Another blog, another week. I can't remember whether I blogged or not last week, so I'm guessing I should be on time with this week's installment.
So, what has happened? Not overly much, really. The other New Zealander had her birthday party last night and that was pretty epic - I made it home at 8 this morning. We do pretty well with parties here in the Faroes! Haha.
It's getting a lot warmer here now - or not so much warmer, but less cold. Indeed it hasn't been below zero for about two weeks which is interesting as it's still February, the coldest month of the year. Having said that, it snowed today. Not much, but some. It's pretty.
I haven't seen the Northern Lights - I was told that they don't actually come out so much, and then only in the coldest months of winter. My host parents say the cold will return so I live in hope that Aurora Borealis will come with it. I desperately want to see it. I suppose there's also a chance that when I go to Iceland to visit Silja in 19 days time I will see it there - even though Iceland is so close to the Faroes (only an hour and a half's flight) it is much colder there because the gulf stream surrounds the Faroes and keeps them relatively balmy. In comparison to Iceland, anyway.
Um yeah, I came home from Suðuroy last Friday and went straight into an insanely busy weekend - I arrived in Havn at 9AM (having left Suðuroy at 7AM ... ugh) and headed home to sleep and wrap a gift for Hanus, a guy in my class who had a party for his 18th birthday that night. At 4PM I headed off to Venjingarskúlin (it means practice school) where I stayed until 8PM playing funk music (I was a guest saxophonist). That was good fun - it was a proper funk convention with about 40 musicians and I was very lucky to be invited as it was generally for MGK, the division of the music school for people intending to go to London and study Conservatory. But yes, that was wonderfully fun and after that I headed home and then walked down to Hanus' place for the party. It was pretty fun. My friend Mattias who is a fantastic concert pianist sat and played at this hideous piano that hadn't been tuned in 20 years and then eventually I sat down and we both played jazz improvisation. And eventually I headed home at about 3ish.
The next day I was due at the funk convention at 10AM but I think I rocked up at about 11.30. We played all day - really just like a jam session, and very enjoyable. Our group had 3 really good songs - Let's Groove Tonight, Celebration and Diggin' On James Brown. We stayed there until 9pM that night. I studied French when we got home, as I had a test on Tuesday.
On Sunday we all met at 11AM and polished up our songs for the last time. We had lunch and so headed down to the performance hall to set up for the concert we were playing from 4-5PM - I was given a baritone saxophone to play which was tremendously fun as it is just about bigger than me and plays notes so low they make your eyes vibrate so you can't see straight. I had a solo as well which I had to play on alto and so I had to switch instruments halfway through one of our songs. The concert went really well - everyone seemed to like it, and a couple of my friends, Sunniva and Christina, were there so afterwards we all (Sunniva, Christina, Mattias, Karl Andrias and I) headed out to get dinner at a café in town. Afterwards we all wound up back at Mattias' place watching DVDs, and then channel surfing - to our amazement he had about 950 channels because his Dad is Russian and so had subscribed to pretty much every channel in Europe. Or something. And we found the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and none of them had seen it so I insisted we watch it. And we did. And I think they'll be scarred for life.

But yeah, that was last weekend. And yeah. I think that's all I have to report!
Kelsy

Yo!
So here I am again, on a Monday night, and on Suðuroy. Where is that, you ask? Well, the snowy photos two blogs down are taken in the village of Sumba on Suðuroy, the southernmost island of the Faroes.
Why am I here? Mini-exchange for a week - I go to the Vágs Miðnámsskúlin and it's fun - I am in a class with my host sister Susan who is 16 (she has 3 sisters who are 18, 11ish and 7ish). The class are all girls and all very sweet and have all added me on myspace! Haha.
So yes, I've been here since Friday and I am here until Friday and I have found out that on Suðuroy they eat Weird Food. We had fish cheeks two nights ago, and fish soup the night before that, and tonight ræstan fisk (which is rotten fish which is then boiled, has been explained) and tomorrow night we are eating baby petrels. I am really looking forward to it as I am told baby petrels are delicious. One has to make a special bread to eat with it, apparently. So yes.
Yesterday my host family took me out driving and Suðuroy is really very beautiful - the weather yesterday was fantastic also, sun and blue skies of the sort one never sees in Tórshavn - my host grandad said it was because the gulf stream surrounds Suðuroy and so the other islands can be knee deep in snow while Suðuroy relaxes in balmy seven degree temperatures. It's lovely here - I live in a little village called Porkeri, 5 minutes drive from Vágs where the school is. I will put up air photos of Porkeri soon but not tonight - it's adorable though, there are sheep walking the streets. They live there in the winter and one must be careful driving.
But yes, I have many beautiful photos of the scenery here on Suðuroy which is unutterably lovely.
I get back to Havn on Friday and I am really looking forward to it for a number of reasons - I get to see my class again who I miss dreadfully (if I miss them so badly after 3 days how will I go when I LEAVE?) AND we have a class party on Friday night. And of course I get to see my host family again who were in Klaksvík this weekend. I miss them.
Anyhoo, I do believe that's about it. Everybody leave me comments. Good little fellows. I'm going to go watch Coyote Ugly with my host sisters. Woohoo!
Kelsy

So I finished school early today and thought it would be a nice idea to upload some photos of my life and not just photos I have stolen from Faroese websites. I can't be bothered captioning them as I never know what order they're going to wind up in, but feel free to comment and ask if anyone or anything takes your interest. Ja, mostly from my friend's 18th birthday party, our class concert and the last day of school before Christmas (where I got painted). Enjoy!

OK, so here are some photos I Maoried off the portal.fo site - the news site for the Faroes, has amazing photos if you know where to look. This is the village of Sumba on the island of Suðuroy - I haven't been to Sumba but I have been to Suðuroy and it has way better weather than the other islands for some reason - it's only 2 hours ferry ride away. There's also a really nice air photo of Havn I found on http://www.atlantic.fo/ (the airline site) - the massive boat you can see in the foreground is the Norrøna, the ferry that goes between the Faroes, Denmark, Scotland, Iceland, England, etc etc. And, after that (though I have no idea wat order these photos are going in) there are 3 beautiful photos of Mykines, the tourist island - 18 people live there but all the puffins do also and there are killer whales and things and it's just the most gorgeous place in the Faroes, though I haven't been there yet - I'm going in the summer when the boat starts going again. Yes OK the photos are going backwards. Mykines is first, then Havn, then Sumba. Enjoy, anyway!

Hello, it's Sunday and therefore I blog. For once, I am blogging on Sunday. Yes.

Well, all the exciting stuff that's happened since FRIDAY when I last blogged ... no actually I don't think there is any. Ooh, but when I woke up yesterday morning there was 8 inches of beautiful powdery snow over everything and it was just gorgeous. It had snowed loads more over Friday night and yeah, just couldn't have been more beautiful. It's melting now because it's raining. Ugh.

Um, apart from that there's really just Føstulávints, this festival they have here to celebrate ... Lent, kinda, but it's way different because all that happens here is that they dress up like it's Halloween and go door to door and stuff. That's tomorrow night, and my class are throwing a party and it's going to be awesome fun. I am going as ... a hippy. Haha.

Anyhooooo, I think that's about it. Sad and short, huh? It's because it's only 2 days worth of news. I wasn't partying last night OR Friday night for possibly the first time since I got here. That's news! We were meant to party Friday night but then the party was postponed to tomorrow night so yeah. It's cool because we get Monday and Tuesday off school for Føstulávints. It's like, public holiday Halloween! Way more fun.
But yes, I'll be heading off now. Leave me some comments - I will get around to putting photos on this thing somewhen, I promise!

Góðan dag!
Well. A lot has happened in the last week and I am uber late blogging AGAIN. Sorry about that, things have just been so insanely busy!
I hope New Zealand has great weather right now because we had a BLIZZARD last night. Yes, a blizzard. Winds got up to 80m/s and everything had to close and batten down the hatches etc etc. We woke up to a foot of snow stuck to the North wall of our house. But it was beautiful, and I'm going sledding tonight with a bunch of my friends because finally there's enough snow to do it!
Yeah so, on Friday I went, at 10.30AM, to the ferry terminal to meet my band and travel to the island of Suðuroy - in true Faroe fashion, every single one of them was late and I wound up on the boat alone standing in the deck 6 restaurant and desperately hoping I was meant to be there. A girl spotted me and started talking to me having recognised the AFS logo on my bag, and as it turned out, she had gone to Australia for a year (she had a terrible Aussie accent), worked on the ferry in the restaurant, and lived in the village of Porkeri on Suðuroy. I was very thankful for her as the band was stil AWOL ...
Eventually they all turned up, thank goodness, and we set up our little stage thing with amps and keyboards and all that for our first performance of the weekend. It was INSANE, because there had been a massively huge storm the night before and the sea was really, really rough. We played, though, after a rough start where we hit a particularly huge trough right on our first count-in. It was kind of, 'eitt ... tvey ... eitt tvey trý fýra WHOOOOOOA'. Our tenor saxophonist, Eirikur, got really, really seasick and everyone pitied him enormously as he had 3 very complicated solos to play. Poor fellow. The minute the set was over he was off like a shot ... I have never seen someone actually turn green but he did.
The boat was full of politicians - the ferry company had invited them all to Suðuroy for this reception which we were all meant to be play at also. We were sitting eating our lunch on the boat and we turned around and hello, here's Joannes Eiðesgaard, the prime minister of the Faroe Islands. Good grief.
Anyway, so we got off the boat and headed to the reception which was in the village of Tvøroyri where the AFS coordinator, Elisabeth is from. On Suðuroy they speak with a strong, strong accent - instead of vit (we) they say oker, and tit (you plural) is tiker. They say jeg instead of eg (that's Danish and means I) and lots of other strange things I can't remember. For me, Suðuroy Faroese is harder to understand which should be interesting as I am doing a mini exchange there for a week on the 10th. And, strangely enough, I'm staying with the family of the girl I met on the boat.
Anyway, at the reception we realised that the venue was way too small for the huge sound of a big band and so we played rhythm section only with our two vocalists. So the rest of us got to hang around, eat food, drink wine and mingle. Mingling is important here - they do it a lot. Anyhoo, while mingling, this Joannes Eiðesgaard fellow casually wandered up to me and said, 'Hello, I hear you're from New Zealand.' (Everyone knows everything and everyone here.) I guess he was expecting me to go 'Hello, I hear you're the løgmaður,' but I really did NOT know this and so I just chatted away for a while thinking he was a local politician or something. He wandered off to mingle with other people eventually and the girl I was with, Hannah, was like, 'Don't you know who that was?' I was a little shocked to find that I'd just met the prime minister and hadn't even realised. Oops.
After that we went to our little house at Hotel Øravík where we were staying - Øravík is really a hilarious place as all it has of note is the hotel. Gosh, it's funny. But we had an entire house which was fun - I stayed in a room with Hannah (from Greenland, plays the trumpet) and two twins, Óluva and Maria, who both play the trombone. Yes, it was quite interesting.
That night we set up our stage at the Stóra Pakkhús which was to be our third concert venue, and we practised a bit until a grumpy old man came and told us to shut up. So we went bowling instead, followed by dinner at Hotel Bakkin, which was in the town of Vágs (this is a common name in the Faroes. Vágs. Everything seems to be something-Vágs or Vágs-something. It's pronounced Vox). Then, at about 10, we headed back to our concert venue to finish setting up and relax a bit before we started playing. We played from 11PM-1AM (you have to do this here because the audience arrive so late) but then we got encored so many times we wound up playing until 2AM. We got back to the hotel at about quarter past and then sat around eating and playing cards until 4 or 5AM when we all made it into bed. We had to get up at 8AM to catch the ferry and then it was late leaving anyway, but we didn't mind.
The ride back to Havn was almost as rough as it was going over, but lucky me, I never seem to have this seasick thing. Sjúrður, my fellow alto saxophonist, did, and the poor kitchen ladies had to come and clean him up in the cafeteria. How embarassing for everyone involved ...
But yeah, we arrived back in Havn to snow and ice and general gorgeousness (it had also snowed overnight on Suðuroy) and I headed home for sleep.

On Saturday night I went to my friend Olga's place for a girls' night involving a bunch of girls from my class. I made ANZAC cookies and took them in a tin and today Olga did the cutest thing - she gave it back to me filled with waffles. Haha. She's one of the people you just want to hug. The Faroes are full of these types of people.
Yeah so anyway, I got there and we ordered pizza and such, and sat eating and taking stupid photos of each other (as you do) and reviewing all the photos that have been taken of our class so far - we actually have our entire back wall in homeroom devoted to photos of our many escapades and it is getting fuller and more hilarious every day. Free period? Double lunch break? Print some photos. We even have a tally of how many times each person has appeared on the wall. It's awesomely cool.
Then we watched Pearl Harbor. Of course. And then we had tea and coffee and cake and cookies and then we headed home. It was very fun. Very cute.

School this week has been much as school generally is except our classes have been slightly more fun - on Wednesday we made a hot air balloon in physics and then cooked livers in biology (most disgusting thing I have ever watched ever in my life). We had a test in French on Tuesday and I was amazed today when I got top of the class! Three 11 scores, which is the second highest you can get and I don't think 13 was possible on this test. So yes, I pretty much rock at multilinguality. Multilingualism? Multilingualness???? Something along those lines.

Anyway, I do believe that's about all I have to report. Which is good as this is a long blog.
Leave me some comments, people!
Kelsy