Day 7-school is in session

   January 11-Yet again, I awoke at 7 am to see if school was cancelled.  This time it was not the sound of howling winds that met me, but the sound of tractors!  There were a couple working on clearing the entrance to Bifröst and I could see snow plows and cars driving on the highway, or at least the lights of such vehicles, since it was still pitch dark outside.  We were pretty impressed at how quickly and effectively they got the roads opened once the storm passed.     So, I woke up the kids and told them to get ready for school.  I quickly ate a little breakfast and then dug out that drift that roughly looks like a car in the first picture and found our Corolla underneath it!  Actually, first I cleared off the car and got into it and tried to back it out, but it didn't budge.  That's when a neighbor came down and told me it was hopeless unless we dug it out.  It turns out he is the husband of the cook at Spencer's kindergarten.  They spent three years previously living in New York City.

   Meanwhile, Sally got the kids around for their first day of school and we loaded up and hit the road.  The bus had already left, but the girls had previously requested that we drive them to school the first day anyhow, so it was not that big of a deal.  We got to Varmaland soon after the buses arrived and took the kids to their classes.  All of the grades are similar to middle school in that their are different classes with different teachers, sometimes in different rooms in different buildings.  Alex started her day off in Joslyn's building in the acting classroom.  Once we got the girls settled in, the principal gave us some coffee and sat down to talk with us.  We found out that there had only been one other student from the U.S. at the school in the past five years, and his mother was Icelandic, so he could speak the native tongue.  He told us, though, that the teachers were all very excited to have the kids and had been making plans to accommodate the girls during the fall semester.  All of the faculty members to whom we have spoken have been very supportive, so it seems that they are very interested in helping the kids adjust to the school as well as is possible.

  We finally left Varmaland around 10 am and Sally took this picture.  The cucumber greenhouses and their powerful grow lights are obvious on the left.  On the right side is the building the houses the upper grades, including Alex's homeroom.  Joslyn's building is behind the greenhouses to their immediate right and the gym and hot spring swimming pool are completely behind the greenhouses.  You can see that the sky was starting to get light around this time.
   We returned to Bifröst and Spencer and I walked over to the kindergarten.  Surprisingly, he was a little more apprehensive than the girls at first, but once we got into the school and found out that his class was outside playing in the snow, he was ready to be cut loose.  I returned to the apartment and Sally and I had dinner with Magnús and his wife Signý, who is in charge of "quality control" at Bifröst.  Essentially, that means she must make sure that the courses offered here are in line with agreed criteria of Iceland and Europe so course credits will transfer to other schools.
   The head of the kindergarten had suggested that we leave Spencer for only a couple hours and then increase the time a little each day as he adjusted to the teacher and the kids, so Sally and I went back over around 1 pm to pick him up.  His teacher said he had done just fine.  She noted that young kids don't need to speak the same language, since so much of their communications occurs through actions.  It sounds like he had mostly played and eaten anyhow, so how could that not be enjoyable?  Spencer acted as though it was just a regular day at school: one kid down, two to go.  We hoped the girls had a day as "uneventful" as Spencer's had apparently been.  We returned to the apartment and Spencer spent the next couple of hours playing in the snow while Sally worked and I cleared the snow from our landing, both flights of stairs, and the 2nd floor landing (for Konrad, who had helped me free the Corolla in the morning.)  A side benefit of doing that work is that I began to meet our neighbors, who came out to thank me for clearing the stairs, or introduced themselves as they came home from class.
   With great anticipation, we waited for the clock to tick down to 3:30, when the school bus was to return.................. And?  No problems.  In fact, within ten minutes of the girls walking through the front door, they had both been whisked away by friends, who came over and asked them to go play!  Joslyn ended up having a little bit of a problem with some neighbor kids teasing her, but nothing out of the ordinary.  Alex ended up watching part of a movie with three girls from her grade and lost track of time.  She and I ate supper late a little after 6 pm. 
   I wish my reason for missing supper was as fun.  No such luck.  It was laundry day!  The laundry facility is half way across campus.  The washers and dryers are free, but you have to sign up for them ahead of time.  Interestingly, detergent is provided by the university and pre-loaded into the washing machines, which are very typical European style front-loaders with very small capacities.  The dryers, on the other hand, had large capacities and dried the clothes extremely fast.
   All in all, Sally and I think that the day was very successful.  We had been quite worried about how the students and teachers would react to the kids at the schools and so far it has gone better than we could have expected.  The girls' classmates know English exceedingly well, so they have no problems communicating, and apparently the kids and teachers are going out of their way to include the girls in their conversations and lesson plans.  As for Spencer, kindergarten is kindergarten: the kids play and communicate nonverbally as much as they do verbally.  He will probably pick up words without even realizing he is doing so.  After the anticipation, early morning, playing in the snow, and swimming (Alex), everyone was pretty tired, so we all slept well that night.