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.