Hey, it’s The Girl With Too Much To Do again ...
It’s Monday evening and I am way too tired to be sitting in front of a computer but I really must get this blog published and I shall do so tomorrow morning. My Sunday blog will arrive on Tuesday evening in New Zealand.
So yeah. How did you like the last one? And the photos ... I put in photos, didn’t I? I can’t remember ...
But yes, I was way way way too busy yesterday to blog – you see, I went on tour with my orchestra. We played in an old people’s home first, then we went to the tiny, tiny town of Kaldbak where my friend Sunniva lives, then we went to Argir, a sort-of suburb of Havn, then we went to Norðradalur, probably one of the smallest villages I have ever seen – it had 4 houses. But Syðradalur, that one is smaller – it has 2 houses. The Syðradalur people came to our performance at Norðradalur, though, along with many, many people from other surrounding villages. The point of the tour was that we were accompanying the lighting of the town Christmas trees in all of these places – every town has a Christmas tree here, but it does make me laugh as they are so obviously imported – the trees that grow here don’t grow so big, and the ones they use as town trees are fairly large (and outside) and very lit up. They’re beautiful. The one in Havn is particularly impressive but I suppose one would hope that of the capital Christmas tree. Anyway, it really harks back to the times when Warkworth had a town Christmas tree and we used to all sit in MS Engineering and watch it getting lit.

Hmm, so what else has been going down here in the Faroes? Well, I am preparing to mail the Christmas Package tomorrow – it has 13 days until Christmas Eve, 12 and a half including time difference, so I desperately hope it makes it on time! Speaking of Christmas Packages, many thanks to everyone who included stuff in mine – everything is fantastic and all the presents look very exciting – of course I haven’t opened anything yet but my host family’s gifts are all wrapped and stowed in my closet waiting to be taken to Klaksvík for the host family Christmas. I can’t wait! Ooh, but Mum did send them a lovely book on Warkworth which they couldn’t help but open and they love it – each member of the family is taking turns to read it and no doubt we will take it to Klaksvík to show the extended host family. It was fun, too, for me to see all the beaches and such.

Beaches seem very, very far away right now – one would be mad to swim here in the winter. It sat on about 0 degrees today and just below at some points. Very, very cold, but oddly enough it doesn’t seem so bad. It all depends on where in the world you are, I have concluded – if the temperature reached 0 degrees in New Zealand, we would all be dying of hypothermia, but here in the Faroe Islands one can leave the house in open shoes and without a scarf. It just ... doesn’t seem so chilly. Though, having said that, there was no snow today and also no wind. The wind makes a huge difference as it comes from the North usually. But I am hoping for snow soon. They have predicted rain this week but if the temperature sits on zero, it will become snow. I live in hope!

Yeah so ... I have been in the Faroes over four months. Which means I have less than seven left. It’s Christmas, for goodness’ sake ... New Years’ is equally soon. When I first arrived I could never have considered Christmas here, in the cold. And having been here so long. It’s scary how fast this exchange is going. The weeks are, honestly, like days, because there is always something to do. Orchestra practice, then orchestra hugnakvølds (cosy evenings – that’s hard to translate because we just don’t do it), big band practices – two of those, concerts, so many concerts ... I have another now – we are playing Christmas morning in the Havnarkirkja (Havn Church) but I shan’t be here for that because I will be in Klaksvík. Then there’s everything my class organise – this weekend it looks like we’re going to the island of Sandoy for a very long class party (3 days! These people like to party...). And we bowl. And go to the movies and out to dinner and all sorts. And then I have my Faroese evening classes – two of those a week. And choir practice on Thursdays. I never seem to be at home. And when I am I’m always doing homework and practicing the piano (for another concert) and wrapping Christmas presents and doing goodness knows what else, but there’s almost always something. Yes, I can see this exchange going extremely quickly.

I’m currently very proud of my class as we won a big, prestigious prize. A month or so back I think I mentioned Verkætlan, the project we did (we got two days off school for it). Well, this year my school ran Verkætlan as a competition and the winners were announced on Friday night at a school kvøldseta (same as hugnakvøld and equally untranslatable). My host mum was determined that I go for some reason, though she wouldn’t tell me why and when they began announcing the winners of Verkætlan 2007 I began to get suspicious – was this what she meant? So I was looking around for anybody at all in my class and I was seriously, the only one. Sure enough, 07Y were announced as winning first for Verkætlan for our project, ‘Grønur Skúlin’ (The Green School) and I had to go up and accept the prize. But that was OK – we won 2500kr, which is equal, more or less, to NZ$625. A little bit more than the interhouse prizes of $20 worth of hot chips at Mahu! But yeah, none of us expected it so this morning we celebrated by doing very little in physics. Though I also do very little in physics so it didn’t really worry me much.

Finally, I got my first report on Friday, and guess what – I passed everything! Physics was a very close call but I got 10 on chemistry – the marking scheme is very odd but 11 is more or less the highest mark. 12 doesn’t exist, 13 does but they don’t give it out unless it’s Nobel-prize-winning stuff. I was amazed with my chemistry mark as I generally sleep in class but I suppose the teacher liked the reports I’ve handed in! And I got 11 in English, naturally. And yeah, passed everything, gosh I was amazed. My final mark was 8.5 which is actually pretty good and better than a lot of the people in my class got. So I was extremely happy with that. I also got the second highest mark on my Maths test but I think I mentioned that. THAT was impressive as it was written in Danish – thanks, Silja, for helping me with my Danish, it is doing me many, many favours as all the schoolwork is written in it!
But yes, anyone thinking of going on AFS and scared of failing stuff, disregard everything they say about school. I didn’t expect to pass anything, let alone in my first four months, and I am one of the top students in my class. Beat the system!

Anyway, I am going to head off and do my French homework (je t’aime la langue Française, elle est belle!). O joy!
Love, Kelsy