Day 14-birthday party

   January 18-Spencer has been grousing about going to kindergarten this week.  He even cried when Sally dropped him off today and his teacher, Ingibjörg, said that he has been sad a couple times during school.  However, he is always in a great mood by the end of the day and is excited to come back the next day.  I think that this is his way of dealing with the rather abrupt changes in his life.  After all, he was born and raised in only one place up to this point and has never been "the new kid" at school.  Also, he thinks that he is going to school longer here than he did in Gunnison.  However, we drop him off around 8:15 and pick him up between 3 an 4 and in Gunnison we dropped him off around 8:15 and picked him up between 3:15 and 3:30.  Those schedules are almost identical.  The big difference here is that he goes to school in the dark and the sun is heading towards the horizon when he gets picked up.  So, it makes sense that he feels like he is at school much longer.
   The big news for Sally is that she now has a desk in her office, so she can hang out with the faculty and get to know them.  She spent most of this morning getting work done at her desk, while I worked around the apartment.  Once her time was up (meaning the battery on her laptop was almost dead, so she has to come back to the apartment to plug it into the electrical converter we have) she came home and we headed to Borgarnes to go shopping. 

   We had heard from Pam the day before that we could actually get a prepaid cell phone without a kennitala, so we headed straight to a phone store and found out that she was correct!  So, we are now "connected," even when we are outside of our apartment!  If you have always wanted to phone Iceland, our phone number is 865-9132.  Since the international calling code for Iceland is 354, our phone number when phoning from the U.S. is (354)865-9132.  See, even our phone number does not look foreign!  The best part is that Iceland strictly hews to the policy that the caller pays and the callee does not.  So, if you call us, the call is free for us, even though it is a cell phone.  Oops, did I sound like a cheapskate there?  Actually, the cheapest route to communicate continues to be Skype and Facetime.  If you would like to contact us, our Skype name is shan.hays and we are in the directory for Facetime under shan.hays@gmail.com. 

   While the adults were psyched about getting the phone, the purchase that made the kids happiest was the Icelandic flag.  It has become the most popular toy in the apartment!  
   The weather was fine when we left to go shopping, but when we got to Borgarnes, we discovered that it was snowing and they had about two inches of fresh snow on the ground!  I hoped that it was just "lake-effect" (ocean-effect?) snow and that the weather would be fine for our return trip.  No dice!  We drove home in a blizzard with white-out conditions at a couple points.  It took longer than usual, but we made it home without any problems.
   The 7th grade parents got an e-mail from Alex's teacher, Þóra, about the first couple of days at Reykir.  In her own words (as translated by Google Translate), "the kids are exemplary in every way, polite and lovely."  She also said that they were getting enough sleep, but refused to say more, in anticipation of the parents getting "travelogues in detail on Friday."  So it sounds like everything is going well for Alex's class so far.
   Joslyn went to her first Icelandic birthday party tonight!  This was actually the second birthday party to which Joslyn has been invited.  She was also invited to Ágústa's birthday party on the night of the big snowstorm.  Unfortunately, the invitation arrived via e-mail and Sally did not get the invitation until she checked her e-mail after the party had actually started.  This birthday party was for Dagbjört, who lives in the same apartment complex as us and is turning 11.  Class sizes are small enough at Varmaland that two grade levels are taught in the same room.  Since Joslyn is the only girl in 4th grade, she has made friends mostly with her 5th grade female classmates, including Ágústa and Dagbjört.  Sally walked Joslyn over to the party.  When they got there, Joslyn saw that no other kid had been brought over by a parent.  She informed Sally of this and quickly shooed her away!  Hopefully, Joslyn will talk about the party on her blog soon, but from what she told us, she had a great time.  They played games, watched TV, ate supper and cake, and danced.  Joslyn took over a present, but there was no present-opening, so we are not sure if any other kid brought a present.  Joslyn also remarked that there were no candles on the cake and that they did not sing a happy birthday song.
   Homework tonight consisted of some more multiplication tables for Joslyn, so the family can now count up to 40 in Icelandic.  Spencer's teacher wrote down some words for him to learn, like ice cream (Ís, Spencer got that one right away) and stop (hættu, Spencer just can't seem to remember that one for some reason............)  We also learned the Icelandic alphabet, all 32 letters: a á b d ð e é f g h i í j k l m n o ó p r s t u ú v x y ý þ æ ö  Now, we are ready to really learn some words!