Day 95-Gleðilega páska

   April 8-Today, we celebrated Easter in the Icelandic fashion, so gleðilega páska (Happy Easter)!  Many of the traditions are similar to ours in the States, but there are just enough differences to make it all feel a little exotic.  Most striking,

each person gets a single Easter egg (páskaegg).  That sounds stingy at first, but hold your judgement until you hear "the rest of the story," as Paul Harvey used to say.  Páskaeggs are made of chocolate, are hollow, and are filled with candy and an Icelandic saying.  They also range in size from chicken egg to ostrich egg.  We bought three páskaeggs for the kids through Hraunborg, which was selling them as a fundraiser to help Spencer's kindergarten (and the other preschool) teachers pay for their trip to New York City.  (Incidentally, we saw a couple of the ladies today and they told us that they had a great trip.)  The eggs turned out to be of the ostrich-sized class: 1 kg in total mass.  Yep, that's right: 2.2 pounds of chocolate and other candy.  Oh, my!

                                                                                                                                                                    Sally had inquired earlier with her students about hiding the eggs and got a split response.

Some said that their parents had hidden their eggs in their youth, whereas others said their parents simply gave the eggs to them on Easter.  In any event, there is no Easter bunny tradition.  Actually, there were no rabbits at all on Iceland until some pet rabbits escaped a couple decades back and are now starting to cause some trouble here.  (It has to do with that whole, "breeding like rabbits" thing.)  Our kids had a very strong opinion on this subject, however, so we acquiesced and hid the huge eggs in the neighboring apartment that their grandparents and aunt and uncle had used the previous week, since we still had the key to it.  We actually did a pretty good job, since it took them five minutes to find all three.  Then, the kids hid two smaller páskaeggs for Sally and me in their bedroom.  Once we all had our páskaeggs, we opened up the packaging and dug in.  

                                  

Joslyn checks to make sure the candy is all out of her egg.

   Icelanders are fixated on licorice and they especially love it combined with chocolate.  We have warmed to this combination slowly, but we still made sure to get páskaeggs that did not mention licorice in the hopes of minimizing its inclusion in the candies.  Regardless, there certainly was some licorice candy in them.  Nonetheless, we mostly enjoyed the eggs and the candy inside.  To counteract the sugar, Sally made some eggs and bacon for breakfast.  She followed that up later at supper time with sautéed lamb steaks, since Icelanders traditionally have a lamb dish for Easter supper.  Overall, we feel like we did a pretty good overall job celebrating Easter like the locals do.

Joslyn with some of the
Easter decorations she made.

   Most of the rest of the day was spent putting
everything back in order after having had guests
visiting for the past two weeks.  The kids rearranged their room for just the three of them and put away the toys and clothes they had taken on the road trip.  Sally picked up around our apartment and got caught up on e-mails.  I dealt with advising and other work issues back at Western.  Then, I did the laundry.  Between the linens and towels from both apartments and all of our clothes from the past week and a half, this turned out to be one epic laundry session.  Since most of the students and staff were gone for the holidays, I thankfully had the laundry facilities mostly to myself, which sped up the process considerably.
   Alex received some bad news today: her baby goat, Víkinger, had died the day before.  Alex belongs to the "Get Your Goat" 4-H club back in Gunnison and has leased a cashmere goat named Remmie from Ann Bertschy for the past year and a half.  This past fall, Ann bred Remmie, who gave birth to twin white bucks two weeks ago.  The leesee can raise and care for one of the goat kids, but the other is given to a new human kid who is joining the club.  Alex chose to keep the young buck that had some black on its face.  Most bucks are sent to a ranch in Montana when they are six months old.  However, Ann planned to wether and keep Víkinger, so her friends in the club agreed to take care of Víkinger until she came back in the summer. 
   Alex has enjoyed working with Remmie and was really looking forward to adding Víkinger to her burgeoning herd, so she was quite upset when she got the e-mail from a friend that broke the bad news.  We were able to Skype with some other friends late this evening and one their sons filled in Alex on some more of the details.  Apparently, Víkinger had bloated, but the vet had come to see him and had given him medicine, so he was doing better.  Then, a wildfire broke out in the valley near the goat ranch and the goats and Ann's other animals had to be evacuated.  At some point in the process, Víkinger took a turn for the worse and subsequently died.  Even though Alex was upset by this news, it was a good chance for her to get exposed to some of the harsh realities of ranch life.