread on them.
-most of the meats were also available in a "soured" form, where they had been left for a month in buttermilk and allowed to ferment: our friends advised we pass these by, so we did.
-lamb stew over rice for people who wanted nothing to do with the historical foods: also very tasty.
   As for drinks, only the initial shot of brennivín was provided, so everyone arrived with plastic shopping bags loaded with liquor (and the occasional pop for the drivers.)  We had brought along a bottle of wine and our bottle of brennivín, in the hopes that others would drink it.  Everyone shared what they had brought, so we got to try some other liquor.  Spencer's teacher, Ingibjörg, brought Opal, which is a licorice-flavored vodka.  We preferred it over the brennivín, but the licorice flavor was a bit too intense.  Pálmer brought a number of þorrablót beers, but his wife, Emma, and the others agreed that they were the beers normally brewed by the breweries with þorrablót labels slapped on as marketing gimmicks.  Nonetheless, they were tasty ambers and browns.  However, another bottle Pálmer brought particularly caught my eye.  It had the shape and cork that are typical of Belgian beers, so I asked about it and he told me that it is a Belgian-style beer that is brewed in Iceland!  He shared it when he opened it and it was a nice dubbel that was quite tasty.
   After the food had been eaten, a band started playing and the dancing commenced.  We ended up sitting at our table, drinking and talking to the Bifröst contingent.  Time flies when you are having fun and it seemed that we had only been there a couple hours, when Magnús said he was ready to go.  We trooped out to the car and headed for home.  The parking lot was still almost full, so I do not know how late the party raged, but when we got home it was 1 am!

Day 23-teenage birthday party

   January 27-The day started out rather unremarkably.  I suppose that is newsworthy in an of itself.  Living and going to school in Iceland has become unremarkable.  How remarkable!
   As the day progressed, the clouds thickened and late in the morning we received an e-mail informing us that Varmaland school would be closing an hour early because the expected deterioration of the weather.  Sure enough, the bus pulled in at 1:30.  It did rain and snow some after that, but the roads did not become particularly slick.  Better safe than sorry, I suppose. 
   The girls relaxed around the apartment and did some math homework, before Alex headed off for her first Icelandic birthday.  Her friend Sigurlaug Sól was turning 13!  Of course, that means that Alex, too, is approaching that birthday herself.  That has been somewhat of a frightening idea in the past, but I must say that we have been very impressed by Alex's Icelandic classmates, teenagers or not.  I have yet to see any particularly obnoxious teenager behavior from them at all.  I will let Alex report more fully on her birthday experience.  In summary, they played some party games we had never experienced, ate supper and cake (after Sigurlaug blew out sparkler candles and opened presents), and watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  Alex went through the American coins we had brought with us and gave some of them as a present.  Their novelty was quite a hit. 
   Sally recently uncovered some interesting information that partially explains this.  At the height of the economic boom in Iceland, 99% of all transactions in Iceland were paid with credit cards.  Since the crash, that number has "plummeted" to 98%.  One of Alex's classmates even got her own credit card this past week.  The upshot is that Icelanders just don't use cash anymore and many children have no concept of "money" as a tangible, real thing.  Instead, money is simply an abstract, numerical concept.  (I suppose that some economists would not entirely disagree with that notion.)  In response to this situation, instruction in personal finance has been added to the curriculum at Reykir. 
   After Alex came home, Joslyn and Spencer watched Cartoon Network (in English), while the rest of us played a game of Settlers of Catan (in Icelandic).  For you Settlers aficionados, this edition of the game is quite elaborate with three dimensional plastic pieces for settlements, cities, roads, and the robber.  We had a very nice time and the ladies even let me win.

Day 22-snow day

   January 26-Around 8 pm the previous evening it began to snow and the winds picked up dramatically.  They proceeded to blow furiously through the entire night.  We woke up the kids at 7 am and got them around for school, even through we could only barely see the lights from apartments that are less than 200 feet away from us.  Since our apartment looks out over the entrance to the university, we watched for the bus driver’s arrival, but we saw no cars arrive or leave the campus.  We kept checking the elementary school’s website and finally an announcement was made that the start of the school day was delayed 30 minutes.  A little after 8:30, the girls and I suited up against the blizzard and headed out to the bus, which is always left at Bifröst overrnight.  We saw neither kids nor bus driver, so we went back to the apartment, where Sally informed us that a second announcement of the school’s closure had arrived seconds after we walked out the door.  The girls got yet another day off from school!

The car had to be dug out, yet again.

   This analogy will only strike a chord with a few of you, but this winter reminds me a great deal of the spring of 1982 on the eastern plains of Colorado, when a seemingly endless string of blizzards blew through.  It was so bad that my folks lost half of their calves that year.  That is not a concern over here, because nearly all of the farm animals are housed inside throughout the winter.  We had noticed that the only animals we saw outside were the gorgeous Icelandic ponies and had begun to speculate that horses, dog, and cats were the only farm animals in Iceland.  Now, we know better.  According to the locals, it is quite a spectacle when the animals are let out of the barns for the first time in the spring.  Apparently, they go crazy, running around madly.  One of the girls in Alex’s class is from a local farm that has sheep.  Alex hopes to gets to visit sometime and see the sheep, so maybe she will also get to chase down an errant lamb in the spring!

   Ironically, within a half hour of the school closure announcement, the winds relented and the snow quit falling.  Sally and I took Spencer to kindergarten and stopped in at the faculty/staff lounge for coffee.  The parents were grousing about the school closure, saying the principal should have delayed its opening until 10:00 instead.  Hindsight is 20/20, you know.


Hinrik Noí and Spencer share the computer during free time.

                                                                                                                                         This picture comes from the weekly kindergarten updates.  Spencer’s teachers, Ingibjörg and Tara, wrote (in Icelandic and translated by Google Translate) that “it goes very well with Spencer, the English boy with us.  We are constantly practicing our English to speak to him and he is learning new Icelandic words.”  I think that Spencer is starting to pick up some Icelandic words.  It will take some time for his brain to figure out the speech patterns, so he can begin to parse the sentences correctly and determine the words that are being spoken.  At least he is getting the opportunity to hear Icelandic.  People rarely make it beyond an Icelandic greeting (if that) with us adults, before they start speaking in English.  I can’t really blame them, though, because if they do keep speaking in Icelandic, all they get are blank stares from us since our vocabularies are so limited.   

   Alex used her free time at home today to get caught up on blogging, so her experiences and pictures from Reykir are now available for your perusal at her blog.  She and Joslyn also did some on-line math homework to keep up with classmates in Gunnison.  As the skies continued to clear, all three kids spent some time outside, sprucing up the snowpeople they had made a few days ago, digging a snow cave in the lava rocks that surround campus, and sledding on the piles of snow that now surround the parking lots.  By the time they came in at sunset, the sky was almost cloud-free.

Day 21-tunnel hike

   January 25-According to the National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center, "the largest solar radiation storm since October, 2003" was to impact the Earth on the night of January 24/25.  There had been blizzard conditions, but we were very interested in trying to see some northern lights.  I woke up around 4 am to see if I might see something.  I did not.  The sky was clear, but the solar storm had mostly passed.

Spencer (in orange) playing in the play area behind his kindergarten, as seen from Sally's office window.

   When the girls got home from school, they took their dear old dad on a hike to the tunnel under the highway.  The recent blizzard the night before had filled in the tunnel entrance on the other side of the road, so the girls cleared the snow out, and we clambered out, looked around, and headed back home.

   We were able to Skype with Katie in the evening before the kids went to bed.  She is our cousin who is staying in our house while we are gone.  She had given birth to her baby girl the day before.  This was a much-anticipated event in our household, since she had lived with us since July, which allowed the kids to follow the pregnancy with a great deal of fascination.  The baby slept for most of her first, international Skype session, but Katie was holding her, so we got to see her.  The kids gushed over her cuteness and were excited to talk to Katie, since they had not had the chance to do that since we left Gunnison.  We are very happy for Katie and Tory and wish them all the best in their parenting experience in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead.  It will be wonderful to finally meet the baby when we return to the States. 

  

Day 20-Settlers of Catan

   January 24-We woke this morning to almost complete darkness because of a temporary power outage at the university that even caused the streetlights to go dark.  Luckily, I happened to wake up at 7 am, so we were able to get the kids up and around for the school bus on time!  After a short, intense snow storm, we adults went shopping in Borgarnes, where we had our first Icelandic banking experience.  The head of Hraunborg (Spencer's school) had given us a hand-written bill for January's tuition the previous week and we had spent the intervening time figuring out the process of paying it.  We couldn't simply give her cash, because it had to go into the school's bank account.  However, since we do not yet have our kennitala, we cannot have bank accounts.  So, we finally figured out that we could go to the bank and pay them cash and then they would deposit the funds in the school's account.  The bank teller stamped the bill "paid" and gave us a receipt.  I am still not sure if I need to present that stamped bill to the schoolmistress.  By the way, the monthly cost of full-time kindergarten at Spencer's school is $400, which seems entirely reasonable based on our experiences with preschool and kindergarten in Gunnison. 

   We got the best view of Bifröst yet while returning home, meaning that we could see Mt. Baula behind the school.  The mountain looms over the school and the rest of the surrounding, but it  is only 3060 feet high.  Speaking of elevation, the highest point in Iceland is 6,952 feet above sea level, so it tends to amaze locals when we tell them that our house sits at 7,900 feet.

   When Alex got home from school, she brought over two of her friends to play Settlers of Catan.  I am sure that it shocks some of you that it has taken twenty days before I finally mention this game.  However, I must admit that one of the first apps we installed on our iPad in preparation for this trip was the Settlers of Catan app.  Furthermore, we found Settlers of Catan in Icelandic (Landnemarnir á Catan) on our very first shopping trip to Borgarnes and could not resist purchasing it.  Since we have played it so much and know the rules so well, we figured that we could play with the natives, who could read the rules themselves.  As it has turned out, of course, they could have done it just as well reading the rules in English.  Þorgerður (on the left) had played Settlers some ten times previously, so she and Alex taught Brynja the rules.  Everyone seems to have had fun time; Brynja and Þorgerður got to practice their spoken English and Alex got to read some of the game material in Icelandic (and win a close game as well.)

Day 19-aurora borealis (and cupcakes)

   January 23-A "coronal mass ejection associated with a long-duration solar flare" (as explained by the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks) occurred on January 19, and the energetic ions from the flare were supposed to hit the Earth on the night of January 22/23.  The night was clear, so we were very interested in trying to see some northern lights.  The Sun's orientation with the Earth matters for the northern lights, and they tend to be most active on the side of the Earth opposite the Sun, or during midnight.  So, I had dutifully set the alarm for 12:30 am when I went to bed on the off-chance I might see something.  I did:

Orion is standing just above the horizon on the left side of this picture.  The orangish pink glow you see at the bottom of some of the pictures are street lights.

      I woke the whole family and we got quite the light show.  Spencer only stayed up for about five minutes, but the girls were transfixed for half an hour and the adults did not go to bed until nearly 2 am.  "Northern" lights is a bit of a misnomer here; these pictures were taken out of our apartment towards the south and there were transient light displays in all directions.  The kids expected the aurora borealis to be a bit more dynamic based on time-lapse videos they have seen before.  The lights did change minute-to-minute and there were a few instances where we saw a pulses of brightness run through the displays over the course of a few seconds.  Overall, I think that everyone was thrilled to get the chance to see this amazing phenomenon.  We might get more chances as well.  The 11 year cycle of solar activity is predicted to peak in February, 2013, so these sorts of solar flares should only occur more frequently over the next few months.  In fact, later on Monday another coronal mass ejection occurred that is supposed to hit the Earth on the evening of the 24th, so we will be watching for the results from that one as well.  Some of these more energetic displays may even be visible in the lower-48.  If you are interested, check at http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ and http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast/2 for predictions every day or so, because once a solar flare is seen, it takes only a couple days for the solar wind to carry it to the Earth's orbit.  Also, if you want to see these pictures better, I just found out that if you click on pictures in the blog, they will load as larger pictures.  Enjoy!

   As you might imagine, everyone was dragging when the alarm again went off at 7 am, but the ladies and Spencer all got out the door and off to their respective schools on time.  At 5:09 (exactly!) that evening the girls and I were welcomed into the gönguklúbbur, or hiking club.  Every Monday the hiking club gets together and hikes to some place near campus.  We crossed the ring road (highway 1) and plowed through the snow-covered golf course to get the Glanni waterfall.  By the time we got there, it was too dark for any pictures, but we shall return and get some shots of it.  After the girls donned their headlamps, we returned to Bifröst via a different route and this time walked through a tunnel under the highway, which was almost as exciting as the waterfall for the kids.

   Sally and Spencer had supper ready for us when we returned.  There is nothing like a nice, hot soup (bacon and potato; yum!) to warm you up after an hour and a half, freezing hike.  After supper, we got to enjoy some of Alex's schoolwork.  Icelandic schools put almost as much emphasis on practical, household skills as they do academics, and Alex had been in cooking class today, where she and a partner made these yummy (and dense) chocolate cupcakes.  Alex apparently saved the day when she stopped Krístján, her baking partner, from mixing up the sugar and the salt in the recipe!  Interestingly, the recipe the class followed used American measuring units of cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons rather metric units.

Day 18-making snowmen

   January 22-After the whirlwind of activity the past few days, we relaxed around the apartment today.  We were all behind on blogging, so we tried to get partially caught up.  Sally got some knitting done, cooked, and finished grading assignments and preparing for her weekly Monday lecture.  The kids started out pretty slow, but as the day wore on, they began to get rambunctious, so we finally threw them outside.  They played in the snow and made two snowmen (Mom and Dad, as they tell it), because it is the perfect kind of snow for snowmen and snowballs.  After an hour or so, they trickled back in, cold and a little less rambunctious. 

               Alex using her siblings as a ramp.

   We received an e-mail from Alex's teacher, Þóra, that she sent to all of the 7th grade parents.  Again, I am trusting Google Translate here, but in it she said that "the trip and the week was an outstanding success. Our kids were a model for both work and play, and were quite highly amusing as well. I will shamelessly boast about our kids who made new friends, as they entered even stronger friendly ties with the group. There was no drama and no boredom throughout the week.  The school camp staff's comments about the group was exemplary, and I think they meant it."  So, it sounds like a good group of kids that behaved well and had a good time.  Alex will post comments about the trip soon. 
   As the sun set, we kept looking at the sky outside, because the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, was predicting that the aurora borealis would be active.  Unfortunately, we did not see anything, except stars, so we all headed to bed.

Day 17-Hreðavatn

   January 21-Everyone slept in this morning.  The family contingent in Reykjavík went out for breakfast at 10 am.  If that sounds late, I should point out that hardly any restaurant is open before then!  We did a little shopping downtown and then headed for Bifröst.  The day was beautiful and we saw the Sun in the most cloud-free sky yet!  These are pictures from the drive.


The mountain Esja across the bay north of Reykjavík

 

The mountain Hafnarfjall, south of Borgarnes











 

Borgarnes from across the fjord to the south



Bifröst University from the south

   Joslyn continued to have fun at the birthday party during the morning, playing cards and watching a movie.  She walked back over to the apartment at noon and we got back at 1:30.  After eating dinner, the kids and I decided to take advantage of the cloud-free weather to go for a hike down the road to Hreðavatn, the small lake that is about a half mile southwest of Bifröst.  Sally took advantage of the kid-free apartment to rest and recover from the celebration the night before!  Once we got past the lake, we were just post-holing through foot deep snow, so we turned around and came back.  There were ski tracks heading on down the road and on the hike back we met Joslyn's friend Águsta, who was Nordic skiing for the first time, so maybe we should try to find some skis to use around here.

   The kids spent the evening at the apartment enjoying all of the electronic gadgetry while Sally and I had supper with Sigrún and Jón, the provost.  They live in Reykjavík and Jón normally is at Bifröst only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but he decided to spend this weekend here in a friend's flat, so he invited us over for supper to get the chance to get to know us.  We had a very enjoyable evening.  Sigrún is an architect, who lived in England until 2007.  All Icelandic architects were trained abroad until 2001, when the Iceland Academy of the Arts opened an architecture department, which Sigrún now directs.  Jón is a political scientist who moved into the administration only recently. 

   It was interesting to learn about the political situation here from him.  After the economic crash in 2008, four former governmental ministers were brought up on charges of malfeasance.  Since the Icelandic constitution is practically a carbon copy of the Danish constitution, it contains some archaic provisions, including the stipulation that members of the government may only be tried by Parliamentary committees.  When the charges were finally voted on, there were two main blocks of votes.  Out of a Parliament of 63 members, 30 wanted all charges dropped and 26 wanted all of the ministers convicted.  So, that made the remaining seven members the ultimate deciders.  All seven wanted the former prime minister convicted, but five of them also wanted to see a subset of the other ministers convicted as well.  If you add all of those votes up, you will see that only the conviction of the prime minister had the necessary 32 votes.  However, only two members actually wanted that specific result!  Consequently, the political machinations to revisit these convictions has continued until today.  In fact, when the foreign minister addressed the party the night before, he said that he could not stay and talk long, because he needed to return to Parliament for an important vote.  It turns out that it was a vote on these issues.  And, we aren't the only ones with a Presidential election this year: Iceland votes for its president at the end of June.  But, no one has started campaigning yet.  Do you think that we can find some way to emulate that in the U.S.?  

Day 16-a day of anticipation

   January 20-Everyone had something to look forward to today.  Spencer has been talking about this Friday almost all week, because he got to watch a movie during kindergarten.  The movie was in Icelandic, but he still thought it was great and recounted the highlights and funny parts to us a couple times afterwards.

   Alex came back from Reykir today, which was something we all were looking forward to.  I will summarize some of the week, but she is going to write much more about it on her blog.  There were about 100 kids from a few different schools at Reykir for the week.  The curriculum includes sports, swimming, the collection and observation of fauna from the neighboring fjord, and, most importantly, Icelandic folk history.  There is a folk history museum on-site, which the students got to explore.  It houses many antique household items and farm implements, a car and tractor from the 1930s, and a whaling ship from the early 1900s.  The best part of the museum from Alex's point of view was that the students were not told "no touching," but instead were encouraged to handle everything to get a better idea how they were originally used.  Alex even got to "attack" one of the staff instructors with a real, although not recently sharpened, executioner's axe.  The students were also served some traditional Icelandic dishes, including cod liver oil and putrified shark (hákarl).  To her credit, Alex tried (and rejected) both.  Hmmmm.  It must be an acquired taste........  The best part of the week, though, was that Alex became even more integrated into her 7th grade class and feels very comfortable with that group of students now.  If you would like to see more pictures of her class trip, visit http://www.skolabudir.is/index.php?option=com_expose&Itemid=20, click on "Vorönn 2012" in the middle of the page, and click on "Norðlingaskóli og Grsk af Vesturlandi."
   Joslyn had been looking forward to yet another birthday party.  This party was a sleep-over to celebrate Jóhanna's 11th birthday.  We happened to find a sleeping bag in a store a week ago and bought it, because Alex needed to bring either bedding or a sleeping bag to Reykir.  It turns out that that was a pretty good buy, because after Alex got her use out of it, Joslyn was able to use it for the sleep-over.  Interestingly, though, none of the other girls brought over sleeping bags.  Instead, they all brought over bedding and their bed mattresses, which are about 6' X 3'!  This birthday party was very similar to the kinds of parties Joslyn is used to in America.  The kids played games, watched a movie, had supper, sang "happy birthday" in Icelandic, but with the same tune as in English, and opened presents.  At one point, each girl was given a lemon wedge and whoever ate theirs first got a toy car as a prize.  Nobody finished theirs, besides Joslyn, and then she even had two more that were left over!  As you might expect, the girls did not go to bed until after 11 o'clock.

   Ever since Sally received this invitation while at the Fulbright orientation on Tuesday, this shindig is what the adults had been looking forward to.  Unfortunately, it started to snow about mid-morning and then intensified throughout the day, dropping six inches or more of snow.  It certainly looked like we were not going to make the party.  But, luck was on our side.  The system that was producing the snow finally pushed north around 5 pm, so we dropped off Joslyn for her sleep-over and hit the road.  The road was pretty snow-packed to Borgarnes, but from there to Reykjavík it was pretty decent.  We checked into our hotel, the Rey Apartments, which is the place we stayed the night after we first arrived in Iceland.  Since I had left a good review for them from that stay, and since they need to get five numerical ratings before the ratings will show up on the booking website, the owner told us he would give us the place for free if we just would leave a numerical rating.  What a deal!  And, the place is fantastic anyhow, so that was a win-win situation for us.  We took Alex and Spencer to the restaurant where Sally and I had had lunch on Tuesday and, yet again, we all had a fantastic meal.  The kids both got lobster soup, which they thought was very yummy.
   We got the kids settled in at the hotel and then we walked over to NASA, which is the name of the largest nightclub in Reykjavík.  Laura, the embassy staff member we met on Tuesday, told us that this is not a regular event.  In fact, the only reason that they were able to pull it off financially, was because Alcoa, IcelandAir, and a number of other businesses with ties to Iceland and the U.S. put together the $15,000 required to throw a party for 1000 people.  NASA was very crowded; it's not the type of scene we are generally used to.  We quickly ran across Pam and Marilyn and we all introduced ourselves to Ambassador Arreaga.  After exchanging pleasantries, we milled around until we found Belinda, who had reserved a table for the Fulbright folks.  We met a couple Fulbright students, including Jen, who is studying fisheries on the north coast as part of her research for her Ph.D. from the University of Alaska.  Jen's husband reminded her that she had applied for the Water Workshop Director position at Western State College in 2006. She had a Masters with little teaching experience and didn't get the position, but she didn't have any hard feelings. It really is a small world!
   The Ambassador and the Icelandic Foreign Minister gave short speeches and then we were introduced to some of the most popular musicians in Iceland: LayLow and Of Monsters and Men  Interestingly, these musicians were actually featured in a NPR story in December that Dale and Jen told us about shortly before we left the country.  If you want to hear what they sound like, go to http://www.npr.org/2011/12/31/144444523/the-year-in-pop-from-iceland-and-lebanon.  So, the beer and wine flowed, the music played, the people conversed when the music volume allowed it, and apparently the powerful and famous of Iceland milled around us without us being aware of their importance. 
   We finally left at midnight and headed back through the middle of the downtown district to get to the hotel.  We had read that Reykjavík really comes alive on weekend nights, but we did not realize how true that is until we saw it ourselves.  I should point out, though, that we are in the midst of the European handball championships and Iceland played a very important  game that night.  They actually lost that game, but they squeaked into the knockout stage of the championships, analogously to the Broncos squeaking into the wildcard stage of the NFL playoffs!  So, the locals may have had a reason to party a bit more than usual.  In any event, there was more activiy downtown at midnight than there had been for most of the day!