Sarah, a Professor of Crisis Management at the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt in Austria, managed to secure a grant to pay for her visit to Iceland, so the international coordinators at her university and at Bifröst arranged her to visit today and tomorrow. Suddently, Jón had to scramble to find a class for her to teach. Since Sarah could not speak Icelandic, she needed to teach in an English-language course. Sally is teaching the only English-based course at Bifröst today and tomorrow, so her class was really the only option. Sally was a little hesitant at first, because she did not see how five hours of lecture on crisis management would fit into the course. However, she recognized that there was no other option for Sarah, so she relented. She reasoned that the class was already nontraditional, because of the structure she had given it, so this addition was not going to be particularly disruptive.
In light of the disorganized nature of the process, the rest of today's events will not seem particularly surprising. Sarah flew in yesterday and was supposed to take a Sterna bus from Reykjavík to Bifröst in the afternoon. However, there is no bus that makes that run in the afternoon, so Sarah had to find a hotel room to spend the night in Reykjavík. She caught a bus earlier today and arrived at campus a little after 10:10. About this time, Sally was wrapping up the first half of today's class, so she went to the international coordinator to ask if Sarah had arrived. He expressed surprise that Sarah had not arrived the night before and they immediately went looking for her. She was standing at the door where the Sterna bus drops off passengers. For some reason that we still do not understand, this door is always locked, although the building is freely accessible by other doors. In any event, Sally was lucky that she had not wandered off. She grabbed Sarah, took her to the faculty lounge for a coffee, and 15 minutes later, Sarah was in front of the class, giving her lecture.
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| Lava froze as it dripped down the side of the crater of Rauðbrók. |
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| Shan and Sarah in the crater of Rauðbrók. |
By this point, Sally had figured out that there was nothing special planned for Sarah, so she took her under her wing. Sally and Shan had dinner with Sarah at the Kaffi Bifröst. While waiting for us, she had been talking to Hjalti, who had told her about some of the local sights and she expressed an interest in hiking to them. Since the hiking trails are only moderately well-signed, we offered to show her some of the sights around campus. We hiked up Grábrók and then headed over to Rauðbrók, which was also new to Sally. After we walked around inside its crater, we went back to campus. Sally picked up Spencer from Hraunborg and went home, while Shan took Sarah over to see Glanni and the Paradísarlaut. Shan returned home to get some work done, while Sarah continued her hike down by Hreðavatn.
Since we were not sure if Sarah would be able to have supper at the Kaffi Bifröst, Sally invited her over for supper with us. So, after Shan and Sally went to yoga, Sally cooked up some porkchops. We had a wonderful time visiting with Sarah and the kids had a lot of fun asking her questions about Austria. Sarah left us a package of traditional Salzburg desserts: Mozartkugeln. These are pistachio-flavored marzipan balls that are covered in chocolate. We all found them to be very tasty.
We made a couple of realizations during the course of today's experiences. First, we now have a much greater appreciation of the assistance that we received when we arrived on campus back in January. Second, it is somewhat gratifying that we have become knowledgeable enough about and integrated enough into the Bifröst community that we were essentially entrusted with the job of shepherding Sarah through and around the campus, even if it was only for a couple of days. We certainly are not "old-timers," but we aren't necessarily tenderfoots, either.
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