Sautján Júni. (Soi-tjown Yoo-nie). We kept saying it all day because it has such a ring to it. Basically, June 17th is Icelandic Independence Day. Like 4th of July, minus the fireworks. We started out the day going to one of the suburbs to partake in the festivities. I saw a schedule of events that boasted of games and kids activities, but when we arrived at the Viking Village to participate, they wouldn't let us in to the "fair grounds" unless we paid. BOO. We decided to skip it and Read More
Sweet Memories!
Thoughts from my husband: This morning I read the song our friend Clint wrote for Mark Stratton's funeral, and a touching blog from Jason Pelt about the drive to Arlington National Cemetery where he was laid to rest. I immediately resolved to not let the day pass without a much needed catch-up phone call with Pelt. He reminded me of a picture of Mark and I he had posted on his blog from our camping trip two years ago so I looked it up and found it. When I saw it I thought, he was probably Read More
Puffin Watching
This weekend was the Harbor Festival, so we joined in the festivities. When Colby saw the advertisement for a puffin tour, he was sold. We rode a small boat out only 15 minutes from Reykjavik where we came upon a small island that inhabited 30,000 puffins (Darcy wasn't a fan of the life-jacket).Our guide told us that in August, the puffins will begin to fly south for the summer, and many of the babies will get confused by the city lights of Reykjavik and crash-land here. When that happens, Read More
Call it overdramatic…
It was the quietest birthday party I have ever been a part of! Nine adult guests were kind enough to come for games, cake, ice-cream, gifts, praise-and-worship, and a slide-show of Darcy's life thus far (with Psalms 117 by Seven Places playing in the background...my new favorite song). I'm sure Darcy will eventually make friends her age, but for now, she is content with the friendships of Dagny, Diana, Andres, Lilja, Katrin, Villborg, Johanna, Jon, and Marissa (sorry, I'm too lazy to put Read More
Memorial Day
Being in another country cuts you off from the usual festivities of Memorial Day, but on Monday night, the 25th, as I was falling asleep, I thought about Mark Stratton, a friend from Stafford Baptist, in Afghanistan and started laughing out loud in bed, (Colby hates it when I do this) thinking about a funny Mark memory. On Tuesday, we got up and started on our mile-long to-do list to get ready for a volunteer group of 13 people who were arriving the next day. I knew something was not right Read More
Kristen Marks, I LOVE YOU!!
I'm slowly making my way out of the blogging hole. Click here to see some of our adventures from the last month. Thank you, Kristen, for teaching me this fine technological skill. Read More
A Seismic Event
I came home yesterday from doing some work and Colby asks, "Did you feel the earthquake?" Excuse me...The Earthquake? I must have missed that. Supposedly the whole apartment rattled, but I didn't believe him until I saw this in the news this morning:"Iceland’s south western Reykjanes Peninsula has been experiencing a huge amount of seismic activity in recent days. 438 earthquakes have occurred in the region in the last 48 hours alone."438??That's wierd, because I haven't even felt one. Read More
Glaciers, Fairies, and Lunatics
I told Colby last weekend that the only thing I really wanted to do for my birthday was hike on the glacier, Sólheimajökull. The next day at language school, there was a new girl in our class from Germany. At the end of class she asked me if I wanted to hike Sólheimajökull with her on Saturday because she had already scheduled a trip with a guide (and her roomie from Switzerland). Colby looked at me, smiled, and said, "I'll watch the kids!" The weather called for 80% chance of rain, so I was Read More
Blue Lagoon and Golden Circle of Fun
The parents of my beloved wife have been visiting from WI this week in honor of Mother´s day, Helen´s birthday (tomorrow), and Annie's birthday (Monday). Throughout the week I have been getting back in the flow of learning Icelandic and preparing for a volunteer group coming in a couple of weeks, but as we drew near to the weekend it was time to switch into sight-seeing mode. We headed out to the Blue Lagoon last evening, and enjoyed being "pickled" (Paul Haley's term) for a few hours in the Read More
Thoughts from a discouraged blogger
There are 33,800,000 matches for the phrase I haven't blogged in a long time on google. It was hilarious to read link after link of people's excuses for why they have not been a dutiful blogger. I'll refrain from using the worn-out phrase to state the obvious so that I too do not become a google statistic.I am a discouraged blogger for many reasons:1. So many things happen that I want so desperately to creatively capture, archive, and share. I feel farther and farther behind as more and more Read More
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