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!