It’s Sunday here in the Faroes, though Monday morning in New Zealand, and I do believe it’s time for the weekly blog.
This week has been a week of music, movies and very odd food.

I may have mentioned the fact that I have been given a saxaphone for the entire year, rent free. This is thanks to a very nice fellow at the tónleikaskulanum or music school, who teaches saxaphone. He has also been kind enough to put me in two big bands (saxaphones, trumpets and trombones) – one of which is a training band and one of which is a professional band. I am, as one may imagine, extremely grateful.
I had my first band practice on Wednesday, and I LOVED it. The first band was good fun – some of the songs I had actually played in New Zealand so I knew them. I knew a few people in the band as well, so that was useful, and though I had no neckstrap, I have been given one also for the entire year I shall be here. It all worked out rather nicely!
The second band involved some of the teachers at the music school and there was no conductor – we were all given music and then we just sat down and played. It was really fantastic – they were all very good musicians but thankfully I could keep up with them, and some of those songs the Mahu jazz band had played as well – Good News, anybody?! And the entire practice wound up being more like a jam session with music – very, very enjoyable.

When I arrived home from band practice, I realised that something smelled fishy. Very fishy. Infact, I could smell it from outside my house. And it smelled of rotten fish. It was unpleasant. The smell was even more intense as I got inside and I soon realised that what I was experiencing was the pungent odour of ræstan fiskur. Ræstan fiskur is half-dried fish which is then boiled, and served with stuff called garnatolg, which is matured sheep’s tallow melted on the stove into a kind of sauce. The whole dish smells rank, but it tastes surprisingly delicious, and I have decided I quite like ræstan fiskur, which defies everything all other visitors to this place have thought. The smell usually puts people off, but once you try the fish it is delicious, and the sauce is also very, very good, as long as you don’t think of what’s in it. My host mum, Kristinbjørg, refused to tell me until I had tried it, and would only say that it was ‘made of sheep’.
So there’s some of the strange Faroese food for you – it’s weird, yes, but oh, so delicious.

On Thursday, Stacey and I headed into town to get tickets to a concert, Crystal Waters, which was last night. That was very fun – we have discovered that there is an ice cream shop in the mall which sells extremely large ice creams extremely cheap, and we always wind up getting ice cream.
Then, when I got home, Lisa (from Austria) rang me and invited me to her house to watch movies and eat cake and popcorn (we do this quite a lot). So we watched Dirty Dancing, which Stacey had borrowed from the town library, and then Lisa, a very good manicurist, did our nails. It was rather enjoyable.

On Friday night, Stacey and I, plus a bunch of people from my class and a bunch of people from her class met up at a place called the Posthúskjallurinum, or the post house basement, for a concert. The concert was in aid of a thing called Dagsværk, which is next week and involves working for a day in the local business of your choice. They pay you anything they can afford over 300kr and the money goes to Bolivia. It seems cool. But anyway, we had this concert which was fantastic – mainly jazz but finishing with a rock band which is huge here and very good performers. See photos in the post below – one of my friends performed, Karin, and she proved to me an absolutely fantastic jazz singer, as did her dad, who accompanied her on the keyboard. Every day I am still more impressed by the musical prowess of this strange little place.

Yesterday I wound up at Stacey’s for the afternoon, watching Girl With the Pearl Earring (weeeeird movie but rather good), so that was quite good, though I had to get back earlyish for my host cousin’s 22nd birthday party. Birthday parties here are a very big deal and they usually involve the whole family. So you get to meet everyone – they’re really a fantastic opportunity for exchange students to meet and get to know the extended host family. THIS birthday party also had extremely good food – frikadellir (kind of mince balls which are GREAT and typical of Denmark and the Faroes) and the best soup I have ever tasted. I have asked for the recipe and will be emailing it home once I translate it into English!
Then Stacey and I and my friend Lilja (who is the daughter of the AFS coordinator here in the Faroes) hit the town again, this time for the major concert of Crystal Waters, which was held in the handball hall just out of town (and about 10 minutes walk from where I live). It started at 11PM and finished at 4AM and there was a lot of dancing to be done. It was fantastic, and I loved it, though I was lucky to be let in as they were checking IDs and we were supposed to be 17 – I quickly figured out that my friend Hanus was on one of the gate booths and he let me in. Must thank him for that one tomorrow!

And then, today, Stacey and Lisa turned up at my house (they literally knocked on my window, it was creepy – though they do it a lot so I’m getting used to it!) and we went to try and talk to Lisa’s contaktperson – we are organising an AFS group holiday to another town this Heystferie (autumn holidays). Most of our host parents have houses in other villages, and so we will probably go to Gjógv (my host parents have a home there, though it was built in the late 1800s and has no central heating – scary stuff), Fuglafirðir (Lisa’s host parents have a slightly more modern house there), or another town on the island of Eysturoy where Katharina’s host parents have a house. It should be fun – we will probably go for 3 or 4 days and just explore – there are a lot of very cute little villages around that provide excellent holiday spots (though excellent holiday spots here are generally very, very cold, one must understand).
And then we went back to Lisa’s and watched Grease, which is always fun, even if it does have Danish subtitles!

Anyway, that’s my week and now I shall go and do my physics homework which is due in tomorrow.
Kelsy