B5

This place is just neato! It used to be a bank and now you can eat there or go for drinks in the evening. They have tables in the old vaults. It is just cool.
At least it looks that way, I have not had anything from there, and I guess that is the real test.

Short Signs

These stupid signs are so low that I am always , well at least I have a few times, running into them.

I have bruised myself!

I know it is a little hard to tell in the pictures, but these things are barely off the ground. I wonder how the cars even see them.

At the park

It has been so great outside. Nice, hot, everyone is getting some sun.

These have been the first days of summer I have seen since I left Canada over a year ago.

Gísli said this has, so far, been the best summer in 5 years.

Exciting.

Too hot

not for me, but the fish.

They got a little too much sunlight today and the tank got to over 35 degrees, one fish is dead.

A few others look a little rough.

We cooled the water down but I think it might be a while before we see if it is safe again.

I am a little sad about this because I had a rabbit die from sun stroke when I was a kid.

The Bad Mother's Handbook

I have to say, trying to find a good book in English at the library is a little crazy. They are unorganized (there is the English shelves and that is it for organization) and I suspect the collection is built on donations, so you see a lot of the same thing. There is a lot of mystery, Steven King, V.C. Andrews, you know, stuff like that.

This is not my favorite kind of reading.

But last week I found this: The Bad Mothers Handbook. It was great and very perspective. (Even if the ending was a little unrealistic)

Timbits used in drive-by harassment: RCMP

Now that is a news headline only a Canadian would understand. It is a kinda funny story too.

Looks like a rock

Where do the weeds end and the flowers start?

(I thought my back yard had some problems)

The cute couple

Window Art

Someone smuggled a crayon into the car and decided to decorate the window a bit for us. We suspect it was Stefán, but he denies it.

Camping Downtown

For the real budget traveler, you can camp in the city. Then if you go out at night, you can just stumble back to your tent.

Grain Elevators

These things are all over the prairies. Seeing them reminds me so much of the drive out to my dads house. Hours and hours of flat land and grain elevators for scenery. Thanks for the pictures Tammy.

The Worlds Biggest Horse Bone

I wonder if it came from a real horse? Thanks Tammy.

Beautiful

I think it is one of those things that most people take for granted. Thanks Tammy for the picture.

Biggar, Saskatchewan

I thought of Mahwish.

(and if you didn't know, Biggar is in Saskatchewan, Canada)

Thanks to Tammy for the picture

I found it

I always knew Kristina had a blog, but I could never find it. I thought I did once, but no one ever wrote in it.

Anyways, this is the real one http://robertsdottir.blogspot.com/

Kristina is Davið's sister.

Stefan can clean up his toys

And here is the proof.

I will remind him of this every time he says he can't.

I will also keep a copy for any possible future wife, in case there is any problems.

Some Extended Family

We went today for our semi annual meeting at Davið's uncles house. About twice a year everyone gets together, or at least more people then usual, and we eat lots of cakes.

Horses

These are some Icelandic horses. Icelandic horses are some special breed that they are very protective of, so you are not allowed to bring other kinds of horses to Iceland.

They are tiny, so when you see people riding them it looks like people are trying to ride donkeys around.

I learned the hard way how proud Icelanders are of these horses. When Davið first showed me pictures I burst out laughing and said they looked like donkeys. He got really mad, started defending the horses, then would not talk to me for the rest of the day.

We saw some today and fed them some bread. I guess Icelandic horses like bread, they were even fighting over it and kicking each other. It was kinda like how ducks, or seagulls fight over bread or garbage.

My lawn

It needs help, much more then I can ever offer it. But today I tried.

The boys and I worked on it for 2 hours today. We cut the grass, even in the corners and pulled weeds. Racked up and bagged a bunch of garbage.... if you were walking by, and did not look to closely you might be deceived into thinking this is real grass.

It is still juts miss, weeds and some dirt patch's, but it is all even now. I would be embarrassed, but when I look over the fences in my neighborhood I see that my yard is typical, maybe even better then some. So there is no use in complaining.

All this reminds me of the yard in Edmonton. We did not put a lot of effort into it, but it still looked better then this. That is not the point here, the point is this:

When the dandelions started to take over and the place would start to look like a jungle we would get threats from the city. We could fix the problems by such and such date, or they would take care of it for us at a large expense. This happened twice.

Once there was even some threatening letters from thew city about a pile of branches we ha in the back yard. Inga had been trimming the hedges and created a large pile of branches. Lucky for us, the day before the deadline to clean them up the power company was trimming branches 2 houses down. David dragged our branches over there and they shredded them for us.

In Edmonton people are not allowed to let there back yards get out of control. You are expected to keep the weeds in check and not have piles of things like branches hanging around. In Iceland no one expects anything from you when it comes to yard care. You do not have to rake your leaves, shovel your sidewalks, pull the weeds or even cut the grass. So most people, at least in my area, do not do any of these things.

Stefán's check up

I took Stefan to the doctors yesterday. He was not sick but there were things we wanted looked at while I had time to take him in.

1. That stupid wart on his hand. We have taken him in and had it frozen a few times and spent months putting the medicine on, but it always comes back. The doctor said not to worry, he promised that Stefan would not have it when he got married. So I guess if given enough time the thing would go away on its own.

2. The cyst on his lip. It does not bother him but Davið wanted it taken off. The doctor said one day it would have to be but it would be best to wait as long as possible. He is so young that the little scar he would get now would only grow as he did. Then he would have a big scar as an adult. So that was left alone.

3. The snoring. Stefan snores like a 300 pound old man. It is crazy loud and he even stops breathing from time to time. The doctor perscibed (I can not spell that one and spell check does not seem to know what I am talking about)some spray steroids to shrink his adenoids. We hope this works well, other wise he might need them removed.

We tried the medication last night and he slept like a baby for the first time in I can not remember how long. He even woke up in a great mood, probably because he got more rest.

Last but not least I was put on antidepressants, so lets hope those help. We are starting for four months, then the doctor will see how I am feeling. This culture shock is a real beast.

A mid-twenties crisis

I am 26 now, so maybe I should say late twenties.

I have started doing things I could rarely be bothered to do before. I learned to pluck my own eyebrows, as you can see my technique needs work.

Thanks to my new lack of eyebrows, I started to color in what was left. This is a first for me too, although I have to admit I had thought about it in the past.

I Naired my arms, like anyone sees the stupid things. I always wear a sweater, it is not hot enough to be walking around bare armed. But underneath my sleeves are some new hairless arms.
I decided to get a little more serious about the tanning. I got a million freckles and a burn instead. (The tanning beds here do not have any time settings, everyone goes for 16 minutes at a time, hence the burn, in Canada I usually went for 8 or 9)

I have started eating boiled eggs everyday, they are OK.

I noticed my big toe on my left foot had 3 hairs on it. None of my other toes did, it was strange. I took care of it.

I have colored my hair twice in the last month. I am still not sure if I am happy with it.

I know I am doing all the wrong things, these things do not make people happy. I know that.

But I am in a rut.

Moscow? Expensive?

Well, I am not saying it is not but when I was looking at this article things did not look so expensive.

A C.D. for less then 25.00, that is not bad at all.

I see London is expensive, New York, but when you live in Iceland you go to these places to stock up on reasonably cheap stuff.

I do not think they included Reykjvík in this study.

Marshmallows

Sure they look a little strange, but they taste almost the same.

Thanks to EuroShopper, we had marshmallows for camping.

They don't seem to catch fire as easy as the other ones either.

A broken washer

Thursday night I went to do laundry so we would have some clean clothing when we came back from our trip. I put the clothing in the washer and when I went to get them out, two and a half hours later, there was water everywhere.

I tried to fix it, Davið tried to fix it, the stupid spin cycle is broken.

I talked to the guy across the hall and he said the same thing happened to him. So everyone else seems to know the thing is broken. I mentioned that some one should call a repairman but since I was leaving right away for camping I could not.

I came back from camping today to see that no one has fixed the machine or called someone else to do it.

Everyone kept trying to do laundry all weekend, so it is no secret it is the thing is broken, so why didn't anyone do anything about it?

I guess that is the problem when the washer belongs to everyone, everyone assumes that someone else will take care of it.

Tomorrow I will call someone, because now I have no clean clothing.

On Vatnajökull

Camping on a Glacier (Vatnajökull)

and it was cold, very, very cold. This is the 2nd largest glacier in the world, at least that is what Davið says. It was crazy cold to camp next too.

It was a four hour drive away, and we drove through some very nice weather.

After the first night of freezing we decide to spend the second night at a camp site near some hot springs. It sounded great.

We spent all afternoon looking for the place. We followed a gravel road that was marked on the map until the road stopped for a river. On the other side of the river the road continued. So we turned around.

You would think they would have put up a sign warning people about this.

After a few more hours of driving, through the rain, we gave up and got a hotel room in Vík, a town in southern Iceland.