Day 55-faint northern lights

   February 28-Shan and Sally headed to Borgarnes to have lunch at the bakery and to get

some shopping done.  Shan has been needing to get a haircut for a while, so one of Sally's coworkers helped him get an appointment at a salon in Borgarnes today as well.  The hair stylist was an au
pair in Taos, NM twenty years ago, so they were able to talk about the Rocky Mountains as well as about Iceland.  One of the funnier things that Sally found while shopping today was "Cool American Doritos."  They taste like cool ranch Doritos, but I suppose that "ranch flavor" does not translate well to Icelandic.
Would you expect it to do so to any language?  Now, we are cool Americans with our cool American Doritos!
   After the kids got home from school today they e-mailed, knitted and played on the iPad.  Then, one of the neighbor girls showed up with a cute little Yorkie puppy, so the kids all took off to play with it.  They ended up at another neighbor's house, whose father is
a policeman in Reykjavík and has a drug-sniffing dog.  I would think that they got their fill of dogs today. 

   A daily routine has developed, in which Shan checks the forecast for the aurora borealis each morning and evening.  It did not look particularly promising this evening, but the night sky was mostly clear, which has been very rare this winter, so we took a peek out the window.  Lo, and behold, there was a faint green glow in the sky!  Sally had bought a tripod for her camera in Reykjavík a couple weeks back, so we decided to put it to good use.  We jumped into the car and drove a half mile down the road towards Hreðavatn to get away from the streetlights around Bifröst and then waited for the clouds to clear.  We got some very nice views and the tripod worked great.  These displays were not nearly as energetic as the ones we saw back in January, but they were still beautiful.  I don't imagine that we will ever tire of this spectacle.



The Big Dipper with a faint trace of aurora borealis.



Our building, Sjórnarhóll, is on the left side of the picture.

Day 54-birthday party firsts

   February 27-Joslyn got invited to yet another birthday party today.  This one, however, was different for a couple of reasons.  It was the first birthday party for a boy (Daniel) and it was the first birthday party for a fellow 4th grader.  Since Joslyn is the only girl in 4th grade, though, these two differences are actually interrelated.  Two 5th grade girls from Bifröst were also invited to the party.  Their parents worked out an arrangement to get them to and from the party and they invited Joslyn to join them.  I was actually a little bummed out by this, because I had managed to figure out where the party was myself.  I know that sounds silly, but you have to realize that street addresses are not used to locate houses in rural Iceland.  Instead, every farm and house has a name that is used for the mail and to tell people where to got for birthday parties.  So, if you are new to the area, how in the world do you find the location of "Túni?"  As it turns out, there is a website called ja.is, which has an incredible map with all kinds of information linked to it.  So, all I had to do was type in Túni and it came up with a few options, including one in "311 Borgarnes," which is our town and zip code area.  I zoomed in to the house and from there I was able to find out Daniel's parents' and big sister's names and their phone numbers as well.  It is pretty slick.
   So, Joslyn headed to the party with Águsta and Jóhanna.  On the way, she learned how to sing "happy birthday" in Icelandic.  She taught it to us when she got home.  A couple more practice sessions and I think we will be ready to sing it to Spencer here in a couple days.  The birthday party was pretty similar to the other parties the girls have attended.  There was the requisite movie (Big Momma's House, in English with Icelandic subtitles) and pizza, along with four birthday cakes.  They also played the same game Alex played at an earlier party, where a gift is wrapped under multiple layers of paper and tape and each kid gets a short time to work at it.  Whomever reaches the gift first gets it.  The highlights for Joslyn were an adorable puppy and Erla.  Erla is one of the best friends that Joslyn had made here so far.  Since she is Signý's daughter, though, that family's move to Borgarnes over the weekend put Erla into a different school.  We plan to get together with them occasionally in the future, but it won't be on the daily basis that they have been used to.  The kids stayed longer than we expected and Sally started to get worried.  We could not find the invitation with the phone number on it, but ja.is came to the rescue again!  All I had to do was remember the location of the house and when I zoomed in on it, I got the phone number of Daniel's mother.  She did not know much English, so when I called, I was forced to put a few Icelandic words together.  It was enough, though, to find out that Joslyn had been picked up and was on her way home.
   While Joslyn was at the birthday party, I headed out with the gönguklübbur.  Unfortunately, I left the camera at home, because I figured that it would be just another hike to Glanni.  However, Gaui was busy cleaning his house, so Sigrún took over and took us up into the hills above lake Hreðavatn.  She told me that the hills behind Bifröst are crisscrossed with trails, so I am really looking forward to getting out onto them, but only after some of the snow melts a little more!  We ended up postholing through snow more than six inches deep.  In some places, when we broke through the crust, the snow that came all the way up to our waists!  It is amazing how much the snow depth changes over small changes in eleveation here.  Borgarnes and the lower half of the valley are devoid of snow, whereas we have about three inches of snow here at Bifröst, which is about 300 feet above sea level.  The ridges we hiked were only about 200 feet higher than Bifröst and they had that much more snow on them.  It is much easier for me to understand how the ice caps can form in the highlands here!

Day 53-beer and cheese party: OK, we will go home

   February 26-Our short naps came to a close around 1am when Sally's alarm went off.  It was time to get up and party!  We have a small group of friends in Gunnison with whom we get together occasionally during the winter for "beer and cheese parties."  It just seems like the perfect thing to do on a cold, dark winter evening.  The group got together on Saturday evening and asked us to join them via Skype.  Since we are seven hours ahead of Colorado, that meant that we, unfortunately, would have to be the late night attendees.
   Since the couples in the beer and cheese gang have kids who are some our kids' best friends, Sally woke up the girls when the revelers called in around 1:30.  She tried to wake up Spencer a couple times as well, but he just rolled back over and went back to sleep.  While he was the least groggy of us the next morning, he was quite upset when he found out that we had talked to everyone and he hadn't.  Sally and I popped a couple beers and we pulled out a little cheese for a heavy, late night snack.  That was about the extent to which we joined the party, though, because the kids hogged the iPad almost the entire time.
   The kids finally signed off a little before 3am and we adults got a chance to talk.  However, our neighbor from downstairs came up at that point and asked us to keep it down!  We apologized to her later on and she is not upset with us at all.  She just had a sick kid, who
could hear us, so that was the problem.  In any event, Sally felt kind of bad after that and headed to bed.  I talked to the guys at the party a little longer, but it sounds like there is not much to report in Gunnison.  Besides being mild and dry, it is pretty much like any other February.  So, I signed off and hit the sack.  That's the latest any of us have "partied" in a long time. 
   Once everyone rolled out of bed later in the morning, we had a quiet day at home.  Spencer
watched a lot of TV.  The girls read books and worked on math that their classes are doing back in Gunnison.  Sally and I got caught up on some work as well.  The girls and I took a short hike to the tunnel under the road once the rain let up late in the afternoon. 
   Alex was feeling a little homesick after having talked with her friends during the night.  She had also noticed that there was a new couple at the beer and cheese party and fretted that we were being replaced.  Since we have no return tickets to go home, she wanted us to see about that.  We had a number of reasons to originally purchase only one-way tickets to come over here.  First and foremost, we were very unsure about our schedules over here, so we were not sure when we should fly back.  We now know that the girls are in school through May and that we have our apartment through July, so Sally can teach more classes here and still have time to do research.  Second, the cost of round-trip international tickets is basically the cost of the two one-way tickets, so there was no price advantage to purchase round-trip tickets rather than one-way tickets.  Finally, IcelandAir is beginning direct flights between Denver and Reykjavík in May and we could not get round-trip tickets that included that leg when we were looking last fall.  That direct return flight really interested us.
   I had been checking the cost of flights back to Denver occasionally and they had not changed much, so there had been no real impetus to make a final decision and buy tickets.  However, when we checked it today, they were a little more expensive, except for the flight on July 29.  When we checked the flight that day, we were surprised to find that the cheap tickets were actually in the business class section!  Cheaper tickets almost exactly when we were looking to go home that include meals, beer, and larger seats?  We could not see a downside in any of that so we decided to pull the trigger.  Yep, in case anyone (like Alex) was concerned that we might be staying here forever, worry no more!  Who knew that all it would take to make us miss the U.S. enough to want to come home was beer and cheese (and friends, too, of course).  The plane takes off at 4:45 pm (local time) and arrives in Denver at 6:40 pm MDT.  Ignoring that pesky issue of time change, we will be "home" only two hours after leaving Iceland!

Day 52-visiting Ian in Reykjavík

   February 25-Ian, the American expat who teaches the Icelandic culture and language class at Bifröst on Fridays, invited us for dinner with his family in Reykjavík today.  So, we got around in the morning and headed towards the capitol yet again.  It seems we can barely go a week here without visiting Reykjavík!
   Before going to Ian's, we first stopped at the Toys 'R Us store to shop for Spencer's birthday.  Yes, there is a Toys 'R Us store in Reykjavík!  Like I have said before, the similarities between the U.S. and Iceland are quite striking.  However, one difference we discovered today is that the prices at this big box store are actually not less than at smaller stores at which we normally shop!  So, we grabbed a couple things that were on sale and headed on over to Ian's.
   Ian lives in the top story apartment of a three-story house out near the end of the peninsula,
on which Reykjavík is located.  The house is almost on the shore and there are some beautiful views of the ocean and the Reykjanes peninsula beyond.  He and Angela both said that it was perfect when it was just the two of them.  However, they have had two kids since then and a third is on the way, so it is starting to get a little tight.

One of red-roofed buildings on the left side of the picture is the Icelandic Presidential residence.
The mountains are on the Reykjanes peninsula across the bay to the south of Reykjavík. 

   Their family epitomizes "international" in my mind.  Ian was born and raised in Rochester, NY, whereas Angela was born and raised in southern Germany.  They both ended up in Iceland for different reasons and met here.  Since then, they have both gained Icelandic citizenships, and their kids are learning English and German in the house and Icelandic in preschool.  They are essentially going to be raised as native-speaking trilinguals.  I am extremely envious.  Of course, Ian and Angela are also trilingual, although they each have only one native tongue.
   Ian first came to Iceland through family connections.  As a linguist, Iceland was as good of a place as any to study, so he ended up back here in 2001 and started working at Bifröst soon thereafter.  It was interesting to get his perspective on the state of Bifröst and of higher education in Iceland in general.  Apparently, the quality of the average thesis at all levels is declining and plagiarism is becoming a bigger problem inside and outside of academia.  Unfortunately, it would seem that academic standards are declining on both sides of the Atlantic! 
   He also gave us some of the history behind the financial problems at Bifröst and we discussed the related issue of low student numbers.  Again, the parallels between Bifröst and Western are striking.  The isolated nature of Bifröst is a problem in attracting Icelandic students, and the school's administration has not put together a cohesive program to attract international students.  I suggested that students from Western and similar colleges in the U.S. would be good targets for such an effort, because of the accessibility of hiking trails and nature from the Bifröst campus.  It may be an idea worth mentioning to the administration at some point.



Joslyn on sculpture dedicated to the
rescuers of shipwrecked fishermen.

    After the adults had visited and we all had eaten, all of us took a walk down by the bay.  The tide was out, so the kids were able to play in the tide pools and look for sea glass.  Before this area got swallowed up by Reykjavík in the 1950s, it was used by fishermen to beach their boats and one of the sights we got to investigate were the remains of the fish-drying racks, fishing shacks, and motorized trolley systems the fishermen used to move their boats into and out of the water.  Nearby was also a discharge pipe for a hot spring.  Oddly, when the tide is in, the hot water comes out below the surface.  I am not sure what the purpose of this bit of plumbing is.
   By the time we got back to Ian's apartment, his kids had hit the wall, so we said goodbye and headed to the Laugardalurlaug hot springs pool.  It is an older pool complex and they are currently renovating it, so a number of pools were closed, causing it to be a bit crowded.  However, the tube slide alone was worth the price of admission, because changing displays within the tube added a visual component that really enhanced the experience.
   Everyone was well-done after a couple hours, so we got out and went downtown for supper.
We chose a Thai place almost at random.  It took a long time to get our food, but it was worth it.  The food was amazing.  The entire family feels that this place deserves a return visit at some point.  In all honesty, though, we have had fantastic food at almost every meal we have eaten over here.  This invalidates one of the biggest assumptions we made before coming over here.  Namely, we thought that our food selection would be restricted to lamb and seafood and figured that we would be looking for recipes and varieties that we could stomach.  While lamb and seafood are quite common, we have found almost every other kind of meat here as well and not at a premium cost, either.  Furthermore, the Reykjavík area has a plethora of international restaurants.  Ultimately, this place is not the gastronomical wasteland we had envisioned, but is quite the opposite.
   By the time we wrapped up supper, it was well past the kids' bedtimes, so they mostly sacked out when we got to the car.  Some weather had moved back in, but the driving conditions were never horrible, so we made it back home just fine around 11pm.  We all hit the sack for a short nap.  What does that mean?  It will all be clear in tomorrow's post.

Day 51-Signý and Magnús move to Borgarnes

   February 24-Today was mostly a typical Friday.  The girls came home an hour earlier, which is typical for Mondays and Fridays.  Sally and I went to the Icelandic culture and language course, where we learned more about verb conjugation and noun declension.  Wow,
is it complex!  There is no way we are going to get all of this figured out before we leave Iceland.  My goal now is simply to be able to figure out the root words when reading Icelandic,
so I can get some idea about the information contained in the writing.  I don't think that we have any chance of learning how to understand much of anything we hear in Icelandic.  That's
too bad, but it is good to have realistic expectations.
   Right after class got out, Sally and I headed over to Signý and Magnús's house on campus.
We had seen Magnús on Wednesday and he told us they had just gotten the good news that
their home loan had been approved, so they were the proud owners of a house in Borgarnes!  This was a tremendous relief for them, because they had kept being told, "we will know tomorrow," for the past couple of weeks.  So, we offered to help him move and today he took us up on that offer. 
   It looked a lot like any other move with which we have been involved in America.  The moving truck backed up to the house and a horde of people started randomly taking stuff out to it and then sitting around and waiting, while the few people who could fit into the back of the truck tried to pack everything in as efficiently and sensibly as possible.  Incidentally, Signý managed to miss the move, because she is in Finland at a conference.  However, she spent the past few weeks packing up the house, trying to convince herself that the purchase would go through.  She is due to come back over the weekend, so she can help unpack everything as well.  Since those are the two worst jobs in a move, she did not really get out of anything by being gone today.
   Since the new house is down in Borgarnes, their stuff didn't have to travel far.  I hope everything made it down there safely, although there were some packing decisions that were made that seemed to ask for trouble.  We will have to wait until we see Signý or Magnús at some point in the future to find out, though, because Magnús said that a number of colleagues who lived in Borgarnes were coming over to help unload, so we did not need to drive down to help.  So, we came back home and had a relaxing evening with the kids.

Day 50-debit card and on-line banking

   February 23-Today was English instruction at Hraunborg again.  I am feeling much more comfortable with the lesson plans and the kids now.  It helps that this was the third time they have seen me, so I am less of a stranger and they are more willing to sing the songs and do the activities.  A few of the three and four year olds even gave me hugs when I left their classroom.  That was sweet.  It's certainly not something you get from college students after class! 
   I am getting a better handle on the social situation in the kindergarten class as well.  Unfortunately, there are two bullies in the classroom.  The teachers know who they are and watch them closely, but these two just pick on the other kids mercilessly and then sit in time-out the requisite amount of time before coming out to cause trouble again.  Spencer says that he and his friends just try to avoid these two kids, but they occasionally have to deal with them.  So long as he is mostly having fun at kindergarten and enjoys interacting with the good kids, it should not be a problem.  I know that teachers are at their wit's end with these two, but I don't know what they can do.  Butts in seats (and the subsequent income) matters as much in kindergarten as it does in college!
   Sally and I headed to Borgarnes in the afternoon for shopping.  When we got into town we headed to the Settlement Center to try it for dinner, which was wonderful.  We have not yet seen the exhibit at the Settlement Center, but I imagine we will go there multiple times as friends and family visit.  The exhibit discusses the first settlers in the area, who developed one of the most prosperous farming districts during the Saga Era.  Egil's Saga discusses the settlement of the Borgarnes area, but multiple other sagas also discuss his descendants and other people who used to live here.  We still do not know a great deal about all of this history yet, but it is something we want to delve more into while we are in the area.
   After dinner, we headed to the bank, where we were finally successful in obtaining our debit cards and on-line banking access.  OK, so it must be pretty boring here, if I have to start talking about on-line banking.  Except, it's not!  Sometimes, the differences between Iceland and America pop up at the most unexpected moments and that would certainly describe our banking experiences so far. 
   First, there is no such thing as a joint account over here.  An account is connected to a single kennitala, or ID number, so there is no way to have two people on the account.  Second, any and all bills are registered on-line, based on kennitala.  I had received the bill for the girls' dinners at Varmaland a couple days ago, so I took it in to pay it while we were at the bank.  It turns out that the bill was already assigned to my account.  That does not mean that it had been paid.  I still had to agree to pay it, but the connection to me was already there.  That kind of interconnectedness can be a little frightening, but it also makes bill-paying really efficient.

   Third, our debit cards have our
pictures and our signatures, which had been recorded electronically in a previous visit.  Every time I have used the card since then, the cashier has simply turned the card over and made sure I was the person pictured on the back.  Simple, but very effective.  I am surprised that this convention has not been adopted more widely.  As I understand it, debit cards are the most widely used form of IDs, because of the picture on them.
   Fourth, the ordeal to get our on-line banking system set up was amazing.  We were assigned at least four IDs and/or passwords and came up with three more passwords ourselves.  Once we got home, I sat down and worked with the sets of numbers and passwords and I think I have finally figured out which ones we need for each purpose.
   Fifth, the manners in which the on-line baking site is accessed are completely different from the ones we use in the States.  I had wondered why every Icelander carries a gray plastic device with a numerical display on the front (left side of picture), but now I know.  Each person's account is assigned one of these (not completely) random number generators.  So, to log into your on-line banking account, you fill out the username and the password you selected, and then you pull out your ID device and turn it on.  A string of numbers appears, which you enter into their own field.  Alternatively, you can use your debit card to access your account.  You plug the card reader into the USB port, slip your debit card into it, and then enter your debit card's PIN to access your account.
   Now that we have access to on-line banking, we also can access the search engine for Iceland's kennitala ID system.  Since the kennitala number includes a person's birthdate, I
can find out anyone else's birthdate and therefore their age.  I can also get the person's address through the search engine.  Can you imagine the outrage that would accompany the introduction of this sort of publicly-accessible database in the States?

Day 49-öskudagur

   February 22-Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, signals that the party is over in most places.  But, in Iceland, öskudagur, or ashes day, is treated a little differently.  Kids (and most adults, too) look foreword to the festivities of today as much as they look forward to the "bolla! bolla! bolla!" of bolludagur.  To gain a better perspective, think about the preparations and anticipation that accompanies Halloween in the U.S.  Well, that is essentially what öskudagur is: Halloween in February.

   The kids got themselves up early again today, so they could get their costumes around.  Joslyn donned the fox mask she made in school a couple weeks ago and then used Spencer's coat and an orange plastic bag to complete her arctic fox costume.  Alex and Spencer used costumes we bought at the flea market in Reykjavík two weekends ago.  Alex was a dragon lady and Spencer was a classy skeleton. 

   There is an old tradition here to "beat the cat out of a barrel" on öskudagur.  Everyone assured us that this was not due to there being cats in the barrel now or even in earlier times, but methinks they doth protest too much!  To get an accurate mental picture of this activity, start with a kid hitting a piñata.  Then, replace the piñata with a ten gallon barrel without metal bands, give the kid a full-sized sledgehammer handle, and

take away the blindfold.  Now we have an activity that befits the Icelander's Viking ancestry! 

    Spencer's class worked over a cardboard barrel with a broom handle in the morning, while the Varmaland kids beat the cat out of the barrel in two different groups in the afternoon. Alex's 7th grade class stayed at Varmaland with the older grades to let out some teenage angst on a wooden barrel there.  Meanwhile, Bifröst hosted grades 1-6 for a barrel-beating at 1pm.  I don't imagine you would see this type of organized activity much in America, because any administrator would immediately think 'liability' and 'litigation' and would cancel it forthwith!  Thankfully, that does not appear to be as big of a problem over here.  Instead, the parents and the maintenance staff, who ran the show, kept the kids back and the kids were expected to show some common sense as well. 

   After the maintenace men hung the barrel from a second floor balcony, the Varmaland kids and some of the

kindergartners from Hraunborg lined up in the college courtyard, and the beating commenced!  As you might expect, the little kids didn't do much damage when it was their turn.  Spencer gave it one try, but decided he was too much for him and just watched.  The maintenance staff at Bifröst did a good job of making the barrel this year, because it survived four rounds.  However, the sides slowly began to cave in and finally could no longer hold the bottom, which gave way, pouring the candy out.  Bedlam ensued. 

   In most of Iceland, the kids immediately fan out to businesses, where they are given candy, much like the Main Street celebration in Gunnison around Halloween.  However, since these country kids do not have a concentrated collection of business nearby, they run from residence to residence, collecting candy.  So, kids in costumes go house to house and get candy.  That's why I said that it is essentially Halloween in February.  The big difference is that the kids have to sing at the door to get the candy.  In some towns in Iceland, the kids actually get together weeks ahead of time to practice, and the store owners give out candy based on the quality of the singing.  In any event, I was amazed at how well most of the kids could harmonize and sing the songs.  It was actually a treat to listen to the songs, before handing out the sweets. 

   Joslyn and Spencer joined Joslyn's 5th grade classmate, Sara, running around Bifröst.  Sara arrived at Varmaland a couple weeks ago.  She has an American parent and an Icelandic parent and had lived in America since she was four years old.  It is interesting that there had been no Americans at Varmaland for many years and in quick succession they have now picked up three!  Since Sara obviously knew English songs, they could all three sing the same things, like "twinkle, twinkle, little star."
   The non-Bifröst students, including Sara, departed for Varmaland on the bus at 2:30.  An hour later, the older kids came back on the bus and started roaming the campus, singing for candy.  Alex joined her usual group of Icelandic friends and tried to keep up with singing Icelandic songs.  She did not get as much time running around for candy as she would have liked, but we reminded her that she could do it all over again in eight months.  The kids are essentially going to be able to celebrate Halloweens twice this year!
  Preschoolers get picked up around 4pm and some of them were taken around by their parents.  Ultimately, I think that we ended up having almost all of the kids who were at Bifröst
stop by and sing to us, because word got around that we were handing out American candy.  Remember that huge supply of Valentine's candy we got earlier this week?  Well, it was nearly wiped out by the time the last kid came through a little after 5pm. 
   So, like typical academics, we have asked a number of people where these traditions came from and what they have to do with Ash Wednesday.  It turns out that the costumes are relatively new.  People who are our age told us that when they were young, the old tradition of sneaking up on people and discretely hanging bags of ash on their clothes was still practiced, but it was dying out.  The tradition of costumes and practicing and singing songs as groups was simultaneously developing up north in Akureyri, from which it has spread all over Iceland.  However, no one could tell us how or why this change came about.  I suppose that it happened for the same reason that Halloween has developed its costume and candy traditions over the past 70 years in the States: most people just enjoy it!

Day 48-sprengidagur

   February 21-Whether it is Mardi Gras, Carnival, Fat Tuesday, or Fasching, essentially every culture with a Christian heritage celebrates overindulgence in their own manner today.  In Iceland, sprengidagur, or "bursting day," is celebrated by eating until you are nearly ready to burst.  So, the similarity between sprengidagur and the other celebrations seems fairly obvious at first glance.  However, the devil is in the details and the detail that differentiates
sprengidagur from the other pre-Lent celebrations is the food.  Traditionally, the food to be eaten in excess today is a soup made of salted lamb and beans, usually supplemented with potatoes and turnips as well.  Quite obviously, sprengidagur is not a Nordic Mardi Gras!
Sally and I had some of the soup at the coffeehouse at Bifröst.  When the cook saw us eating the soup, she asked if we liked it and we told her that we did.  She was quite surprised and asked if we had Icelandic ancestry.  No, but it was just meat and potatoes in a soup.  From my perspective, that is not exactly rare or odd.  I mean, how can you go wrong with that?  The kids all had this traditional dish for dinner as well and Sally even made some for supper, so the whole family properly celebrated sprengidagur.  Of course, it didn't hurt that we still had some cream puffs and a whole lot of Valentine's candy left over from yesterday!
 

Day 47-bolludagur

   February 20-Today started out early for Sally and Joslyn.  Poor Joslyn's stomach acted up on her again.  She blamed the cream puffs from the day before.  We think one of them did have some brandy in the whipped cream, but I doubt it was enough to cause any trouble.  Unfortunately, this bout of nausea hit at 1 am, so Joslyn was not as prepared to deal with it.  Sally must have been the lighter sleeper at that point, because only she heard Joslyn come into our room to tell us what had happened.  Consequently, she ended up with the clean-up job.  Thankfully, Joslyn had no more problems after that.
   Today, Icelanders seamlessly transition from the þorrablót and konudagur celebrations connected to their ancient pagan Norse calender to celebrations connected to their more recent Christian heritage.  Bolludagur, or balls/bun day, begins the period of celebration that leads up to Lent.  Traditionally, the "balls," to which the name refers were meat balls, but in the 19th century, Danish bakers began to introduce cream puffs, and today these delicacies
are the primary food associated with bolludagur.

   Preparations for bolludagur began last week, when
Icelandic kids spent valuable school time fashioning implements of torture to use on their parents.  If kids wake up earlier than their parents on bolludagur, the tradition is for them to sneak into their parents' room and strike their parents' bottoms with the bolluvöndur (bun wands) they made, yelling "bolla" on each strike.  They then get one cream puff for each strike.  When our kids came home with their  bolluvöndur on Friday, they seemed very eager for Monday to arrive.  As a result, we warned them that as Americans, we could choose to follow the tradition as we see fit and if they came in too early or struck with too much enthusiasm, then there would be no cream puffs for them!  They took our words to heart and only came in 20 minutes early this morning.  I don't know how many times "bolla" was yelled, but I think they got their fill of cream puffs today, so there were no complaints!

   Sally had put together some cream puffs the night before, so we all got up and forced ourselves
to enjoy this Icelandic tradition.  The kids all had more cream puffs
at school.  Spencer even got to help make some before eating them.  The coffeehouse on campus sent some up to the faculty lounge, so adults were not left out either.  In order to try to fit in, all of us continued to eat cream puffs as they were offered to us throughout the day.  I think that we were excellent ambassadors as we continued to show the locals that we are willing and able to partake in their customs, no matter how difficult that may be!  Sally got even more ambitious and made cream puffs for the students in her class today.  Since half of the class are international students, who are bemoaning the fact that they are missing out on their countries' more raucous pre-Lent celebrations, Sally figured she could help introduce them to the Icelandic tradition.  Overall, I think that this is a tradition that the Hays family would like to import into America, although we might want to leave the early morning parental beatings behind!
   What could make a day devoted to cream puffs even more decadent?  Not much, but we managed it.  Two more packages from the States arrived today.  Shan's parents sent over a large number of souvenir items to give out to our friends, whereas the package from Sally's folks contained nine pounds of Valentine's candy!  How those sugar-loaded kids went to sleep that night, I do not know.  We were very happy to see the candy arrive when it did, because we will be able to hand it out on Wednesday when a tradition similar to America's Halloween takes place.  Shan was able to work off some of the day's excesses because he joined the gönguklübbur on a hike to the waterfall Glanni in the late afternoon.
  

Day 46-konudagur

   February 19-Today is the first day of the ancient Nordic month of góa.  This is significant in modern Icelandic life for a few reasons.  First, it marks the end of the preceding month, þorri, and therefore the end of the time period of the þorrablót feasts.  Second, it marks the beginning of the last month of winter, since góa ends around the spring equinox.  Icelanders, historical and modern, figure that the months of þorri and góa are the toughest parts of winter to bear, so the beginning of góa means they are halfway through this period of time.  Third, the first day of góa is konudagur, which means women's day.  It is the day that the husband is supposed to be particularly nice to his wife.  Husband's day, or bóndadagur, takes place the first day of þorri, which was Januray 21.  Since konudagur snuck up on me, I was not adequately prepared, but I did get Sally a matroyshka doll decoration while in Reykjavík today.  Besides, just the fact that we are in Iceland is still special, even if we have been here almost 50 days.
   We got more snow last night, so there was about half a foot of snow on the ground this morning and then it started to rain.  The kids were getting a little rambunctious, so we tossed them out and they enjoyed playing in the snow for almost an hour.  Elisabet, who is a neighbor kid and a kindergartner with Spencer, ended up joining them and they built another snowman.  Joslyn insisted that my English lessons with Elisabet were working well, because she could say different body parts of the snowmen.  She may be right, but there are so many sources of English in this country that I don't figure I better count this as a success story yet.

Cream puffs are traditionally eaten on bolludagur.

   Belinda, the head of the Fulbright office, threw an early bolludagur party today for the American Fulbrighters in the country.  Shortly after noon, our trusty Corolla blazed its way through the chassis-high wet snow in the parking lot and out onto the road.  We were off for Reykjavík yet again!  We got into town a little early, so we went shopping, hence the previous
reference to the konudagur gift.  There were only a few Fulbright students at Belinda's but the other two faculty members showed up, so we got to talk to them again.  Pam and Marilyn are doing great and socializing with the locals a lot.  Maggie is not doing as well.  Her boyfriend, daughter, and dog are all still in America, so she has become quite homesick.  While being surrounded by English-speaking American family members all the time certainly has stunted our attempts to learn Icelandic, Maggie's experience does remind us that the presence of our family members over here ultimately does make the time here much more enjoyable.

   Pétur, an Icelandic Fulbrighter, who spent time working at a halfway house in Minneapolis in 1990, was also at the party.  He is now a pastor and he provided us with a short bit of education and entertainment.  First, he handed out sheets of Icelandic music.  While he played the guitar, we all tried our best to pronounce the Icelandic words and sing the song.  I am sure it sounded horrendous to the native speakers.  The second song was "Home on the Range," but in Icelandic!  If it weren't for the tune, I would not have recognized the song.  Pétur then had everyone right down a regret on sheets of paper, which
he burned to represent forgiveness by God and the release of us from that regret.  He then taught the kids how to use the ashes from the burnt paper to make the symbol of the cross on their foreheads, so they got a little bit of education about Ash Wednesday in the process.

   The biggest hit at the party from the kids' perspective was Belinda's hairless, Sphinx cat, Birta.  This may not seem to be the most logical choice for a cat to have in a place named after frozen water, but the reality is that Birta is pampered to such a degree that she has very little to do with the "ice" in Iceland.  Belinda has actually written a children's book in which Birta is the main character.  The story specifically addresses Birta's hairless nature, because its main themes are prejudice and differences between individuals.  We intend to find and buy one of the books now that the kids have met and played extensively with its main character!  

Day 45-swim meet

   February 18-This past week, the girls came home with notes about a sports day in Borgarnes today.  The Ungmennasamband Borgafjarðar, which means "young people's club of Borgarnes," hosted the event, which involved swimming races and indoor track events, like high jumping.  Both girls decided they wanted to enter the swimming competitions.  So, we got around this morning a little earlier than we normally do on weekends and headed to the sports complex in Borgarnes.
   As it turned out, only one other student from Varmaland entered into the swimming competition: the daughter of Varmaland's PE and swimming teacher, ĺris.  ĺris was also involved with running the competition and helpfully explained the whole process to us.  We
were very appreciative, because our kids have never been involved in swim meets in the States.  ĺris previously spent four years in Alabama, so her accent is part-Icelandic and part-Southern drawl, which gives it a unique sound.  From her time in Alabama, she knew that swimming was not a part of school curriculum in the States.  She also concluded that American kids are not generally as good of swimmers as Icelandic kids, who are taught swimming starting at age six at the latest.  Before the swim meet began, ĺris told us that she had asked our girls if they knew how to swim when they first started swimming classes at Varmaland back in January.  She was more than a little dubious when they said they did, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that the girls actually could swim.  In fact, she even told us that she thinks that they have good form!  We think that that was quite a compliment for Tami and her staff back at the Western State pool, who have been working with the girls at stroke clinics for the past few years.

   Joslyn competed in the 25 meter freestyle and 25 m backstroke races.  She came in last in each of the events.  It probably didn't help that she was the shortest kid in her age group.  Regardless, she had a lot of fun.  All of the swimmers got medals for participation and Joslyn was really proud of it and wore it the rest of the day.  Alex competed in the 50 m freestyle, 50 m breaststroke, and 50 m backstroke.  Her rookie status was clear on the first race, because when the whistle was blown to start the race, she was obviously not ready for it.  She didn't begin her dive until her only other competitor was already in the water!  Still, Alex was a strong swimmer and managed to pass the other girl on the last lap.  Alex got a better start on the breaststroke, but the other girl easily won that race.  Alex won the backstroke race but did not compete in the final race, which was a mixture of styles.  The other girl "raced" that one alone.  Alex also enjoyed the swim meet and was very pleased with the medal. 

                                                                                   After the awards ceremony, the rest of the family changed into our swimming suits and

joined the girls outside (in the 20 degree Fahrenheit weather) to soak in the hot tubs and play in the outdoor swimming pool.  By 2 pm we were getting hungry, so we cleaned up.  We watched the indoor sporting events briefly, because there were a couple kids from Bifröst competing in them.  We ate dinner at Hyrnan, which is an American-style café with pizza, burgers, and ice cream.  We had not eaten there previously, but the food hit the spot for everyone.

   After dinner we shopped and did some sight-seeing around Borgarnes.  The region around Borgarnes plays a central role in Egils Saga, which is one of the most famous Icelandic sagas.  Now that we have our bearings, we are starting to figure out the important locations that are mentioned in the saga.  We drove home and decided to stop at the Glanni waterfall for a quick look.  The weather has turned colder and a few inches of snow has fallen recently, so we wanted to see if Glanni looked different than it did a few days ago.  The difference was remarkable!  To get a feeling for how much the flow in the water had dropped, compare this picture of Glanni with the one we took (and posted) just three days ago!  It will be interesting to see how the waterfall continues to change through the spring and into summer.

  Back at home, we unpacked from the day on the town and then Facetimed with Shan's folks to wish my father a happy birthday, since he turned 70 today!  My sister's family was down to help celebrate, so the girls were able to see and talk to their cousins as well, until they finally couldn't stay awake any longer.  All of that swimming, hot-tubbing, hiking, and food in their stomach, combined with the lateness of the hour, had finally taken their toll!

Day 44-Icelandic economy and finances

February 17-Sally and I had a great chance to learn about the history and the nature of the modern Icelandic economy and its financial system today.  While sitting in the staff and faculty lounge for coffee this morning, we started to talk to Hjalti about the home financing mechanisms in Iceland.  The system over here is significantly different from the one we enjoy in the U.S.  For starters, there is no such thing as a long-term fixed-rate loan.  Instead, a borrower can choose one of two different types of loans: a three-year loan that automatically gets renegotiated at a new interest rate when it is due, or a long-term variable rate loan that is
pegged to the inflation rate.
   Ian Watson, the American expat who teaches the Icelandic Culture and Language class in English on Fridays, came in and enlivened the conversation at that point, because he and Hjalti disagreed on a few points.  Ian also gave a short history of Icelandic society and economy later in class that day, which tied in nicely to this discussion.  For most of its history, Iceland has been an agrarian society.  The Vistarband law passed in 1490 forced anyone whose wealth amounted to fewer than three cows to become indentured servants to a landed farmer for one year.  Every year on the same date, everyone's wealth was reevaluated, and the poor had to find someone to serve again.  This process kept the poor from becoming beggars, since they were always "employed" by some farmer, who was responsible for providing their servants with room and board.  Of course, it also essentially
made the poor into slaves who were subject to other limitations as well.  For example,
indentured servants were not allowed to marry.  This restriction reduced the number of children born into destitution, although children could be and were occasionally born out of wedlock.
   Farms, run by their owners, were the basis of local government and served as the center of social life for Icelanders.  Consequently, towns did not exist in Iceland during this time.  In the late 18th century, Icelanders began to take to the sea to fish and discovered that they could sell the fish and buy their way out of indentured servitued.  Meeting places for fishermen sprang up on the coast, developed into harbors, and ultimately became
permanent urban settlements during the 19th century.  As more people took to fishing, the farmers began to lose their labor and they fought these developments.  Ultimately, they lost and in 1894 the Vistarband law was abolished.  Meanwhile, fishing became Iceland's primary economic driver and remains vitally important today.
   Iceland's economy and standard of living looked more medieval than modern well into the 20th century.  Iceland essentially became independent of Denmark when the Germans invaded Denmark in 1940.  The  British moved in shortly thereafter to keep Iceland free of German submarines and to use Iceland's fjords as a layover point for trans-Atlantic convoys.  Subsequently, Iceland's export of fish to Britain increased dramatically, resulting in a large influx of money.  After the war, the fishing industry grew dramatically and fish exports rose steadily.  An American base was also established at Keflavík and Americans with money to spend began arriving on the island.  The government used the money it collected from taxes on fish exports to modernize the country's infrastructure and fishing fleets.  During these boom time, there was essentially no unemployment.  However, the financial system did not modernize simultaneously and remained tied to the peculiarities of Icelandic history.  It was basically crony capitalism at its finest. 
   By the 1990's personal wealth had increased to such a degree that Icelandic banks were overflowing with money and they started buying up banks in other countries.  These actions made the Icelandic financial system look strong, investors came calling, and the Icelandic króna strengthened considerably.  Consequently, imports became artificially cheap and Icelanders went on personal spending sprees as well.  Inflation has always been rather high in Iceland, so it made more sense to buy products sooner than later, when they would certainly be more expensive.  Therefore, it also made sense to take out loans to finance the personal spending sprees.  Foreigners watched the króna steadily increase in value and wanted in on the action, so they started buying the currency, further inflating its value.  The Icelandic banks recognized this new market and advertised savings accounts, monetized in the steadily appreciating króna, aggressively in Europe.
   In 2008, the whole system fell apart, practically overnight.  As the global financial system grappled with ever-tightening credit, foreign depositors demanded that the Icelandic banks repay them with their native currencies.  The sell-off of krónur caused the realilzation to spread that there was no foundation for the króna's value.  Since bubbles are built on confidence and belief, the psychological support for the króna's value crumbled.  Ultimately, the króna lost nearly 3/4 of its value against the dollar.  All three of Iceland's major banks went bankrupt, personal savings were lost, and prices rose dramatically across Iceland as the inflaction rate soared.  The repercussions are still being felt today.
   While the situation has stabilized and the economy is actually slowly growing, Icelanders are still saddled by debt and the government has had to deal with greatly reduced budgets.  Polictical discontent in the immediate aftermath of the crash brought down the government and the new government made sure that Icelanders' savings were reimbursed.  However, foreign accounts have not yet been reimbursed and there is an ongoing debate as to whether they ever will be.  The depositors in Denmark and Britain were reimbursed by their own
governments, which now demand to be repaid by the Icelandic government.  These demands are currently playing a significant role as Iceland negotiates to join the EU. 
   The government has also imposed capital flow restrictions since the crash to force foreign investments in Iceland to remain here.  Consequently, krónur may not be converted into foreign currency.  The folks in the lounge pointed out that Iceland is the only country with a population of less than one million that has its own currency that is not tied to a foreign country's currency.  They think that the króna is really just funny money and it is only a matter of time before Iceland is forced to adopt another currency, like the Euro or the Canadian dollar, or something similar.  To make matters worse, Iceland is too small to be self-sufficient, so the strength of its economy is really dependent on the strength of the European and American economies.  Obviously, that is not particularly reassuring right now, although the economic indicators are currently more positive than negative in Iceland.
   Returning to the interesting way in which mortgages work in Iceland, the crash was obviously pretty hard on homeowners.  Housing prices dropped, the net worth of homeowners was decimated by the króna's devaluation, and the interest rates jumped with a rise in inflation.  Consequently, many people were suddenly underwater with their mortgages.  Unlike in the United States, people here cannot simply walk away from their homes in these situations and turn them over to the lendors as collatoral.  Nor are they allowed to sell the house to recover some of the money they need to repay the loan.  And, until recently, lendors could indefinitely pursue litigation to recover the full loan amount from a lendee.  There is a time limit on that now, but there is still no way for a person to declare bankruptcy and start over.  This situation combined with the lack of usary laws and the excessive loans taken out by Icelanders before the crash has resulted in many people working their tails off just to keep paying interest on loans.  Consequently, there is a controversial movement afoot in Iceland to have the government pay off portions of loans to get people back afloat.  Others point out that warnings were sounded prior to the crash about the Iceland's precarious financial situation and that the people who chose to take the risks of high levels of indebtedness should now deal with the consequences of their bad decisions themselves. 
   To muddle matters even more, the Icelandic Supreme Court handed down a ruling on Wednesday about home loans made in both krónur and foreign currency before the crash.  It was our discussion of the ruling that sparked the long discussion.  After the crash, these loans were renegotiated and the foreign currency interest rates were increased to
compensate for the loss in value of the króna.  The Supreme Court ruling disallowed this
interest rate change, forcing the banks to reimburse lendees the extra money that has been collected on the loans since they were reset.  This ruling essentially rewarded the lendees for risky behavior and has really raised the ire of the people who chose the safer loans and are now getting the shaft.  The expectation is that all of this will come to a head in the Parliament at some point in the near future, or it could cause the current government to fall.
   All of this brought to mind the saying, "you don't know what you've got until it's gone."  Compared to Iceland, we have some pretty good consumer and lender protection laws in the States and the Icelanders envied our home morgage system.   I don't know what that says about smaller governments being more responsive to the populace and less so to special interests, but it is an interesting observation.  Furthermore, the fact that legislative actions can cause changes to be made in contracts between private parties (lenders and lendees in this case) is also something that would be difficult to imagine in the U.S.  Whereas much of our time here has been spent marveling at the similarites between the U.S. and Icleand, this is an instance where the differences are much more apparent.