
Well, here I am. Still in Iceland, but only until tomorrow! I guess you've seen the photos below. I will load more when I get time (and when I get my school computer account working!). But I am going to throw in this photo of me with an Icelandic horse, which is uber cute (the horse, not me. They're just little and furry and adorable).
But yes, still in Iceland and heading home tomorrow at 1.30PM. I'm looking forward to getting back to the Faroes but it will be horrible to leave Silja for the second time! Ah well, we'll just have to get her to New Zealand. Or me back here.
Anyways, so our week has been as follows:
Tuesday we went to the Golden Circle, which consists of Þingvellir (oldest parliament in the world), Gullfoss (the golden waterfall which is huuuuuge and not very golden, at least not in the middle of winter) and Geysir (if you can't guess what that one is, it's geysers). That was awesome but it's also a major stop on the tourist trail and we ran into the same people all the way round, guess we followed a tour bus. But yeah, there are a few photos in the post below from that and I shall post more in due course.
On Wednesday we did nooooothing. Silja read a book that she had to read for school and I .. slept the whole day. At 7.30 we headed to her dad's place where we were invited for dinner with the whole family and I got to meet all of Silja's step-siblings, which was nice. And dinner was really really good - lobster soup to start and pesto chicken salad as a main, followed by a very decadent chocolate cake which was absolutely delicious. It was the birthday of Friða, Silja's sister-in-law and I think that was the reason for the meal, though it may have partly been me also. Either way, the food was unreasonably good. Afterwards we all sat around talking - Icelandic people find the Faroe Islands HILARIOUS, so we had plenty to discuss. And we wound up watching music DVDs until the not so early hours of the morning, because Silja's dad has a great collection.
On Thursday we also did nothing - we had meant to head up North to visit Silja's nana but we decided against that because the weather was so incredibly bad.
So we went on Friday - the drive took us about 3 hours and we wound up in Valgerður's (Silja's mum's) hometown of Sauðárkrókur, which has about 2000 people and a fish factory. It's on the coast between two mountainous pensinsulas that jut out into the North Atlantic. In the bay between the two peninsulas you can see 2 small islands, and there's a local story about one of them that two trolls, husband and wife, were moving their cow across the bay when the sun rose and turned them into stone. The cow and the woman still stand, but the man has apparently fallen into the sea.
Silja's grandma was really, really sweet, even though she spoke no English and didn't understand much either, if any. I'm not entirely sure. But I understood most of what she said to me, which was probably because of the huge similarities between Faroese and Icelandic, and I wound up answering either with mimes or in a weird pidgin-Icelandic language. But yes, the North was really nice and I met a LOT of Silja's cousins. She has a lot of cousins. But yeah. Last night the Northern Lights came out really strongly, and Silja, one of her cousins and I went out of the town to see if we could catch them more clearly. I couldn't photograph them, but Silja could, and I will see if I can procure her photos. Afterwards we went to a party at her uncle's place.
We drove back today and got to Reykjavík at about 3PM, and it was good to be back, though the North was lovely and I intend to return! And yes, it's Easter Sunday so we are all eating chocolate and doing very well, and apparently we have turkey for dinner so that's something to look forward to.
Anyways, I'd better go and pack my suitcase if we're heading out in the morning.
Kelsy
:)