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!
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