Last Wednesday (Nov 2) we headed out for a tour around the municipality that Solheimar is a part of (its names is Grímsnes og Grafningshreppur to be exact!). Our guide was a man who works as sort of a Public Works manager for the town. His name is Horður and is the epitome of an Icelander. We stopped by several different farms to check out their various ways of using the geothermal heat available on their land. What we really enjoyed was playing with all the sheep, horses, Border Collies, and cows on all the farms. By the end of the day, we were covered in stinky awesomeness. Horður invited us to his farmhouse for dinner. Over the traditional crocks of lamb stew, we enjoyed a lively conversation with him and some time spent looking over his ancient World Atlas to show him where we are from.
The nicest sheep ever! He jumped up for us to pet him!
I'm trying to remember what else happened this week... the days are going so fast now they seem to blend together. Oh! On Saturday I played the violin in a concert with the choir and enjoyed hearing the home people play instruments and sing in their fall recital.
Yesterday (Nov 9) we went to Reykjavik and had a full day of sightseeing. Our first stop was the Alafoss wool outlet where I purchased a sweater and lots of wool for knitting (new favorite hobby!). We took a guided tour through the home of author Haldor Laxness (an Icelandic author whose book "Independent People" we all read this summer) and went to the National Art Gallery. We also met with an author/documentary film maker whose film "Dreamland" we saw about a week ago. He was a very powerful speaker and environmental activist who, just from his talk, got me fired up to make change!
The rest of the day was spent wandering the main shopping streets and enjoying the city and waterfront at night in the rain. We ate dinner at a great restaurant called Happ and the most famous geologist in Iceland (can't remember his name, but he was interviewed by news stations all over the world in 2010 when Eyafjallajokull erupted last May) joined us for dinner and gave a little lecture during dessert. Very fun!
At the "Sun Voyageur" statue on the waterfront at dusk
Beautiful pools and bridges in front of Harpa
Harpa, Reykjavik's new opera and concert hall. The outside is entirely colored glass. Incredible!
Modern menu at Happ! And a bit of my new sweater...
Something that's been hard to get used to here is the lack of sunlight. At this point in the season, we are losing about 6 minutes of sunlight per day. This morning, the sun rose at 9:40am and set this afternoon at 4:40pm. It's so hard to get out of bed when the sun shows no sign of rising anytime soon. I wake up every morning and wonder why I am awake in what feels like the middle of the night. I'm looking forward to being back in Wisconsin and at least having a bit more light.
Like I said earlier, the days are absolutely flying by. We have final projects and tests coming up in all of our classes in the next week, so that'll keep me busy this weekend. Also, right before we leave we are hosting a Thanksgiving dinner for the community, with the expectation that about 100 people will show up! I'm in charge of all the stuffing, so that should be fun to figure out. We'll be playing some live music, possibly doing some contra dance, and telling the Thanksgiving story. It should be a great end to an incredible semester here.
Only 14 days left in Iceland! I'm trying to make the most of it and soak up all that I can... though I fear that I'll get home and think that this was all a dream. Stay tuned...
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