On a layover

Another Christmas come and gone and they are already advertising Valentine's Day merchandise. Hail consumption! (not...)

My little 5-day layover in the US has been rather uneventful, I must say. All the stuff for field work is pretty much packed by now, of which I am justifiably proud, since usually I'm running around last minute trying to throw everything into boxes and panicking about having forgotten something critical. This time, I'll leave that scenario for the packing of my personal items.

Christmas in Iceland was great. We met with friends and family, I saw my darling sister Lára for the first time in over two years, my old class from high school met at Stína's for (disappointingly?) civil drinks and chat, Stína's twins recognized me yet again and were even willing to give me a hug or two, something I was not able to tease out of my lovely little niece Lilja. Fortunately her twin brother, Tómas, more than made up for the un-hugginess of his sister.

Shan and I met repeatedly with our Ithaca-friends Ármann and Ása, who had us over for dinner and joined the two of us and Lára and her boyfriend Kári to a summerhouse in the countryside, where fierce winds tore open trunks of cars and the hot tub was incredibly cozy and nice. We also went to the mother of all Christmas parties, the Líndal-clan's meeting at Stína's childhood home. It was fun as always, meeting Stína's mom and sister and her stepfather Sigurður, with whom I didn't have a nearly long enough conversation. I also learned how age is no barrier to other women eyeing my boyfriend; Sigurður's sister, consideraly more advanced in years than Shan, couldn't get her eyes off him once she had seen the "beautiful, big man" and even introduced herself in her finest Icelandic! As is to be expected, I just about burst apart at the seams with pride over my man :)

Downtown on Þorláksmessa was wonderful. We were a little crumpled up, since we arrived on noon that same day after a long trip from Ithaca that included a roughly 5-hour delay on our flight out of JFK due to crazy (as we say) weather in Iceland. That crazy weather had abated considerably by the time we arrived but rain, winds and general gloominess prevailed until New Year's Eve. That day we had decided to go for a drive in the countryside and lo and behold, for the first time in over a week we saw the sun! New Year's came with the best weather in 10 years, windstill and temperatures at the freezing point. Shan shot up the hugest of all huge bottle rockets (almost...) and the fireworks spectacle in the city was fantastic. Some idiots next door almost killed someone as a big bottle rocket that was meant to explode way up in the sky landed in our neighbors driveway and exploded there, I'm glad it wasn't our driveway! In general, it was a great evening, but I'm glad that I'm not a survivor of war because I would need psychotherapy after hearing all these explosions.

Next time, I'll blog from somewhere in the Philippines. 'Till then!