Northern lights ETC

Hey cyber world..

2 weeks have passed since my last message,  when we arrived in Ísafjörður. I was planning to post more often but you know how it goes..  

Things are going very well and to be honest above expectations, I think I can speak for the three of us. It is amazing how fast you get all settled in such a new environment.. and it is a new environment.

The weather so far has been great and even though the city is so small it does not suffocate, at least not till now. It is funny as no matter where you go you will always bump into some people you know - for some this would be a reason to not like it. I also start to recognize cars.. not sure if this is truly interesting info, but at least it shows the size of this city.

These last two weeks have been quite intense as we had to introduce ourselves over.. and over.. again. Also, our first subject started: coastal and marine conservation, which is taught by the man I met on the airport. The courses here are intense as there are only 3 weeks per subject, so we have class a few hours a day. The rest consists of a lot of reading, discussions and by the end of this week we will have to hand in a paper.. luckily enough no exams.  Our class consists of a wide variety of interesting people, having all sorts of educational backgrounds, and coming from all over the globe. The school is small and cozy, people do not wear shoes inside the building (for those who wondered why I was not wearing shoes on one of the Facebook pictures) and there is yoga class two times a week during lunch-break.. sounds like the perfect school?

Of course, we have also explored the nightlife. Besides the ability of hanging in other students’ houses, the city has 2 bars - less is more, right? One organizes a quiz night each Thursday, the other one has a beer-bingo night each Friday where you can, as you might have guessed, win beers. Compared to Germany and Holland the beer prizes are high so the bingo is well attended.. by both Icelandic and foreigners.

There are a million things to think of on how to spend your spare time. Every Sunday morning you can go sea-kayaking in the fjords with a group of people. I found this so cool that I am planning to do this each Sunday. The water is so clear that you can see till the bottom and we were surprised by the seals swimming around our kayaks. We also tried out the swimming pool which has a sauna and a hot tube.. the hot tube was great, usually you get disappointed once you step in one cause the water is always less hot than you expected it to be. This hot tube is HOT, so hot that it made me faint - this is another story, available on request. We have also skied in the Ísafjörður ski resort, which is like a big playground for adults, there were almost no other people, just us.. powder snow and absolute silence.

There is probably enough that I forgot to mention right now..  yea, something just crosses my mind: the northern lights! I finally saw them, fast moving green strings and curtains, beautiful.

With the image of the northern lights in my head it is a good time to start making a way to my bed.

More news will follow soon(er or later).. J

Our cozy living room



View out of our kitchen window



The church and beach right behind our house

People you don't know

Music performance in church

Bingo

Suse and the instructor

We were drifting somewhere

View from the top of the ski resort (Ísafjörður in the back)

Empty

High view from the mountains

Hihi from sunny Iceland!

After a big delay at Schiphol we arrived much later in Reykjavík than expected. Not too bad as were not going on a holiday, no stress, letting everything go with the flow. Yesterday we spend half the day in the city, mostly checking out the stores to see what kind of things they are selling here. We were all three kind of impressed by the whole range of ‘exotic Icelandic salmon skin’ earrings and other products covered with this odd leather. So far we noticed that the Icelandic people are very friendly, dressed up with more sense of fashion than the Dutch and Germans and good music in the background of almost any store and café.

In the afternoon we took the taxi to the domestic airport and while waiting there I recognized by coincidence one of our guest-teachers Brad Barr who comes from Alaska. I asked if he was the man I thought he was and after this small introduction we felt a little more excited about the upcoming course as we now had a face to it. The flight to Ísafjörður - which was almost cancelled due to the bad weather, went alright till we flew into the fjords where we had so many turbulence that the plane went close to going horizontal a few times. Usually turbulence gives me the good kind of adrenaline but now I have to admit I started to feel a little uncomfortable.. just a little ;-)

At the airport we were picked up by a lady from school and we met another student from Norway who will take, like us, a few subjects from the program. We were dropped off by ‘’our house’’ and found out soon why they did not send us a picture from the outside. We considered all the houses in a 360’ view, but that was really the one haha. It reminded us of a Pipi Langkous house, but.. the bad it looks from the outside.. the cozy and warm it is from the inside, and luckily enough there is a good heating system throughout the whole house. More pictures of the house will follow later..

Today we cleaned up all our luggage and took a long walk to a supermarket which is about 45 minutes walking. The views here are breath-taking and no matter where you look, mountains everywhere, something not quite common for me. We were broken after arriving home, carrying kilos of groceries with us (toilet paper, vegetables, potatoes, rice, herbs and more).

Tomorrow is the first school day, we have not yet internet in the house.. so more news will follow soon!

We arrived!!

All the ducks are swimming in the water

On the road

Enjoying the sunshine

Our house!

We are leaving tomorrow, finally!

Tomorrow ‘s the day we - Suse, Carla and me will finally leave to Iceland after a few months of preparations. January was pretty busy and I cannot wait to do something new, and to get a blast of fresh air.. which the program (www.uwestfjords.is/masters_program/) in Ísafjörður will hopefully bring.

After arriving in Reykjavík we have a day to spend in this northernmost capital city of the world before heading to Ísafjörður on Saturday, late afternoon.

My case is packed, bought a whole bunch of new stuff, and my first new experience - going up north is a costly hobby. Practically everything had to be bought, a whole new winter wardrobe including long undies, shoes, bag, glasses, to name just a few.. travelling is not that bad J

 Thanks to my bf Rick from who I got these cool traveltags to not lose my bags!

To the other people from who I received some support as well (including my aunt's chicken-salad and my grandma's stamppot maus), bedankt!!