I suck at updating this blog!

May 22-29: my 1 week farm homestay. It was amazing. I was on a farm called Efri-Ey, and it is about a 30 minute drive from the nearest town of Kirkjubæjarklaustur (how´s that for a long name?!) which has 150 inhabitants. So basically it´s in the middle of nowhere. It is in the southeast of Iceland, and took about 5 hours by bus to get there. When I arrived in Kirkjubæjarklaustur, I was warmly welcomed by Maria (the German exchanger who I visited in Patreksfjörður during Easter... she moved to the farm 2 minutes down the road from Efri-Ey) and also by Sigrún, the daughter of the farm lady, and Andrea, Sigrún´s 17 year old daughter. Then I got to the farm and met Sara and Þórir, the owners of the farm. They are around 70 years old, and Þórir is ill so Sara does pretty much all of the work. Andrea was working there for some of the summer so of course Sara had plenty of assistance. There was also Skarphéðinn visiting, Sara´s grandson who lives in Denmark. He is 7 years old and has SO much energy nonstop, so he was surprisingly a big help with all the work. There are about 200 sheep on the farm, and I went during the birth season so there were somewhere between 100 and 200 new baby lambs being born. In addition to the sheep are 4 horses, a cat named Snúlli, and a dog named Móri.

     The farm work was really fun. Maybe just fun because I was only there for 1 week, but I would have loved to be there longer if I had more time in Iceland! (I had the option of staying up to 2 weeks, and I would be willing to stay that and longer, but I have my whole life in Kópavogur/Reykjavík that I wanted to return to). We woke up each day around 10 or 11, ate breakfast, then went out to go feed the 4 motherless baby lambs. Then we would give the sheep food and water and hay, and there were 2 different buildings with sheep so we went first to the 1 near the motherless lambs and then took the pickup truck down to the one which was just down the street. Then we would come home around 2 or 3 and eat lunch, which was normally a hot meal and something typical Icelandic (lamb, meatballs, fishballs, Icelandic breads and vegetables, potatoes, thick sauces). Then we would go back out and do something extra that needed to be done like assist a younger mother with giving birth, set some sheep outside, or tag the lamb´s ears. This process was kind of shocking... the way they tag them is pretty inhumane in my opinion, but it´s necessary so yeah, it is what it is. They take the right ear and cut a triangle out of the side of it, and this is the symbol of Efri-Ey so that way if the piercing falls off they at least can determine who owns the sheep. Then they take the left ear and pierce a double-number into it, 1 side being the number of the farm (all sheep have the same number with that) and the other being an individual number to keep track of each individual sheep. I didn´t do the bloody work; I just recorded the numbers for this (wrote down the mother´s number, lamb´s number, what color the lamb was, and whether it was male or female). Then we would go around 5 to feed the motherless ones milk again. Then was dinner time where we usually just made sandwiches or something, because lunch was the biggest meal of the day. After dinner we left the house again to feed all the sheep again (they eat a lot!) and then to feed the motherless lambs.

     In my free time, I spent a lot of time with Andrea, as she was my age and we got along really well. We watched movies, sunbathed, played with Skarphéðinn, stuff like that. The life was pretty simple there and really nice. Also really different than the capital area in that there isn´t so much foreign influence. They don´t use English slang on the farm like they do ALL THE TIME in the capital area. They don´t eat pizza and hamburgers so often, instead they eat a lot of Icelandic food. I actually didn´t speak a word of English the whole week except for when we were in Kirkjubæjarklaustur one day and I met American tourists. I was glad to meet Maria 3x this week... once when she picked me up, once she came to visit my farm, and once I went to her farm for her birthday. Her host mom makes the best cakes. The farm was surrounded by beautiful nature. Not a tree in sight, it was on fertile land but bordering vast fields of lava and a black sand desert. In the distance you could see 2 glaciers, Mýrdalsjökull and Vatnajökull (the biggest glacier in Europe). The skies were so blue and the grass was so green. My favorite work to do was feed the motherless lambs. They were the sweetest cutest little things ever. "Mine" is named Dagur (Day). It was sad to leave on Friday the 29th. They drove me out to where the bus came to get me, and we all had nice long hugs goodbye. Sara gave me a beautiful painting of a horse that she did herself as a memory of the farm. At first I was kinda overwhelmed being back in an urban area... I normally go downtown quite often but I didn´t visit downtown for like a week later, I instead just spent time with friends in Kópavogur and just away from downtown. (Although now I love it again :D )

And crap, I´m trying to recall what I did for the week I got back, but I don´t recall anything specific, just met up with friends every day, did lots of "rúntur" (going around town in a car with no purpose except being in the car and listening to music and having fun), etc. Then the weekend of the 6th - 7th was great. On the 6th I showed up at Laugardalsvöllurinn at 5 which is the big soccer field / stadium where the national team plays. The game started at 7, so we in Lúðrasveitin Svanur were just rehearsing and relaxing and making sure all our uniforms look ok. Then like 30 minutes before the game started, we played some songs and marched and stuff, the Icelandic fans are kinda boring but the Dutch fans (it was Iceland vs Netherlands) were REALLY fun (also drunk), all dressed in bright orange, and screaming and singing like crazy. Then we had the honor of playing both the Dutch and Icelandic national anthems. It was really nice hearing people sing along to Ó Guð Vors Lands and then chanting Ísland Ísland Ísland (Iceland) when we finished the song. Also standing near the soccer players, they are SO hot. That night I went to djamma which is always fun, but not too late because I had to wake up for a kinda busy day the next morning. So the next day, the 7th, was Sjómannadagurinn (the fisherman´s/seaman´s day) and it is this pretty big festival that occurs at harbors all around the country, and we of course went to the one in Reykjavík. We were planning on getting up at 8 to go there, but when I called Elvar at like 8:10 to see if we were still on for the early time we were just like uhh lets go back to sleep and go later. So I ended up sleeping a couple more hours (thank god) and then we got there around 1 and it was really nice! We went on a tour of a huge Norwegian coast guard ship, saw through pictures how the harbor has developed in the past 50 or so years, saw a bunch of creepy huge fish on display in ice buckets that Icelandic fishermen have caught, and went PUFFIN WATCHING. Puffins are these really cool beautiful birds that only live naturally near the north pole and there are a ton of them on islands surrounding Iceland. We took a boat out to a little island called Akurey and I got to see the cute little things! Then we went to Kolaportið (the flea market) and I bought a 3 x 5 foot Icelandic flag, good bedroom wall decoration for when I get home.

Wednesday June 10 I woke up at like 10:30 and got ready and then went and climbed a mountain, Esja. I went with Elvar, Daniel, and Danish. It was a 4 hour hike up and down, and it was really tiring but so worth it to get to the top. The mountain is right outside of Reykjavík and we had a beautiful view from the top. The picture below is taken pretty close to the top... the rock that I´m sitting on used to be at the top but just fell down in a recent earthquake on the 29th of May. (I felt the earthquake!)

Saturday morning I had to wake up really early to play with the band for some cruise ships coming to Iceland... sucked but still kinda fun seeing tourists. Saturday night was a block party on my street... totally different than the block parties we had on Summit Road. It was just our street (like 15 or so houses), and a lot of the neighbors have never even met each other so it was more like meeting everyone (oh and we are all newly moved in here within the last year because none of the houses are older than a year), and it was shitty weather but it happened anyway. It was fun, all the adults were drinking Icelandic beer, the kids played outside, and there was lots of good grilled meat and even whale meat.

I´m going camping tonight with some exchange students, celebrating Icelandic independence day on Wednesday, going to Vestmannaeyjar (the Westman Islands) from Thursday - Saturday with my Belgian friend Freya, planning a camping trip with my school friends next week, saying goodbye to exchange students and hello to my family on next Sunday, and then 10 days later back to the USA. :O