Somewhere in the past we Icelanders picked up the tradition of the Cream-Puff Day (Bolludagur), aka eating yummy ‘buns’ with cream and jam on the Monday before the start of lent (the Monday before Ash Wednesday). I’ve never made any buns myself, but this year I decided to give it a go, using a recipeRead more
Every February the local universities open up their doors for a Saturday afternoon to entice the current crop of junior-college seniors to apply this summer introduce all the different departments and ‘educational opportunities’. I was mildly involved in organizing the EE department’s involvement, as in I attended a meeting or two, and then asked the student organization to handle the rest – which they did with aplomb.
On the day itself I hiked on over with Anna, who’d just emerged from her weekly English school session. Here be pictures.
My office is in the white-ish building behind the wooden house on the left (that's for sale).
I am happy to report that December 2011 has been officially dealt with, blog-wise anyway. To make up for the lack of recent photos, here are a few from today, where Bjarki and I took turns using the camera.
This here is my side-ways smirk.
A cheerful Bjarki.
Way back when, Holla and Óli invited us and some other good friends over to make confectionery (fancy chocolate bits) on 23 December, aka the Day Before Christmas, where tradition dictates that one should eat really really stinky fish for dinner. This past Christmas, we were all set to return the favor, when a stomach bug stopped our plans. Thankfully, the ingredients were all fairly non-perishable, so we waited until things had started to quiet down after the holidays, and summoned Holla & Óli and Adda & Halli over for some chocolate-fiddling in the beginning of February instead.
Melting white chocolate.
So yeah. These past TWO months I’ve glimpsed the (surprisingly) green grass in our backyard for a total of three hours. Maybe four. The remainder of the time it’s been hiding under a blanket of snow of variable thickness. Yes, it’s Winter. For realz this time!
I’ve yet to go out on a photo-scouting mission with my proper camera, so a lot of these photos have been taken using my mobile phone camera. Ready for some white stuff?! 🙂
2 January 2012: Anna, her friend and Bjarki headed out with shovels to start digging into the big snow-mountain that the heavy snow-clearing machinery had kindly left opposite our house.
As of writing this, I’m one lecture and two homeworks away from being done teaching the ‘other course’ for a long while this semester. I’ve also finished gobbling up Merlin (mmmm… Meeeeerlin, also the internets are insane!) and as a result I have a wee bit of mental space opening up. To celebrate I’m goingRead more
Lotta, one of our good Icelandic friends who we met in California is a proper arty photographer, with impressive degrees to her name and everything! This January she and a good friend of hers co-held an exhibition called Echo here in Reykjavík, and she was kind enough to invite us to the opening. As it happened Finnur was busy, so we plonked the kids down with their grandparents (triple hooray for local grandparents!!) and went on our separate ways.
Looking over the parking lot I used by the harbor.
Newborns in Iceland are rarely given a name before they leave the birth-hospital, as is customary in the US. Instead, the newbie usually goes by all sorts nicknames while the parents try to suss out an appropriate name, and once they’re done there’s (usually) a baptism, or a naming party, where the kid’s name is ‘revealed’. Here are some pictures from the baptism of my newest niece, Iðunn Heiður Nökkvadóttir, daughter of Nökkvi and Jóhanna. 🙂
Jóhanna and Nökkvi with Iðunn Heiður, who slept through all of it! It should be noted that both parents were feeling a bit under the weather, but decided to go ahead with the party anyway since it had all been planned, etc. etc.
I have a million and two images to post from the final gasps of December, but first I’m finishing my mental vacation (aka ‘escape from reality’) in Merlin-land. Yes, at this point in time, I feel it is my duty to stand by my vow to finish watching all hereto produced episodes with the utmost haste,Read more