2 posts tagged “planes”

One room has been cleaned.  Two bags have been packed.  An infinite number of goodbyes have been said.  Many "one last times" have been experienced.  Numerous emotions are being felt.  One girl is going home.

I never even imagined me getting to this moment, but yet I find myself here. 

Tomorrow I leave my host family...indefinitely.  We're going to the AFS "forest" to plant a tree and from then onwards our paths may not cross.  I have slight worries about my luggage.  I barely have anything in the one but it is so close to being overweight.  If I have to pay I just have to pay.  I think I'm just fretting about it because I really don't want to think about other things.  Like getting on that plane in less than 48 hours.  It is however something that has to be done.

I am going home.

So, the Akureyrar Helgi was pretty much amazing.  On Thursday night I stayed at my friend's, Þórdís, house because she has an apartment in Reykjavik where I'd be catching my flight the next morning.  We stayed up watching music television and eating ice cream.  A weird realization struck me that night.  A silly one, but still.  At home, in Sandgerði, we have like 20 tv channels (which is a plenty, most of my friends just have the 2 national ones), but Þórdís has like 80 or something.  I was sitting in her living room flipping through and was seriously overwhelmed by the number of channels, I couldn't handle so many!  I don't know how I'm going to deal when I get home with, what, practically 500 or more.  So yeah, small culture shock.  On Friday we woke early and she jetted me off to the airport.  My flight went fine and I met up with the volunteer, Marín, at the airport. 


Most of the day I hung out with Ollie, the Australian, and Ann-Sophie, the Belgian.  They live in Akureyri so I just went to school with them for a bit and chilled downtown.  Mainly at this one café, the Bláa Kannan, something like the blue teapot in English.  They showed me around Akureyri and we just hung out.  Around 4 we went to meet the other exchangers who arrived by bus, the French-speakers, Daniel (Switzerland, his dream is to move to Texas and become a cowboy, I am not lying, he's hilarious when you get him to talk about cheese), Thomas (France, I run into him all the time in Eymundsson, this bookstore in downtown Reykjavík) and Hélene (Belgium, she had, and still has I believe, a broken arm this weekend as the result of a skiing mishap so she couldn't go in the hot pot with us).  At one point Bilge (Turkey, had her birthday this past week, I love talking about Turkish food with her, I am most definitely visiting her and gorging myself on simits and apple tea) and Juho (Finland, his name is pronounced like 'You hoe!' which has led to some...funny misunderstandings).  We all gathered at the Bláa Kannan, where we were joined by the other volunteers and Nick (Switzerland) and Lelenia (Italy), they both also live in Akureyri.  We talked and chatted and then headed to the pool, where we chatted in the hot pot.  It is most definitely an experience; going into a hot pot while it's snowing and with snow all around you.  After we dried off we headed to Strikið, a restaurant, where we were joined by Rebecca (you should know what country she's from by now, her flight from Ísafjörður to Reykjavík was cancelled so she had to drive down so she could catch a flight to Akureyri, thus her late arrival).  We hung there for awhile and then headed to the movies.  We saw Juno, which was just as hilarious the 2nd time as the first.  Then we headed to our 'houses' for the night.  I was at Hafrún's (a volunteer) house with the other girls, Hélene, Bilge, and Rebecca.  We were up most of the nice just talking which is always fun.


Saturday morning we enjoyed a great breakfast from Hafrún's mom (at least, I assumed it was her mom).  Then we contacted Ann-Sophie and agreed to meet up downtown.  So after we were all dressed and ready Hafrún dropped us off downtown.  We got some tea and relaxed.  Around 2 we had to go meet up with everyone else at this one museum.  We went and looked around and then walked and got ice cream at the best ice cream place in Iceland.  It was good, but I don't know if it's the best ice cream I've ever had.  Then we headed to the summer house.  It was outside of the city and had a great view.  We got settled and then a group of us headed out to the hot pot.  We had to wear hats so our hair wouldn't freeze.  After that we waited for dinner to arrive, so we played spoons (a hilarious card game for those of you who don't know).  After dinner we just hung out and talked together until around 4 or 5 in the morning.  Then we decided we should probably go to bed.  That was difficult.  We had a Mothman scare which left most of us unsettled for a while.  It was funny nonetheless, but after the fact. 


Sunday we all woke up grudgingly.  Bilge and Juho both had early flights so they had to be up first.  The rest of us slowly enjoyed breakfast and cleaned up the house.  When we were done we went to drop off Hélene, Daniel, and Thomas at the bus station.  Rebecca and I had late flights that evening.  Ann-Sophie, Ollie, Becca and I went back to Bláa Kannan and talked for quite a while.  After that we went on search for dinner.  Ollie and I got some grub at the Indian Curry Hut.  The chicken vindaloo was actually quite delicious, which just reminds me of that one Ramone's song.  Then we walked around while Ann-Sophie and Becca decided what they were hungry for.  We decided to go to Búllan, a burger joint, so that they could get some fries.  While they waited in line Ollie and I sat in the kids section and read Bushisms from a poster on the wall.  While they were eating their fries a fire started in the kitchen.  The fry cooks tried hard to put them out but nothing was working, after a while it looked like they were pouring water on it and my first thought was Are they pouring water on a grease fire??!! so we decided to go outside and wait for the fire to stop.  After awhile the alarm went off and we sent Ollie inside to make sure everything was okay.  Thumbs-up, we returned and finished the fries.  Then we decided to chill at a café downtown, Café Karólína.  A volunteer came and picked us up when we had to get to the airport.  Our flight was scheduled for 21:10 but not long after we go there it was delayed until 22:25.  We didn't want to wait that long in the airport so we decided to go back downtown.  We went back to Karólína and talked some more.  Around 22:00 I got a phone call that went something like this: Halló? Is this Allison? Yes. Where are you? Who are you? This is the airport. Oh, I'm at a café... What are you doing there? Everyone is on board. EVERYONE IS ON BOARD!! WE'RE COMING!  Then we all ran into the car and drove like 80 km an hour to get to the airport.  The guy was waiting for us outside as Rebecca and I quickly said good bye and ran to the terminal.  These air control guys motioned us outside and we start running towards the plane, which turns out to be the wrong one so we start running towards the other one.  Luckily we got seats together so we just walked quickly to our seats and threw ourselves in them.  Have you ever had a whole plane waiting for you?  It's not the best experience, but it took all of our self control to not start laughing our heads off.  And that pretty much sums up the essence of the Akureyri Weekend, it shall never be forgotten.


Going back to school on Monday was tough.  I kind of just wanted to be with all of the other exchange students again.  Last week I was kind of in a bad mood.  On Thursday I went to see the school musical with Mamma.  It was called Sjénsinn, which means like No Way.  It was actually really funny.   It was all ABBA songs with different lyrics.  Then on Saturday I went into Reykjavík.  Ollie and Ann-Sophie were down for the weekend because Ollie was flying home to Australia on Tuesday for his sister's wedding.  I went down with Pabbi and hung out with him for the morning.  That weekend was Samfés, which is when all of the youth groups across the country get together for this big thing.  On Saturday they had a song contest so I got to watch the warm-ups.  I even got to see Haffi Haff (singer and just media figure in Iceland, see his entry for Eurovision here, I wanted him to win, but he didn't make it to the finals), he was there as a guest performer.  Then around 1 I met up with Ann-Sophie and Ollie, who were at KFC.  We walked to Kringlan, the mall, and shopped for awhile.  I actually found jeans!!  For just 7,000 kr.!!  Anyway, we met up with Taylor and Andrea (two other exchangers from the USA and Italy) and went downtown with them.  Taylor and Andrea went and got hot dogs and then we looked for the piercing place because Ollie wanted to get something pierced, I think his lip.  They were all closed though, but we ran into a girl I knew from school who dropped out to move to the city.  We chatted for a bit and hung out with them at Hressó.  Then Ann-Sophie and I went to Café Paris for dinner and chatted.  Pabbi came and picked me up. 


School this week was easier and it's a short week.  On Monday night I got a surprise call from my contact person.  Apparently Asiarpa, an exchanger from Greenland, was flying home the next day and was staying at my contact's house.  She invited me over (as well as Manu and Alessandra) to hang out.  I had no idea Asiarpa was thinking about going home so it was a bit of a surprise.  We spent most of the night talking and eating Belgian candy.  On the drive home the Northern lights were out.  It was kind of sad to say goodbye.  On Tuesday I skipped (shh...don't tell anybody) two of my classes (with my host parent's permission) and went into Reykjavík for the evening.  Ollie flew home in the morning and Ann-Sophie didn't fly back to Akureyri until 5:30 so I went to hang out with her.  We met at Café Paris and chatted and then walked around.  We saw some Japanese tourists, their tour guide was super peppy, like obnoxiously.  We got really hungry for cheeseburgers so we looked for the McDonalds that was marked on Ann-Sophie's map.  Unfortunately it had been torn down awhile ago so we had to come up with a new place to eat.  I called Pabbi, but the place he recommended didn't have sit down service so we searched a bit and ended up going to Bátar, a place Pabbi had recommended to me a long time ago.  We got cheeseburgers and fries with spice.  Oh, it was good.  It was the first real cheeseburger I'd had here and it was worth it.  After we were done we headed up Laugavegur and browsed.  We ended up going into Mál og Menning, the bookshop, and sat in their café, drinking tea.  Around 4 we decided to go to Hlemmur (the strætó depot) to find out when Ann-Sophie had to catch the strætó to the airport.  On the way there we walked past Páll Óskar!  He's pretty much the most popular dj in Iceland.  It was pretty epic.  I wanted to stop and get a picture but he kind of gave me this look that said 'Don't you dare make a scene,' and he was talking to someone so I decided to just walk on.  Ann-Sophie and I almost got on the wrong bus because you have to make sure they're going in the right direction.  It might be the number you need but it might have already gone past your stop.  We made it to the airport and waited for her plane.  Ann-Sophie really doesn't like flying so she was a bit nervous.  It was kind of sad leaving.  I've seen her so much in the past month, but luckily there's an AFS camp on April 4th so I´ll see her soon.  After her flight left I headed to the bus station, BSÍ, and waited for the bus to Keflavík.


Tomorrow is the last real day of school before Easter break, or páskafrí.  We have off until the 26th.  Friday we don't have classes, instead it's this day called Starfshlaup.  Everyone in school is on a team, I´m on yellow, and together you participate in different tasks.  It's kind of like a school wide relay race of sorts.  Some of the tasks are academic like French, English, Biology, and some are not like swimming, etc.  Basically which ever team competes the best wins.  I'm not actually doing a task; I´m in the clapping section, but it should be fun anyway.  I'm glad I have a yellow backpack.


After the Akureyri weekend, I came to the realization that...I don't want to leave these people.  I mean, Rebecca and I have a Europe tour in the works for the summer of '09, but it's going to be really hard to go home.  Tomorrow begins the 100-days-left marker.  It leaves me speechless.