Day 80-Þingvellir

   March 24-We travelled to Reykjavík today to spend the night so we could pick up Shan's family from the airport the following morning.  We slowly got around in the morning and then headed to Borgarnes.  Signý had invited us down to her and Magnús's house for coffee on the way through, so we got some Vienna bread at the bakery and then dropped in on them.
Our visit the weekend before had been brief, so it was nice to spend an hour relaxing in the house, talking to them, and enjoying the views from the house of the bay and of the Hafnarfjall mountain.  Unfortunately, their daughter Erla, who is Joslyn's friend, was at her grandparents in Reykjavík, but the kids had fun exploring the house and its yard. 
   After we left their house, we took a back route into Reykjavík.  The recent spate of warm weather has melted the snow on the less-travelled secondary roads and we took advantage of this to drive over some passes that otherwise can be troublesome.  We drove up the Skorradalur valley to the east of Borgarfjörður and over to Svinadalur on road 520.  The wind was blowing terribly as we made our way up the north side of this pass, but it was calm in the valleys on the south side, so we drove a short distance up Grafardalur before stopping and having a second lunch.  The kids ran around, releasing pent-up energy, while we adults enjoyed the views of the waterfalls.  Then we all skipped stones on a short stretch of calm water in the river.  It was quite relaxing.

Waterfalls of Grafardalur.



The wind was blowing so strongly that occasionally the water from this waterfall in the Laxá valley was completely swept back up and over the cliff from whence it came!

    Once we had our fill, we got back in the car and drove on down to and then around the top of Hvalfjörður.  Halfway down the southern side, we headed back inland up the Laxá valley on road 480, emerging in an upland moor called Mosfellsheiði.  We continued on east until we
came to Þingvellir, which was our primary reason for taking this circuitous route to Reykjavík.  Þingvellir is geologically interesting and historically important.  It is located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is a divergent tectonic plate boundary.  The land to the west of Þingvellir is on the North American continental plate, which is moving west.  The land to the east of Þingvellir is essentially on the Eurasian plate, which is moving east.  These diverging plates allow magma to occasionally well up from the mantle and erupt as lava on the surface, making the region geologically active.  Due to these actions and subsequent land subsidence, large, straight fissures have developed in Þingvellir that run parallel to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.  Þingvellir is also important historically for Iceland, because its parliamentary body, called the Alþingi, met here from 930 until 1798 AD.

The Öxará river was diverted early in the history of the Alþingi to fall into the fissure, Almannagjá , here.

The Öxará flows a short distance through Almannagjá to the Alþingi assembly location,
where it provided fresh water to the participants and their horses.

The Öxará empties into the Þingvallarvatn lake a few hundred yards beyond the Alþingi location.
Þingvallarvatn, the largest lake in Iceland, was formed by glaciers during the last Ice Age.
Its shape and character has been modified substantially by subsequent lava flows.
The most recent eruption occurred in the middle of the lake, resulting in the cinder cone island of Sandey.

   While we were walking around Þingvellir, it started to rain lightly, so we called it a day and drove the short distance to Reykjavík, where we checked into our regular digs there at the Rey Apartments.  We went out to eat and beat the 7pm supper rush just barely.  Then, we went shopping at the 24 hour Hagkaup.  We returned to the hotel and hit the sack in anticipation of rising early in the morning to go meet the family at the airport.

Day 79-Spring is in the air

   March 23-It warmed up "dramatically" today.  By that I mean that it got up to near 50 degrees Fahrenheit.  That may not seem like much, but for a climate under a heavy maritime influence, that is a fairly significant increase from the temperatures in the 30s that we have had the past few weeks.  It did not go unnoticed by our neighbors.  They hung around outside in the afternoon talking to one another and started to pull bikes out of winter storage.  Some even stayed outside to watch their children play on the rapidly dwindling piles of snow and in the rivulets of meltwater. 

   We decided to go for a hike up Grábrók, which is the volcanic crater just to the north of the Bifröst campus.  Shan did this hike a couple months ago with the gönguklúbbur but had not been back on top since then.  There was not much snow on the trail, so the hike was pretty quick.  The sky had mostly cleared, so we got some nice views of the Norðurádalur around Bifröst. 



Inside the crater of Grábrók.



Ruins of a sheep-sorting corrals north of Grábrók.



Bifröst campus and Lake Hreðavatn south of Grábrók.



Hraunsnef mountain to the north of Grábrók.

    After working up an appetite on the hike, we got in the car and drove a few kilometers up the valley to the farm/hotel/restaurant of Hraunsnef for supper.  This is the place that Sally's knitting club meets every other Wednesday.  We got to see some of the handiwork items that the club's members had made and sell in the restaurant.  We had burgers, pizza, and a wrap and it was all delicious.  About the time we started eating, the place really began to fill up.  So long as we eat before 7pm, we have generally beat the supper rush over here.  That may well change as summer approaches and the tourist season begins. 

Day 78-children at play

   March 22-"Börn að leik" means "children at play" and can be seen on roadway signs warning drivers about this "road hazard."  This is the sign on the driveway into Bifröst. 

   It is particularly appropriate here, because there seems to be a large number of students at Bifröst who have children.  This has led to a social opportunities for our kids that we had not expected.  Alex sometimes will not come home after the school bus arrives on campus, because she takes off with her friends to do whatever it is that pre-teen girls do.  Joslyn does this less, but she occasionally will go to friends' houses or run into them while playing outside.
Some of Spencer's classmates live in Sjónarhóll, so he sees them around here a lot and plays with them some, too.
   This evening really exemplified these social dynamics.  Of course, we all did our usual things during the day.  Sally worked, Shan taught English at Hraunborg, and the kids were at school.  When the girls got home at 3:30, Alex came home with Brynja in tow.  A half hour later, Águsta came over to pick up Joslyn and they went to a play room on campus where a group of 4th and 5th graders were hanging out and socializing while one of the parents supervised.  They played foosball, air hockey, and board games and then watched part of the Smurf movie. 
   At 4:30, Spencer went to the floor below ours and picked up Elísabet, who was the friend who did not make it to his birthday party two days ago.  We set up a Scotch tape marbles circle again and Alex taught Elísabet and Brynja how to shoot marbles.  Elísabet gave Spencer a lego action figure and they opened it up and started to put it together.  Unfortunately, Elísabet had to go home for supper at 5:15, but Spencer was happy that he had the chance to have her over to play.  Since she lives so close, we will try to do it more in the future.
   Joslyn got back around 6 and our three kids and Brynja played on the iPad and watched TV for a while.  We invited Brynja to stay for supper, but her mom wanted her to go home, so she left and we ate supper around 7:15.  Then, Brynja came back over at 8 and picked up Alex for an older kids' (7th-10th) party.  It took place in the same room Joslyn's party had been, so Alex played some of the same games with the girls in her class and then she watched the first part of "Robin Hood, Men in Tights."  She really enjoyed it, so we will have to introduce her to the world of Mel Brooks when we return to the States.  The party lasted until 10, but Alex left at 9, because she goes to bed earlier than most Icelanders her age.  She found out that this "nightclub for teenagers" takes place weekly.  She enjoyed it and will probably attend it again.  Apparently, parents supervise theses sorts of kids' activities to make up for the "isolation" their kids endure because they are out in the boonies here at Bifröst.  Ironically, our kids see Bifröst as an urban wonderland, since they can walk over to so many friends' houses, as opposed to living in the country back home.

Day 77-housekeeping

   March 21-Today we worked to get ready for the upcoming visit of Shan's parents and his sister's family.  They will stay at Bifröst for the first part of their visit, but since there are six of them, we are unable to put them all up in our apartment.  The University is advertised as a hotel and rents out rooms during the summer, when vacationers flood into Iceland, so we talked to Sandra, who is in charge of housing here, a few weeks ago about getting my family a room.  Since the floor we are on is mostly deserted, she suggested that we use apartment 312, which is right next to us.  She gave us keys to it and to the other rooms on this floor so we could scavenge bedding and anything else that we may need from them.  Subsequently, I became an honorary member of the housekeeping and maintenance staff for today.  First, I changed out ten light bulbs that were burnt out in the apartment, which has not been occupied since November.  Then, we got all of the bedding and linens, so we cleaned the apartment up a little, arranged the furniture, and made the beds.  I even bled the air out of all of the wall heaters so they are working as well.  We did not clean the silverware, dishes, or glasses.  It would have been easy to do if there had been dishwashers in these apartments, but the decision was made not to include them when they built this apartment complex.  We plan to clean that stuff as my family needs to use it.
   This afternoon, Sally went to talks by her students about work they did in their Institutional Economics class.  The way this course was taught, half of the semester was devoted to constructing an educational website that discusses the principles of Institutional Economics
through the use of lots of examples.  Most of the faculty at Bifröst attended the talk.  It seems to be an effective method to use when teaching an elective course. 

Day 76-Spencer's birthday party

   March 20-We finally got around to having Spencer's birthday party with his friends.  His actual birthday was March 3, and we tried initially to do it then.  However, there was a nasty bug going around here and kids (and adults) who caught it were laid low for a week!  We never caught it and we have wondered why that was the case.  No one we have talked to over here has had their flu shots, but we got ours back in Gunnison during the fall, so that may have been our saving grace.  It could also be that we had already been exposed to this particular flu strain earlier.  If this is the case, I hope that we did not bring it over here with us!  We have also noticed that most kids stay up an hour to two hours later than our kids, who are still sleepy in the mornings despite getting the extra sleep.  So, we also have considered that we and our kids have less stressed immune systems, which are better able to fight off the virus when we got exposed to it.  Of course, we may have simply gotten lucky!  In any event, once Spencer's friends finally got healthy again, Sally's folks were visiting, so we had to put the party off again.  This was finally a date that would work for us and his friends. 
   Sally's folks brought over some stuff for the party, like birthday hats and goldfish crackers, but we needed more items, so Sally and I went to Borgarnes in the afternoon to go shopping.
We also had to stop at the bank, because I have not yet figured out the banking system over here completely.  Most payments are made electronically, so I tried to pay Spencer's kindergarten bill directly out of my bank account.  I had asked around previously and had been able to figure out where numbers go in the form so the correct account would be credited.  However, as I was finishing up the transaction, I was prompted to enter a PIN.
Since each account has four PINs, I was not sure which one to use.  I guessed wrong a couple times and found myself frozen out of my account!  So, we went to the bank and the very helpful service staff showed me which PIN to use and unfroze my account.  We are back in business: spend, spend, spend!

Hinrik Nói and Spencer

   If Spencer had his way, we would only have left him at school for five minutes today; he was so antsy to get home and
get thing around for his party.  We pulled him out of school a little early and came home and got everything around.  He invited four kids, but Elísabet's parents got their wires crossed and forgot to bring her over, so only the three boys showed up.  (We saw Elísabet's mother later on and set up another time for her and Spencer to get together.)  We also had Alex's friend (and Einar's older sister) Þorgerður come over to be the party translator.  Despite the excellent English instruction that they are getting at Hraunborg (heh heh), Spencer's friends don't understand enough English for us to use it much.  We probably could have gotten by with broken Icelandic, English, and lots of body language, but if someone got into trouble or there was an altercation, we wanted there to be someone they could communicate with effectively and easily.

 Spencer had thought long and hard about his party and we tried our best to include all of the activities he wanted.  First, I made a circle on the apartment floor using Scotch tape and the girls taught the boys how to shoot marbles.  Hinrik Nói and Þorgeður exhibited some skill and even were able to put some backspin on the marbles, but the boys quickly lost interest and went back to playing with the Matchbox cars that Sally's

Hand-painting. Einar, Þorsteinn, Spencer,
Alex, Hinrik Nói, Þorgerður, and Joslyn

mom had brought over from America when she visited.  Second, we limboed.  We forgot to play the song, but it did not matter.  Again, the girls were more interested in the limbo and the boys quickly lost interest and went back to the toy cars.  Third was hand-painting.  Alex and Joslyn painted pictures of cars on the boys' hands using water color pencils.  The boys were actually more taken in by this than I had thought they would be.  We had a tough time getting them to wash their hands for supper later on, because they were afraid they would lose their pictures.

   Fourth, we played a faux-Icelandicized version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.  Spencer changed it to tape-the-horn-on-the-Viking.  He and Joslyn drew and colored a Viking on the back of some wrapping paper the day before, which we hung on the wall.  Each boy grabbed a pre-cut horn, colored it, and then put it on the Viking, while they were blind-folded, of course. 

   Fifth, we had a scavenger hunt.  Sally had hidden Matchbox cars wrapped in tissue paper around the apartment and the boys got to hunt for them.  Each got the one he found as a party favor.  Given their prior fascination with the cars Spencer already had out, this further fueled the fire and they spent the remaining time until supper running their cars around the apartment.

   Sally made a couple pizzas for supper and then we had the delicious "caramel bomb" cake from Geira Bakarí (the bakery down in Borgarnes) for dessert.  We sang happy birthday in Icelandic and Spencer opened his presents.  By this time Emma (Þorsteinn's mother) and Helena (Hinrik Nói's mother) had arrived, so they had some cake as well and finally pulled the boys away from the toys and left.  Þorgerður got Einar around and they both took off as well.

   We cleaned up from the party and then took off to Varmaland for our evening entertainment.
A public speaking competition is held over here yearly, in which students read excerpts from a book and are judged.  That is where it ends for the 5th graders and 6th graders, but the top two 7th graders move on to a regional competition and the winners there go on to the national finals.  Alex's teacher, Þóra, had given Alex a popular Icelandic poem to study while the other kids in her class were practicing reading their excerpts, and Alex was given the option of showing up to read the poem.  At first, she had been gung-ho to go do it, but as we loaded into the car, she began to express reservations.  She was worried that the audience members would listen to her reading something different from her classmates and decide that she must be the class dunce, who could not manage to read an entire excerpt.  I explained to her that in a school as small as Varmaland, all of the parents would be aware by now that she was the visiting American and that they would not think ill of her for not reading at the same level as her classmates.  However, I gave her the option of not going, since attendance at the competition was completely voluntary.  She decided to give it a try and we headed to Varmaland.
   When we got there, we were a little worried that we were at the wrong place, because there was only one car in the parking lot.  Shortly afterwards, people started pouring in, though.  As our friends and family well know, it is not often that we among the first to arrive at an event; usually we are barely on time.  In general, this actually fits well with the general Icelandic culture.  In this case, though, we were about ten minutes early.  We won't make that mistake again!

Alex's poem.

   None of us understood the readings, but it was fun to listen to tempo of the readings and to try to pick out individual words and the occasional phrases that we could understand.  Alex read her poem last.  It is a traditional Icelandic poem that has been set to music, although we have never heard it sung.  The poem, which dates to the 19th century, celebrates the arrival of the golden plover back in Iceland each year, which is supposed to herald the arrival of spring.  Coincidentally, the first golden plovers of the season were seen earlier in the day down by Akranes.  We knew this because the sightings were reported widely in the national media and all of the attendees were well aware of it.  Since today was the vernal equinox, it is officially the first day of spring, so the birds were right on time.  Now, hopefully the weather gets the news and we start to see less winter weather.

7th grade winners, left to right, 1st to 3rd place:
Eyrún, Sigurlaug, Brynja, Þorgerður, and Alex

   After Alex was done, there was a break while the judges deliberated.  We ate some cookies and the adults drank coffee and talked while the kids drank juice and ran around playing tag.  At the awards ceremony, Joslyn's good friends, Jóhanna and Águsta won first and second places, respectively, in the 5th grade division.  Alex's good friends, Þorgerður and Brynja tied for third place in the 7th grade division.  If either of the top two seeds cannot make it to the regional competition, one of them will go in her place.  While the 7th grade winners were in front of the audience, Alex was called up to join them for an honorary special mention.  According to Sigrún, this was actually quite an honor.  She told Alex that she thought she had been very brave to
participate and that she had read it very well.  Actually, quite a few people congratulated Alex on her reading and a number of the parents told us that her pronunciation of the Icelandic words was very good.  One of the judges came over after the awards ceremony and
complimented Alex on her pronunciation, tempo, and rhythm.  Overall, Alex was relieved that she had decided to go through with it and was rightfully proud of her accomplishment.  The rest of us were glad that she went as well, because it was a great opportunity to experience another uniquely Icelandic event.
   As a side note, since today is the first day of spring, we had twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of night, like everyone else on Earth. This is remarkably different from the short days we had when we first got here.  From here on out, we will have longer days than everyone who is south of us.  The days are getting noticeably longer each day and already it is twilight when the kids go to bed.

Day 75-school days

   March 19-Today was Sally's last day of lecture for her natural resource economics course. Teaching this course in Iceland has been very nice but also a fair bit of work. There were three issues that mandated changes from the course Sally teaches at Western State. First, Bifröst University wants every lecturer to use powerpoint slides so the students can focus on the discussion and not note-taking. Sally has never utilized powerpoint slides to this extent and therefore had to create the slides from scratch each week. Second, teaching this course one morning a week did not allow for discussion of some of the articles before additional articles were read. This hampered some of the spontaneity of discussions, because all of the articles on the topic were decided weeks ahead of time, irrelevant of current events. Additionally, new articles could not be assigned based on in-class discussions because a new week brought a new topic. Third, Sally tailored numerous topics to the Icelandic environment (ocean fishing policy instead of fresh water fish management, or Arctic Ocean instead of general ocean economics).
   The majority of this class was international exchange students (four Germans, one Hungarian and one Pole, vs. four Icelanders), which gave the class a very different feel than that which Sally was expecting. One surprising feature was that the international students' quality of work was substantially higher than the Icelandic students. An Icelandic colleague who shares the same students said that she has seen this disparity as well. Because there were so many European students in the class, Sally incorporated a large amount of
empirical data from the EU. This focus on the EU policy perspective was a great change from always focusing on US policy and specific US government mandates. This international perspective on natural resource economics will show up in the next edition of this course taught at Western State. One other sidenote-this class has eight women and only two men. This gender distribution is exactly opposite of what Sally would expect at Western State.

   Over the past few weeks, the girls have each produced numerous pieces of wonderful handiwork
in the vocational courses taught at Varmaland. Joslyn loves her woodworking class even though she cut her finger this last week. She does not want to miss school on Fridays because she would miss this class. In addition to woodworking, she has more traditional art classes and drama classes. Joslyn is already bemoaning the lack of these kinds of courses in the Gunnison school's curriculum. Unfortunately, the school district back home does not have the resources (both in time and money) to support these types of courses.

  

  

  

   Alex has fallen in love with knitting and has recently been having to show Sally the proper Icelandic method of knitting.  She can knit a pair of woolen socks in a week in her spare time. In addition to knitting, Alex is in a cooking class and brings home wonderful creations every other Monday. We all love to eat her tasty treats.

   Spencer seems to be enjoying his time at kindergarten now that he has made a few good friends. Academically, the kindergarten here does not stress learning to read and write at the same level as Gunnison. It is unusual for Icelandic children to know how to write their names and most kids at this age are just beginning to write single letters. When Spencer's class goes for a visit to Varmaland, the 4th and 5th grade students instruct the kids on how to write the first letter of their names. In addition, the Iceland kids are learning to hear the first letter sound in words. This has created some difficulties for Spencer.  For instance, when he sees a picture of a car he thinks "c," not "b," which is the correct answer over here since "bill," pronounced bit(l), is the Icelandic word for car, Luckily, Joslyn is with him and they end up working it out together.

Day 74-BINGÓ



"Scout Club of Borgarnes"  In Iceland, the Girl Scouts
and Boy Scouts have the same parent organization. 



   March 18-While Spencer and Joslyn went outside to run around and play this morning, Sally and I stayed inside to get some work done.  No sooner had we decided that we should just spend a lazy Sunday around Bifröst, when the kids came storming back in with a totally different idea!  Joslyn's friends,

Águsta and Erla, recently joined the Girl Scout and Joslyn and Spencer brought them over to tell us about a bingo fundraiser for the Scouts this afternoon in Borgarnes.  There went our quiet day at home!  While Águsta and Erla hung around the apartment playing with Joslyn and Spencer, I drove down to Kristín's house to pick up Alex and Brynja to return them to Bifröst.  After the late nights at the sleepover, they were both pretty beat, but Alex managed to get through the rest of the day pretty well. 

   Águsta and Erla could not explain the location of the youth hall where the fundraiser was being held, so Erla gave us the address of her new home in Borgarnes, so we could go there and have her folks show us the way.  That worked out great, because this gave us an excuse to see Signý and Magnús's new house for the first time since they moved to Borgarnes a few weeks back.  It is a fairly big house with beautiful views of the Borgarvogur bay to the west of Borgarnes.  Since Signý and Magnús are both extremely busy with work and their Masters studies, they do not have much free time right now, but they gave us a short tour of the house before Signý walked us over to the fundraiser.  By mid-April, they will have a lot more free time and we will come down for a longer visit with them.

   The hall was filling fast when we arrived, but Joslyn's friends and the rest of the Bifröst contingent made room for us at a couple tables in in the front of room.  The next three hours were a lot of fun.  In many ways, the fundraiser was very similar to the weekly bingo fundraisers in Gunnison.  Local people and businesses had donated prizes, which were bagged together and given out to the winners of each game.  There was an intermission halfway through when we could buy coffee and cake made by the Scouts and their parents.  Yummy!  The money was being raised to help the Scouts pay for their summer camp in Norway.

   Bingo was played essentially like it is in the States, except that  every game had a different goal.  In one game, the goal was to fill each space around the "free" space.  In another game, everyone stood up, and each person sat down when a number was called that was on that person's board.  The last person standing won.  Alex got a bingo on the game when the goal was to to be the first to fill in the "G" column.  Unfortunately, four other people got a bingo at the same time, so they drew cards to see who won the basket of goodies.  Alex drew a "10," but some guy drew a queen, so he won.  Each of the other winners got a consolation prize and Alex really liked the stocking cap she got, so she was happy.  The cat silhouettes on her cap are reflective, which typifies most winter outerwear over here.  When we first arrived in Iceland, we were confused by this, but its usefulness quickly became apparent.  With so little daylight in December and January, people are often out and about in the dark, so it is just a matter of safety.

   Playing bingo was very good for our Icelandic numbers.  Our friends were very helpful, but we could figure out most of the numbers as the caller said them.  We continue to have the biggest problem with the number "1."  The reason is that "1" is spelled as "einn" in Icelandic and is pronounced "ate."  The number "21" is spoken as "twenty and one," which is "tuttugu og einn" in Icelandic.  This means that it ends in the sound "ate."  So, quite often, one or more of us filled in the "8," "28," "38" and so one when "1," "21," "31," and so on were actually called! 

   The bingo boards are the types that have plastic pieces that you slide over the number as it is called.  They reminded me of the ones I used when playing bingo down at Hale, CO as a kid.  It turns out that there were good reasons for that familiarity.  First, they date back that far, according to Jóhanna's mother Krisítn, who was sitting with us.  She grew up in Borgarnes and told us that she played bingo with these boards when she was a youngster.  Second, they were made by the company "Bingo King" in Englewood, CO!  Sally got to explain to everyone that they were made only ten miles from her hometown.  Talk about making odd connections in the least likely of places!

Day 73-exploring west of Borgarfjörður

   March 17-We slept in this morning and then hung out in the apartment.  Alex called a little after noon and asked if she could stay at Kristín's house another night.  We had no specific plans for the day, so we told her that would be fine.  Since the weather was nice and we now did not need to wait for the party to be over to go pick up Alex, we decided to spend the afternoon exploring the area to the west of the Borgarfjörður.  You won't find this region mentioned in any guidebook.  The land is simply an extensive lava plain that is sparsely populated with farmsteads.  Nonetheless, we came across some interesting churches, Sally got to see some birds, and the shallow shoreline had lots of small, rocky islands, making it very picturesque.

Hafnarfjall to the east of Bornarnes.

Borgarnes as seen from the west.



Whooper swans.



Gyrfalcon.  These were caught and exported to Europe in large numbers during the Middle Ages,
because they were prized by European nobility, for whom falconry was a popular pastime.

Lighthouse on Þormoðssker, a small, rocky islet four miles off of the coast.

Small rocky islets in a shallow bay north of Traðir.

Church at Áftanes, which is a farmstead that was established when Borgarfjörður was initially settled.

Farmstead and church of Akrar with the mountains Hafersfell (right) and Ljósufjöll behind it. 

   While we were off exploring, Alex had a great time at Kristín's extended birthday party.
They stayed up until 3am on Friday night, watching the movie, "Bridesmaids."  Alex declared that "it is the most disgusting movie ever," but she also says that she liked it.  They spent
time today playing party games and board games that the girls had brought along and also just running around on the farm.  Kristín's family owns 60 sheep, a couple horses and a puppy, and Alex got to see and play with all of the them, which she obviously enjoyed.  Since a farm needs have upwards of 1000 sheep to be economically viable, both of Kristín's
parents have other jobs as well.  One of the party guests, Þorgerður, was accompanied by
her stepsister and a friend, both of whom were visiting from out of town.  After they left in the afternoon, the remaining guests (Emba, Brynja, and Alex) helped make a carrot cake,
which was the birthday cake for the celebration that evening.  The smaller group of guests
went to bed "early" tonight, only staying up until 1 am!

   The sky was mostly clear again tonight and the auroral forecast indicated that there could be some geomagnetic storms.  So, Sally and I looked out the windows whenever we thought about it in the evening and then whenever we woke up during the night.  In the process, we caught a couple moderate displays.  Isn't it nice that Mother Nature decided to celebrate St. Patrick's Day?  The Hays family did as well today by wearing green, although it is not otherwise celebrated in Iceland.

Day 72-kleinur, laufabrauð, and harðfiskur

   March 16-The staff members at Spencer's preschool/kindergarten, Hraunborg, are travelling to New York City the week after next to visit preschools there and to see the sights.  To help defray costs, they have been having various fundraisers.  The students pitched in this past week when Kolbrun, the cook at the school, supervised them in the kitchen as they made kleinur to sell.
Kleinur are a traditional Icelandic fried pastry dessert.  They taste very much like donuts, which is to say that they are very yummy.  So, to be supportive of Spencer's teachers, we bought a couple bags of kleinur for ourselves!
   Alex and a few other girls from Bifröst were invited to a sleepover birthday party at a farm between here and Borgarnes.  It is actually the same farm at which Joslyn attended a birthday party a few weeks back.  So, Sigrún Lilja and Shan drove a gaggle of
girls down to the farm after school today. 
   When Shan got back, the whole family trooped over to Emma and Pálmar's house for supper.  This is the couple with whom we celebrated Beer Day a couple weeks back.  They wanted to serve us an Icelandic meal, so they cooked fish for us.  Pálmar's father was a fisherman, and it sounds like he ate fish practically every meal.  His grandmother also gave him cod liver oil every morning, so he acquired a taste for it and continues to have a spoonful for breakfast.  Their son Þorsteinn, who is four years old, wants to mimic Pálmar, so he has been demanding and receiving a spoonful for breakfast for a while as well.  Cod liver oil has traditionally been supplied to kids in school and our children are offered it at every breakfast at their schools.  They consistently turn it down.  Joslyn and we adults tried the mild form of the oil and we did not find it distasteful.  I doubt that we will buy any of it for daily consumption, however!  I should point out that not all Icelanders are fans of cod liver oil.  For instance, Emma stopped taking it as soon as she was allowed the choice! 
   Emma introduced us to another traditional Icelandic food, laufabrauð, which is made at Christmas time.  The dough for laufabrauð is made with a minimal amount of flour, hearkening back to the days when flour was a rare commodity.  The dough is rolled out wafer-thin and then designs are cut into it, before it is deep-fat fried.  It was Pálmar's turn to be unimpressed, but for him the reason was economics, which is his profession.  He said that Emma and her mom spend hours in the process to only make a small amount of laufabrauð.  We had to side with Emma, however, because we thought her laufabrauð tasted better than his cod liver oil.  Pálmar did have some luck with us, though, when he pulled out his harðfiskur.  We had tried harðfiskur, which is simply dried fish, a couple times before, but we had not found it very appealing.  However, we found Pálmar's variety to be rather tasty, especially when he had us put butter on it. 
   The kids had fun playing with Þorsteinn's extensive collection of playmobil toys and we adults had a wonderful time sitting around talking, trying out different food, and drinking wine and beer.  Time flies when you are having fun, though, and it was a shock to all of us, when we finally looked at the clock and realized it was getting close to 11pm!  We reluctantly pulled ourselves away and said goodnight.  We continue to be amazed by our good fortune to have met so many wonderful people over here who are so inviting.  So many people have been willing and able to interact with us and the language barrier has proven to be almost no issue whatsoever.