It’s hard to believe that I’ve already been in Iceland three full days already. I can’t tell if it seems like I’ve been here longer or shorter than that. Each day is jam packed with so much stuff, it could probably be split into two or three days without making life boring.
Sunday, after we landed, was mainly used for napping and exploring the city. I think this place has everything you could ever want, though it’s difficult for me to be sure about that since I don’t speak Icelandic. It seems like an incredibly difficult language, and apparently their grammar is even more challenging to learn than German grammar. I’m hoping to be able to pick up some stuff along the way, and so far I’ve got one or two words down.
On Monday and Tuesday we had class in the morning and then speakers in the afternoon. As soon as we got back to our dorm on both days, it was more city exploring. Downtown Reykjavik is like no other city I’ve been to.
You can buy everything there. Yesterday I passed way too many clothing shops to count, a hair cutting place, way too many bars than I could count, a hardware store, several outdoors store, and so much more. Plus the grocery store we’ve been shopping at is located on the first floor of one of the buildings downtown. It’s really weird for me since I’m used to shopping centers and strip malls where everything is separated into its own place. Here, though, it’s all crammed together. I guess it makes shopping more convenient, yet it was also a pain to carry all our food the 15 minute walk back to our dorm.
I do enjoy the quaintness of the city though. There are not that many really tall buildings, so it sort of has a smaller town feel. I’m loving the downtown streets and just walking along them is so cool. It is a struggle sometimes to not know any of the language, but it’s fortunate that so many people speak English. I just feel an obligation to try and learn something in order to be respectful. It’s nice of Iceland to let people enjoy their country, so I need to take something back with me.
Additionally, this is the most fashionable city I’ve ever been to. It’s a little ridiculous. So many clothing shops and so many weird fashions. I do miss the simplicity of home. I’m sure I stick out like a typical American because I just thrown on jeans and a t-shirt every day.
There is one huge problem I’ve experienced so far and I think I mentioned it in my last post. The server here doesn’t allow me to access this website and I haven’t been able to find another decent connection yet.
Luckily Jeff has offered to post stuff, so I have to send everything I write to him to put up here. And that means there’s not really going to be many photos because it’s too much of a hassle to email photos as well.
Plus I’m a little particular about where the photos appear in the text.
There are several other people who have been keeping blogs, so I’m sure at some point we can all go to a wifi place downtown and try to connect. So until then, I won’t post any pictures. Which actually works out because I haven’t really taken any yet. But I promise to get on that and to start documenting my time here.
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