Day 147-Spencer's graduation

Alex's countdown to summer.

   May 30-Summer arrived today, academically, because it was the last day of school for the girls.  Since it was sunny, warm, and not windy at all, they spent almost all day doing outdoor activities at Varmaland.  They had popcorn kernel-spitting contests, played on stilts, baked bread wrapped around sticks over a campfire, and consumed hot dogs and Coke for dinner.  Alex also put on her bathing suit and played on an improved slip-n-slide on one of the hills.  Since the plastic tarp was a little short, though, the last bit of the slide was on the grass, which made for interesting landings.  She also went swimming.  Joslyn rode around on her bike and played a little putt-putt golf on a improvised course.  Both girls also gave their teachers necklaces with gold aspen leaf cutouts as going-away presents and Alex gave her teacher, Þóra, a baby hat she had knitted, since Þóra is due in November.  The teacher appeared to appreciate the gifts a great deal.  I think that they genuinely enjoyed having the girls in their classes this spring and that the girls' presence was not a big inconvenience to them.

Joslyn's view of summer.

  

         Our final assessment of the girls' time at Varmaland is mostly very positive.  The teachers were warm, kind, and generous.  The arts and crafts courses and the other non-academic courses were very delightful for them and they learned a number of useful skills that they can use in the future.  Academically, though, it was a wash.  Math was taught at a level well below that taught at their grade level in Gunnison.  They did not need to attend English lessons and could not study Danish, science, or social studies, because these subjects were taught in Icelandic.  Instead, they spent most of these class times learning Icelandic.  Icelandic is a "boutique language" (in U.S. Embassy parlance) and their knowledge of it will not be of any particular use anywhere else in the world other than in Iceland.  However, knowledge of Icelandic has taught them that there are other ways to express ideas and to construct sentences.  For instance, the definite article (the, in English) is not a separate word, but instead is incorporated into the noun, itself.  These differences between Icelandic and English will make it easier for them to learn other languages in the future, because they will already be expecting that there might be differences that they cannot even conceive of a priori.

Playground at Varmaland.

Joslyn's teacher Gróa at the Varmaland swimming pool and hot pot.

Some of Alex's female classmates.

Alex's friends, Þorgerður, Sigurlaug, Brynja, and Grímur.  Joslyn is in the background.  

Þór Elí baking bread on sticks over a campfire.

Spencer's kindergarten class.

The age-old question: Is my diploma really in there?

     In another parallel between the States and Iceland, Spencer's kindergarten class graduated from Hraunborg today.  The graduation was a cute ceremony in one of the classrooms.  The kids sang a couple songs in Icelandic and then the teachers handed out roses and diplomas.  Afterwards, we ate cake and ice cream.



Bára, the director of Hraunborg,
gives Spencer a congratulatory hug.

 

Spencer with this teachers
Ingibjörg and Tara.



  

  

          We spent the latter part of the afternoon working around the apartment, fixing bikes, and perusing Sígrun's yard sale.  At 5:30 Sally went to pick up Joslyn, who was at Stefán's birthday party.  Since he lives at a house in Varmaland, Joslyn just walked over to his house after school.  She said that his birthday was very similar to the others she has attended here in Iceland (pizza, cake, ice cream, birthday songs, and games).  Since the weather was nice, though, many of the games could be played outside and no movies were watched.  They were also able to jump on the trampoline that belongs to their neighbors, who happen to be the family of Spencer's friend Hinrik Noí. 

   When they got back, we all went to the barbecue party that the social science student union was throwing for themselves and the social sciences faculty, which includes Sally.  It turns out that Sun, burgers, hot dogs, beer, and ice cream go together in Icelandic culture just as well as it does in American culture!  We had a nice time talking to the students and the faculty.  The students pulled out a Swedish game called Kubb.  It has some similarities to horseshoe pitching, but uses wood pieces that you try to knock over and that can be moved around.  Shan started playing one of the games in the early evening, but the teams were so evenly matched (beer has that downward leveling effect) that we played until the Sun set around 10 pm.  We finally removed half of the wooden targets from the game and finished up around 10:30.  Whew!

Day 146-Spencer's class trip

   May 29-The kids' final week of school began today.  It is unabashedly all about the fun now.  The weather continues to cooperate: the ongoing "heat wave" is forecast to last through the rest of this week.  We will probably even get into the 60s!  Spencer's class certainly took advantage of it and went on a field trip today.  First, they headed over to the farm of one of the teachers at Hraunborg, Pálina.  They got to see and hold the baby lambs, play with a very energetic dog, and ride on her ATVs (a 4-wheeler AND a 6-wheeler!)  Pálina lives a short distance from Varmaland, so they headed on over there and went swimming in the school/community pool.  Spencer gushed about the whole trip; obviously, he had a great time.

   Joslyn brought home her last bit of handiwork today, a stained glass pendant that she put together last week while other kids started a larger project that they will return to when they come back to school in the fall.  The kids were in and out of the apartment after school, reading books, jumping on the trampoline, playing with friends, and riding their bikes.  Meanwhile, Sally and I were busy tying up loose ends here and preparing for our upcoming visit to Europe.  We have settled in so much here that it feels like home, not like a "trip."  So, now we are having to get together our passports and other documents, which have been in storage, just like when we are back in the States!  What a weird feeling.

   Incidentally, Bifröst University had a multimedia marketing company out here a month ago taking pictures and videos of the campus and surrounding locations.  Since the school wants to highlight the local amenities, the company visited Hraunborg and Varmaland as well.  The resulting products have essentially become the front page for the university's website: bifrost.is.  Go check it out: our girls ended up in the videos for the "Skóli fyrir alla" video, as did many of their friends.  Incidentally, the picture on the front page is taken from our building.  All in all, it is a pretty slick presentation.  It will be interesting to see if it gets enough views to have an effect and to help to increase the number of students here.

Day 145-Annar í hvítasunnu

Brynja soaks up that high-latitude Sun. 

   May 28-By chance, America's Memorial Day (observed) happened to fall on Whit Monday this year.  So, Icelanders got to enjoy a long weekend, just like Americans.  The similarities don't end there, though.  Like most Americans use the day for outdoor activities, rather than actually memorializing, most Icelanders skip church services and use the time to be outside as well.  Luckily, the weather cooperated fully.  Today was absolutely gorgeous.  We even donned our shorts, which was a first for all of us, expect Spencer, who has been wearing his shorts for the past month. 

Summertime and the living is easy.

   Brynja stopped by in the late morning and invited Alex out to go play in the river Kiðá, which flows into the southern side of Hreðavatn.  Alex readily agreed and spent the rest of the afternoon with her and other families who headed over to a waterfall near the mouth of the Kiðá.  They sunbathed, swam in the pool at the base of the waterfall, and jumped into the pool from the cliffs around it.  It was a warm day (meaning the temperature nearly reached 60 degrees Fahrenheit), but the water was ice-cold, so they returned to Bifröst and warmed back up in the school hot tubs.

Shan and Spencer cruise in front of the Kaffi Bifröst.

   Meanwhile, Spencer was antsy to get out biking again.  So, Sally and Shan took him out for a spin around the campus.  Afterwards, we loaded up our swim gear and headed to Borgarnes.  Unfortunately, two of the hot pots were closed for maintenance, but we still had plenty of fun soaking in the remaining hot pot, swimming laps, and relaxing in the Sun.  Afterwards, we made our usual post-swim ice cream stop at Hyrnan, before driving home.
   We had Sígrun (yoga instructor, mid-level manager and social coordinator at Bifröst, and mother of Alex's friend, Brindís; that's right, the titles get longer, the longer we stay here) and her two daughters over for a raclette supper tonight.  Sígrun had eaten raclette once before, but it was completely new to her daughters.  They all agreed that it was great and will be on the lookout for a raclette to buy!  Sígrun was actually the second person we met at Bifröst.  She lives in the house next door to the Samkaup store on campus and saw us exiting the store our first day on campus.  She introduced herself to us and warned us that the prices at this store were rather high compared to the grocery stores in Borgarnes.  She also made sure that we got a shovel the next day to clear the snow off the steps (for the first of many times.) 


Joslyn, Sígrun, Brindís, Spencer, and Alex.

   As is probably quite obvious, she has been an extremely pleasant and helpful woman and we are very happy that we finally found a time to have her over, since her last day working at Bifröst is on Thursday.  She has lived here for several years and her daughters, now 12 and 14 years old, would like a more urban environment, so she has bought an apartment in Reykjavík.  She is spending June fixing it up and then she will move.  She is currently looking for a job in Reykjavík as well, so hopefully that goes smoothly and she gets one by the time July rolls around.  Otherwise, she will join the faculty who commute out to Bifröst a few times a week for work, while she continues job-hunting.  She hopes to have us over to her place once she is settled in.  We hope that works out.

Day 144-filling in the gaps

   May 27-We spent the first part of the day around the house.  The adults did some work inside, while the kids played within and outside.  The sunny skies finally motivated us to get out and do something around mid-afternoon.  The Kaffi Munaðarnes is located in a collection of summer houses across the river from Varmaland; we had been stopping in there every few weeks since February to find out if it was open yet.  A couple weeks ago, Sally actually talked to someone there and they told her that the restaurant would be open weekend afternoons, so we decided to try it again today for a late dinner.  Success!  Since they are still gearing up for the summer tourist season, they were only serving hamburgers, so we all had one and split a 2 liter bottle of Coke.  The hamburgers were quite tasty.

   As is usually the case, though, there were surprises in store for us.  First, while talking to the owner, we discovered that she is the mother of Víkinger, who is one of the students in Joslyn's class.  He usually hangs around the restaurant, but happened to be off playing with a friend while we were there, so Joslyn was not able to play with him.  Second, the kids found a mini-golf course while walking over to the playground and Víkinger's mom told them that it was free to play, so we all grabbed balls and clubs and played a round after we were done eating.  Third, Víkinger's mother pointed out that they will have bounce houses up for the kids to play on as soon as they get them patched.  She noted that we would enjoy stopping in for coffee in the future while the kids played around on the bounce house, the mini-golf course, and the playground.  I think that she has a point and imagine that we will return at least once.

   A short distance down the road from Kaffi Munaðarnes, at the turn-off for the road to go to Varmaland, is the Baulan filling station and roadside restaurant, to which we went next for some ice cream.  While we were sitting there, Joslyn's teacher, Gróa, came in with her son to purchase motor oil.  The owners had advertised that they would knock 20 króna off the price of a liter of oil, since Iceland placed 20th in the Eurovision competition.  She came over to talk to us and invited us to stop by her house on the way back to Bifröst.  She lives less than a mile south of Bifröst in a house that we can see from our apartment.  We have been intrigued by it for the way it is set down into the lava, so we decided to take her up on her offer.
   Her husband, Birgir, was also at home when we arrived, and the two of them gave us the grand tour.  The place is very nice.  They have spent a lot of time using the surrounding lava rocks to make walls that cut down on the wind.  Birgir has also expanded the house quite a bit since they bought it in the 1979.  He pointed out some logs he used in the construction that were driftwood from northern Iceland.  He said that there used to be a lot more wood that drifted across the Arctic from Russian logging operations in Siberia, but they since have gotten better at catching the logs that float down the rivers, so fewer make it out to sea.
   Birgir also explained more about the recent history of the local area.  His grandfather bought the eponymous farm on the north side of lake Hreðavatn in 1914.  He subsequently built a hotel for visitors to enjoy the lake and started reforesting the farmland in the 1930s.  In the early 1950s he gave the Icelandic cooperative movement land for for their Cooperative College, which was Bifröst's designation at the time.  It was moved from Reykjavík to its current location in 1955.  While this land donation was at least partially driven by philanthropy, his grandfather's financial interest in the preexisting restaurant next door to the donated land probably didn't hurt!  Birgir spent one year at his grandfather's lodge as a child and subsequently followed in his uncle's footsteps to become the forest ranger for the western quarter of Iceland.  It was very fortuitous that we ran into Birgir and that he told us these stories, because they helped to make sense of a large amount of disparate information that we had collected in our time here.

A typical evening in the apartment.

   Upon returning home, the kids all got out bicycles and rode them around campus.  Shan went out and helped Spencer briefly and that was all he needed.  Spencer can now start and stop himself without any problem and cruises over smooth surfaces under almost complete control.  Shan and the girls rode their bikes down south on a biking and hiking path to the river Hrauná, which runs along the southern edge of the lava flow, emptying Hreðavatn into the Norðurá.  The girls rode back home for supper, but Shan explored the river and the lava around it for a short bit on foot, before returning home.

Day 143-Eurovision finals

   May 26-The highly anticipated Eurovision finals took place this evening.  When popular event like this are being televised, the Kaffi Bifröst will often open in the evening and project the broadcast onto one of the walls.  However, the long weekend meant that many of locals were gone, so the café remained closed this evening.  Einar and Sígrun Lilja came to our rescue and invited us over to watch the finals at their place.  Since their kids, Þorgeður and Einar, are friends of Alex and Spencer, the kids were quite happy with this development as well.  Einar and Sígrun Lilja have both spent time studying in England and have grown fond of the BBC commentators, so they planned to watch the finals on BBC.  The upshot is that we got to watch the finals with friends, in English, on a digital TV.  Brilliant!
   The announcers at the competition spoke mostly in English (with important information repeated in French), so it is common for each country to have a commentator back home doing voice-over translations into the native tongue.  So, it may seem odd that there would be an English commentator, since there is very little need for translation.  Instead, the BBC commentator used the opportunity to provide acerbic, sarcastic, and witty comments, which added a whole new dimension to the experience.  For instance, an Azerbaijani singer performed during the vote-counting.  The commentator explained that since this was being broadcast across Europe, this was an attempt to give the singer some European-wide exposure.  He added parenthetically that the singer is married to the daughter of the autocratic “President” of Azerbaijan and then deadpanned, “what are the odds?”
   The program started at 7pm, which worked very well for us, but perhaps not so well in Azerbaijan where it was midnight!  There were 26 competitors (ten each from the two semifinals and the automatic qualifiers of host Azerbaijan and the "Big Five" countries who put up most of the money for the competition: Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) and each song lasted three minutes.  The stage crew managed to change out the equipment between acts remarkably quickly, but the competition still lasted over three hours.  Consequently, most of Eastern Europe was voting after midnight and that the central Asian viewers had to wait until the wee hours of the morning to hear who the winner was. 
   After all of the competitors had performed, viewers were given fifteen minutes to call their votes into the broadcasting stations of their own countries.  This popular vote was then combined with the selections made by that country's panel of experts.  Finally, each country reported their results in turn on live TV.  The act with the most votes from a country was given 12 points.  The next act got ten points, then 8, 7, 6, and so on down to one point.  So, San Marino’s 32,000 citizens had as much of a vote as Russia’s 142 million comrades.  Yep, the system is as messed up as the U.S. Senate and our wonderful Electoral College.  Thankfully, it only deals with the winner of a song contest, not with the fundamental structure of the most powerful government on Earth……….
   There certainly was a wide range of types of songs and acts to choose from.  The first contestant was the United Kingdom's Engelbert Humperdinck, or “the Hump,” as the BBC commentator referred to him.  Since the competition is usually between up-an-coming artists, the decision to put up an established and successful singer (yes, that Engelbert Humperdinck) as a contestant was considered to be somewhat odd.  Nonetheless, he didn’t do too well, coming in second-to-last.  You could blame it on his age (76) and his lack of an energetic accompanying dancing act.  However, Russia’s six singing grandmothers, the oldest of whom was also 76, came in second with a song in Russian and English and with very little dancing.  It turns out that there are strong voting blocs, which might explain this.  The Scandinavian countries tend to vote for one another, as do the old Soviet and Eastern bloc countries and the Balkan states. 
   There was a Cold Play knock-off out of Germany that Spencer said was his favorite.  The girls like the Danish band, whose lead singer sounded very much like Taylor Swift.  Sally and Sígrun Lilja gushed over the voice of the Estonian singer and we all agreed that he looked quite handsome as well.  There were a number of energetic dance songs, but Shan found the Ukrainian entry most catchy.  Of course, the favorite for all of us was Iceland.  In the end, though, Sweden ran away with the contest, beating Russia by a large margin.  The song was enjoyable, but it was not anything particularly fantastic from our point of view Iceland came in 20^th, which was a shame, given that Turkey’s entry, which would have fit into a musical very well, was in the top ten.

   We enjoyed the experience a great deal and hope to be able to watch it State-side in the future.  Of course, it will not be the same unless we are surrounded by people who are actually invested in it and really care about the outcome, but we will just have to manage somehow.  We sat around drinking and eating dessert for a short while after the winner sang her song again.  Have I mentioned that the Sun does not go down here until late?  Without any twilight or evening, it is very difficult to judge the time and to realize how late it is.  We all were shocked when we finally looked at the clock and saw that it was after 10:30.  We rounded up the kids, walked back home through the rain, and went to bed.

Day 142-Alex's dairy experience

   May 25-Sígrun Lilja picked up Þorgeður and Alex from Norður-Reykir this evening and drove them back to Bifröst.  Both girls had a fantastic time on the dairy farm.

Kolla and Bjarmar own and operate the dairy.
They are the parents of Þóra, who is Alex's and Þorgeður's teacher at Varmaland. 

These are most of the buildings of Norður-Reykir. Kolla and Bjarmar's house is on the left. They let Þorgeður and Alex have their son's old bedroom during their stay. The dairy operation is contained in the buildings on the right.  Across the valley behind Norður-Reykir is the goat ranch that we visited a few weeks ago.



Each of the girls selected a cow and then kept track of the amount of milk that she produced while they were visiting. All of the cows had names and Alex picked Penny, their oldest cow at 7 years old.



The dairy cows spend most of their time in these stalls. The water and feed are provided in the containers in front of them and the grates behind them allow excrement to fall into the basement where it is formulated into a slurry to be spread back onto the hay fields. By law, the cows must spend at least two months outside of the barn. These will be outside later this summer.

Kolla, Bjarmar, and the girls donned these special coveralls at milking time (twice per day). 

To begin the process, the cows were led into the milking room.  The lowered section in the middle allows Kolla and Bjarmar to do the milking without bending over as much. Penny is in front on the left.

The girs were responsible for cleaning the teets of their cows and then attaching the automatic suckers.



The machines kept a running tally of each cow's production.
When no more milk was flowing, the girls disconnected their cows and took them back to their stalls.

There is a creek and a thermal spring at Norður-Reykir as well. Prior to the construction of permanent swimming pools at Varmaland and Húsafell, this location was used as a temporary swimming pool, where the local kids learned how to swim. Each spring an earthen dam was built here and the water from the creek and the thermal spring would combine to make a pool with a comfortable water temperature for swimming. Kolla uses the thermal spring for cooking; she and the girls made rye bread one evening and put the dough into a concrete oven built atop a thermal spring.  By the next evening, the bread had been completely baked. The girls had to cross the these hot spring each day to go to the more remote building on the ridge, which housed the non-dairy animals and dairy cattle that were not actively being milked. 

The girls had to help Bjarmar feed the beef cattle in these buildings.

Bjarmar told Alex that the dairy operation was more profitable than the beef operation, so she asked why they did not convert everything to dairy. Bjarmar explained that there is a nation-wide quota system on milk production to maintain prices at a level that will allow dairies to remain profitable. Unless they purchase higher quotas, any extra milk they produce cannot be sold.

Alex (and Spencer) can't get over the size and flexibility of bovine tongues.

Breeding also takes place in these remote buildings.  Heifers are bred "naturally," but then are impregnated using artificially inseminated yearly afterwards.  This is the bull in front of his current harem of heifers.

This is also the building in which the bucket calves are kept. The girls got to feed them their milk. Not surprisingly, this was a highlight for them. A recently passed law requires that cattle now have tags in each ear and that the tags state the animal's number and the farm and country to which it belongs. Exasperated local farmers joke that this way the cow will know that it is Icelandic if it manages to swim to England.......

Alex was thrilled that they had a farm cat, Tína, which strongly resembles our Frisky.
She only would have been happier if Tína had already given birth to her kittens.

As much as it flies in the face of the romantic view of the farm, the reality is that computer work comprises a large part of work time on the farm, as Kolla demonstrates here.

Day 141-bikes

   May 24-We have gone from zero to five bikes over the past three weeks and they are all are at least partially functional as of today.  The whole process started a few weeks ago when the housing department decided to clean out the storage room here at Sjónarhóll.  Most of the items were claimed, but a few bikes had apparently been left by previous occupants, so were available for us to use.  One was a kid's bike that fit Spencer.  Gaui oiled the chain and I patched the front tire and it has worked well for him ever since. 

  

  

     

       There were also a few adult bikes, and I selected a mountain bike to fix up.  It does not take too long for anything to rust over here, and it took the last couple of weeks to finally get it to be partially functional.  I managed to free up all of the links in the chain and the brakes work fairly well.  The rear brake doesn't release completely yet, but so long as they can stop me, I am happy.  The front wheel had been bent, but Gaui had an extra one in the shop, so I simply switched it out.  Unfortunately, the cables to both derailleurs were rusted too thoroughly and I never could get them to slide through their casings at all.  I can adjust the front derailleur by adjusting the low end screw, so that gives me access to both of the lower gears.  As for the rear derailleur, I can physically pull on the cable and situate it in two different locations, which can put me in the lowest gear or a mid-range gear.  I cannot make any of these adjustments "on the go," but a bike with these limitations is better than no bike at all!

   A women's townie bike had also been left and it was in much better condition.  All I had to do was scavenge a seat off of one of the other left-over bikes and air up the tires and it was ready to go for Sally.  The rear gears are adjusted internally and worked like a charm on this one.  All in all, it is actually a pretty nice bike.

   That left us with three bikes.  Since Alex and Joslyn could ride Sally's and Spencer's bikes with some discomfort, we figured that this set of bikes would work for us.  On a lark, though, we stopped in at the Good Samaritan second-hand store in Reykjavík last week and found a bike that was Joslyn's size for only $25.  The chain was not rusted tight, so we bought it and when we aired up the tires, they held.  We were very pleased by this find, because Joslyn's class all brought in their bikes on Monday so they can ride them during recess for the last two weeks of class.

   At this point, we figured it was time to start thinking about bike helmets, especially since

Joslyn was supposed to bring one to school with her.  We first considered having my folks bring some over with them to drop off on their way through.  However, we stopped by the home improvement store in Borgarnes over the weekend and found bike helmets for kids for cheap: $12 for the smaller heads and $20 for the bigger ones, so we snapped them up.  My folks ended up bringing us an old adult helmet they had around the house, though, so most of us can now protect our noggins while we are out riding.

   We were amazed by this run of good luck in terms of helmets and bikes and figured at this point that one of the adults could ride the mountain bike while the kids rode the other three and that would work fine.  Then, while we were visiting Maggi and Signý  this past weekend, they mentioned that they had heard that we were getting bikes around for everyone and offered to let us borrow Erla's old bike to use.  Its cables had started to rust, but a little oil mostly did the trick.  The rear brake sticks closed on this bike as well, but, again, the main point is that it can be stopped.  The bike is a little small for Alex, but I raised the seat and she can ride it with little discomfort.
   So, we now have ragtag band of bicycles to use, Battlestar Galactica-style!  Spencer has begun to learn how to ride and is actually doing a pretty decent job.  There are some nice gravel roads and dirt paths that head into the hills around Bifröst, so hopefully we get the chance to take them out for some spins during the summer!

Day 140-fishing at Hreðavatn

   May 23-Joslyn's fun school activity for today was fishing at Hreðavatn.  Since this is the lake that lies just southwest of Bifröst and since the kids got to bed rather late again last night, we let Joslyn sleep in this morning and walked her over to the lake when the bus full of kids arrived from Varmaland.  The lake and the surrounding lands used to belong to the family of Gróa's husband, Birgir.  Gróa is Joslyn's teacher.  We are not sure who actually owns the land now, but Birgir works for the government to maintain the reforestation efforts that his family started 60-70 years ago.  They are no longer planting any new trees, but the oldest parts of the forest, Jafnarskarðskógar, is actually a pretty nice stand of evergreen trees.

Birgir, Joslyn, Jóhanna, and Gróa clean the fish.

   The kids had no luck angling, but Gróa and Birgir had caught a couple dozen Arctic char and brown trout using nets earlier in the day.  Around noon, the group trooped over to the barn behind the old family house and her husband filleted the fish and then they grilled and ate most of them.  There were six remaining fillets, which Gróa sent home with Joslyn for us to cook and eat.

   All of the seventh graders spent this week learning about farming.  Since the best way to learn is to do, all of the kids spent most of the week on farms.  Around mid-moring, Sally drove Alex and Þorgeður to the farm Norður-Reykir, which is north of Reykholt in the Hvitá river valley.  There they were to stay until Friday, working on the dairy farm and learning about the dairy industry.  The farm belongs to the parents of Þóra, who is Alex's and Þorgeður's teacher at Varmaland.


Fulbright student grantees Jaimes Mayhew
and Jessica Harvey with Marilyn Yee and Sally. 



  



Belinda Theriault, director of the Iceland Fulbright office,
Dr. Luis Arreaga, U.S. Ambassador to Iceland, and
Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Iceland's Minister of Education.



   Sally and I left for Reykjavík in the early afternoon to attend a Fulbright function to honor the Icelandic scholars who Fulbright will be supporting when they begin their studies in the United States in the fall.  All of the scholars are pursuing Masters or Ph.D.s, so the year of Fulbright support is intended to help them get started in their programs, but they need to find their own funding to see them through the rest of their studies.  Half of the scholars were heading off to study at the Ivy League schools and we found out later that many of the applicants only plan to attend the most prestigious schools in the United States.  Some of the applicants are subsequently rejected by these highly selective schools, which comes as a shock to them.  It is the classic case of a big fish in the small pond of Iceland's 320,000 people finding out that it is not so big when competing in the big pond of 310 million people.  I have seen the same sort of thing happen in the States when rural kids go to college and when graduates of Western go out into the wider world as well.  

   We also got a chance to see the American Fulbright grantees again and also some of the Embassy staff.  Many of the student grantees will be leaving in June, the Fulbright scholars will be gone by early August, and two members of the Embassy staff are finishing their three-year assignments here in mid-August.  Consequently, we all bemoaned the fact that our wonderful experiences in Iceland would be coming to a close very soon.  Some of us went back over to Marilyn and Pam's house for coffee and dessert and finally Sally and I left to head back to Bifröst to pick up Spencer and Joslyn, whom Emma had been watching after they got out of school. 

Spencer's class enjoyed the nice weather as well. Can
you pick out the American in the picture?  It's so obvious!

   We had  some coffee with Emma and talked for a short while about the need for  more organization and coordination for guest lecturers at Bifröst.  While our experience has been quite painless and relatively easy, other visiting faculty have not been so fortunate.  It appears that the problem primarily has to do with diffuse responsibilities among the staff, low numbers of overworked staff, and faulty interpersonal communications.  Thankfully, people like Sally, Emma, and Signý, among others, have been able to step in and help out for some of the visitors, but it has been on an ad hoc basis.  Given the numbers of short-term faculty who we have seen come through Bifröst in our short time here, we hope that they put into place a better system, so the faculty go back to their home institutions with good memories and high praise for Bifröst.  I am not so sure that is happening right now.