Day 5-school begins

   January 9-Sally got up at 6:30 this morning, well before the sun, while the rest of the family got to sleep in again.  I had coffee at the faculty coffee lounge with Magnús, the interim coordinator of international studies.  Then, it was time to teach natural resource economics at 8:45. I had 9 students; 4 from Iceland and 5 from other areas of Europe (Germany, Hungary and Poland). The classroom is known as the fishbowl because of the large, floor to ceiling windows at the back of the room that overlooks the main courtyard between buildings. I teach three 40 minute lectures with either a 5 minute or 10 minute break in between. Then, after another 10 minute break I lead a 40 minute discussion section to go over problems or I lead a discussion of readings with the students. This first day was fairly typical with the Icelandic students very concerned about what the homework assignments and examination will be like. None of the students had done the reading so the discussion section was very short. Instead I assigned the students to write a couple of sentences to answer two of the four discussion questions. All of the homework is to be turned in electronically and graded electronically with my comments attached. After teaching, I ate lunch at the campus coffee shop with Magnus and afterwards, had a short tour of the facilities.
   Shan, Sally, and the kids met Magnús at 2pm to walk over to the kindergarten and child-care facility, which is on-campus.  We got the grand tour of the facility and Spencer spent about 15 minutes with his class while everyone else had coffee in the teacher's lounge.  Shan may have even found himself a job.  The school had lined up a person to come in and speak English with the kindergartners but that fell through and the head of the school asked me if I would like to do it.  I am not sure about the exact types of material I am supposed to cover: alphabet, numbers, phrases, or just conversing in English to get their ears used to the sounds, but I am to meet with the head of the school to discuss the details.
   Next, we followed Magnús over to the girls' school in Varmaland, which is about 6 miles as the crow flies south and east of the university.  On the map from days 3, it is about halfway between Bifröst and the "R" of Reykholt.   Varmaland means "warm land." and refers to the numerous hot springs around it.  They have been tapped and provide the heat for the school and a large number of greenhouses, which are used to grow cucumbers.  The location of Varmaland is quite obvious in the evening, because the powerful grow lights stay on until midnight and make the location look like a rather large town as they reflect off the low clouds.  The school itself was traditionally a boarding school for 17 to 20 year old girls, who learned housekeeping, home economics, and related subjects.  Around 15 years ago it was converted into a school for local kids in 1st through 10th grades.  The principal and the girls' new teachers gave us a tour of the grounds and buildings that lasted nearly two hours!  They were very nice and I think that they are genuinely interested in seeing the girls fit in and succeed.  I think that there were two highlights for the girls.  First, Alex will be put into 7th grade, because of her birth date, meaning that next week she will join her class on a week-long field trip to Reykir, which is on the north coast of Iceland, almost due north of us.  Second, the school has an outdoor hot springs pool and the curriculum includes swimming for the girls weekly.  I think that the girls are understandably nervous about jumping into this experience, but the teachers went out of their way to try to put them at ease and I am sure that they will take to it very quickly.  They kept apologizing about their "rusty" English, despite the fact they spoke it with a nearly flawless grammar and vocabulary.  Sally and I were most surprised by the amount of life skills in the curriculum.
   We drove back home through some pretty heavy snow and had pepperoni pizza, which was no different than pepperoni pizza you can find in the States.  As the evening wore on, the snow continued and the wind picked up.  It started to look just like a good old high plains blizzard.  By the time we went to bed, the steps and landing outside the apartment looked almost exactly like they had when we moved in!  From the pictures below, you can see why the kids started to get worried that the roads might be bad enough to cause school to be cancelled on their first day!
 

The view of the entrance to the university from our back window.

 

The view of the university north out of our front door.