Hello, it's Monday and as usual, I am late. Today is my 17th birthday and before you ask, being 17 feels uncannily like being 16. Uh so yes, what happened today? My host family gave me a CD which is really nice Faroese music, this guy called Teitur who sounds a bit like Jeff Buckley or slow Paolo Nutini, and cooked me feskasupan for dinner which is the most unbelievably delicious meal I can ever imagine - soup made of meat stock with vegetables and pork balls with these little dumplingy things. It's like a broth and the taste of it is amazingly good.
Funny story, though. I got to school and was actually fairly horrified to find that my friends had done nothing - I had honestly expected them to seeing as we generally get up really early and fill the classroom with balloons to celebrate birthdays. So I was a wee bit down for most of the day right up until I stopped caring and we went to the mall after biology. And as it turns out this little crew of mine had basically hatched an awesomely amazing plan to make my birthday the best I'd ever had.
So yeah, first I really have to explain the week, I suppose! This will be a long blog.
On Thursday Sunniva, Christina and I skipped Maths to go and pick up my mate Cory from the airport - he's from New Zealand, on exchange in Denmark, and right now staying in Kaldbak with Sunniva. We took him back to school and afterwards went into town to show him the sights, so to speak. And that night we had a party at Jógvan's place for his 18th, which was a pretty good party - I scored a Sherlock Holmes hat and some hippy glasses out of it ... the hat belonged to Sunniva and I gave it back, but the glasses, which belonged to Jógvan, are still in my handbag. It's OK though, he says I can keep them. Haha.
So yes, on Friday night a bunch of us headed out to Sunniva's (and had a wee powernap) where we basically sat around listening to music and talking all night, followed by some dancing like crazies as the sun came up. Then we slept for another hour or so, and drove into town where we had a cake tombola to attend as fundraising for the class trip. And yeah, then I basically slept the whole day.
On Sunday I got up ridiculously early (at about 8) and started organising a trip out to Sandoy, the island that my friend Ronja lives on. We road tripped about there, saw beautiful places, amazing cliffs and views, and part of a soccer match. It was so pretty. And yes, we got back to Havn at 8.45PM and I went with Sunniva and Cory to Kaldbak for dinner, because they were having WHALE. Yes, whale. Or grindabøf as it is called - literally whale beef or a kind of whale steak. It was delicious! I really loved it. The meat tastes like a kind of mixture between fish and red meat, and it is absolutely black. It's strange.
So yes, anyways! Today was my birthday and as I had mentioned I walked into class thinking that my friends had forgotten me so I was a wee bit grumpy at school. After biology though, we went down to the mall - Cory, Elin Maria and I (Sunniva APPARENTLY had to go watch her sister's kids and Christina APPARENTLY had to go to her job). And yeah, Cory bought a Faroese jumper and we just hung about for a while before the others arrived and we were going ... somewhere? when I called Stacey to go up to her place in Hoyvík to pick up the present she wanted to give me. She wasn't there, though, and while I was in there the others took off back down to SMS under the pretence (pretense?) of Sunniva picking up her pen (?). I called them, having been stranded alone at Stacey's place, and they had to turn around to get me which I guess altered their plans. I found Stacey at SMS but then lost eveyrone else and Elin Maria eventually came to find me - we had no idea where everyone else was, though, or rather I didn't, and so when we spotted them at Williams, Sunniva's work, we went after them but lost them again. Then Christina came out of nowhere and Cory pretty much rugby tackled me in order to prevent me seeing Sunniva motoring across the mall with a huge bunch of balloons behind her (he failed). They told me to act surprised and so we headed out to the car where we found her stringing them up in the windows along with a bunch of Faroese flags. So I jumped in, fully not expecting them to pull a huge framed 3D map of the Faroes out of the boot. But they did. It was really cool. And as if that wasn't enough, they also gave me a whale tooth on a silver chain and shot glasses with puffins on them. It was really cool. And yes, so then we drove about town and eventually wound up at a bakery where Sunniva bought hot dog sauce to decorate the car with (and I bought cookies) - so 5 minutes later we were driving about in this car with 'Kelsy's 17th birthday' and 'Free hugs' and 'Kelsy 17 ár' written on it in mayonnaise. It was so funny. And yes, then they dropped me off at home, my parents and grandparents rang, and we had feskasupan. So the day turned out pretttty good.
And now I am going to bed - but first, photos!
P.S Cory met the Prime Minister - photo below!

Well, what has happened in the Faroes this last week? Actually, something that can either be considered very amusing or very shocking happened at school on Friday. Here's the story:

On Thursday night, the 3rd grade (the equivalent to the New Zealand year 13) threw a huge party. They had planned a skulkidagur which is basically wagging day in English - they were just going to drink all night and then sleep all day. I don't know why they didn't just do it on Friday but apparently it's a tradition and they do it every year. So yeah, anyway, they got absolutely wasted that night and at 5AM were all dropped off at the school in buses, where they proceeded to have a party on the lawn complete with loud music blasted out of one of the upstairs windows. And when we all arrived at school (1st and 2nd grades) they were still there and still drinking. There were crates of beer everywhere and yeah, people drinking in the canteen and I had no idea why - I walked into school and became very very confused by these two drunk guys standing at the steps with a crate of Føroya Bjór telling everyone it was THEIR BEER. Haha. And I could hear yelling in the distance - I'd figured it was something to do with Hoydalar but I had no idea what until I walked into class and saw everybody standing at the windows marvelling at what was going down on the roadside. Which was that most of the 3rd grade of Hoydalar were standing drunk, hailing cars and making them drive them into school. And then they would jump out and run back up to the roadside. All my friends and teachers got stopped trying to get into school. And yeah, the school called the police and the police went to try and break them up (had serious issues as you may imagine). They had been throwing balloons at cars and when they ran out of balloons they threw dirt. they really held up the traffic, too, and all the buses that day were late by about 15 minutes. But yes, when the police got there they all decided to head down into school, where they came through our classrooms singing, doing the conga and STINKING of alcohol (they were still drinking and this was at about 9AM). The deputy principal cornered about 40 of them in our classroom and led them out again where a bunch of them went to sleep on the field and did all sorts of interesting things.

They made it into the newspapers and onto the radio, and I managed to procure some photos from the website of one of the newspapers, so here they are - photos of the chaos at Hoydalar on Friday, courtesy of Dimmalætting. And yes, nothing interesting has really happened otherwise.

Well, another week is gone in the very, very short time I have left in this country. Yesterday, it was 12 weeks until i'm leaving (12 weeks and 5 days until I arrive back in New Zealand for you kiwis). Now, that's pretty scary. Yes. Very scary, indeed.
Uuuuh, so not overly much has gone on this week ... I was much, much too tired to go to band practice on Wednesday (go me) and I wrote my blog on Wednesday anyway (love that Faroese time) so yes ... Thursday until here. What have I done..?
A bunch of us decided to go road tripping on .. Thursday? Or Wednesday maybe. We just drove. To this place called Kirkubøur which is beautiful, a tiny village with a big, ruined church - we just went out there for a look, I'd seen it once before. That was really fun. We listened to Jethro Tull, courtesy of Mattias. Who spent the weekend in Denmark playing in the Steinway Competition against all the best pianists in Scandinavia. He's pretty incredible - I was lucky enough to go to a concert he gave on Tuesday night with the other guy, Ólof, who was also going into the competition. They're both amazingly good pianists. The concert was really small and the most unbelievable piano playing I'd ever seen. I think I was lucky to even have been told about it as I'd been on at him to tell me about his next concert for months.
Um, yes. What else has happened...? My host aunt had her birthday yesterday and I gave her a bottle of feijoa wine which they'll probably hate as it's so sweet but hey, it's the thought that counts, isn't it? And afterwards I caught the bus to Kaldbak, a funny little villagey place 10 minutes drive out of Havn where we had a Monty Python movie night at Sunniva's place. Then this morning at 11AM I attended a christening for some very distant relation of my host mum's. Jóhanna was made godmother of the baby boy.
After THAT we went home and I had a nap and then caught the bus into town to Muller's Pakkhús where I was playing a concert at 4PM with my orchestra, GHM. We played film tunes - Grease and Mary Poppins and all manner of other stuff I don't remember. Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life went down pretty well. The concert was biggish considering it hadn't been advertised at all and afterwards I headed to a cafe with my friend Christina where we sat and drank coffee, ate nachos and made up lives for the people who walked past the window. It was rather fun. Then I came home and here I am.
And now I'm going to go and do my Maths and French homework which is due on Tuesday. Bother.
In other news, it's getting quite light here now, they brought in daylight savings last weekend and even without that the daylight hours have been increasing a lot. I am rather looking forward to the almost-always-light summer. It will be lovely.
But yeah. Homework.
:) Kelsy
P.S Leave me some comments. Nobody does anymore!

This is a late and probably very short blog as it just occurred to me that I haven't updated my diary (yup, I keep a diary too) in ages and I really should. While I have the time. Which for once I do, as band practice this evening was cancelled.
I'm just sitting here playing the piano and I remembered that I haven't blogged this week! Ack! Not that so much has happened, but it's the principal really, I guess.
So, 88 days left in the Faroes - I leave here on the 28th of June and get back to NZ on the 3rd of July (start planning the parties, people). It's really, really sad to consider that I'm going home after all this time. And it's amazing to consider how fast the time has gone. I've made amazing friends here who I'm going to miss terribly (*cough* NULL SJEY Y *cough*), I've learnt 2 new languages and a heap of stuff about the world (*cough* how to open a beer bottle with another beer bottle/one's teeth/a lighter/a phone *cough*). I WANT TO KEEP LEARNING! But I guess it's going to have to wait until ... 2012 or so when I can actually get back here. Darned university.
In other news, I still have at least 12 blogs to write before I'll be jetting off to Denmark and then Frankfurt and then Singapore and then New Zealand, so let's not put on the black clothes just yet.
Ah so I got back from Iceland to a huuuge snowstorm in the Faroes which was pretty lovely - about a foot of snow in Havn and just everywhere. Loooovely stuff. I do love snow. And it was colder here than it was in Iceland so that was a little backwards, I thought. It was really nice to be home, though, and to speak Faroese again.
I handed in my chemistry report on Friday, and my physics report on Monday, and now all my homework is done for the forseeable future though I'm sure to be given something massive in Maths soon. But ah, well. It keeps us occupied.
Soooooo, I'm going to head out and update that diary and keep organising stuff like what clothes I'll throw out before I leave here. Too much luggage ...
Kelsy
:)