Day 133-Fulbright presentation

   May 16-After the kids headed off to their respective schools this morning, Shan and Sally went to get coffee in the faculty/staff lounge. Since Sally has taught every morning for the past eleven workdays, we have not been able to socialize with her colleagues much over our morning coffee. We also needed to talk to Sigrún about picking up Spencer from kindergarten because we would be leaving Bifröst soon and not returning until early evening. After a few cups of coffee and a good discussion about the Fulbright program and American and Icelandic politics, we found Sigrún and she said that her husband, Einar, could pick up Spencer. We unfortunately had to miss the Wednesday soup lunch, althought we got to watch the early steps in its preparation. It was lamb soup made by the parish priest, Elinborg, who raises sheep on the churchgrounds a few miles south of Varmaland. She had raised and slaughtered the lamb that was going into the soup.
   We drove to the Akranes bakery for bread and dessert for supper that night and then on to Reykjavík. Once we got there we headed straight for the second-hand store. Josyln's class gets to bring their bikes to school next week, so we had been hunting for one for her.  We found a rusty bike that fit Joslyn for 3,500 ISK, or about $30. Luckily, most of the rust was cosmetic and the chain worked fine, so we snapped it up. In addition, Sally found a few bags of playmobil people to add to the growing collection.
   The primary reason we were in Reykjavík was to attend the Fulbright Commission's first annual Fulbright grantees presentation. Belinda, the director of the Fulbright Commission in Iceland, hosted this event to highlight the value of the Fulbright program and to try to secure future funding. She indicated that there are questions about the ability to maintain the Icelandic Fulbright program in the future. Six students and three scholars gave short presentations about the research and/or studies they undertook while in Iceland the past semester or year.  The presentations were very good and very diverse. The students had been in Iceland since last fall and included two artists, two Masters students studying medieval Icelandic and Nordic law, and two PhD students conducting research on fishing communities and Icelandic music.

   The two scholars besides Sally were Pam and Maggie. Pam is a cultural anthropologist/ linguist from the University of Wyoming.  She initally wanted to research the best methods whereby Icelandic is taught to immigrants from southeast Asia. Her research subsequently evolved to deal with the interpretation of the laws in Iceland that pertain to immigrants learning Icelandic. Maggie is a nurse from the University of San Francisco.  She presented her research on using music and image therapy on iPods and iPads to mitigate pain in post-surgical patients. Sally was the last to present but had technical difficulties because her presentation slide show was on a cow thumb drive that was too fat to fit into the sleek Mac notebook slot. It took a few minutes to transfer the files to another thumb drive on the office PC and then she was back in business. She presented her research on prices in the energy market in Iceland. Overall, it was very nice to see how everyone else spent their time in Iceland. The audience included the presenters, two spouses (counting Shan), some members of the Icelandic Fulbright board, US embassy employees and a few others from various ministries in Iceland.
   After a quick goodbye to our Fulbright friends, Sally and Shan drove back to Bifröst. We had planned to have the girls pick up Spencer after they got home from school, but the bus drivers announced the day before that they would be stopping at the Baulan gas station to buy all of the kids ice cream today. That was the reason that we had to scramble for back-up this morning. As it turned out, the girls got back just in the nick of time, but Einar had already picked up Spencer and invited him to his house to play with his son, Einar, who is Spencer's friend. The upshot is that the girls got to spend the late afternoon at home without their little brother. They seems to have suffered through just fine.
   We hurried back from Reykjavík so quickly, because we had previously invited Maggi and Signý and their kids over for a raclette supper. We had been trying for the past few months to have them over but both Signý and Maggi are working full time, completing their Masters degrees, and settling into their new house in Borgarnes. Today was finally the day that worked for all of us. To accomodate 11 people, we ended up eating in shifts with the adults and older kids eating first while the younger kids played on the trampoline outside. It was great to introduce more people the fun of the raclette and to just sit around and converse with them.  After socializing with them quite a bit in the first month we lived in Iceland, we have had fewer opportunities to do so more recently, so we really enjoyed the chance to hang out with them again.