Good Friday (or Föstudagurinn langi, or Long Friday in Icelandic) was spent mostly ‘at home’. First up was bingo, then there was candy floss, somewhere in there was a trip to the swimming pool (this is written in June!), and then the kids played. All in all, it was a very Good Friday! 🙂
First up, there was bingo with real prizes!!
Þóra and Anna by our car, as we are about to go visit a couple of farms.
We arrived in/by Akureyri (they live 10 minutes south of Akureyri) with no plans at all. After ‘putting our heads into water’ (Icelandic saying for ‘thinking about it’) we came up with the brilliant plan of visiting a couple of farms 4 minutes away northwards that belong to relatives of Kata. The reason: it’s the season for ‘baby’ animals!
Iceland has a state church, the “Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland” (aka Þjóðkirkjan or ‘The National Church’). Yes, you read that right, Iceland does not have a separation of church and state. Although this irks me somewhat, one happy result is that Easter is a big national holiday, with Thursday, long Friday AND the Monday after Easter all off from work.
Since I finished teaching on Tuesday 19 April (yay!) we decided to skip town the day after and visit our good friends Kata and Jói in/by Akureyri up north. We last visited them some two years ago (how can it be so long?!?!) so a visit was very overdue. We set out around 2pm, and it was relatively smooth sailing all the way to Akureyri where we arrived around 7pm. The kids stayed awake the entire time, and did pretty well, even though all we had for entertainment was the car-radio which turns out to get very few stations out in the middle of nowhere…
In Borgarnes where we stretched our legs and got a few chocolate easter eggs for the kiddos.
The weather this latter part of April has been rather, erm, uncertain. It’s like the clouds coming ‘ashore’ have a major identity crisis and don’t know if they should be snowing, or raining, or just withholding it?! They also seem to wonder, almost out loud, whether they should invite some gusty wind along or not?Read more
Anna’s class all met up after school on Thursday to go ice-skating, and Anna looooooved it! As luck would have it, one of the girls in class then invited all the other girls to celebrate her birthday in the same ice-rink only two days later, and Anna was Over The Moon with excitement! So todayRead more
Today I gave my last formal lectures of this school year!!! Yay, for no more lecture-making late-nights for well, a few months! Also yay for a less grumpy Hrefna, and hopefully a more well rested, well balanced, less frantic, less panicked, more serene, less manic, more energetic, more knows-where-her-towel-is Hrefna. We’ll have to wait andRead more
I have spent the vast majority of today in bed, alternatively asleep or feeling crappy. But it’s been oddly great because it’s the first time in a loooong while where I have been the only sick one, aaaand both kids have been at school. So, yes, finally, a Proper Sick Day for me! Yay! 🙂 (For thoseRead more
After Finnur spending almost two solid weeks working while tending to a sick kid at home (first Anna, then Bjarki), there was a very dire need to stay far far away from our apartment this weekend, and we mostly succeeded! 🙂 On Saturday there was the usual morning sports-school for Bjarki (next-to-last-session) and English-school forRead more
I’m so conflicted about my job. On one hand, I enjoy being in the classroom. Sure, I often get second thoughts on how I should have talked about this thing or that, but generally I like babbling on and on, and I have learnt (and hopefully taught) some neat things this year. On the otherRead more
… it takes more than one week to recover from spraining a calf muscle. Yes, I somehow managed to sprain a calf muscle during my weekly gym-session last week (Yes, I know. ‘Weekly’ isn’t exactly fabulous, but it’s more than zero gym, and it keeps my hands operational. Also I’ve been known to swim aRead more