Journal Entry 1: Iceland :)

First thing we did in the morning? We visited the famous Iceland turf houses(yes it's boring I know). They are literal "grass houses", I'm telling you. Houses covered in grass. The grass grows on the rooftop, beside the houses, and basically anywhere but the entrance. According to the tour guide there, since Iceland has a very cold climate, these turf houses are specifically constructed to insulate the cold. They're built with flat stones and birch or oak wood that prevents the turf houses from caving in. It's pretty obvious that they were super duper well constructed, otherwise they probably wouldn't exist right now. We also visited the Hallgrimskirkja(I have no idea how to pronounce that, I think its something like Hal-grimms-kir-ja) church in Reykjavik(Ray-kya-vic, "vic" as in the "vic" in victory). The church tower is about 73 meters high. It's a multipurposed, beautiful building, in my opinion(I don't know about H.D. It kind of seemed like she was thinking about food the whole time). It also serves as a national sanctuary. The building was first constructed in 1945 and was finished in 1986. It was built by a man named Guðjón Samuel. In front of the church was an intricate statue of
Leifur Eiriksson, the first European to discover America before Christopher Columbus. 

When we were getting lunch from a random restaurant(that served shark meat, sick), we saw that the TV was playing a sports channel. The contestants were riding Icelandic horses that I mistook for ponies. Who could blame me, they're tiny(no offense, Icelandic horses). H.D had a good laugh at me since I asked her if the "ponies" were trained. I just glared at her while everyone else in the restaurant looked at her like she just sprouted another head. The waiter overheard our conversation and came over to join us. He told us quite a lot of information. Apparently horse riding isn't even a main sport that Icelanders participate in. Handball was considered the national sport. The Iceland team received a silver medal in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. To this information, I smiled awkwardly and congratulated the team for I had no recollection of this. Icelanders were good at chess too. I remembered that the Iceland football team qualified for the UEFA Euro 2016 and asked the waiter about it. H.D was a great fan of football. She always talked about it. He told me that Iceland was the smallest nation to qualify for the major tournaments. Other sports that were popular were golf, basketball, tennis, volleyball, and swimming. 

As a bonus, the waiter also taught us some Icelandic and history to it. Icelandic is a little similar to Norwegian and is a Indo-European language. It's an insular language, meaning that it hasn't been influenced by other languages too much. In fact, Icelandic hasn't changed much since the 12th century and the children could still understand the texts from that time! Fun, right? (No, it's not, A.D. It's not. We all know you're a fact sponge.) The waiter taught us some words like hello and thank you in Icelandic. Hello was "Góðan daginn", which, I'm describing it as accurately as I could, was pronounced something like "Go-than Die-yinn." Again, I'm trying my best. Thank you was "Takk fyrir", and it was pronounced something like "Taak Fee-rear." I had a lot of trouble pronouncing the former. H.D didn't bother to try because she knew she was going to get it wrong. When we left the restaurant, I told the waiter "Takk fyrir", but it came out wrong and became "tack fire" and we all laughed it off. He then told me that it was alright and he's seen worse.

24/2/17

A.D&H.D

 Adventures in Iceland