L’aube d’une nouvelle année..

Beautiful medieval houses in my home town

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!

First post this year, my my..

2009 is only 2 weeks and a half old and it seems like it’s been here for ever. And around me people seem to feel the same eerie feeling.
Every time I’ve said happy new year so far, people have eyed me with a semi-comatose look, or with a look of utter bewilderment like I’m a spaceship just landed in their bowl of cornflakes, and go”huh? Ah yeah, right” like they forgot that only 2 weeks ago they were partying like crazy. But well yeah, that would probably be why, then.

Me also has this total unfeeling of a New Year, but that’s maybe because I am trying to forget the fact that I’m aging. Maybe everyone is. Just trying to persuade themselves that the New Year never happened and they are still young.

Hvaðeina.

Xmas in France was very nice. If I may be allowed to use a rather corny image, it was like taking an infusion of love, seeing a bunch of old friends and my family, whom I spent Xmas with. It gave me a great energy boost, always useful to come back to a dark Island.
My family!! :o)My friends..

THISdemon woman (hello mum, I love you! :D) threatened to disinherit me and curse me and my descendants over the next 12 generations if I left the house without knowing how to knit. Unable to resist under such convincing argumentation, I gave in.. As a result of which, I can knit!! :o)And here's de quoi to prove it..Ma vie, mon oeuvreLa demi première paire, et c'est Lucas qui l'a eue entière!!

My beautiful brother (on the left) :Ð

Speaking of darkness, when i got back on the rock I was slightly “à côté de la plaque”. My body clock had gone back to daytshift and sunshine (kinda), so the first morning I woke up at 11 and it was still dark I was slightly confused.
As I was on my first day back in France when I woke up; not only was it daylight, but I got woken up by Margot’s radio alarm blaring. A grand moment of anthology when I sprang up in semi-sleep and erupted (in English) “but..but, I don’t understand? Why is the radio not in Icelandic?” to which my friend Lucas, very classy as usual, replied, also in English (he is French): “That would be because you’re in France, baby..”
Ah. Yes. It would.
:o)

France was a bit of a shock when I got back.
For a start it wasn’t sunny (WTF, why do I bother?!!) but also, ALL the train station and metro and post office employees I asked directions and questions to were actually very civil and smiley.. What happened, it’s so confusing..? Luckily, people in the metro and the streets were as discurtious and unhappy as ever; I was lucky, it might actually have made me want to stay..

Sunny France. You can just about make out Notre Dame in the romantic fuzziness of the smog

Ok, what came more as a shock was the intensity with which “The Crisis” seems to have struck the continent (no, I don’t mean France, or I would have said “world”). Of course the RER was on strike and half the trains were cancelled, but apparently it happens so often nowadays that the newspapers don’t even bother mentioning the subject anymore. Hardly mentioning the cost of living and food, which has gone through the roof, there are visibly a lot more people begging and living on the streets.

But as far as I’m concerned everything’s ok. Rennes
Sacrés Coeurs in Paris, just above Montmartre, where the famous French film Amélie takes place

The other really ironical little adventure was the fact that my plane back to Iceland was 2 hours late because of the snow... in Paris!!! I’d never heard of aeroplanes having to go through the defreezer, but that’s the way it is apparently. (and that’s where I would like someone to tell me why they have to do that on the ground when it’s 0 degrees Celsius, when planes fly up to altitudes where it goes down to -64 degrees? Who is wacky enough to come up with an explanation please?)

Back in Iceland, life resumes as normal.

Swimming,

These were our GMs pets. Because of the kreppa they don't feed us much at the hotel so we have to improvise meals. Here is Fish n' Chips Icelandic way.

All right... of course I am joking and no living or dead animal was harmed in the process. I promise. (btw, the fish are called Obama and Mc Cain, yes like the chips, and they now belong to Mike)

Icelandic lessons, hotpots, work,

swimming some more, friends, beer, coffee and no cigarettes... I went climbing last week and screwed my knee (ow!!!) but hopefully I’ll be able to bounce about soon again, yipee!!

It also seems like I have AT LAST found a place to live, and should be moving within about 2 weeks, hooray!!

This is not the house I am moving into, but it looked very pretty this morning at 10.30. Ok, it's not really THAT dark, the flash does it, but still..

But more about that on the next post. My dad’s coming to visit on Monday, and I’m pretty excited, yay!!!

Snjór...

From the back window.
Le bike in le snow. I don't have nailed tires, so I haven't been using it the last two days, although I could, really...


Iceland going more nationalist because of the kreppa, or simply football?

4.20 pm.

.

On Friday I went on a jeep tour across the countryside. Þingvellir, Langjökull glacier, Hraun and Barnfossar. John, Jon, Paul, Lowell and Gaz, 5 English gentlemen, were my companions; we had a waaaaaaaaaail of a time, going down caves, peeing on glaciers (always take care to have the wind in your back), making silly jokes with Inga the wonderful driver and admiring the exquisite beauty of this country.

The famous five, not very visible, and the jeep, trying to camouflage in the snow on Langjökull glacier...

It was freeeeezing on top of the glacier, maybe -15 celsius with strong crosswinds, but oh so beautiful to watch the snow drift by..

This mountain is so incredibly beautiful...

Just before I decided to come here I had a dream about Iceland, where I had visions of landscapes of lava and snow. This afternoon was pretty much a like a convergence of what I saw in my dream and reality.

We went walking around in a lava cave. Impressively silent. My ears have been ringing strangely for the last 6 weeks or so.. I wonder if I should move to a lava cave?

3 pm

Next to Barnafoss, la "cascade des enfants", cause two of them fell in there and died on a Christmas eve, so goes the story.

Hraunfossar, the darkness coming at 16.30

Erratum

Bon.

Puisque Timo me l'a fait remarquer, je m'excuse humblement auprès de tous les Finnois et Suédois dont j'aurais heurté la sensibilité en disant que le panneau à Helsinki était anti-Suédois parce que unilingue.

En fait non. C'est juste moi qui ne sait pas faire la différence.

Encore une fois le temps est d'une élasticité déroutante, je n'arrive pas à croire que ca fait déjà presque un mois que je suis revenue de Finlande, déjà près de 8 mois (QUOI?????????) que je suis ici. Pas croyable. D'ailleurs c'est quand même drôle parce que ces derniers temps le paysage autour du port me faisait pas mal penser au mois de mars, en plus ensoleillé cependant..

Depuis début octobre, c'est toujours autant le bordel dans les banques ici. Ce qui pose de gros problèmes aux personnes âgées qui voient toutes leurs épargnes disparaître, aux jeunes qui ont contracté X crédits pour s'acheter un apparte un 4x4 ou une moto (ex. cet ami qui a vu ses remboursements mensuels de crédit doubler jusqu'à valoir au moins un demi-salaire. Ca calme)

Et puis bien pour des gens comme moi qui n'étaient pas venus chercher l'Eldorado comme d'autres mais qui comptaient au moins sur le fait que la sueur de leur front vaudrait au moins la transpiration, c'est un tantinet -mmmh, j'hésite- exaspérant/agacant/vexant et avec une pincée de dérision et d'ironie on arrive quand même à en rire :Ð

Du coup, se pose la question de l'APRES. Personne ne sait au juste ce qui va se passer avec la couronne Islandaise, s'il va y avoir totale réévaluation, dévaluation ou quoi, du coup (si je regarde mon cas) ca vaut à peine la peine de rester.. si je pars je ne peux pas franchement utiliser mes gains d'ici parce que l'argent est bloqué dans une certaine limite. Si je reste, je suis peut-être en train de bosser pour des peanuts, toujours dans ce boulot qui ne me satisfait que partiellement (le doux euphémisme). Alors la grosse question: puisque mes pieds me démangent à nouveau, est-il ou n'est-il pas temps de reprendre la route?

Sérieusement cette question je me la pose tous les jours.. Certains trucs qui me retiennent ici, d'autres qui me donnent envie de me barrer en courant (ou en nageant plutôt...), pas full envie de repartir encore à zéro ailleurs et trouver mon 5eme boulot dans mon 4eme pays en une année. Envie de vélo et d'espaces vides, facon Atacama.

Mais l'hiver m'intrigue, ca a un côté vraiment excitant de voir à quel point il peut faire noir ici. Comme au printemps je n'avais jamais vu une aussi grande luminosité, maintenant je n'ai jamais vu une telle obscurité. On dirait vraiment que c'est palpable à quel point c'est noir. On perd encore 7 minutes de lumière chaque jour, maintenant il fait sombre vers 17h et des poussières, jour vers 8h30-9h le matin.

Et puis il y a les aurores boréales. Mon super talent de photographe ne me permettant pas de mettre de pic ici, on se contentera de se souvenir des images vues à la télé quand on était petit, mais je confirme, ca a un côté vraiment magique de voir ces lumières danser sur toute la largeur (?) du ciel!

Ben avec tout ca, on n'est pas plus avancé.. j'ai quelques idées/projets sous le coude, mais ca reste entre moi et moi pour le moment.

Nananère!!

:Þ