And now the updates get shorter (but with pictures!):
Friday 5/31/13
-Ran with Laura 5ish miles to the north along the river and the Selfoss golf course. 9:30am class.
-More issues with installing Matlab and getting it to work with my Mac.
-Because of this, class ran over a bit with the lecture and Christian explaining our first homework. Then we did some planning for our trip to Northern Iceland. I got very hungry and ran off to get food at home. On the way there, downpour occurs. The others followed soon after and caught the full rain storm. Turns out the weather in Iceland changes very rapidly. That was fun. Front and back of pants ended up completely different colors from being soaked, haha. Looking into more intense rain gear..
-Recovered from the intense soaking for a bit, then headed back to the university for a homework part, complete with Smurf candy, which I am now obsessed with.
-Finished around 11pm and we all went back to the apartment to watch Stick It and drink Viking beer, which is basically not beer since it's approximately the same alcohol percentage as non-alcoholic beer. :-P
Saturday 6/1/13
-Tried to go on 4.5 mile run around the perimeter of town with Laura. Failed. Ended up going 8.1 miles around the perimeter of Arborg after we missed a turn. Highlights: running on various media (sand, gravel), going by a farm called Björk, lots and lots of horses, and not being able to hitchhike successfully.. no one would pick up the two unthreatening girls! (Turns out Iceland is one of the safest/best countries to hitchhike in.. it's considered a legitimate way to get around!: http://hitchwiki.org/en/Iceland)
-Power went out in our apartment :-/
-Went with our TA Christian to Hveragerdi (a town about 15 minutes away) to get some supplies and check out this earthquake exhibit. They have a Cal Academy of Science-style shake house and an example kitchen post-EQ (dishes broken everywhere).. but the coolest part: There is a see-through section of the floor directly above a fault they discovered! You can literally see a gap in the ground, and they have a sensor down there for recording future earthquakes. It was amazing! I hope we can convince the instructor to take us down into the basement to check it out up close..
-Hot creek hike in Hveragerdi. Amazing views. Random steam coming out of bubbling pots of water/mud in the ground. Horses. Mossy ground. Very soggy shoes. A waterfall at the end! And then the hot creek, which we spent a very long time lying around in and making friends with some other travelers. And then it started raining and we hiked very quickly back to the car. Oh yeah, and spending too much time standing in the rotten egg-smelling steam to take pictures.
-Our first night out in Reykjavik! Went to see Hallgrimskirkja (really big church). Tried fermented shark (smells HORRIBLE).. our TA made us do this and fully documented the experience.
Then got a bit of a driving tour, and finally tried to check out the main street. Turns out things don't really happen there til after midnight.
We did find these things though:
We found an English pub though and got one expensive drink, before hurrying to the bus stop, missing the last bus of the night, and then chasing the bus with our TA driving like a champion. We managed to look up the bus schedule and pull ahead of the bus at its last stop before it got too far from Reykjavik (basically cutting it off), then hopping out and quickly jumping onto the bus, cracking up, and potentially making all the sleeping passengers hate us. But it was fun. And we arrived back in Selfoss around midnight. While it was still light out. I'll never get over that.
Sunday 6/2/13
-We realized at the hot creek that we failed at reading and only did the first two (of three) parts of the homework. Decided that we should be studious and take care of that rather than trying to conquer Mount Ingólfsfjall. We also wanted to get some laundry done before we leave on Tuesday for Húsavík.
Mount Ingólfsfjall
-Homework homework homework. Kind of fun. Deriving equations! :-D
-Met up with our friends from the hot creek at the Selfoss pool. Apparently every municipality (or every town?) in Iceland has a heated pool. And ours has a waterslide! Note: you go much faster on your belly. It's about $4 per visit, or you could get a 10-pass for cheaper, which we are considering. It would be like we actually live here!
-Then we went out for some Icelandic pizza at the local Domino's :-P The grocery stores close around 7 here and we didn't have enough left over to feed 6.
-And finally more internet-ing at the university. (This time we stayed until 11:25.. we couldn't remember when the doors became alarmed and decided to just see how things went, and I think we're all good, no alarms appeared to be going off!) Getting excited for when we finally have it at the hotel, although this has been a good break. It's making me realize how much time I waste online..
Friday 5/31/13
-Ran with Laura 5ish miles to the north along the river and the Selfoss golf course. 9:30am class.
-More issues with installing Matlab and getting it to work with my Mac.
-Because of this, class ran over a bit with the lecture and Christian explaining our first homework. Then we did some planning for our trip to Northern Iceland. I got very hungry and ran off to get food at home. On the way there, downpour occurs. The others followed soon after and caught the full rain storm. Turns out the weather in Iceland changes very rapidly. That was fun. Front and back of pants ended up completely different colors from being soaked, haha. Looking into more intense rain gear..
-Recovered from the intense soaking for a bit, then headed back to the university for a homework part, complete with Smurf candy, which I am now obsessed with.
-Finished around 11pm and we all went back to the apartment to watch Stick It and drink Viking beer, which is basically not beer since it's approximately the same alcohol percentage as non-alcoholic beer. :-P
Saturday 6/1/13
-Tried to go on 4.5 mile run around the perimeter of town with Laura. Failed. Ended up going 8.1 miles around the perimeter of Arborg after we missed a turn. Highlights: running on various media (sand, gravel), going by a farm called Björk, lots and lots of horses, and not being able to hitchhike successfully.. no one would pick up the two unthreatening girls! (Turns out Iceland is one of the safest/best countries to hitchhike in.. it's considered a legitimate way to get around!: http://hitchwiki.org/en/Iceland)
-Power went out in our apartment :-/
-Went with our TA Christian to Hveragerdi (a town about 15 minutes away) to get some supplies and check out this earthquake exhibit. They have a Cal Academy of Science-style shake house and an example kitchen post-EQ (dishes broken everywhere).. but the coolest part: There is a see-through section of the floor directly above a fault they discovered! You can literally see a gap in the ground, and they have a sensor down there for recording future earthquakes. It was amazing! I hope we can convince the instructor to take us down into the basement to check it out up close..
-Hot creek hike in Hveragerdi. Amazing views. Random steam coming out of bubbling pots of water/mud in the ground. Horses. Mossy ground. Very soggy shoes. A waterfall at the end! And then the hot creek, which we spent a very long time lying around in and making friends with some other travelers. And then it started raining and we hiked very quickly back to the car. Oh yeah, and spending too much time standing in the rotten egg-smelling steam to take pictures.
-Our first night out in Reykjavik! Went to see Hallgrimskirkja (really big church). Tried fermented shark (smells HORRIBLE).. our TA made us do this and fully documented the experience.
Then got a bit of a driving tour, and finally tried to check out the main street. Turns out things don't really happen there til after midnight.
We did find these things though:
We found an English pub though and got one expensive drink, before hurrying to the bus stop, missing the last bus of the night, and then chasing the bus with our TA driving like a champion. We managed to look up the bus schedule and pull ahead of the bus at its last stop before it got too far from Reykjavik (basically cutting it off), then hopping out and quickly jumping onto the bus, cracking up, and potentially making all the sleeping passengers hate us. But it was fun. And we arrived back in Selfoss around midnight. While it was still light out. I'll never get over that.
Sunday 6/2/13
-We realized at the hot creek that we failed at reading and only did the first two (of three) parts of the homework. Decided that we should be studious and take care of that rather than trying to conquer Mount Ingólfsfjall. We also wanted to get some laundry done before we leave on Tuesday for Húsavík.
Mount Ingólfsfjall
-Homework homework homework. Kind of fun. Deriving equations! :-D
-Met up with our friends from the hot creek at the Selfoss pool. Apparently every municipality (or every town?) in Iceland has a heated pool. And ours has a waterslide! Note: you go much faster on your belly. It's about $4 per visit, or you could get a 10-pass for cheaper, which we are considering. It would be like we actually live here!
-Then we went out for some Icelandic pizza at the local Domino's :-P The grocery stores close around 7 here and we didn't have enough left over to feed 6.
-And finally more internet-ing at the university. (This time we stayed until 11:25.. we couldn't remember when the doors became alarmed and decided to just see how things went, and I think we're all good, no alarms appeared to be going off!) Getting excited for when we finally have it at the hotel, although this has been a good break. It's making me realize how much time I waste online..
No comments:
Post a Comment