I've Been a Bad Bad... Blogger

So I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I have been writing the last couple blog posts a couple of days after the actual events transpired...my bad. You see my original goal was to write a post every evening or at least every other evening. However like most things in life, things haven't gone according to plan. I have been very busy these last four days that I have lived in Iceland, thus I'm thinking I will just have to save writing posts for when I have a spare moment, whenever that may be.So far I have done a number of exciting things. In chronological order here it goes. So far I have: gotten a tour of the entire Solheimar community. We live in one of the Brekkokuts (guest houses), however we attend classes in the Sesseljuhus (Sessilia's house. Sessilia is actually the founder of Solheimar). The Sessuljuhus can best be described as the community center, often times schools will tour this building because the Sesseljuhus is considered the first sustainably built building in Iceland. It's a beautiful building, fit with wooden floors and paneling, powered entirely by a combination of geothermal, solar, and wind energy sources. Starting during week 4 we will be participating in workshops located in a building just down the street from our guest house. After getting the tour of the workshops, I can undoubetly say, that at the moment, I am most excited about participating in hopefully all of the workshops. To explain a little more, the workshops are basically rooms where arts and crafts are being done. There are 6 different workshops including: the woodworking, weaving, music, art, herb/soap/candle, and ceramic workshop. Basically the residents with special needs at Solheimar attend various workshops on a weekly basis. They create wonderful works of art, and then sell them at the Solheimar gift shop. This, I believe, is how Solheimar makes a portion of its anual revenue. I am really excited to work in the woodworking and weaving workshops in the future.
Being the nerd that I am, I have to say that beginnging classes has been so much fun. I had my first Iceland history, language, and culture classes on Wednesday, and boy oh boy was I in for a surprise. Though being a Germanic language, the Icelandic language has been no walk in the park for me. Before coming to Iceland I thought learning the basics in Icelandic would not be that bad, since I have some history with the German. Well so much that assumption. Icelanders I've noticed love their TH sounds. They seem to fit it in the middle or ends of pretty much every word, and though for the most part their alphabet is the same as the English alphabet, they have this one letter that looks kind of like a D with a horizontal line through it, thats pronounced as -ETH. Anyway this odd little letter is driving me and my tongue crazy. Whenever I attempt to speak Icelandic I feel like I have contracted a lisp.
Lastly, as a group we went on a walk to the nearby river. After following the windy, sometimes steep dirt trail we finally came upon a pretty big river. It was sooo beautiful! I felt like I was in an episode of Planet Earth. Standing there at the banks of this river, to my right was a black mountainrange covered by a thin layer of bright green moss, and to my left was a flat, open plain of various grasses and bushes. Two things from that moment stick out vibrantly in my mind: How incredibly quiet it was and also how fresh and crisp the air tasted. I have never experienced such a moment. For a good twenty minutes my mind was completely void of any thought. I have a theory for this, because this not thinking one thought or another is something that never happens to me. I think that because complete quiet and fresh air is so different for me, my brain just went into a sort of automatic shock. It was a great feeling and I plan on having it more often.