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.