Anna’s birthday parties, 1-4

The weekend of December 18-19 saw us celebrating Anna’s 7th birthday no less than three times!  The first was a “classmates” birthday party, the second was a “Finnur’s family pre-Christmas/Anna’s birthday”-bash, and the third was a “Hrefna’s family and a few friends”-bash the day after.  The fourth and final birthday celebration was held on Christmas Day itself in England with Gunnar (my dad), Shirley (his girlfriend) and Anthony (my brother).  Here are pictures from all FOUR celebrations!!

18 December 2010 – Birthday Celebration #1
The girls from Anna’s class

We discovered early on this fall that Anna shares a birthday with one of the girls in her class. We therefore joined with the other family in hosting a birthday party for the girls in class at the local 'jumping castles' place. Having been to a number of these places in the USA, I must say that the big difference is that there is one (count em!), yes one, employee on site, and she spent the entire time sitting behind the counter reading a newspaper. This is a "enter at your own risk" place if there ever was one!

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Gleðileg jól/Happy Holidays!!

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Emerging from survival mode…

The past two weeks have been mad, crazy, nuts, with heaps of fun, frustration and stress sprinkled in between.   But  finally, things have calmed down enough that I have enough mental reserves to resume blogging, which must be a good sign!

So, what happened?  Well, the final wasn’t an abysmal failure, but I heard that it was very long and difficult.  Perhaps a bit soul-crushing even, but I believe/hope the students are young and resilient enough that they won’t be too scarred.   Also, as I mentioned before, I had included two difficult ‘nuggets’, which indeed proved to be very very difficult – so difficult in fact that they exposed a matter I can’t comment on in public but has been the source of much stress and frustration, and is not over yet.

Anyway, back to the story of the past two weeks.  

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Pictures from California

Here are some pictures from my week-long trip to California.

Friday 10. December 2010: While in the Keflavik airport in Iceland, Icelandair stewardesses all of a sudden started singing holiday songs in the main departure hall. Later on they moved to the more crowded (badly designed) US departure lounge. It was most definitely stress-reducing. It's hard to be in a bad mood when people are singing lovely songs!

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Shouldn’t I be more frantic now?

I’m traveling to California on Friday, and will be returning the Friday thereafter, leaving Finnur (aka The Hero) in charge of house and kids.   I have a TON of stuff I need to get done before the week is over (grade a final, assemble a poster for a conference, choose a book for nextRead more

Fannar Hrafn Pétursson

Today, Pétur and Signý christened their 2 month old boy Fannar Hrafn Pétursson (which kind of translates to Snowy Raven Son of Peter).  It was a beautiful frosty day, and we all had a great time.  I took (too) many photos, although sadly a lot of them are quite blurred since my camera, flash andRead more

Aaaaalmost there!

It’s December!!  Yikes!!  But also Yay because teaching for this semester is all but over.  My last ‘lecture’ was on Monday (it was an unprepared review) and that’s also when I gave the last homeworks back.  This week I need to write a final for December 7th, and then a sick-test for December 20th orRead more

The opinions of the assembly

Iceland just held a vote for a citizen assembly that is meant to draft a new constitution. The old constitution is a bit outdated and not clear on many things. It was adopted in 1944 mostly by taking the Danish constitution and replacing the word ‘king’ with ‘president’, since Iceland doesn’t have a monarchy. It has only been amended 7 times in the last 60 years and numerous attempts (by the political forces) at a wholesale revision have failed. Hence the citizen assembly.

Curious as ever I used the opinions listed by the candidates (on dv.is) to figure out the majority opinion of this newly elected assembly. 25 members were elected, of which 2 (8%) did not respond to any of the questions in the survey below. But here are the results, for those interested…

Hopefully my translations of the questions didn’t change their meaning. Also, if you spot data errors, let me know and I’ll fix them promptly. The raw data (for error checking purposes) is here.

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Thanksgiving

While we lived in California, we met quite a few Icelanders, many of whom became good friends of ours.  As it happens, many of the Icelanders we got to know in California moved back to Iceland before we did.  Needless to say, it’s been a lot of fun re-connecting with our old CA-friends. 🙂

Back in California, there was a ‘core’ group of Icelandic families that often met up, and, for example, went camping together.  This group has stayed in touch in Iceland, and we were thrilled to be invited to a thanksgiving potluck this past weekend at Lára’s and Halldór’s place the Saturday after the official US Thanksgiving.

We took on bringing the gravy (“brown sauce”, Finnur’s speciality) and waldorf (apple/walnut/celery/grape) salad (Hrefna likes chopping things!).  Unfortunately, Finnur apparently got some random energy-zapping bug that Saturday, so by noon-time he barely had energy to get the gravy going before collapsing into bed for an hour.  He did manage to finish the huge pot of gravy, but stayed behind while I took the kids to the party.

A salad in the pre-tossing stage next to an aperitif.

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Woooosh!

That’s the sound that time makes these days.  I blink, and it’s all of a sudden well past mid-November!  Which is good because that means teaching is almost over and sanity may return.  Maybe.  There’s always next semester to fret over, but I’m trying to remain nonchalant.

The biggest annoyingly-drawn-out-event of the past couple of weeks (during which there has been no blogging) has been the presence of the Incredible Lurking Stomach Bug of Doom.  Anna was the first to go on 4 November, Bjarki got it on 9 November and Finnur on 15 November.  I sit here feeling not entirely well, but keep hoping that I’ll escape with nothing more than this burpy tiredness that’s been pestering me since last night.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

In between the mountains of hurl-related laundry, and us trying to juggle who minds the sick kid when, stuff’s been relatively quiet.  The biggest event was Finnur giving a talk at the dedication of a new very very fancy building of Reykjavik University, of which he is a graduate.  He was called on as an alumni to give a short speech, and apparently it went well (I was minding the kids at his parents’ place).

11 November: The backside of the very new, very fancy University of Reykjavik building.

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