Day 5

June 14, 2018

10:52 PM Icelandic time

Just got back from the thermal pools; a lot of us have loved trying to go every day. It was especially nice after a long night of dancing and karaoke last night! They are very refreshing and is a nice relaxing place for us to practice our Icelandic and be surrounded by locals speaking it too. Going to the thermal pools is the thing to do in Icelandic culture! I have been avoiding it, but today I joined them into jumping into the super ice cold pool, and then going back into the hot pool. It was REALLY cold, but it was actually quite nice once we got back into the heitur pottur (hot tub).

We started today with Icelandic lessons where we learned a little more about how to identify foods and describe them with color, size, etc. We also started learning the popular song that Icelanders sing during their soccer games to prepare for this Saturday‘s world cup futbol match. The song is called ‘‘Ég er kominn Heim.’‘ I really like our teacher Sigri, she is very enthusiastic about teaching languages, and makes it a lot of fun! Then we had a lecture about the western Icelandic emigration.

Later in the afternoon we went to the American embassy. It was a little awkward at first because they only invited the 4 American citizens in the Snorri program, and didn‘t invite the Canadian participants to go. All of us are invited to go to the Canadian embassy tomorrow, so it felt a bit unfair that the US embassy didn‘t invite our friends from Canada. Regardless, the meeting with the American ambassadors went well. We discussed the Snorri program, where we were all from, where we will be staying with our host families, and how significant and unique this program is to re-unite Western Icelanders to their familial roots.  

We then all met at the Nordic Association to have an Icelandic night with some other young adults that are in Iceland participating in a similar program but from Scandinavian countries. We all tried some traditional Icelandic food. There was smoked salmon, sheep head, sheep‘s head cheese, regular cheese, smoked lamb, many types of black licorice, Icelandic chips (snauks) skyr, vinaterta, and blood sausage. I really like skyr, which is a thick kind of yogurt. My favorite food that I tried was the vinaterta; which is a sweet layered pastry with prune jam. We also all tried the fermented shark. I was expecting it to be really gross, but it actually wasn‘t that bad. It tasted more like smoked fish but with a stronger fishy taste. I tried a little bit of everything besides the non-fish meat products, and I enjoyed trying new kinds of food!

It is getting a bit late (even though it never gets dark here in the summer) but I am going to bed. More updates coming tomorrow so stay tuned!