Day 10-going calling

   January 14-Today was Saturday and it rained most all day long, so we mostly stayed inside.  In the days before we left for Iceland we bought two Kindles and an iPad, which you can see in a picture from the "Day 1" blog, and those items, plus the wi-fi connectivity, have been almost more of a novelty for the kids than us being in Iceland.  You see, we only had dial-up at the house in Gunnison, so the ability to get on-line and actually do something is quite amazing for the kids (and us).  So, the kids can spend hours hanging around the house reading on the Kindles, playing on the iPad, and going to Webkinz World on-line.

   There was one thing, though, that motivated them to leave the apartment: candy!  The grocery store on-campus sells candy by the weight and it is half-priced on Saturdays, so the store is ground-zero for the pre-college set that day.  Oh, the variety!  The choices!  Everyone returned with a full panapoly of candies, which they immediately began to sample.  Turns out, however, that "candy" does not always necessarily equate with "good," and there were a large number of types of candies that looked appealing, but ended up getting thrown into the trashcan.  First, however, the kids asked that we take a picture of them, which is shown above.  You may treat this as a public service announcement: based on careful taste-testing by the experts at Hays candy-tasting industries, LLC, you are hereby warned that these candies should not be bought, tasted, or eaten.  There actually were a whole set of candy types the kids did find very appealing, so they took the rest of their money and ran back over to the store to get those before it closed.  Of course, since they actually ate those types of candy, we do not have a picture of them.

   This picture shows the best sunset we have had so far in Iceland.  I mean, there is a little bit of color on the clouds, but it's not quite like the sunsets we get off the deck at home in Gunnison.  In the lower right of the photo you can also see Hreðavatn, which is the lake to the southeast of campus.  A short time later we headed over to Magnús and Signý's for supper.  They had also invited over Einar and Sigrún, who is Sally's office mate-to-be.  There were eight kids between the three families, so everyone had age-appropriate people to interact with.  Signý made a lovely lamb dish with peas, corn, sugared potatoes, salad, and beets as side dishes.  We finished up with some very creamy ice cream.  According to the Icelanders, this was a pretty typical Icelandic meal.  I certainly could get used to that for food!  Everyone had a great time sitting around talking (and playing).  Many of the kids ended up watching Glee with Icelandic subtitles from a DVD.  The adults (and the kids, too, for that matter) spoke excellent to very good English, so there was really no impediment to our conversations.  I did get some chance to learn some Icelandic: you will love this sentence.  It is a little contrived, kind of like"Eats shoot and leaves," but it is entirely a grammatically correct Icelandic sentence: Àvi à À à à.  It means Avi (a person) of "River" (the name of a farm) has a sheep.  It sounds even better when you realize that À and à are pronounced "ow."  It is kind of like the word "left" meaning different things in English, on steroids.
   The whole group came together around 8:30 pm for the night's entertainment: Söngvakeppni Sjónvarpsins, which means TV song competition.  Since the 1950s a European-wide song competition has been held annually.  Each country is allowed to submit one original song, and Iceland has been submitting songs since the mid-80s.  It is somewhat similar to the more recent American Idol.  Five songs were sung and two were selected to go to the final round, based on folks phoning in their votes (for a nominal charge, of course).  However, since the song must be original, this competition highlights both the composer and the performers.  It was fun to listen to, and according to Magnús, there are large Eurovision parties in May when the European-wide competition takes place: he has already invited us to his.
   Overall, the whole family had a great time and were overjoyed that we have already had the opportunity to interact socially with some of the locals.  Both couples were very nice and our kids got along great, so we hope that we manage to do it again at some point.