wow

I'll begin this post with my fantastic Easter break.  In Iceland there is a national religion, it happens to be Lutheran, so Easter break is quite nice.  I had over a week off from school and decided that it would be a good time to visit Rebecca.  Every year over Easter Ísafjörður, the "capital" of the West Fjörds, about triples in size, for good reason.  There is a big skiing festival there, called Skíðavikan, and of course the rock festival Aldrei Fór Ég Suður.  I had a flight scheduled for thursday the 20th but due to some inclement weather I didn't make it north until friday.  The first thing I noticed when stepping off of the plane was the mountains.  They were everywhere.  This probably shouldn't have surprised me, since Iceland is full of mountains, but it did.  "My Iceland," in the south, does not have mountains.  Yes, they are there, but in the distance.  You never actually get up close and personal with them.  It is not quite the same in the north.  Up there they are scary big.  After getting settled at Rebecca's house in Bolungarvík we went to the pool.  It was so nice to sit in the hot pot and be surrounded by big mountains and piles of snow.  After that Rebecca's dad, who works as a news man (I can't think of the exact word in English), came and picked us up.  He was heading to the Skíðavikan to interview some people so we tagged along.  It would have been more interesting if we could have actually gone skiing, but it was still fun.  Then we had a nice dinner with some of the family and after that we went to Aldrei.  Aldrei was held in this old fishing warehouse on the harbor in Ísafjörður.  That night we saw Morðingjarnir (actually got one of the cds they tossed out into the crowd), Skakkamanage, Hjálmar (great reggae band), Megas, and Mugison (the whole festival came into existence because of him).  It was quite awesome.  Becca and I managed to be quite close to the stage the entire time.  Around 1 we went home, watched some movies, and ate some delicious Swiss chocolate.

On Saturday we woke up not having any real plans for the day.  We thought maybe we would go down to the beach but other than that nothing definite.  Instead after breakfast Rebecca's dad and uncle decided we would go snowmobiling.  It was pretty much the most amazing thing.  Ever.  We spent around three hours going up and down mountains and around fjörds.   The West Fjörds were carved out by glaciers so the tops of the mountains are all flat.  This makes it quite easy to get around by snowmobile.  It's hard to tell that you're on top of a mountain because it just looks like a big icy, tundra field.   I wasn't really all that scared.  It was just really really fun.  I have a DVD of the whole thing, thanks to Rebecca's dad, if anyone's interested.  It's actually quite funny to watch.  My legs were so sore after the fact though.  That night we went to Aldrei again too.  It was the last night and stopped at 2 in the morning.  We stayed pretty much the whole time.  We saw Sprengjuhöllin, Eivör (an amazing Faroese singer), Dr. Spock, and lots of other artists that I can not remember off the top of my head.  The place was packed, but it was still quite awesome.  We didn't make it home until around 4 and by then we were pretty beat.

On Easter Sunday we woke up quite tired and sore from the day before.  The morning began with a search for our Páskaegg (Easter egg).  In Iceland they don't have easter baskets, instead they have easter eggs.  Basically it's this big chocolate egg filled with candy.  And basically I got way too many of them.  I already had brought two with me, one from the parents and one from the grandparents, and then Rebecca's parents got me one.  I was very appreciative, but really it was too much chocolate.  We spent the afternoon walking along the beach.  It was really nice and relaxing, but a tad smelly.  We had a really good dinner and then jetted off to Ísafjörður to see Menntaskólinn Ísafjörður's production of Rocky Horror.  It was really hilarious and I wanted very badly to sing along but I didn't know the words in Icelandic.  That night there was a ball downtown but I decided to be responsible and not go.  My flight home was really early the next day and I knew I would need my energy.  Instead Rebecca and I watched movies and ate more Swiss chocolate.  Early Monday morning I drove to the airport with Rebecca and her dad.  There were tons of people flying that morning and luckily I reserved my flight beforehand.  Mamma picked me up from the airport.  It was good to be home in the flat flat flat south.

That Friday my friend Ollie, from Australia, stayed the night.  He was in Australia over Easter break for his sister's wedding and he needed a place to stay before getting his flight to Akureyri.  Around 1 am we picked him up from the airport.  He had spent around 40 hours in different airports the past two days and was understandably quite tired.  We woke up Saturday morning and drove into Keflavík to catch a bus to Reykjavik.  We spent most of the afternoon wandering around, shopping, and drinking coffee.  We went to Hlemmur to catch a strætó to the airport where we ran into two other exchangers Mod (Thailand) and Jelena (Germany).  I thought we needed the 15 bus but Ollie said we needed the 19, which was currently driving away.  After a quick check at the sign he started running after the strætó and I of course followed.  We made it, laughed quite a bit, and got to the airport safely.  We exchanged quick goodbyes, as we would be seeing each other the next weekend, and then I left to go the bus depot.  The next day I was really sick with a stomach virus that I got from Gunnar and I ended up not going to school on Monday.  Ollie apparently got it as well.

Last Wednesday I went on a school trip to Geysir and Gullfoss (I'll post pictures tomorrow).  It was fun but the weather was kind of icky.  Then this past weekend was Menningar Helgi (AFS culture weekend).  We got to do lots of cool things that I'll be updating about tomorrow.   It was great to see everyone again, but it's also a little sad because the next time we're all together is the departure camp.  This weekend I'm going to Akureyri for the framhaldsskóli söngkeppni (the high school song contest) that Manu is competing in.  It should be a lot of fun.  I'm going to try to update about the AFS weekend and my trip to Geysir and Gullfoss tomorrow.