Day 8-here comes the Sun (sort of)

   January 12-The girls did not have school yet again.  This time it was because parent-teacher conferences were going on at the Varmaland school to discuss the students' grades from the previous term.  So, the ladies of the house got to sleep in while I got Spencer up and took him over to the kindergarten.  He was ready to go.  I just walked him into the front door and helped him out of his winter gear, and he was off.  I barely had the chance to tell him good-bye.  I think he enjoys kindergarten!

   The rest of us had a fairly lazy morning back at the apartment, reading, knitting, and doing some work around the place.  The highlight came at 12:30 pm when the Sun rose over the horizon and the clouds were actually thin enough for us to cast shadows!  No, you did not read that incorrectly; we now know that sunrise is not until 12:30 in the afternoon, although it is twilight for a few hours before then.  As you can see in the picture, it was not entirely clear; there were still some altostratus clouds blocking it, but that is best view of the Sun we have had since we arrived in Iceland.  I guess the saying, "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone," applies here, because we are so used to having a bright sun in bluebird skies in Colorado almost every day year around that we don't realize how rare that can be elsewhere.  The fog and clouds during the winters in Oregon were probably the biggest shocks to Sally's and my systems when we were in graduate school, and we always remark on the hazy conditions we encounter when we drive anywhere in the U.S. east of the middle of Kansas during the summer.

  We picked up Spencer from kindergarten a little later and Sally snapped these pictures there.  The first shot shows the name of the school, which has an interesting connection to Gunnison.  The Icelandic name for schools that contain preschool-aged children and kindergarteners is "Leikskólinn," which means "play school."  The interesting part is that "Leik" is pronounced Lake, so you might say that Spencer is going to a "lake" school, and the name of the building that houses his kindergarten in Gunnison is the Lake School.  Also, Iceland still uses the traditional Nordic patronymic naming system, whereby an individual's last name is their father's name followed by "son" or "dóttir."  So, when Spencer was wearing his Gunnison soccer shirt, more than one native asked about it, because "Gunnison" is not uncommon as a last name in Iceland, meaning "son of Gunnar."  The upshot is that Spencer's life must not have changed much.  He has gone from Lake School in an Icelandic-named town to "lake" school in Iceland!

   I imagine the explanation for this second picture will shock some of you.  These perambulators are the beds for the infants at the preschool!  This is a very common practice in Iceland.  While walking around Reykjavík we saw babies asleep outside in their perambulators while the parents dined in restaurants and one of our neighbors had their baby asleep outside in their perambulator when we came home one evening.  On the day of the big storm, the preschool had moved the perambulators inside, but when we picked up Spencer this day, the babies were sleeping outside in them and the temperature was below 20 degrees Fahrenheit.  Needless to say, they are bundled up pretty snugly in there! 

   We headed straight from kindergarten to Bogarnes to do some shopping.  As you can see, it had already started to cloud up again.  On the way home we stopped for our first gas in Iceland.  It costs 240 Krónur per liter, which is about $7.50 per gallon.  However, the Corolla's gas mileage is at least twice as good as the pickups we drive in Colorado, so our actual cost per mile driven works out to be about the same!