Day 23

July 2, 2018

11:45 PM Iceland Time

Woke up this morning and had my skyr, muesli and coffee as usual. (SO good!) Then I headed over to the pool down the street before I headed into work. The pools are where everyone goes to chat. In other countries everyone goes to the bar or pub to talk, but in Iceland you go to the thermal pools. The pool near Þora’s house is more in the suburbs, so there aren’t really many tourists that go unlike the Reykjavik ones. I go in and absorb all the Icelandic everyone is speaking. Nobody really talks to me directly, and I am too shy as of yet to spark up conversation in my broken Icelandic. But it’s a great way to start the day!

At work they had me review their English version of their website to help them with some of the grammar and wording. They said they have never had an native English speaker review their verbiage, so they are happy that I will be helping them with that. After a few hours I went and had lunch, and then met with the youth from Endur Hugsa and helped them prepare a bit for their event on Wednesday. We sawed and hammered recycled wood together to make some planter boxes to go inside their neat greenhouse that is entirely made out of recycled materials. We discussed the event coming up, and I will just be documenting it by taking photographs and helping with their social media. I won’t be doing the art therapy activity until Saturday for the family event.

It got a bit late, so I headed home. I worked on some drawing, and then Þora’s daughter came by. She is really nice, and it was great to talk to her and get to know her a bit. We went out for dinner to a nice vegan place called Glo; I guess she has recently tried to be more vegan as well! I told her a bit about my family and mentioned that my brother Jared was studying marine biology, and turns out her dad is a marine biologist, and even published a huge book on Icelandic fish! We also looked through the genealogy book I was given by Islendingabok. It is really neat how interested everyone here is in genealogy. I have never met people (other than my family) who are so fascinated with genealogy. They really were excited to see how we are related to Bjork and other famous Icelanders. We chatted for bit, and then her boyfriend came and picked her up. After she left, Þora and I watched some British crime dramas together.

Tomorrow morning I am going to go to the pool with Þora, and then head to work, so stay tuned!