On the up and up

I have never really hiked that much before, but if there is any place to start it is definitely Iceland. I need to tell you about some of the places we have hiked to so far. 

Here's a throwback picture from our first hike.

1. By the geothermal hot springs. I can't remember if I told you about this one, but we were supposed to be checking out the exhibit by the hot springs and instead we hiked up the mountain right next to it. At the time I thought it was really hard. Now, looking back, I am realizing that I was a wimp. 

2. Don't know if you can call this one a hike, but we walked up a really long set of stairs at a volcano that went up and around the crater. Megan and I didn't know it at the time, but we were looking out over our host parents' college campus where they met. 

Views from the troll's seat!

3. From our host house and from our university center, you can see this funny little indent in the side of the mountain that people around here refer to as the "troll's seat", because it really does look like one. It goes up about 1/3 of the way up the mountain, and from far away, it looks like there is no way you can climb it because of how steep it is. Turns out you can, and we did. Hofi took Megan and I to do this hike with some people she works with. They do the hike every year to commemorate a fellow employee who died climbing the valley inside the troll's seat (not where we were hiking, don't worry, he was a rock climber). This thing was pretty much straight up. Major strain on the butt and calf muscles. It also took so much longer than you think it does, which is a common theme of Iceland, I'm realizing -- that everything is so much farther away than it appears. It took us 45 minutes to get to the top. 

Me and Meg in the troll's seat. See all the Frozen rocks?

I don't know what I expected the inside of the valley to look like when we got up there, but it definitely was a surprise. It looked like those rock trolls from Frozen were lying all over the place. Like one giant mossy rock playground. And it was huge! Plus the view was incredible, you could see out over the town, the fjord, and the ocean. I thought it was perfect: a good workout (hiking really gets your heart rate up) and a great view. Then it was just 30 minutes back down! It really made you practice your balance and muscle control. I loved it, I want to do it again. 

Here are the little waterfalls I was talking about!

4. This one wasn't really that much of a hike either, just a 20 minute walk up, but we saw the biggest waterfall in the Westfjords called Dynjandi. It was so powerful. My favorite part about it wasn't even the biggest waterfall at the top, it was all of the smaller waterfalls going down towards the ocean that I really loved. It looked like a water park. 

Meg about a third of the way up the mountain.

5. This one is the monster hike. But wow was it worth it. Best view I have seen in my entire life.

To keep the description short, basically Hofi and Christian took us to a relative's farm in a valley of a fjord (between 2 mountains) and climbed the mountain on the left, called Thorfinur. You can Google it to see pictures of it, or just see the ones I posted below of our trek up it. And it really was a trek. It took us 3.5 hours to get to the top. It was no casual stroll either, this thing was straight. up. for a good portion of it. Our only instructions were to "follow the sheep." That's not a joke, Megan and I pulled ahead because our host parents were being chatty (in Icelandic) with their friends, and we didn't want to be awkward. At one point, we didn't know which cliff to climb up next, and Christian just said "FOLLOW THE SHEEP!" from the cliff below us. Best life advice ever. 

My study abroad program said we weren't allowed to go rock climbing, but I think that definitely counted as rock climbing at times. I just never looked down. 

Here's our monster hike! Told you it was straight up.

Also, because it was so steep, you couldn't climb single-file because you would get rocks kicked on you, or you just wouldn't have a solid place to step if the person in front of you already used it (I promise I'm not exaggerating any of this description, this is all serious). So after we started the really really hard stuff about 2/3 of the way in, it was dead silent. All I could hear was my own breathing and the sound of the rocks slipping out under my feet for about 1.5 hours. I was really in my head, trying to talk myself into continuing to the top. It's much harder when you aren't with other people. I could see Megan every once and a while waayy over to my left, but I wasn't really paying much attention. 

Once you got to the top, you would think it would be flat up there, right? At least that's what I thought, probably because I was looking for anything to call a finish line. Instead, it was covered in rocks so you always had to watch your step and double check your footing. There was also snow up there, which I didn't really touch because you couldn't see what was under there or, more importantly, if there was anything under there at all. 

Mom don't kill me, I made it all the way up so I had to see the edge. 

But the VIEW though. Just wait until you see it, I put a lot of pictures down below. 

I had zero desire to go back down. Partly because I was tired and partly because I would never get sick of it. You could look down and see the tops of the birds flying below you. 

Going down took another hour and a half. I learned the best way to go down a steep mountain is sideways, and really worked my outer thighs. It's also fun to surf the rocks (and takes a lot less time). I fell on my butt a lot, but turns out that also saves energy. I was really feeling one with that mountain by the end of it. 

Hoping to go on more hikes like these throughout the rest of this trip. I really can't get enough of this part of Iceland. 

Inside of the troll's seat. 

Here's Dynjandi from afar. 

What the top of the mountain looked like. You can see other mountain tops in the background!

We hiked up this. The dog was there for moral support.

More specifically, we hiked up this.

Views from the top!

Me sitting at the top.

Transformers: A Movie Review

A few days ago, it was gloomy and cold (typical Icelandic weather), so a couple of my classmates and I decided to have a cozy night indoors and go see Transformers: The Last Knight in the oldest movie theater in Iceland, located a short 5 minute walk from our university center. Only Megan, Carter, and myself showed, despite the many other people who claimed they wanted to come see it. 

So I'm gonna stretch my writing muscles and see if I can write a movie description/review for this...interesting...film. Here we go:


Transformers: The Last Knight opens with a mildly confusing scene set in the days of the Knights of the round table (at least that is the conclusion I came to based on the title of the movie and the couple appearances of a round-ish table throughout). After your brain situates itself and realizes "oh ... this is the movie, not just another preview" it immediately jumps to another equally important thought - "wait...how is this the movie?" - as you realize that there is no way there can possibly be large robots in the middle ages. Except for there are, so get over it. 

Here begins the first plot line of the movie: Merlin the Wizard and his magic wand thingy.

Next scene: A group of kids in an abandoned town. They get found by the bad guys, shot by the other bad guys, saved by the third group of bad guys (or are they good guys?), and end up escaping and we never see them again the whole movie. Plot line opened, plot line immediately closed. If only they all worked out so nicely. This scene also opens up a very important question regarding an integral part of every movie plot equation: who ARE the bad guys? Stay tuned for the answer to that loaded question. 

Also in the scene I just discussed, we meet a girl that fixes transformers and her small robot friend whose name was not memorable enough to remember. He was small, slow, blue, walked around on wheels, couldn't speak, and played an integral role in saving the day (spoiler alert!). Since I've never heard of any other character like that in any movie I've ever seen, I'll just invent some robot-sounding name comprised of numbers and letters off the top of my head - R2D2? Sure, we'll go with that. 

Next we switch scenes yet again to a junkyard (fitting, since this movie is a piece of trash) where we see our hero, Cade Yeager, who is on the run from the bad guys and the other bad guys because why not. This means that he has a daughter that he can't talk to, but she continues to call him and leave him "I love you" voicemails. 

2 words: PLOT. HOLE. Don't know about you but if my dad chose his giant robot friends over me, the only voicemails he would be getting would be from the closest mental hospital. In this junkyard, we meet just enough Transformers that we can't remember their names, but not enough that we give up on trying. 

Next scene: in outer space somewhere where our Transformer hero Optimus Prime is angry that his home planet of Transformerland (not the actual name of it, that would make too much sense). So he goes berserk and joins up with yet another bad guy. This bad guy was short, silvery, sounded like a girl, lived in space, and could shoot lasers out of its hands. Don't remember its name, so I'm gonna make up another oneeee...top of my head...Palpatine. Sounds original to me. 

So Palpatine turns Optimus Prime into this darth i mean dark character, Pessimus Prime (it's actually Nemesis Prime but I like my version better because it makes him sound like a pouty little b**** and I'm all about accuracy, people). 

Back on Earth, everyone on the planet is now trying to find Marlin's son Nemo. Wait shoot wrong movie....Merlin's magic wand thingy. Apparently it can only be used by one of his descendants. Conveniently enough, there are so many left! Don't kid yourself, there's only one. So Cade and the good guys kidnap her, the bad guys and the other bad guys want to catch Cade and end up hindering their progress with their team of MOHAWK and some others. The only one I could remember was MOHAWK because it was a real word and it came flying at you from the middle of the screen. You would think with all of their special effects for this movie, the director could find some cool way of introducing these characters besides the "Grow and Turn" animation from Powerpoint that we all used in 4th grade. 

Pause: I came to this shocking realization that if you take all of the letters in TRANSFORMERS and mix them around, you get STAR MORN SERF which is so close to STAR WARS it's not even funny. 

Unpause: Good thing they introduced all of those characters to us with Powerpoint animations, because they never show up for the rest of the movie. Rip, MOHAWK. So...where were we again? (Had to ask myself that several billion times throughout the course of this movie) Oh! Finding Marlin's stick! Also looking for Marlin's stick was Pessimus Prime so that he could bring it back to Palpatine and destroy the Earth, naturally. They found Marlin's stick all rotted up and decayed in some mummy cave somewhere, no idea how they got there. They also found Marlin's magic wand thingy there too. Pessimus took it, said "nah nah na boo boo," and ran away like a 2 year old. 

I'm going to fast-forward through about 2 hours of battle scenes as they fight for Marlins's magic wand thing in space, here we go...

CLASH CLANG BANG 
PING CLANG CLASH 
"You've just been stung!" 
BANG BASH CLANK
RING TANG BASH

I ran out of metal-on-metal sounds, I'm really sorry. In the end R2D2 saves the day, and they all live happily ever after with an important message from Optimus Prime (oh yeah, his BFF named Bee saves him and turns him back to Optimus with his moving quote from a few lines up). Here is Optimus's message to us that we must carry with us forever:

"Opposites attract. All is fair in love in war. Time heals all wounds. What goes around comes around. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. All for one and one for all. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. They all lived happily ever after."  -Optimus Prime

Wow, Optimus. Truly moving cliches. 

But wait...who were the bad guys? And what about the-

Stop right there. No clarifying questions allowed. 


Annnnd that pretty much sums up the movie. To leave you with a positive spin on it, here is my honest *positive* opinion of the movie Transformers: The Last Knight. 

This movie will truly be one you will never forget. It is three hours of pure laughter that will challenge both your attention span and your patience. It is the perfect story line to lose yourself in if you wish to never find yourself ever again. You will leave the theater with a new perspective on the world. And if you see it once, you never have to see it ever again. 



And they are making another one!

Helga

This post is going to be entirely about my host sister, Helgadora. 

Helga is 2 and a half years old with red hair and blue eyes. She loves watching Mr. Bean and that's it. She speaks no English, and I am terrified of her. She can be cranky sometimes and you never know when she's gonna blow. 

Here in Iceland, they have a different philosophy about raising kids than we do in the United States. Hofi was an au paire and she said that parents in the US want their kids to be perfect all the time, whereas in Iceland, they have a more laid back philosophy. So when Helga whines or cries in public, instead of shushing her or yelling at her, they just let her go and try to talk her out of it. It's really different, but I guess it works because everybody here is so nice. 

Another side effect of this child-raising method is that kids speak really well really early on. And for that reason, Helga has taught me many important Icelandic words and phrases. For example, I can now say "I want to watch Mr. Bean", "more chocolate", "ice cream now", "go away", "stop doing that", and "you're annoying, stupid American girl" in Icelandic. Only the last one was a joke, the rest she says to me all the time. 

Here is a day in the life of Helga: 

8:00 AM: Go to school
4:00 PM: Come home from school
4:01 PM: Watch Mr. Bean
5:00 PM: Eat dinner
5:05 PM: Try to watch more Mr. Bean
5:06 PM: Not be allowed to watch more Mr. Bean
5:07 PM: Take off clothes
5:30 PM: Bring all stuffed animals from upstairs to downstairs
6:00 PM: Try to watch more Mr. Bean
6:01 PM: Succeed in watching more Mr. Bean
7:00 PM: Watch Megan and Charlie bring all stuffed animals back upstairs
8:00 PM: Go to bed

Yesterday we made pancakes for our host family with homemade maple syrup that Megan brought from New York (she wins favorite exchange student). Helga had 3 plate-fulls of syrup and 1/4 of a pancake. She just kept licking the syrup off and asking for more. So you think maybe she would like having us around, even if only for the syrup. But later that day in the car, she told her mom that she "forbids her to talk to us." So much for that. 

Today we had our most meaningful interaction yet while we were watching Mr. Bean in the living room. She was cranky so I snuck her a Hershey kiss. A couple of minutes later, she says "meira" which means "more". I said "meira súkkulaði?" or "more chocolate?" and she nodded. So I gave her another one. Which means we had a full conversation! And understood each other! That's huge! 

Helga also does this thing where she pinches her mom's hand as she's falling asleep. And today in the car she was pinching my hand while my heart melted into a puddle and she fell asleep. 

She's pretty cute :)

Told you she was cute!

Small Helga, giant waterfall

Accurate portrayal of our relationship

Cute pic of us on our way home from a really long adventure yesterday 

We found horses this week! Icelandic horses!

"Swimming"

Here in Iceland, they love their swimming pools. There is one in almost every town, no matter the size. That's partly because they are so cheap. Either you live near a geothermal heat source that heats up the water naturally or you live near a hydropower plant that supplies so much electricity that heating the water is dirt cheap. On top of that, Icelanders don't pay to chlorinate their pools. Instead, you have to shower before entering. More on that later. 

Another important piece of information is the definition of swimming in Iceland. I looked it up, here you go:

Swimming (v) : soaking yourself in hot water and making sure not to get your hair wet 

The first time I went "swimming" was at the Blue Lagoon on the very first day of the trip. Face masks and fancy drinks and photo shoots. 

We went "swimming" this week in a town about a 25 minute drive away called Flateyri (population 180...with a pool). To get there you have to drive through a 2-way 1-lane tunnel. If you do the math, the tunnel comes out to be... (divide, add, carry the one)...yep. Terrifying. 

But the pool was super nice, we went there with Helga (age 2) and our host parents (Christian and Hofi in case you forgot). There were 2 outdoor "pools" (probably half a foot deep, we sat out there while it was raining which was awesome), an indoor hot tub, and a normal-sized lap pool (yes, mom, I swam some laps while I was there). 

Remember how I said that thing about showering before entering? So we get to the pool, we go into the locker rooms, and Hofi goes, "Here in Iceland, we are not shy..." 

Not shy (adj): naked.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, you have to shower *naked* before entering. Not the most comfortable thing to do if you've just met someone. So Megan and I were like "I won't look if you won't look", and went for it. When in Rome I guess? 

Yesterday we also went "swimming" in a natural hot tub right next to the ocean. It was a 2ish hour drive away, but definitely worth it. While we were there, we met a couple and their 2 kids from Michigan (@andrew they were from the UP) who went to Pitt (@mom and dad, they went there for med school I think). After staying with Helga for a week and not being able to communicate, I was really excited to talk to 5-year-old Stanley and 6-year-old Henry and try to throw rocks from the very hot hot tub into the freezing cold ocean with them. They were super cute :) Helga had a different approach and tried to take every single stone (stin in Icelandic) that wasn't in the hot tub and put it into the hot tub. She also swam back and forth between Megan and I, so we're making progress. More on Helga in my next post :)

Moral of the story: Just keep "swimming" :) hehe

As you can see, Helga was preoccupied by the stones and really not feeling this picture

That's me!

#Food

Hi! Sorry it's been so long, it has been a busy week! So I'm just going to post a bunch in a row and write about a lot of different topics here to try to get caught up. 

First and foremost, so none of you are concerned, I need to tell you that I have been eating just fine. The traditional Icelandic food is a little unusual by my standards, but I told myself that I would try every single thing offered to me. And it has only led me astray once when I tried the beer our host dad gave to Megan and I. Beer is gross. 

Weird food #1: Lamb. 

Take all of that beef that Americans eat and replace it with lamb, take all of the fruit, vegetables, and carbs we eat and replace them with just potatoes, take all the cheese we eat and replace it with butter, and wellah!...you have the typical Icelandic diet. 

Icelanders eat SO much lamb. I thought that fish was going to be the predominant meat that I would be eating, but I was way off. My first experience with lamb was way back in Keflavik, where the airport is, on Day 2. I wasn't a huge fan of it then, nor was I a fan the second, third, and fourth times I had lamb at Solheimar for dinner back to back to back nights. It was squishy. 

But THEN for dinner on the very first night with my host family, Christian whips out this huge tray with what looked like a lamb thigh on it. Based on past experiences with lamb (a small but significant number), my only thought was "Well s***. " It was already awkward by nature of Megan and me being strangers in their country and home, and now I was going to have to choke down the food they gave me also. I put my fork in my hand and buckled down for the long haul. I'll give you the play-by-play of my thoughts: 

Bite one: "Okay this isn't so bad..."

Bite two: "Wait this is actually kinda good..."

Bite three: "...Really good!"

Bite four: "OH MY GOSH THIS IS SO GOOD"

Bite five: "IT'S LIKE HEAVEN IN MAH MOUTH WOO!"

Bite six and up: "mmmmmmmmmmmm"

So lamb (if cooked right) is good. Really good. 

Weird food #2: Fish?

I put the question mark there because fish come in lots of different forms here in Iceland, and who knows what is actually fish. 

Form #1: fish in a jar. It's green and chunky and you put it on rye bread (which is really dense and brown). Sounds yummy right? It actually wasn't that bad, I ate a whole piece of bread with it. 

Form #2: dried fish. They eat it like we eat potato chips. Salty, stacked with protein, suuuper chewy and really does look like dried fish. But also not bad! I ate an entire piece after our hike the other day. 

Form #3: in soup. I've had this twice since I've been here. The first was in a very creamy, very fishy soup from a restaurant in the oldest building in Iceland. That one was not great. The second was at Christian's parent's farm, made by his dad. That one was really really good, even though immediately after dinner we went to the fish tank and saw the brothers and sisters of the rainbow trout we just consumed. 

Weird food #3: Banani pitsu

Banana pizza! Here in Iceland, they put bananas on their pizza because they HATE spicy stuff. They can't handle it. So to balance out the spicy pepperoni, they add some sweet bananas. And surprisingly it's pretty good. Even better when it's cold the next day.

I think that covers most of the unusual food I've eaten so far, but I'll make sure to update you if I come across anything else weird. My host parents are 10/10 chefs, and I have more of a problem eating too much than not eating enough. Gotta hike up some more mountains and burn off all the meat and potatoes I've been eating....