Sabbatical 2012

Sally received a Fulbright Fellowship to teach and conduct research in Iceland for 5 months starting in January 2012. Luckily, Shan, Alex (age 12), Joslyn (age 9) and Spencer (age 5) can accompany her on this adventure. This blog will allow family and friends to keep up with the trials and tribulations of our escapades in Europe.

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Monday, January 9, 2012

Day 4-putting the "ice" in Iceland

   January 8-Today we mostly sat around the house, relaxed, and attempted to get to bed earlier to completely get in sync with the Icelandic time zone and so Sally could get enough sleep before teaching Monday morning.  It turned out to be a pretty good idea, because the it rained and sleeted most of the day and the roads become sheets of ice!  Our apartment looks out over the entrance to the university and we saw three vehicles become stuck today, simply because they slid off the road or because they could get no traction on the ice in the middle of the road! It appears that the usual way to get a car going that is stuck on ice is to go to the side of the road with a spade, dig through the snow, and dig up the ground, which is mostly volcanic ash, and spread it under the tire that is slipping.  It may not be a great surprise, then, that I have decided we need to get a short-handled spade and a tow rope for the car, because I imagine we will be stuck at some point.
   We also got to watch some kids playing in the parking lot of the apartment complex.  The boy, who appeared to be around 7 years old, rode his bike out into the driveway and promptly fell over into a pool of water as the wheels of the bike slid out from underneath him.  He must  have been sopping wet.  Then he fell down a couple more times trying to get his bike, before his younger sister, maybe 4 years old, came out and fell flat on her back a couple of time in the ice pool, and finally the youngest kid, probably two years old or so, also came out, fell down, and wandered off into the snow to play.  I imagine that the parents had to use the dryers in the evening.
   I cleared a little more snow from the landing outside our apartment, Sally and Alex knitted, and Joslyn and Spencer read books, played on the iPad, and played with their Playmobile toys.  Spencer also wandered out of his room with a Cars book in English.  It turns out that he "hid" it in his backpack, because he wanted to bring it along.  He and Joslyn have both looked at it, so maybe it was a good choice on his part.  Also, Sally fixed two of the heaters.  Each room has a wall-mounted hot water radiant heater, but two of them only warmed up a quarter of the unit, so the rooms were a little cool.  While looking at them, Sally noticed that there was a screw on one side, so she used my Leatherman to unscrew them and air escaped.  Once she had bled off all of the air, the heaters filled with water and the rooms warmed right up!  She also used some mystery meat to make some delicious meatloaf.  The package stated in large letters "100% Kjöt," which means "100% Meat."  We also could determine that 60% of it was lamb and pork, but we could not translate the rest of it.  Well, at least it was meat........ and it tasted good, too.     We also plugged our computers into the Internet in the apartment and finally Skyped with family members in the U.S.  We had managed to Facetime with my aunt and uncle while staying in the hotel in Reykjavík, but otherwise this was our first time to try to do any sort of calling with the computer.  We got it figured out pretty quick and now realize that even using Skype to call landlines phones in the U.S. is ridiculously cheap: less than 3¢ per minute!  So, we are not as remote from the U.S. as we thought we might be!
   We got the kids to bed and were getting ready to head that way ourselves, when I realized that the Broncos were playing their playoff game, so I decided to see if I could find out how they were doing online.  It turns out that all of the radios that carried the game either were not allowed to stream the game online or could not do it overseas.  However, the NFL website gave play-by-play text updates and made videos of key plays available right after they happened.  The Broncos were ahead!  And then the game was close!  How could I go to bed?  So, Sally reluctantly hit the sack while I continued to watch the updates and occasionally videos.  Wow!  What a game!  I wish I had been able to watch it on TV, but I am glad the Broncos won it quickly in overtime, so I could finally go to bed at 1:30 in the morning!   
  

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