Excursions etc.

It is unbelievable that I have already been here for more than two weeks! Time flies! I also had a lot to do in these days; )

The university began on Monday a week ago, starting with an introduction to the geology of Iceland. The people are very nice to me, but it is unbelievable how many Germans there are! In this course there are around 40 people, of which around 15 are German, 7 French, 5 English, 3 Dutch, and then there are a few lonely people like me; )

But I hold firmly that I do not speak German with the Germans. Because I discovered that I need to concentrate as much to speak fairly understandable high German as to speak English.

After two days of instruction we went on an excursion, first two days at Reykjavik and then three days in the South. The weather was very great, especially on the first day, and we stopped by some tourist stops (bubbling mud holes, bridge between the Eurasian and American plates) as well as some geological features such as a volcano and a crater lake.

During the three-day excursion in the South the weather changed though, and I was happy to have my rain pants! We looked at a glacier (shocking to see how much farther it reached 20 years ago) and various glacier deposits. On Saturday a trip to an island was scheduled, which I had looked forward to very much, but we could not go because of the predicted high winds and rain. Instead we visited another waterfall (I was very happy to have my rain pants, because without them I would have been drenched by rain and the waterfall! ) and a museum about volcanoes. The last excursion was a little sightseeing, the well-known (but also geologically interesting) waterfall Gullfoss and the geiser Stokkur were the highlights in the rain.

Also on Monday the normal lectures began, and they cover us with work already! But I think (or hope) that they only want to shock us a little; )

Yesterday our landlady invited us for dinner, an Icelandic meal ("Bokfish"), a stew with potatoes and fish and some sause. It was in any case delicious; )

Over the weekend I will drive with some other exchange students to Westfjorde, and I look forward to discovering parts of Iceland that are still unknown to me :D

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