Day 42-packages from home

   February 15-We received our first mail last week, from our Icelandic bank.  Unfortunately, the address did not include our apartment number.  So, late last week, we were in Sally's office talking to her officemate, Sigrún, and I asked her what we should do to see if there was a problem.  Sigrún made a number of phone calls and then sent some e-mails trying to get to
the bottom of it.  It turns out that our apartment building Sjórnarhóll is a place-name in and of itself and apartment numbers are not included in the kennitala registry!  After some more work, Sigrún contacted the postal service, which was recently privatized, and notified them to our existence and the fact that we actually lived in a specific apartment in the building.
   At the time, we were very appreciative of Sigrún for doing all of that work, because I doubt we could have made it throught the automated call answering systems and the such, but we did not realize the importance of her work until today.  For the first time, we got a circular dropped through the mail slot on our apartment door.  More importantly, when we happened to walk by the College's front desk, the secretary told us that we had packages waiting for us!
   Interestingly, one package had been sent January 18 and the other had been sent February 8.  We think that at least the first package had been sitting at the post office in Reykjavík or Borgarnes waiting for some sign that the address on the package was actually occupied!  Thank goodness we happened to mention this address issue to Sigrún and she was willing to see the process through, or we would still be sitting here wondering what had happened to these packages.
   The oldest package contained a blow-up booster carseat that we had bought on Amazon and shipped to my folks'.  We had figured that bringing along Spencer's booster seat would be expensive, because it would count as another checked bag.  It turned out that we could have had an extra checked bag, so we were wrong there.  We also figured that we would pop in to a store over here in Iceland and buy him one once we landed.  Wrong again: we could not find anyone who could tell us where to buy a booster seat the first week we were here.  So, we bought this odd seat, so it would not be terribly expensive to ship on to Iceland.  Partially wrong: the shipping costs essentially doubled the cost of the booster seat!  And, of course, we have finally figured out where we could purchase a booster seat here.  Oh, well: live and learn.  My folks also threw in a calendar, some Colorado maps, Colorado tourist guides, and Colorado pins to show to locals and to use as presents for kids' birthday parties.
   The second package, from my sister's family, was one of the Valentine's Day packages we had been expecting.  It contained Valentine's cards, candy, and some balloons that inflate by hitting them on the table.  As you might expect, everyone was overjoyed to get these treats.

   We have been experiencing pretty mild weather conditions here over the past week.  I don't think that the temperature has dipped below freezing recently.  Then, we got some pretty heavy rain for the past couple of days.  When you combine all of this with the snow and ice we had on the ground, you get a LOT of water running towards the sea.
When Sally and I drove to Borgarnes to go shopping today, we noticed that the rivers were overflowing their banks, so I

thought that it might be a good time to show Sally the waterfall Glanni and to see if it was running particularly heavy.  WOW, was it ever!  It looked totally different from the last couple of times I had seen it.  When the girls got home from school, we showed them the pictures we had taken and they wanted to go see it, so we hiked on over again.  We also walked a short distance away to the Paradís hollow, which collects water that has run through the surrounding lava fields.  It looks like a great place to have a picnic once summer arrives.