Let’s start some actual blogging about what is happening recently.

First: WINTER! Yeah, I would say, that winter finally really arrived. Although the first snow already came in the middle of September (only a few flakes) till now there were always “warm” winds to melt the snow away again. But since the beginning of November the snow has stayed and will probably stay till April. That means slippery (like really slippery) roads and that means Maria falling over again and again and again on the way to school 😉  And of course it is cold (last week even -15°) but I realised that “There’s no bad weather, only false clothes” is pretty accurate, I’m not cold most of the time. With the winter I got my first real flue here in Iceland but thanks to Dr. Petra Glathe I am perfectly equipped and with my medical education (haha :D) I practice self-diagnosis, so I am mostly well again.

Of course there are nice things about the winter: snowmen, happy children, hot chocolate and candles. And the world can be so quiet and peaceful when it is covered in snow and darkness.

Christmas is coming too and in Iceland you realize that when you are in the supermarket (BONUS!!) and the milk looks different. They have a special Christmas design with the wordplay “mjólk” (mjólk means milk and jól Christmas), dwarves, Grýla (part troll, part animal and mother of the 13 Yule Lads/Santa Clauses) and the Christmas cat (who eats bad children). As you already see from these few characters, the Icelandic Christmas traditions are very complicated and some of them are pretty cruel. I’ll surely tell you more about it at some point but if you want to read about it, here you can find some nice explanations.

The second thing I want to cover in this post is the Árshátið of the High school in Laugar. It’s definitely one of the highlights during the school year and is a big ball with all the students and teachers and staff people. I finally had the chance to really dress up again and i didn’t even had to make the difficult choice what to wear, because I only have one dress here 😀 Luckily Rakel has the same shoe size as I have and I found some shoes fitting my outfit, but I  still missed my beloved prom high heels so much! 🙁 Walking with high shoes on ice is another one of my new experiences here, it’s definitely not easy girls! Ok, back to the ball: Everyone put a lot of effort in this event: The location was beautifully decorated, there were professional presenters and some really cool short movies made by the students. The programme started at 7 and lasted until half past 11, of course with some breaks to enjoy the delicious!!! food 😉 We had a really crazy performance with all the teachers, featuring the headmaster topless, with a peace sign on his stomach, wearing a long hair wig and going totally crazy much to the amusement of everyone. It was hilarious! Goethe-Gymnasiums-people: Can you imagine Bodo Lehnig doing this? 😉 After the programme everyone helped to put the dishes, tables and chairs away to make room for dancing. A band from Husavik played all the music you need for such an evening and everyone enjoyed themselves. It was cool to look at this whole school/prom/ball stuff from another perspective and I even enjoyed sitting at the teachers table. But of course it made me think of my own prom and I missed all you people a lot!

Now enjoy the rest of the weekend guys, a lot of hugs and kisses,

Maria 🙂