Day 64-girls in Reykjavík

   March 8-Both girls headed to Reykjavík this morning for different school-related activities.  Grades 7-10, which constitute secondary school in Iceland, attended a nation-wide "high school" sports competition.  "Nation-wide" sounds very impressive, but do not forget that the population of Iceland is 320,000.  This is around 1/1000 the population of the United States, or 200,000 people fewer than live in Wyoming.  In other words, "nation-wide" here means something much different from "nation-wide" in the U.S. and more closely equates with
"county-wide" in many metro locations!
   The indoor competition included athletes from many of  Iceland's school districts, each of which put together a team of two boys and two girls.  Each team competed against other teams in their division (eastern Iceland or western Iceland) in various exercise-oriented events,
like doing pull-ups and push-ups.  The highlight for Alex was a peculiar relay race.  It started with a girl from each of two teams in a car.  When the race started, the girls jumped out, ran tires (like guys do in football practice in the States), went across a monkeybar setup, climbed a rope ladder, belly-crawled a certain distance, lifted some heavy sacks into a box, lifted a heavy ball onto a platform, jumped rope 20 times, climbed a rope ladder, and then finished by getting into a second car.  As soon as a girl closed the door in the second car, a boy on her team jumped out of the first car and essentially ran the same relay course. 
   Alex did not realize that the color of the Borgarfjarðar school district, which includes Varmaland, is pink, so she wore a purple shirt today.  She got into the spirit, though, and put on a little pink face paint, in order to support her district's team.  She and her classmates had a lot of fun and must have cheered enough, because their team placed second in the western Iceland division.  As soon as the competition was over, the students loaded up and headed back for Varmaland.  Alex noticed that it was 3pm and started to worry about how she was going to get home, since this is the time that the students usually load up to ride home from Varmaland.

Joslyn's good friends, Águsta, Jóhanna, and Erla

   Meanwhile, Joslyn's 4th and 5th grade class ate breakfast at Varmaland before boarding a separate tour bus/school bus.  Joslyn was delighted to find out that her good friend, Erla, who
moved to Borgarnes two weeks ago, got to come back to
accompany them on the class trip as well!  The bus drove around to the other two schools in the Borgarfjarðar school district, Kleppjárnsreykir and Hvanneyri, to pick up their 5th grade classes and then headed off to Reykjavík.  Once they got to town, they headed straight to an indoor ice-skating rink that was up on the 2nd or 3rd floor of a building.  They only took a break to eat pizza for lunch, but otherwise the kids skated their hearts out.  Joslyn's teacher, Gróa even got out on the ice for a short while, even though she had not skated in years.  Joslyn had a great deal of fun skating with her friends and really enjoyed the dynamic light shows that were projected onto the ice.  The return trip was uneventful and she stayed on the bus when it stopped in Varmaland, because it was the bus that took the Bifröst kids home as well.


Joslyn is in pink behind the girl with the white skates.
Reflected in the windows are the tour bus and Gróa taking the picture.  

    While the girls were off having their fun, the rest of us did our own things as well.  Bill and Jean slept in this morning and then Nana Jean walked Spencer to school, where she got to meet his teacher and classmates.  Sally did a little work in her office and then met the Sterna bus, which drives passengers and parcels around Iceland on the Ring Road, in order to pick up Bill and Jean's piece off luggage that had not managed to arrive with them yesterday.  Meanwhile, I went over to Hraunborg to do my weekly English lessons. 
   Once I was done at Hraunborg and Bill was awake, we adults headed to Borgarnes to eat dinner at the Settlement Center.  Jean got to eat mussels, which was one of her goals while in Iceland.  The rest of us had the soup and salad, which is almost always a great choice over here.  After we were sated, we went to the exhibition portion of the Settlement Center and took the two audio tours that they offer.  The first one explains the settlement of Iceland and the second presents a shortened, multimedia version of Egil's Saga.  This saga is considered to be one of the finest Icelandic sagas and describes the first settlers in the Borgarnes area.  It was particularly interesting to us, because we know this area better than any other location in Iceland.  Bill and Jean enjoyed the food and the audio tours, so we deemed the visit a success.  We did some quick shopping for food and a cake and then headed back home. 
   We got here shortly after the bus from Varmaland had brought the kids back.  That should not have been a problem, because we had given Alex a key to the apartment, in case we got back late.  However, Joslyn was waiting outside the apartment door!  It turns out that the 7th graders had been given a note the day before to tell the parents that they would be back late, so we would need to pick them up from Varmaland.  Since we had been in Reykjavík on Wednesday, we had not gotten the note, so we began to wonder where Alex was.  Jean, in particular, was worrying about Alex's absence, but we know parents of other 7th graders, so we figured that we would give them a call at 6pm if she had not shown up.  That was lucky timing on our part, because shortly before that deadline, Sally saw Sigrún drive into Bifröst with a car full of kids, including Alex.

   With everyone back home, Bill and Jean's lost bag could be opened.  Since this was the bag that had all of the birthday gifts for Spencer and Joslyn, this was a highly anticipated event!  Joslyn
got a couple party games and Spencer got some toy cars, legos, and K'nex.  We ate the 2012 Iceland cake of the year as the birthday cake and celebrated both kids' birthdays.
Between the yummy cake and the new toys, everyone had a very enjoyable evening.