We Made It!

So we made it to Akureyri ( pronounced Ahkoorehrey with the R's rolled), Iceland on Wed. February 4, sleep deprived and exhillerated. We had left Minneapolis at 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 3rd and didn't get to Akureyri until 11:45 on the 4th. We had a couple long layovers without much sleep, and this was especially hard because we could barely sleep on the night of the 2nd because of the excitement of leaving the country. But we made it safely and are quickly falling in love with the town. We are still getting used to the time difference, Iceland is 6 hours ahead of Minnesota, so we lost some time en route.

When we landed in Akureyri, the PR representative for the School for Renewable Energy Sciences (RES) whom we've been emailing for the past month recognized us from pictures we sent in and drove us and three other students to the Hotel Harpa in downtown Akureyri. We have met several of the other students, from Mexico, Slovakia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Hungary, and have quickly become good friends with all of them. All of us being in such a new situation has made it very easy and necessary to make friends. Arnbjorn, the representative from RES drove us in "green" cars to our hotel and met us for dinner later. His job is to make sure the students feel at home and get whatever they need, so we will keep him close.

For the first two weeks we will be staying in the Hotel Harpa in downtown Akureyri. The hotel is very nice, and as I write this I am sitting in the lobby, a wifi hotspot, with several of the other students who are all on their computers as well. There are several shops and cafes very close by the hotel. Actually, most of the buildings featured in photos on Akureyri's website are within a block of the hotel.

The day we arrived we got a tour of the campus and wandered around town with some of the other students. That night we ate at Bautinn, a restaurant right across the street from the hotel, and I tried horsesteak. It was better than I expected. We ended up falling asleep at about 9:15 (we didn't even make it through the opening credits of a M*A*S*H episode) after fighting jetlag all day.

The next day we slept in, missed breakfast, and had lunch at a cozy cafe down the street in a building we had seen on Akureyri's website several times before departing. We meandered around town some more and visited the public library and some shops. I've made it my goal to buy an Icelandic wool sweater, but at prices between 7,900 Kr and 28,000 Kr ( b/w $80 and $250) I haven't been able to justify the purchase. After seeing the downtown area we went to an outdoor public pool. The water is chlorine free and geothermally heated, so as long as we were in the water we were very comfortable, but we had to make quick trips between pools and hot tubs. I don't know how exactly the water is cleaned without chlorine, but they are very strict about showering before entering the water. There is not much of a crime rate in Akureyri, as we had to leave our shoes on an unprotected rack outside the changing rooms. Everyone here is relaxed, friendly, and seems trustworthy. We are now preparing to go out to dinner and experience some of the night life in the city. Stay tuned to find out if we make it!