Keflavik airport, Iceland. Dec 1, 2012. Luggage, luggage, luggage :) !!! We managed to put ourselves all together as a package to fly home to Canada. It's bittersweet to say g'bye and exciting to be going home (not excited about final exams tho haha). Serendipity found us with a group of Geophyics professors from Univ of Iceland on the plane with us while I studied for my geophysics exam the entire flight. They were headed to a conference in San Fransico & we recognized each other, altho I was tempted to ask for pointers on the flight, I didn't t :) We watched the sun set literally for 7 hrs as we chased the sun across the curvature of the Earth all the way to Seattle, back in time eight time zones. We left Iceland the same time we arrived in Seattle. Whoa! Time warp symptoms began to occur. Culture 'shock', too, as my brain kept thinking & speaking in Icelandic. We ordered a coffee and i anwered in Icelandic while trying to compute in dollar vs. krona. It was a good laugh. In Seattle, sooo tired we slept on the floor it didn't matter, while waiting for our Kelowna 11pm flight. Was great to be met by mom and friends that we missed - to go home to our own beds. One thing I noticed was how inexpensive food is in Canada, through these 'new' eyes I have now. Also, having to use a car to get place felt like a drag. The pace is faster in Canada, people feel more hurried, less settled in an indecribable way. It feels like immering myelf back into a web that I don't particularly feel the same in. Some people commended how calm i was. How to explain? I don't know...even with 15-hr study days for final exams I know we are fortunate to have immersed ourself in Iceland - it can only make us more aware and feel stretched from growth in invisible places inside of our soul.
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This fantastic book, Sagas of Icelanders, by Robert Kellogg, a natural history of Iceland written in sagas of the Vikings and the first people to leave King Harold of Norway for this new land. Iceland was settled in 874. I'm on page 620 (whew!) out of almost 800 pgs, it really has been a good read especially to feel the real stuff generations have lived through. It's not a boring history book. It's stories passed verbally for 100's years, now in print. Erpsstadir dairy farm, NW Iceland, a nite in the farmhouse with hottb, endless tubs of homeade ice cream & full moon. Recipe for laughs & fun. A perfect time together!!! It's our last week, so went on a road trip to NW Iceland up to the West Fjords, a most wild and rugged landscape. The main purpose was to stay a night at our favourite dairy farm, Erpsstadir, and eat all the fresh homeade ice cream we could. It's about a 3 hr drive NW of Reykjavik. The further north we went, the more snow. We rented out the farmhouse at Erpstaddir which had a nice comfy homey feel, a hot tub on the deck and cows, sticks, rocks and hills for Niall to climb on. The couple leavin the farmhouse that we stayed in, had hunted and caught 7 ptarmigan birds before sunset, for their family christmas feast (pic in gallery). In Iceland, there's no turkeys, it's a tradition to find ptarmigan for christmas. We each had our own tub of homeade ice cream made fresh, chocolate mint, caramel, licorice, vanilla, dark chocolate & more.. Sitting in the hot tub under the full moon eating ice cream must've given us the giggles because we laughed and talked for what felt like hrs :) The days are short, sunrise 11am and sunset 4pm. When we left Erpsstadir, the family that owns it (the father) invited Niall to return in three years when he was 12 yrs old to work on their dairy farm, he was serious and I know Niall would love it. We stopped at another farm with a natural hotpot to soak in with more ice cream about two hrs north - we noticed steam coming out of the ground and knew there'd be a farmer that'd have a pool to soak in. Returning to Reykjavik, the sun set on one side while the moon rose on the other side. So magnificent the scenery, I sometimes am speechless in awe as it all feel soooo close. On Nov 26th, we went to a Star Wars symphony at the Harpa Concert Hall, which is one of the best in the world and of unique design of glass on the ocean downtown Reykjavik. The children brought friends from school and it was a spectacular symphony of music with the Icelandic symphony. Pictures with the Star Trek characters after! It is bittersweet, these final days. The week before, we went to Harpa to watch four sax players do a concert. Nice culture! We also visited the Viking Maritime Museum, stayed for hrs it was very good, especially going on a real ship that's docked and learning how Icelandic fisherman have lived for hundreds of years since the Vikings. Packing up the apt wasn't so difficult, kept the apt as there's a chance to continue studies next term, too. Now home to Canada to study & complete final exams at my home university (UBCO). Just before leaving for the airport Dec 1st, we went for a last walk downtown Reykjavik to the farmer's market for baked goods, our fav bags of licorice, handmade wool mittens for Lex, a hot dog (of course!) and to sit in our fav coffee house to feel its vibe once more. G'bye, Iceland, for now, you are a most special place on this planet!! Thank you to my children for sharing and trusting me in this adventure, for friends & family that've kept in touch and new Icelandic friends and places, we are connected forever. Today, being my birthday was quiet and reflective. I took my piano music with me to a nearby elderly care centre hoping and knowing there'd be a piano there to play. I miss playing mine. Not only did I find a piano, the two women who welcomed and showed me around to three pianos (one's a Grande piano) and invited me for lunch. I went in there now knowing what would happen and it reminded me again how connected we all are and are surrounded by opportunity and connection at all times if I only take the time. Our final stop was the dimentia unit where one older man plays piano and another sings so when I sat down to play a few Frank Mills songs the one man sat beside me singing so beautifully!! They welcomed me at anytime, whether it be lunch, tea time or dinner or just in the evening and to bring my kids, too, and have a meal. The place is called Grund, on Hringbraut Rd beside the University. The woman who showed me around and had lunch with, explained that when Icelanders left for Canada in the early 1900's that two people came back from Canada and built the facility. One was her grandfather.
In the afterrnon, I had geophysics class then picked up a couple of Icelandic cakes from an amazing bakery one block away. The children and I invited Gudrun and her three children from downstairs. She's Icelandic and finishing her PhD here although has been living in Senegal, Africa with her children and other countries while she finishes her education and works. We met in the laundry room (lol) and she kindly calls or stops in and asks me if I'd like to go to the grocery store with her. Having children and no car, wow that is an amazing offer. She's very kind and fun. Niall goes to school on the bus with her son. So, us two moms and the children had a birthday party with more cake than we could eat, along with balloons and glow-in-the-dark lights that came all the way from Canada!!! We have cool pictures of the kids dancing with their lights taken with 30-second exposure...kind of like northern lights in patterns. There are 17 geothermal swimming pools in Reykjavik and one is very closeby so we went and enjoyed the hot pools, steam baths and swimming lengths under the moonlight. By the time we got home to bed, yes, it was a quiet and good day. Spending my birthday in the middle of the Atlantic on this beautiful wild island felt kind of cool, and never ever lonely especially with three incredible children of mine, new friends and knowing familiar friends and family at home. How I felt on this birthday may be summed up from my thoughts: Each of us is so powerful and so fragile all in the same moment that if we stopped to truly perceive it all at once, all we'd feel like doing is to let go, always love another and trust. Thank you for sharing this day :) even if it is a fleeting thought of each other. Geomagnetic storm last evening at Grótta. Last evening, there was a geomagnetic storm with displays of light and clear bright stars. This was taken with 30 second exposure at Grótta in Reykjavik, Iceland at 10:20pm. Saw a falling star fell, too! was so fantastic to experience :) Sometimes I bike out to this lighthouse in the dark evening along the Atlantic. It's very still & quiet - the rain & air feel fresh on my face while everything else is bundled up warm with scarf, hat & coat. This was special timing, magical as many moments feel here with the aliveness of the Earth & Sky. Earlier in the day, I went to a 3-hr yoga class at Shala Yoga - the instructor, she was from Denmark and Estonia originally. One by one, she took us through each of the seven chakras...opening them up, I have never ever sweated and worked so hard mentally, emotionally and physically in a yoga class. To go from that to experiencing a magnetic storm of magical lights i felt energy, calm, gratitude for all things and peaceful joy. Interesting how the heart chakra is emerald green light, reminding me of the beautiful green flowing light of the aurora above. Bursting with activity yet flowing. Just like our heart can feel wih all of our human emotions. Sunrise is 10am, sunset 4:30pm only six hrs daylight...The Sun sits at only 8 degrees above the horizon then sinks again. Sinking, surrendering, settling into darkness is an interesting sensation. It kind of wraps itself around us like a cozy feeling inside.. By this time next month, only 4 hrs daylight. Next summer, there will be little or no darkness. This is the time to surrender to it and welcome it's calm. Life is like these cycles, time to be internal, then time to be external. This morning in 8:20am geophysics class, we found out that the nearby Leirvogur Geomagnetic Observatory had been going crazy during the night from all of the activity! We are learning of the magnetic field of the Earth and it's so fascinating how it protects us perfectly from the solar radiation of the Sun. Solar flares from sunspots send solar wind into the geomagnetic field above us, so that visually we see them as currents of electricity - visual dancing light! The Sun has 11-year cycles of fluctuating solar activity and between now and 2013 will reach it's height of the present Solar cycle. At the centre of the Earth, a dipole moment, like a giant magnet sits with the magnetic current entering the north pole and exiting out of the south pole. Every so often, the poles reverse, where the South pole becomes the North pole. All rocks in the Earth align themselves magnetically to the current magnetic field. Even sediments floating down to the bottom of a lake silently align themselves magnetically together to the present magnetic field. The geomagnetic pole and equator move gradually over time, now about 10 degrees East of the geographic north pole. Sinkholes from icebergs. Þórsmörk, Iceland is my favourite place on the Earth. More photos in the gallery - will help feel a little of the awe of nature we felt on Saturday during our trip. The children and I had one of our best days in the wilderness of Iceland with a Fire and Ice tour to Þórsmörk, about two hrs east of Reykjavik. The only way into the glaciers and volcanos is by jeep or the ICE Explorer we took, and there's only two of them on the planet! Icebergs sat in these sinkholes after the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010 sent amazon river-like glacial floods out to the ocean, draining this lake under the glacier. The volcano erupted under the glacier. We hiked for about an hr to the Eyjafjallajökull glacier. We drank the 300-yr old glacial water from the streams, no pollution! The glaciers in iceland can reach up to almost 500 m, and at times were over 1000 m deep. We stopped for lunch at a hut built by a group from a glacial club that work in Iceland, Greenland and Antarctica. A hiking trek, Landmannalaugar, can be done thru the centre of Iceland starting here, heading north across volcano and glacier areas, with huts to say in. Must go in the summer! The ICE Explorer took us to another place where we hiked into a deep volcanic valley to a cave. As we left the valley at sunset, volcanic ash was swept up by a dust storm making a most beautiful sunset. Cloud formations were like no other. Could say more. The pictures do the best :) The past two weeks the earth felt more alive with events here and other places! Sat Oct 21st, North Iceland's coast had a 5.8Magnitude earthquake, raising concerns for the community of Húsavík. There are many earthquakes every day, yet this occurred along a normal fault in the oceanfloor and is moving along a transform toward the town. The fault line goes thru the town! Links from seismic stns around the world and local map in Iceland. Then, the earthquake along BC's coast happened the following Sat., Oct 28th, well, our geophysics teacher has been sending us links and info for the events constantly which is cool. A neat earth map shows the BC quake took 9 minutes to reach us here in Iceland. It was neat to focus on my home province, look at it from Iceland in this way. One site even shows the shaking in your home town in BC! We'd just been learning about seismicity, p-waves, s-waves, faults & crustal movements so we've been learning from each event in Iceland and BC. A speaker from Saudi Arabia who was raised in N Iceland, did his PhD in USA and works/teaches in Saudi Arabia oil companies, etc, spoke to us about the earthquakes. The Hurricane Sandy happened. Then on Friday, Nov 1st, the winds were sooo high in Reykjavik that people were warned to stay inside, people were blown over and broke ribs (15 to hospitals), cars off the road, some roads closed beside the ocean. I heard that the winds were higher than the hurricane Sandy but this was normal for Iceland (not sure if it's true but could be). In the news, there is a building downtown Reykjavik that's architectural design supports wind flows around it that literally pick people up when the winds are high! Poor design. I had biked to my 8:20am class only to find that I couldn't bike - the wind threw me around so had no balance and then my toque flew off, disappearing in a second. It was probably in the Atlantic Ocean seconds later lol. All of the bikes in the bike stand were laid over on the ground. Niall's bus driver took two children at a time from inside the school to the bus, because children weren't allowed outside at the school. Parents were told to pick up their children. Of course, we can't read the newspapers or listen to the news so that makes it interesting. Last, but not least, geomagnetic storm a few days ago made the aurora at high rating for dancing northern lights :) There's a cool site, for Iceland weather, that shows the rating for northern light activity, earthquake activity over the past 72 hrs, road conditions and more. It's common for Icelanders to wake up in the morning with their coffee and check out the www.vedur.is website to see the latest quake activity before starting the day. Often, class starts with looking at it in the morning :) Gotta love it!! :) Iceland vs. Ukraine EURO soccer game! Thurs 25 Okt: we went to the football stadium filled with 7000+ people, watched & cheered for Iceland's women's team at their Iceland vs. Ukraine Soccer (Football) EURO qualifying game. The announcer said it was record for attendance for the women's Soccer! The stadium can hold 10,000 people. Tickets were only 1000 krona (about $10 CDN) for me and free for the kids, couldn't believe how reasonable. The public bus was 1400 kr each way so the bus cost over double the ticket prices for the game. Niall & I had the icelandic flag on our cheek, Lex got an Iceland scarf, we had flags, popcorn & hot drinks :) as it was only 4 degrees C. The moon came up, the setting was very cool, no pun intended as it was chilly!!. Everyone kept cheering "Eesland, Eesland" is how it sounds in Icelandic (spelled Ísland). It was an important game for Iceland's women soccer team. They won 3-2! One of my dreams has been to take my children to Europe and watch a REAL football (aka) soccer game. Tonight, I checked this off my list !!! :) It was thrilling. Woohoo!!! My heart is full of gratitude for fulfulling & sharing dreams and ambitions. Soccer in Europe is like hockey in Canada, maybe people are even more passionate about their soccer here. We finished the evening by stopping at the hot dog stand by the Football Stadium for a famous Icelandic hot dog - they have special crunchy 'Cronions" which are crispy onions on the hot dogs & the mustard is darker. Whata fun evenin! Way to go, Iceland women's team! If there is a men's team game we'll go, too. (more pics in the gallery). The black layer ~10cm (above the little shovel) deep is tephra ash layer from the Katla volcano eruption in 1500! Under the redish shovel, is a darker layer showing the settlement in 874, when the first people arrived in Iceland (started tilling the land, had horses, sheep, animals that changed the soil). Further down, about 7000 years of lake sediments, even old tree stumps that old! (More pics in gallery). tephra ash dated 1500 (fingertips). Lots of field trips in university here! Very cool way to learn. Soils & Vegetation field trip told a story of Iceland's history. Each volcanic eruption is saved in the soil, to keep a record. It takes sooooo long to make soil, and how quick to deplete or change or destroy it. The black layer nearer the surface is tephra ash layer from year 1500 of the Katla volcano eruption. Further down, where the soil is darker is when the settlement in 874 in Iceland when the first people settled from Norway. soil changed, from tilling, animal grazing, trees cut down, erosion, etc. Further down in a layer a colleague found a tree stump 6000-8000 year old tree stump in what used to be a wetland from organic matter. Most students in this group were from all over Europe. Sept 27- Okt 7th, RIFF: Reykjavik International Film Festival. Before I forget, back a few wks ago, we decided to enjoy a little of this film festival especially since the university theatre was only three blocks away. I'd never been to one & it proved to be enjoyable for all of us. Films from Germany, France, Italy and Iceland. Some were in foreign languages, sometimes the film producer was present afterwards. Mobile Home, was a hilarious story of two young men in France who decide to buy a mobile home and live on the road, only to find it wasn't that simple. A German film called Lore, was based on a true story of five children (siblings) survival during the German-Nazi time (1947) when their Nazi parents were taken and no one coulld be trusted. Another, Kon-Tiki, the true story of a man named Thor Heyerdahl who in 1947 followed an ancient path 4300 miles across the Pacific on a fragile Kon-Tiki raft. Attacked by tidal waves, sharks and dangers, Thor and five buddies battled nature to prove they could ride a current on a raft that far! Beasts of the Southern Wild, during an ecological apocalypse a six-yr old girl and hometown are washed away by rain & try to restart their lives (a Sundance film winner). Italy: Leave It or Love It, included a tour of Italy by two people who wonder if they should stay or leave, as the present conditions in Italy for young people are not good. Got to see italian countryside & understand the dilemnas there. Startup Kids: the boys went to this film documentary focused on three entrepreneurs who started as kids putting together an online enterprise, their lessons, adventures, failures, perseverence & success. Overall, it was kinda a cool experience for us all - I may never go to another one but glad to what they're like - very cu the culture & creativity of it.. |
AuthorI'm the mom of my three beautiful children on this wonderful Iceland adventure. Archives
June 2013
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