Þúsund Ár Sem Segja Allt Sem Er [A Thousand Years Which Tell the Whole Story]

This is going to be the sort of miles-long, rambly entry that I try my hardest to avoid, but I can't help but write down everything about Iceland after finally getting to go after about ten years.

DAY 1
So this wasn't going to be a real "day" in Iceland to save money. I seriously considered getting an earlier flight out on Sunday so I'd have more of the day to do things, but I thought I should be cheap for once. So, I get on the bus from UEA at 1PM, arrive at Heathrow around 5:30PM (and have a strange encounter with the bus driver...he helped me take my suitcase off the bus and I guess he didn't hear me thank him or something, because I began to walk away and he screamed after me and grabbed me by the arm and said "a thank-you would have been nice." Um, what?). My flight was scheduled to leave at 8:30 PM, meaning I got to the airport just in time for the recommended three-hour-early rule. However, I got to the IcelandAir desk and there was a long, unmoving queue, and several airport employees were standing around the desk on phones, shaking their heads and looking stern. I had no idea what was going on, but I stuck it out for an hour and the line started moving at 6:30. I then wasted time in Terminal 1, for what I thought would only be an hour and a half. I distinctly remember Terminal 1 from the time I had to kill time there on my way to Holland, and I recall that there are very few low-key dining options in that terminal: it's either Pret or Caffe Nero, both serving basically the same things. I ate a sandwich and waited for my gate to be announced...but it never was. The board just kept saying "PLEASE WAIT," and I was getting concerned. I so happened to look at my phone sometime in there, and I saw I had FIVE missed calls from home, so I called back and learned that ICELAND HAD JUST HAD A VOLCANO. This explained everything. Thing I learned #1: I have the worst timing in the world. This is more of an affirmation than a discovery, but it's true: things I really look forward to and care about, often Coldplay concerts, inevitably have schedule clashes with other things: other concerts, flights, deaths in the family, class, running for prefect in high school, etc etc. So it was only fitting that Iceland had to literally explode on the very same day I needed to fly there. Based on talking to my mom and quick checks of the internet at the terminal, this particular volcano was only 100 km outside of Reykjavik, hadn't erupted in over 500 years, and the drama might not have been over: more violent, closer volcanoes could be triggered, as could earthquakes, landslides, power outages, and falling ash. Rather than freaking me out, it actually made me rather excited in a sort of weird way. Of course, I didn't want to get caught in any chain of natural disasters, but at the same time, it was so Icelandic and so foreign and exciting to have a flight delayed by hot molten lava and huge smoke plumes creating a no-fly-zone rather than just the usual excuses of technical errors or people taking too long to board or too much traffic on the runway.

We eventually took off around 12:30AM. I was thoroughly impressed with IcelandAir: I don't have much airline experience, but I wasn't expecting my own TV and entertainment for a two-hour flight (one that WORKS, no less, unlike Virgin Atlantic), and I had more legroom than I've ever had on an economy class flight. I had seen all the movies on offer, so I watched (500) Days of Summer for the millionth time, which I love, and listened to some music. They had a channel devoted to Icelandic artists, but I was surprised to find that neither Björk or Sigur Rós were on that channel. I listened to some Amiina and some Múm instead, which was fine. They also happened to have Coldplay's entire catalog, which I couldn't resist. On the other side of the plane, apparently, you could see the smoke plumes and orange glow from the volcano, but I couldn't see anything from where I was sitting. We landed in Keflavík around 3AM. My immediate impression, before I even got outside, was that everything smelled like sulfur. I thought that this might have been because of the volcano, but apparently this is a normal occurrence: the country always smells like sulfur. As does the tap water, even though it's safe to drink country-wide. This is more than I can say about England: they always warn us not to drink tap water out of bathroom sinks, but kitchen sinks are fine. I think they're being overdramatic, since I've been drinking water out of my bathroom all year and I haven't died yet, but I digress. Looking out of the airport windows and on the bus ride to my hotel, there was something that seemed very wrong to me about the landscape. It wasn't just that it was almost entirely flat and devoid of any sort of civilization: it was that there weren't any trees. At all. Coming from New England, I'm very used to dense clusters of trees and vegetation. England has significantly less trees than I'm used to in most places, but there are still some dotted around. But in Iceland, there are precious few trees anywhere, and it was somehow very disconcerting.

I and basically everyone else on my flight took the FlyBus directly to the doors of our respective hotels, about an hour away. Mine was IcelandAir's Hotel Loftleiðir, which is on the grounds of the Reykjavík Airport about 1 km from the city center. Reykjavík airport, unlike Keflavík, is for domestic flights only, meaning that it basically offers flights between Reykjavík and Akureyri, the only other true city in Iceland, and I think the only other airport that is anything more than an open field and an aluminum hangar. About 6 other people on the bus also checked into my hotel, which made everything run smoother, I think, when a bus of people arrived at a hotel at 4AM. I asked the hotel staff about the volcano and the potential repercussions: the threat of earthquake seemed very real online, and I planned to put my shoes and jacket and passport right by the door and scope out emergency exits just in case. I also asked about falling ash, which also was almost guaranteed, but the hotel staff just kind of shrugged and acted like this sort of thing happens all the time. I ran out of money on my phone minutes after arriving in Iceland and discovered later that I was incapable of topping up outside of the UK, which was incredibly aggravating. However, despite fighting with the TalkMobile website in the hotel at 4AM, all I did was shower and fall into bed around 5AM.

DAY 2
I made myself get up at 9AM so I could actually do things before I had to leave for the Blue Lagoon at 1:30. Upon checking in, my radiator in my room had been left on and it was boiling hot (perhaps it being green energy makes them less worried about waste--except not, because instead of lightswitches, there's one main circuit in each room that you flick on and off for lights, so you either have all the lights and TV etc on, or there's no electricity in your room at all, all in the mind of conservation), so I stupidly left the window open and fell asleep. Let's just say the temperature in my room was below freezing when I woke up. However, upon opening my curtains, I discovered that my room had a view of Hallgrímskirkja, the most famous landmark in Reykjavík, so that made me want to wake up.

I went downstairs to the hotel restaurant to negotiate getting breakfast: I didn't prepay for it, and I wondered if I could just eat it and then get it added to my bill. Thing I Learned #2: I'm incredibly awkward in service encounters when going through them alone. It's actually embarrassing. I guess it's because I don't like people to make a fuss over me and I don't like to put people out and I don't like to be served or treated specially, but honestly, the hotel staff must have thought I was insane on more than one occasion. I asked them if I could please add breakfast to my bill because I didn't really have anywhere else to eat and I got in at 4AM last night and I'm sorry if it messes them up, if it doesn't work could you tell me where to walk to the nearest grocery store to get some cereal, but they just kind of looked at me and were like "uh, of course you can have breakfast." I don't know why I thought it would be a big deal, perhaps it was the lack of sleep, but whatever, I got some toast and eggs and bacon and potatoes and cereal. I stayed away from the cured herring, as well as the unpurified cod liver oil, which is traditional to have a shot of with breakfast in Iceland. Eesh.

I used the hotel ATM to get out some cash. Iceland is on the Icelandic Kronar, or ISK. As of this weekend, $1 is about ISK 126, which is very hard to convert in your head, so I used the calculator on my phone a lot. Thing I Learned #3: I can't count (also an affirmation). I planned to get about $70-80 out of the ATM to last me for a little while. According to my calculations, that was somewhere in the neighborhood of about ISK 8000. However, I think I pressed ISK 80,000 by accident, which amounted to over $600 withdrawn. All the zeros made me dizzy! I couldn't help it! I didn't realize I was carrying around a particularly large sum of money until the following day.

After breakfast, I hiked up to Perlan, which was directly across the street on the top of a hill. Perlan, or "the Pearl," is a community center/tourist center made out of five old hot water tanks. Rather than rip them down, they put a glass dome on the top and converted them into meeting spaces, a museum, a movie theater, a cafeteria, and a five-star restaurant, as well as a lookout point over the city. It was probably about 30 degrees at the bottom of the hill, but at the top, especially at the top of Perlan itself, it was probably about 10 degrees with windchill. I was loving it, though I popped in and out of inside often. I bought postcards and touristy things in the giftshop there and had an amazing Belgian waffle for lunch. My souvenirs in total, which was about 10 postcards and some other things, came to about ISK 3000, or about $20. However, I handed the girl at the register ISK 30,000 and she cracked up and helped me count out the right amount. Honestly, what is my problem with zeros?!

Thing I Learned #4: Sigur Rós writes their music about Iceland. I've heard this over and over again in documentaries and articles, how they somehow embody the country in their songs, and I always figured it was true, but I didn't really get how it was true til I listened to them while taking pictures of Reykjavík and the surrounding mountains from high up on Perlan. There is something about listening to "Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur" and "Hljómalind" and "Hafsól" and all the others while staring at snow-capped mountains and brightly-colored houses in Iceland itself. I can't explain it, especially to people who aren't aware of them or are fans of theirs to begin with, but it's like a religious experience or something, listening to them in Iceland.

I went back down the hill back to my hotel, where I met a bus at 1:30 to take me and several other hotel guests to the Blue Lagoon, which is about a 45 minute drive away outside of the city. Transport and admission to the Blue Lagoon was included in my travel package with IcelandAir, which was all very nice of them. I attempted to take pictures out of the bus window on the journey, but they always turn out shaky at best. It was interesting to see how quickly Reykjavík melted from small city to suburbs to complete and utter emptiness. One minute, you're surrounded by apartment buildings and small strip-malls with pizza shops and video stores, and then you're suddenly in the middle of lifeless, brown lava fields with nothing but volcanic rock for miles, and I mean nothing. It's a sort of wilderness I've never seen or been in before. It's like being on the surface of the moon. It was disconcerting to be in the middle of all that nothing, but it was also fascinating. On one side of you is the Arctic Ocean, and on the other side is miles and miles of lifeless nothingness. It's brilliant.

Eventually you come upon this smoking power plant of some sort, just outside of Grindavík, and you get your first glimpse of electric blue water, which is actually more exciting than I thought it would be. We were dropped off in the middle of a parking lot in the middle of all this nothingness, and we walked up a path that leads you to the Blue Lagoon complex. Before going in and redeeming my prepaid ticket, I loitered outside at the part of the Lagoon that's not for swimming and took tons of pictures. The water really is a crazy color, with some neon-green algae around the edges, surrounded by black volcanic rocks and white, hardened silica. It's amazing. I think you can walk all the way to the power plant in the distance, but I thought that would be a bit awkward, so I went inside after about 15 minutes of freezing my hands.

The Blue Lagoon complex is pretty small for all the tourists it gets, but it does the job. It seems to emit this vibe of relaxation--it is fundamentally a spa, after all. I poked around the gift shop a bit, debating whether or not to buy a lopapeysa sweater here or not, before redeeming my ticket and going into the lagoon. Thing I Learned #5: This country is insanely expensive. At the front desk, they give you a blue rubber bracelet with a hunk of white plastic in it, which houses a computer chip. This bracelet is your life, so God help you if you lose it in the lagoon (which I bet happens all the time). You scan it once to get past the front desk, you scan it to open and close the locker for your stuff in the changing room, you scan it to charge food and drinks to your account at the bar, you scan it to charge massages and spa treatments to your account, and you scan it to rent towels, bathrobes, and the like. It's actually an ingenious system, so you don't have to worry about getting your wallet soggy and infused with salty silica or losing keys to your locker. I rented a towel, and in retrospect, probably should have rented a bathrobe too. You then enter the cleanest locker room I've ever seen to change and stash your stuff. Apparently the Europeans/Scandinavians are less concerned with baring skin in public, but there are a few changing rooms with lockable doors for the more prudish Americans. You're then instructed to shower for at least five minutes with soap and shampoo without your bathing suit before even going outside. I like this rule. I like how clean and germaphobic the Icelanders are. I don't like that the showers don't have doors. So, I bent the rules and showered with my bathing suit on (I wasn't the only one), and then went out into the freezing air wet and wearing next to nothing. Now, I'm not whiney about the cold--I don't think I feel cold like a normal person does. But the few seconds between leaving the heated building, hanging up your towel on a free peg , and climbing the uneven stairs into the 104-degree water were perhaps the most painful of my life. My feet have never been that cold. I think the water in my hair was starting to freeze. Throughout my time in the water, when a new person would come out of the changing room and into the lagoon area, I would often hear a scream of a sort of freezing anguish.

The water, though, was lovely. 104 degrees F sounds almost unbearably hot, to me, at least, but in that climate, it's the perfect temperature. I didn't leave the water for two full hours, save for a quick dart back to my locker to get my camera, which brought on another pain wave from the cold. It's true that the entire place reeks of sulfur and the water is worringly cloudy and it's overpoweringly salty, but you kind of forget about that. I haven't had as much fun swimming in a long time as I did bopping around the Blue Lagoon, even though I was the only one there alone and got some curious looks. My only complaint is that the bottom is very uneven (it is natural, after all), and you can bump your toes and legs quite nastily on protruding bits of volcanic rock and hardened silica. I was convinced I was going to have at least two blackened toenails, but it turned out alright in the end.

There are these wooden boxes full of white silica mud located all around the edge of the lagoon. You're supposed to use the provided spoon to scrape out a blob and rub it all over your face. At first I was skeptical, since everyone else in the lagoon looked like total morons and I have sensitive skin anyway, but I covered my face in the end. You're supposed to leave it on for 5-10 minutes until it's hard and then rinse it off in the lagoon, which leaves a squishy layer of used silica on the bottom of the pool, which is gross to step in (but hey, bacteria can't live in the water, so it's not so bad). I had difficulties washing it off for some reason, and upon going back inside at the end, realized I had crumbs of white gunk scattered all over my face. But I'd say that the silica mud is beneficial: it cleanses and dries out your skin, which is exactly what I need. I would have bought a bottle of it for myself in the gift shop if it wasn't about $60.

You're required to shower again after getting out of the lagoon, and if people skimp on the shower before getting in, I don't think anyone wants to skip the shower at the end: your skin and hair feels salty and fuzzy all over. So I had my second shower of the day and changed back into my clothes. They provide hair dryers and vanity space, which is very nice of them. I then perused the gift shop again, buying some silly souvenirs and telling myself there would be a wider range of sweaters for sale in the city. By the time I got back to the hotel on the bus around 7, I was shattered. And so began my awkward service encounter number 2: I decided to order room service for dinner rather than look like a zombie in public down in the restaurant. However, I discovered that the phone in my room didn't work, so I had to go downstairs to order room service, which kind of defeats the purpose of room service. Again, I think it had something to do with the lack of sleep, but I felt like a supreme idiot standing at the door of the restaurant and ordering room service. The waiter seemed to think it was strange I was ordering room service in person as well, so I just caved and sat in the restaurant and ate my food. The lady next to me, also American, was eating a reindeer burger, which I found both disturbing and funny in my addled state, so I just wolfed down my food and got out of there before I looked any more ridiculous than I must have already looked on three hours of sleep, but not before I had one more awkward service encounter: the waiter had to help me count my money, because apparently I still hadn't gotten the hang of all the zeros. I took a third shower and crashed with the BBC, the only English channel, still on the TV.

DAY 3
I woke up early again, but since I'd gone to bed around 8:30, this wasn't a problem for once. I had breakfast in the restaurant again, this time mercifully without any awkwardness, and left for the Reykjavík city center on a complimentary hotel shuttle bus. The drive was only about three minutes, but to walk it would have both taken awhile and caused significant safety risks: you have to cross numerous highways to get there. I was dropped off right at the edge of the Tjörnin, or Pond, where the Reykjavík city hall and the Alþing, the Parliament, are. It was turning out to be a beautiful day, with sun and blue sky, which I took as a good sign for my Northern Lights tour that night, but it was also much colder than it had been the day before, probably about 25 degrees. I should have worn my new marshmellow jacket and an extra pair of pants, but I can deal with cold pretty well, so it wasn't a problem.

I wandered all day, which is precisely what I had been looking forward to most about the trip. I love nothing more than roaming city streets by myself in other countries. On every day off we had in London, that's what I would do, and I felt I learned the most on the days I was free to explore. The same held true with this trip. So I started out at the Tjörnin and wandered from there, stopping in various shops along the way to get more souvenirs, including a pocket Icelandic to English dictionary, which I've been wanting for ages. Thing I Learned #6: It sounds ridiculous to say, but I have a better working knowledge of Icelandic than I have of most other languages. However, when I say this, it means that I can look at a block of text and get the overall gist of what it's saying based on a few key words. I still can do this with Spanish the best, even though I think I lost most of my ability to speak it back to anyone. Dutch is probably the next best after that, then maybe Arabic if you give me enough time to sound out the letters, and then probably Icelandic. Of course, all of my knowledge of Icelandic comes from Sigur Rós lyrics and a few random online translations I've done, in addition to an actual interest in learning the obscure language, which is more than I can say for most other languages. I do plan to start an online course in Icelandic this summer, though, not because I think it will be in any way useful to me, but because I'm actually interested in it. I wandered up Laugavegur, the main shopping street, before I realized that it was much too expensive for me. Iceland actually has a vibrant fashion scene (who knew?), and all the designer stores are on that strip, in addition to most of the pubs, which are dead and closed during the day, but are packed to the gills all night, every night. Did you know that beer was illegal in Iceland until 1989? Iceland had a phase of prohibition in the 1920s, much like the US did, and they only lifted the ban in the 30s because in order to trade fish with Spain, Spain demanded that Iceland receive Spanish wine. However, beer still remained illegal, since it was cheaper than liquor or wine, and the lawmakers thought that this would lead to more drunken loutishness. The law remained in effect until March 1, 1989, and for the past 21 years, March 1 is "Beer Day" in Iceland, and beer is the drink of choice year-round. Going out at night is a serious business, and apparently pubs stay open as late as 4 in the morning.

I went down to the modern Viking boat sculpture in the harbor, which I had been looking forward to seeing, but unfortunately the wind was so strong that I honestly believed I would be blown into the water and gone forever, so I only stayed a few minutes. Honestly, the regular temperature in that country isn't so bad in March, but it's the crazy wind that gets you. I couldn't keep myself upright down by the water. I took a couple pictures and then walked back up to the center of town and directly to Hallgrímskirkja. Hallgrímskirkja is impossible to miss, as it's about the only building in the city taller than about 8 stories. After sitting in the church itself a bit, which is beautiful in its simplicity, I took the elevator to the top of the tower for ISK 400. What I found interesting was that outside of the ticket office, there was as sign saying that if no one was there to buy a ticket from, just put the ISK 400 in a bin outside the door before going up the elevator (where no one checks your ticket, by the way). There were actually coins in the bin, too. Thing I Learned #7: Iceland seems to be some freakish utopian society: everything is spotlessly clean, everyone is friendly and speaks English, crime is virtually nonexistent, healthcare and education are free, all of the heating and electricity is from green sources, the nation is wealthy (or, it was before the banks failed in 2008) and ridiculously technologically advanced, gender equality and LGBT rights are some of the best in the world, the society is virtually classless because it's so small, and to top it off, people willingly pay money for things they'd never be caught cheating in the first place. I love this country.

Hallgrímskirkja offers probably the best view of the city, and I highly recommend it. However, keep an eye on your watch while you're up there: the bells chime right above the observation deck every fifteen minutes, and it was so loud that I jumped out of my skin when the clock struck noon. I figured that was my signal to leave, so I went down to explore the other shopping street, Skólavörðustígur. I ended up spending an inordinate amount of time inside the Handknitting Association of Iceland shop, which has an entire room filled top to bottom with lopapeysa, or traditional Icelandic sweaters. I have intended to buy one for years, even though they're obscenely expensive, but if I couldn't have my very own Icelandic grandma knit me one, I was going to pay someone else's Icelandic grandma to knit me one, which is what the Handknitting Association is all about. I ended up with a black, zippered cardigan with grey and white designs on the traditional ringed collar. It is perhaps my new favorite item of clothing of all time.

I wandered around for several more hours, going in and out of shops, getting my tax forms refunded (foreigners don't have to pay the very high Icelandic sales tax, so with your receipts, you get a form that you fill out and bring to a tourist office and they give you cash back in whatever currency you'd like), and finding lunch. I noticed that most mid-range Icelandic restaurants serve American style food, which is fine with me, as I wasn't looking to try charred sheep's head or whale steak. Actually, the country (or perhaps just the city) was distinctly more American than it was British. I can't exactly describe what I mean by that, but after living in both countries, I feel like most first-world countries err on the side of being more British or more American, with Canada and Australia being about 50/50. Iceland, despite its close proximity to Great Britain, definitely felt more American to me, which was actually quite welcome.

After a very late lunch, I then made my way to the National Museum of Iceland, which I had picked out of a long list of museums to make time for. I'm glad I picked that one: I feel like I now have the most complete knowledge of Icelandic history over almost any other country (Things I Learned #8-Infinity). Well, that's probably not true, given the number of times I've been forced to take American history, but my point is that the museum was well done, and because Iceland has been home to so few people in its 1000 years of existence, the timeline of its history as we know it isn't hard to get a handle on. Basically, the first settlers came in the late 900s, from both Britain and Scandinavia, and lived lives in small clans until the arrival of Christianity a few years later, which they accepted without much complaint, probably because people were still allowed to practice their pagan beliefs without persecution (how often can you say that about religious freedom in history?). The Alþing (Parliament) was created around 1000 as well, and Iceland never had a king or anything other than a representative government except when it fell under the rule of Norway and later Denmark, which they only fully shook off after World War II. In all that meantime, it was a quiet nation of fishermen and sheep farmers, periodically ravaged by natural disasters and plagues that reduced the population and didn't entice many more immigrants. At the start of the 20th century, Iceland was one of Europe's poorest and most impoverished nations, but it emerged into the 21st century as one of the wealthiest, happiest, and developed due to the start of international trade. It's fascinating to me, especially because Iceland seems to have an opposite history from everyone else: at times of great development and prosperity in the rest of the world, such as during the Industrial Revolution, Iceland was being hard-hit by another devastating volcano or lack of fish or plague, well into the 20th century, and had little idea about what the rest of the world was doing. History, even between America and various European countries, always tends to get a bit samey and monotonous in my mind, but Iceland definitely doesn't follow suit.

After spending about 2.5 hours in the museum, I stayed inside the Kaffitar (Starbucks-like chain of coffeeshops) that was in the museum until it closed at 5, and then I wandered around the city until I was picked back up by the hotel shuttle at 6. I was incredibly tired again, but I had to wait until about 7:30 to hear whether or not my Northern Lights tour would be on. It turns out it was cancelled due to overcast weather, which had crept up on the city during the day (Iceland is a lot like England in that it can be sunny and clear one second, and then pouring rain and grey another). I was extremely disappointed, but I'd also expected this to happen. Someday I'll get to see the Northern Lights. Instead, that night I just watched the BBC and fell asleep early.

Thing I Learned # Whatever-Number-I'm-On-Now: I'm usually right about the things I love, and I love them fiercely. I've been interested, borderline obsessed, with Iceland for about ten years now. Somehow I knew I loved it, even without going there, and I knew going there would make me love it even more. I was certianly right: I'm seriously contemplating saving up to go back sometime this calendar year, hopefully over New Year's (since Reykjavik is world-famous for its New Year's Eve fireworks) and then I can just fly back to England from there. I tend to think, though, that once I get to see something I'm in love with, I'll get it out of my system for a while, and I'm always wrong. I only love Coldplay more after seeing them in concert, even though I've seen them ten times now, I didn't "get England out of my system" by visiting for a few days last year, and even though I'm a bit desensitized to it now, I'm never going to stop loving it as my second country, and I'm always going to dream of London. And the same goes with Iceland: I should have known that even a breif trip there would have made me about ten levels more obsessed with it, not leaving feeling like I'd gotten my fill for a while. And it's true: all I can think about is all the things I didn't get to see. I've made at least three lists of things to do the next time I go, which, like I say, I will ensure is sooner rather than later. I also sent a long, rambling, over-informative email to two of my friends here in Norwich on the Dickinson science half of the year abroad program, since the science kids are all going to Iceland for three days on April 13. It was fun to actually be able to recommend things to them based on personal experience, but it also pains me that I don't get to go, even though I was just there. I can't stop listening to Sigur Rós and Jónsi's new leaked album, and I'm counting the days til April 5 when the accompanying film comes out. I'm hoping the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, the one that clouded my arrival, is still erupting in December, since they're now running tours right up to it for tourists and locals alike. And I will not stop thinking of Iceland until I get to go again: I'm addicted, I'm obsessed, I'm in love.

Today I turned in my papers on the Ku Klux Klan's love of parades and lynchings in the South during the 1930s (interesting how two of my papers were on very similar subject matters). To turn in papers at UEA, you have to fill in this carbon-copy coversheet thing with all sorts of technical information about the class and then write your name on the very edge of it and stick a sticker over it so the grading is anonymous until after the professor's graded it. Then you have to use a scary electronic staper to put one of the carbon copies on top of you paper, and then you timestamp it with another machine. It's all very technical and over-serious, but that's what the English are like with their academics. Anyway, after you do all that, you put the paper in your professor's mailbox slot in the American Studies office, which is also the office for Literature and Film and Television Studies (FTV). So, while I was turning in two papers on subjects that are, while very important to American history, almost wholly uninteresting to me, I saw that the mailbox underneath my history professor's mailbox belonged to an FTV professor teaching a course called "Screenwriting: Adaptation." I kind of stood there holding my BSed papers for a minute and wondered what the hell I was doing for the millionth time this semester.

I've begun to wonder how much my chosen major contributes to my collegiate grief. At Dickinson, American Studies was about as close as I could get to majoring in media and/or film, so I can't really say I was presented with an opportunity that I regret not taking (well, unless you count my possibilty of going to Bard over Dickinson, but I have to say I'm kinda glad I didn't do that, even though things didn't turn out brilliantly the other way either), but I can't express how sick I've been these days of American Studies. What I've really been sick of is the literature and history classes I'm taking up the wazoo by requirement: at Dickinson, I frontloaded my courses with media-oriented classes, using up all my "choice" classes, so whether I ended my college career at Dickinson or UEA, I'd have to just be taking the dry requirement classes at this point. Next year, at least, I'm hopefully going to get into two film classes (one about films from 1939 and one about Native American films), and one class about America in the 21st century, so that's going to help, but what I really want to be taking are classes like "Screenwriting: Adaptation" and "Celebrity" and "Politics and Mass Media" and "Television Studio Production," all of which are UEA modules in the school of FTV. It's much too late to start over, obviously, and even if it wasn't, I think I'd explode from over-institiutionalization. But it makes me wonder what I should do next. Right now, I think the plan is going to remain what it has looked like for the past year or so: graduate, try to find any sort of job relating to media production or management, whether that's in the UK or the US, to put on my currently blank-as-hell resume, and then assuming I'm not climbing the industry ladders at breakneck speed or anything, perhaps go back to get a master's degree in media studies. At this point in my life, that last part gives me heartburn, but it's all tentative for now anyway.

What I'm getting at is:
a) I'm tired of what I'm studying, as well as university at large (you haven't heard that one before)
b) I'm starting to feel the walls closing in about graduating, as much as I can't wait for that July day. I always used to think that would be the "easy" part, but I'm now realizing that trying to get even an entry-level job at a production company/record company/PR firm/broadcasting network/film studio with a resume you can hear crickets in doesn't really bode well.

Things You Didn't Know About Iceland

In honor of me leaving for Iceland in exactly a week, here is a list of interesting facts that might dispell all the reasons it has a bad rep:

• There are less than 320,000 people that live in Iceland. Over 200,000 of these people live in and around Reykjavik, the capital.
• In 2007, Iceland was ranked the number-one most developed country in the world by the UN's Human Development Index. This means that they have extremely high life expectancy, levels of literacy and education, and standards of living compared to the rest of the world, including the US and UK.
• It's not actually that cold: Reykjavik isn't much colder than New England in a cold winter, but it doesn't ever really go above about 75 degrees F in the hottest months. This is my kind of climate.
• Iceland may be the world's oldest parliamentary democracy: the Althing was established in 930 A.D. but was disbanded in 1799 until 1845.
• Icelandic is one of the most archaic languages still in use today and has changed very little from the 13th century. Rather than using Americanized words for new things, like "computer," the word for computer, "tolva," literally means "number wizard."
• Basically everyone speaks English fluently.
• Iceland has one of the highest levels of gender equality in the world.
• Icelanders use patronymic last names. An Icelander's individual last name comes from their father's first name, followed by -son if he is a man or -dóttir if she is a woman. Therefore, a brother and a sister would have different last names: if their father was named Jón, the son's last name would be Jónsson and the girl's last name would be Jónsdóttir. This makes things like looking up names in phonebooks nearly impossible.
• There are no trains in Iceland due to the rugged terrain. Everyone drives cars.
• Iceland's current prime minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, is the world's only openly gay head of state. Iceland is very liberal with regard to its LGBT citizens and have allowed civil unions since 1996 and gay adoptions since 2006.
• Geothermal and hydroelectric power provide all of Iceland's electricity and most of its energy. It is one of the greenest nations in the world.
• Icelanders eat some gnarly food--charred sheep's head, putrified shark meat, sheep testicle loaf, blood pudding. However, they're also famous for their hot dogs, which are Bill-Clinton-approved. I'm OK with this, and the fact that they also have the usual chain restaurants so I won't starve.
• Iceland is one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world: personal computer ownership is extremely high, as is the network of broadband internet connections: it has the highest number of broadband internet connections per capita in teh world.
• Everyone in Iceland wears the same sweater. OK, that's not true, but it kind of is. I plan to buy one of these traditional sweaters while there, even though they're expensive.

-As much as I think it will be a struggle to make it to graduation with my sanity in tact, I'm thinking that next year might not be so bad academically. I'm in the process of choosing my modules/classes for all of next year now, and I recently realized that third-years at UEA take TWO modules per semester. That is half as many as I take now. That pure fact alone makes me want to dance, but in addition, at least one of the classes looks fabulous, and the other three look at least doable, at best, mildly stimulating. So maybe I won't be driven into the ground next year: I'll have about the same amount of free time (who's complaining, even if it can get a bit weird sometimes) with less on my plate, but also less friends. It's a tradeoff, but it's [just] one more year. That "just" is often removed and replaced with "LONG" between the words "more" and "year." And God knows what after that: I can't really imagine myself looking for a serious job a year from now. I feel like I need some recovery time from serious burn-out, and I'm no longer entirely sure that I'm going to be as adamant about staying in England as I once was. I think I'm going to start slow. I still have so much to figure out.

-I think I'm now officially 100% OK without Wafflestomper. I actually was limping and falling over much less than I thought I'd be, even in the first two days. What I didn't really expect or foresee was the amount of pain that accompanied just plain walking: I may have looked normal, but every muscle in my left leg and foot was screaming. At the end of the first three days, I felt like I had run an entire marathon on one leg alone. The muscle still feels flabby and gross, but it's not as painful as it was at the beginning. I do walk a lot slower than I used to, though.

-I'm going to be in Iceland in a week and a half. I don't really believe that statement. I still wish I was going with someone, and I still wish I had time to explore the Ring Road rather than just Reykjavik, but I can't complain. I just have so much to get through between now and then that it doesn't feel real. I also have a hard time imagining my time there, since it's all kind of free-form and brief.

-My two addictions of the moment are tea and Cadbury milk chocolate. I managed to really get into the whole tea thing, almost without trying. I mean, I said I was going to try to understand the English tea culture, so I bought a box of Twinning's Earl Grey, which was trying. But beyond that, I just kind of tried it twice (it was better the second time, once I got some milk), and since then, I've been having at least one cup a day. It's kind of automatic, I don't really think about it: I just make it and drink it and then realize how much I enjoy it as I'm drinking it. There's either an addictive drug in it, or there's some kind of English mind-control involved with drinking tea. The chocolate thing really isn't anything new, since I've blogged about it before, but it's interesting how I always need to have it around and I can't resist taking squares of it all day once the wrapper is open. I never used to be like this with stuff that isn't a salty snackfood before.

-I stayed up til 5:30AM on Sunday night to watch the Oscars. Damn the curvature of the Earth. I hadn't seen most of the films up for the major awards besides Avatar and Up in the Air, but I've heard and read so much about the others that I felt like I had. I also wasn't championing any specific film like I usually am, so it was a weird year for me, but I still enjoyed it massively. The Hurt Locker and The Blind Side are at the top of my list of movies to see once they come out on DVD. I loved that Kathryn Bigelow got Best Director: I don't really profess to be a bra-burning feminist in any sense, but I love chicks in film in the big jobs. It was also nice to shove it in James Cameron's face: even though I thought Avatar was good (though not really Oscar-good besides the technical aspects) and I have nothing against him, I'm glad it didn't sweep the awards (and his face sure looked like he thought it would whenever the camera was on him that night). I was hoping Gabourey Sidibe was going to get Best Actress, though, just because she was so cute in the interview I saw with her, she looks like she did an amazing job, and the only thing I like more than chicks getting the big wins is when absurdly young, underdog, first-timers get the big wins (Diablo Cody for Best Screenplay in 2008 will be my favorite Oscar for a long time). Watching the Oscars inevitably inspires me to want to start working on a screenplay again for about two weeks, when it gets pushed to the very-back-burner in place of real life. I'd still like to get into film and I still say that I'd love nothing more in life to win an Oscar, but it's not a "goal," it's kind of a wait-and-see-where-I-am-when-I-get-a-bit-older nice thought.

-This video/song is my recent obsession:

Jake Gyllenhaal kills me in this, and there's something about the whole style of the video that I love. I think it kind of loses something with the end and the fireball, but whatever. It also made me go back and listen to Contra, and I loved it this time. I always need two listenings to really get into an album, and they need to be spaced out by large amounts of time. As a result, I'm going to see Vampire Weekend in NYC in September, shortly before I return to England.

-This may be my first post in a while without a rant about academics. Believe me, it's all still very much at the forefront of my mind, but I don't think whining about it is getting me anywhere. Some days it feels doable, and other days I sit in front of a blank page in MS Word and wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life and how much time I've arguably wasted by going to university full-time. I've also been thinking a lot about my transfer and Dickinson vs. UEA in the past week, but I'm not going to get into it here, since it's still all fuzzy in my mind. I'm still going with the tact of "getting through this year any way I can" without expecting too much grade-wise, particularly from two classes. Maybe next year will be better academically and I can go out with a bit of my academic face saved. Or maybe not.

It's Dangerous for me to Shop in Norwich

Wafflestomper has stomped its last. After a few practice runs up and down my hallway, I have to say I'm doing better with the whole walking thing than I thought I'd be! I think I look mostly normal when walking, though maybe someone can detect a slight limp due to my left calf muscle turning into a bag of soup. However, I think my knee is jacked from the past three months...it feels like there's a bruise underneath my kneecap, if possible. And, uh, not to be pessimistic or a whiner or anything, but after going into town shopping...my foot kinda hurt much like it used to. The same old ache, pretty much. We'll see how this goes.

I know I've lost weight since moving to England in August, and I've always guessed it was around 20 pounds, but today I went into the Gap to try on cargo pants (I wanted baggy pants I could fit layers under for Iceland), I discovered that I am now a size 2 US. I almost exclusively buy pants from Gap back home, and usually I'm about a 6 with the help of a belt, though some pairs I own are a 4, and one pair I own is an 8 from my "worst" period with weight. I have dropped from a size 8 to a size 2, and even that needed a belt. (Also, apparently all English people are tall, because they only sell regular length pants at the Gap in Norwich, with no ankle lengths to be found). I'm not sure how I feel about all this weight loss, since I keep having to tighten my seatbelt-belt every few weeks, and I've run out of notches in my regular buckle-belt. I suppose I'd like it more if I was losing all this weight in my thighs and upper arms.

I wonder if you can also lose weight in your feet, since I bought a pair of warm, waterproof hiking boots on 50% off, and I'm down a size from what I usually am (the box had US sizes on it as well, but I still went for half a size up so I can fit multiple layers of socks and my brand-new foot warmers underneath). Conversely, my hands seem to have grown: I bought women's large gloves, which were the most expensive Iceland purchase: 30 fricking pounds, but gloves were perhaps the thing I needed the most. And they have pockets for handwarmers. I can't complain too much.

While out buying all sorts of rugged winter gear, however, I fell in love with a dress. Of course, I have very few (if any) places to wear a nice dress these days, nor do I have £95 just lying around, but I think if I were a dress, I would be this one:
I tend to not even allow myself to go into Monsoon usually, since I inevitably drool over something in there that I can't afford and have little use for, but today I couldn't help it. Isn't that dress perfect? My brain even started to rationalize its use in Greece (doesn't it look like it would need to be worn on a night out in Greece?), but then I remembered I'm not going on some fancy holiday eating in nice restaurants and staying at a five-star resort: we're going to be staying in another moldy hostel, we're going to be on a student budget, and the sorts of things we'll be doing will probably require the use of my new mountain shoes rather than this silk dress. You can't climb the Acropolis in this, you won't have anywhere to hang it in a stinky hostel room, you can't wear it while buying a gyro from a street vendor, and you can't eat for two weeks anyway after blowing all of your stipend on it. However, this camisole in the same color scheme and at a much better price might need to happen:

This could definitely be Acropolis-friendly (as well as entire-trip-friendly), since I could wear it with just about anything. I'll watch to see if it goes on sale soon. OH RIGHT, Monsoon doesn't have sales. I think I need to get a job there purely for the discount.

I haven't blogged in ages, and I'm not sure why...I suppose it's because little of interest has been going on these days. I think today marks the beginning of the Hellhole that will be the rest of my semester. All my work is either going to be given the same usual marks it always is, even though it's BS, or it's going to be a complete shitshow, since I've all but stopped caring. Academia has begun to legitimately depress me. I found out today that my 2,000-word essay for Contemporary Fiction, which was never going to be strong in the first place, has to include a significant bibliography with reference to established literary theory. My first reaction was to have my stomach sink. My second reaction is EFF THAT. I've never read concrete literary theory in my life, let alone in this class. I don't think my first experience with it is going to be using it to support my point in a short paper that doesn't need it anyway. I'll talk to my professor and let her know that I've never really done proper literary analysis outside of high school before (my Dickinson Contemporary Fiction class was completely different than this one, and therefore much more enjoyable. Good old SOB would shake up this class and blow it and everyone out of the water). Anyway, enough whining. My point is, I'm going to do my best, but I'm not working myself into the ground, for this round of papers or for exams (which the English take ridiculously seriously. You're expected to freak out and feel unworthy. I expect to treat them like I've treated all of my other exams throughout my life, and I am OK with feeling unworthy. I think half of my classes are unworthy).

UPDATES:
-I'm going to Iceland in 22 days, but alone.
-I went to Ireland this weekend, and it was lovely.
-Wafflestomper has stomped its last upon my arrival back home tonight. Though I think my knee is now jacked from walking with a cast for three entire months.
-I actually quite like two of my classes, just for the record. The other two could fail me and I probably wouldn't care. At least not for longer than a day or two.
-I cooked for the first time in my life a week ago, and it was fabulous. Sarah, Alli, and I made pierogies/pedoheh (40 of them in 2 hours, whereas it apparently takes my mom two days), and it was the best day I'd had in a long time. I plan to do it again for Easter, when Alex and/or Emma may be visiting.
-I bought a ticket to see Jonsi in London on May 26. It is inevitable that I will have an exam conflicting with this. I'm prepared to get very annoyed with UEA and their ridiculous delays with the exam schedule.
-Coldplay played a brand-new song in Argentina this weekend, and it's absolutely incredible. I can't get enough of it. Chris has said they plan to release an album by THIS Christmas, but I don't believe it for a second, even before EMI refuted it. Chris has a notoriously big mouth, and he's also a good-natured, humorous liar. He doesn't realize that fangirls hang on his every word. I would too if I wasn't seasoned to his hopeless optimisim and childlike excitement that never comes to pass. If we listened to him, we'd have seven albums by now, he'd be fat and bald, the band would be broken up, he'd be a racist, gun-toting asshole (but the media thinks he's the last part regardless).

Ireland was lovely, though I had a hard time remembering I technically wasn't in the UK anymore. It was like England, but with deliberate mistakes: different accents, different money, different shops, different language, different history. Kelley did a great job of showing us around (though she walked a bit fast for my liking). I discovered I love Irish whiskey. The sound of the Dublin crosswalk signals were endlessly amusing. We seem to have a knack for picking particularly disappointing and smelly hostels, though this one was a mark better than the one we stayed in in Scotland. I was colder than I've ever been in a long time, and I usually don't get cold very easily. Our tourguide on our daytrip was perhaps the most hilarious person I've ever met, and I think we'll all be quoting him for a long time to come. All in all, I had a great weekend, though I think culturally and visually, Scotland may be more my jam for some inexplicable reason. I also wish all of our little clan came: at some points, I think we could have used Alli's gigglyness, Henry's logic and decision making, and Brandon's goofyness to break up some of the more trying moments due to tiredness, since we tended to get a bit more short with each other than usual at points (and I try to never let my mood dictate how I treat other people, which requires more effort sometimes, which made me more tired on occasions). It was almost weird how much I thought of them or something made me think of them (and I think everyone else thought of them on occasion too: a Leap Year ad on a bus, a statue of a man pointing, a weird noise, a period costume), and I think I'm slowly beginning to not only realize how much I'm going to miss everyone next year, but I'm beginning to feel it as well. I'm a sap, but I don't care. I've never felt more at home than I have with this group since leaving Wooster, and I'm reluctant to let it go.

Anyway, I probably shouldn't blog on Monday nights after my hell-day, since it makes me sound cranky, but there's my first update in a while. I'll get back on track if I have time and something actually happens around here until Easter break and the globetrekking begins.