Day 82-final exams

   March 26-Sally's natural resource course took their final exam this morning. In Iceland, professors do not proctor their own exams. Instead, the University hires someone to proctor multiple exams in the large lecture halls. The professor typically checks in the room a few times during the three hour-long examination period and also gives his or her cell number to the proctor in case something unusual happens. During the exam, most faculty hang out in the faculty lounge drinking coffee and reading the paper. One student did not attend the final exam. Later, he presented a doctor's note to the administration justifying his absence, so he will take a make-up exam sometime in July.  Sally will have to write a whole new exam for him because the original final exam is available on-line for anyone to see.

The recent rains and lukewarm temperatures caused
Glanni to be running extremely high.

   We got our kids up this morning and sent them all off to their respective schools, while the rest of the family slept in.  In particular, Shan's folks, Norm and Diane, slept in the longest. Since they are otherwise always up early and usually harangue everyone else for sleeping in, this was our one chance to return the favor and we took full advantage of it! After a late brunch the family went for a brief hike to the Glanni waterfall and Paradise Hollow. They also drove by Hreðavatn (the lake just south of campus). Once the kids

Paradise Hollow

returned from school at 2:30, we loaded everyone up and headed for Borgarnes and the Settlement Center which is housed in two historic buildings from the late 1800's that are the oldest buildings in Borgarnes. There are two different exhibitions in the Settlement Center with audio tours in ten different languages. One tour is about the initial
settlement of the Borgarnes area and the other describes Egil Skallagrímsson's saga. Everyone went through the display and audio tour of the settlement. Egil's Saga is fairly violent and only Shan's parents and Greg and Misty went though it. Shan and Sally had already seen it when Bill and Jean were visiting a few weeks back, so we stayed in the gift shop with the kids. After spending some time and money at the gift shop, we all headed to dinner at Hyrnan, a fast food cafeteria-style restaurant.  We came back home and celebrated Spencer's 6th birthday one last time with another cake from the Geira Bakarí. Spencer finally got to open the birthday presents that the family had brought over for him and about which he had been asking almost from the time he first saw them!