1st university exam!

So today's the first university exam! I was all "yay, how exciting" until I really started studying for it, then it turned into kind of a "kill me before I kill myself" type of thing

3 hours to go... 

Am I hungry? of course I am, I'll go make an omelette..... Great now I have eaten, but I start thinking, what did I eat, I mean I know it was an egg... but what is egg, really? What do I really know about eggs? not so much... so I decide to google it. After 15 minutes of teaching myself everything there is to know about eggs there is nothing more to know and I start watching this! 

2 hours to go... 

I haven't gone running in a while have I? No it's actually been a while, way to long.. I'll go running! I run until I'm about to faint and feel like I need to throw up because I know that as soon as I get back home I'll have to get back to studying. 

1 hour to go... 

I call mom and ask her where she is... she's at a sale. what? there is a sale? off shoes? where? can I come? Of course I can, I can do whatever I want. So I go to the store with the sale and buy shorts, everyone knows it's good luck to have new shorts on when going to an exam... how else are you going to pass?? 

Now I'm late so I run off to the exam, I come running into the classroom, sit down and realize I had no pen or id with me... they had been talking so much about having NOTHING with you during the exam that I left EVERYTHING in the car... including the only 2 things I needed with me... great job! hahaha 

Regardless, the exam went well, way better than I expected it to & even if it didn't Only 2 out of 3 count so I can go happy to work.. yaaay 

Happy weekend, I hear people get happy when the weekends come, I wouldn't know... weekends are just like any other day, if anything busier! 

color marked people

Ok so, when I'm in a relationship I find it extremely hard knowing at what point I should mention it when talking to strangers. If you meet someone, anywhere, and start talking there are two possibilities; 1. the person is interested in you or 2. they're simply JUST talking to you..

Now you don't want to walk around assuming everyone is trying to get into your pants making the first thing you say to the person something like "Hi my name is Katrín and just so we're clear from the beginning I'm in a relationship so if you're talking to me for mating purposes I'd advice you to continue on to the next female, if not, please, keep talking"

If you squeeze it into the conversation it's like "oh get off your high horse, can't two people talk?!" and if you don't you might get a weird "oh, you have a boyfriend?" along with an obvious you-were-leading-me-on look 10 minutes later.

ANYHOW tonight there was a party that eliminated all misunderstanding like this. The theme of the party was dressing in colors that represent your status.

Green - I'm single & ready to mingle

Yellow - I'm dating someone 

Red- I'm in a relationship.

The drinks were also color coded & the shots of the night we're three; the cheater, just broke-up & just hooked-up. 

To make things even more obvious, there were stickers that you could put where ever you'd like. Then you could also mix & match.

Green + Green = I'M FUCKING READY.

Yellow + Green = I'm dating someone, but not serious enough, so I'm up for anything

Red + Green = I'm in a relationship, but willing to cheat (thankfully didn't see anyone like that)

Of course there then always has to be that person making it all complicated

workworkwork

I also got stickers! yay

Even the window was sweating there were so many people 

Oh and of course I forgot, when all was going on I had a brilliant idea... what if there would be some kind of database where you could access people you know and straight up get information about their relationship status.........no, wait a minute

the over-agreeing guy

I was just talking to a friend and the conversation lead to this one thing guys do to kind of "impress you" or what ever they're trying to do. 

It's when they change their opinions to fit mine, like I'm some kind of porcelain doll that brakes if they say the word no to me... 

now an example of this; 

I was with some guy as we were waiting for a mutual friend... I had just gone through a break up with a professional football player and of course everything and everyone around me was in some way reminding me that his favorite team was playing a game. I really didn't feel like thinking, seeing or having anything to do with football for quite a while... I don't even understand the sport for crying out loud. 

Anyways, the guy starts chit-chatting about useless stuff and before I know it he says "Hey, I know, let's put the game on, there's this great game on, liverpool - *whocares* balblalllblba" 

I, without thinking accidentally make some kind of "egh" sound and say "oh naah I really don't feel like watching a bunch of guys running after a ball right now."

he immediately responds "oh yeah I know right, football is so stupid, I mean what are they doing, just like, you know, like chasing a ball, like running after a ball... oh so stupid" 

He then starts saying that he wants to go out for a pizza as soon as our friend would be ready and I say "oh I can't imagine having pizza right now, but you guys can go right ahead I'll just have something else" 

his response? "Oh yeah I know I hate pizza too" 

what? didn't you JUST suggest having pizza? what are you, talking just for the sake of talking?!

he then strikes up into the conversations how he had a rat problem in his house and to solve it he turned them into his pets, talking about it like it was a brilliant idea. Now, I was being a bit pessimistic and could easily have just let it slip but the guy was having rat's as pets goddamn it! So I say something like "I hate rats jeez what are you thinking?" and AGAIN his response is "yeah I know they're so disgusting, I'm getting rid of them as soon as I get the chance" 

After that I started testing him by objecting to everything that he said, and he always took his original opinion back. Once I even objected and as soon as he agreed with me I said something like "oh no wait, I have it the other way around" and changed my opinion to his original one and guess what the guy did, he ALSO changed it back! really? why why whyyy would you do that?! the whole purpose of the conversation was lost and I could just as well have been talking to a monkey or the wall

me & my ex didn't agree on everything, and probably disagreed a bit too much but it was still a thousand times better than this hahaha! 

stop agreeing so much thinking it will please us! hahahha!! :D

change blindness

I just want to say sorry in advance for all the psychological stuff I'll be posting, but some of it I find so fascinating you have no say in the matter! hahahah!

I love getting deep into how people work, why they do what they do and so on. I can spend hours googl'ing some theory or experiment made, watch it on youtube, which then leads me to other videos and so on. I've spent so much time doing it and much of it is actually paying off now that the teachers are talking about this and that experiment and I have already read and watched everything there is to find on google.

see, wasting time on the internet does pay off!

Ok so this first thing is called Change blindness and is about the fact that people fail to notice even large-scale changes to their environment simply because they have their focus on something and everything else just gets blocked out.

This second one is the same but with different people conducting the experiment... 

and the final one, a bit different

I think everyone would fail to realize the men had changed, except the women that were ovulating and looking for a mate. They just thought one of them was cute and therefore noticed when someone less cute came haha :D 

The next thing is called inattention blindness 

hahaha first time I saw this I really fell for it, that was years ago though when I had been google-teaching myself. Still really fun to see the other 300 students in class today failing to notice it. 

This is the same thing, but I was a bit afraid the bear was more obvious in this one, might just be me noticing it more because I've seen it so many times. 

Oh, I love psychology. Now, back to reading & finding more fun stuff to share with you!

P=13?

Hahahaha silly americans, the number 13 is an unlucky number so let's just skip it in the elevator! 

Austria

Wonderful wonderful Austria! 

The whole week was so wonderful and amazing I can't even begin to describe it! 

The road that led up to the hotel 

These are so cute... piles of wooden logs everywhere. I think I love them especially much because we don't have tree's in Iceland. Everytime I go to a country with trees I just can't stop looking up and around like I just landed on the moon hahaha

How nice living in a place like this where your neighbors are miles away. Such big difference in the life there than in some big city like Rome 

Love how cute all the houses are, made out of wood and everywhere you'd go they'd have flowers hanging from the balcony

One day in Innsbruck. Nathan was trying to make it seem like he was eating the mountain... close enough!

Driving up the hill behind Innsbruck we got a really nice view over the city.

This is actually taken from a mcdonalds, believe it or not. The nicest McDonalds restaurant ever

again, from the McDonalds... the most romantic mcdonalds meal I've ever had hahaah

Driving again over Innsbruck some days later.. 

This was a BIG issue for me. I kept forgetting the keys in the damn door! I always opened the door and since Nate was walking in right after me I just kept leaving them in there assuming he'd take them. The next morning I'd always be turning the whole room upside down looking for the keys

Grass angels! hahhaah, I love just laying. If I find a nice spot where you kinda stop to look around and soak in the view I just lay down and stay. This night we went out eating, we went to this small place and I asked the waiter "Do you have any food?"

waiter "Yes, pizza" 

me "great, whats kinda of pizza?" 

waiter "House pizza" 

me "ok, but whats on the pizza?"

waiter "?" 

Me "like... what do you put on top of the pizza?" (of course showing with hand movements as well)

waiter "house!" 

great... so we had the pizza with a house as a topping

anyways, on the way back it was all dark and chilly and we find this spot that looked so cozy so we lay down and stay forever just talking about everything and nothing. The air was so cold but it was like you got some heat from the ground, if that makes any sense, because as soon as we laid down it wasn't cold anymore.

People really need to lay down more, gives you more of an opportunity to be in a nice place and relax in it, kinda like seeing, not just looking. 

This was my second time in Austria, I'd already been to lovely Vienna last summer where I was hosted by Dominik and this time added Salzburg, Linz & Innsbruck to the list. Then of course the countryside where we were staying and not to mention taking trains across Austria many times. 

What surprised me a lot was that in the smaller villages there were all these people dressed in their typical austrian clothes, something like this...

It was all very sound-of-music-ish! 

I can't wait to go back to Austria one day, such a characteristic country, I love it & it's so easy to travel within it + it boarders germany, czech republic, slovakia, hungary, slovenia, italy and switzerland (and Lichenstein if you want to count that in). Perfect! 

kex party

Laugarvatn - I bet they have a picture of me on the door with a big X over my face. I can't imagine I'm very welcome after last Monday... 

Kex had a staff party. We started out at Kex tasting the new menu, which by the way was to die for. I didn't even know I liked half the things on there & now I can't wait to get to work just because we get a free meal every day. 

I haven't really gone out drinking in such a long time that just smelling the alcohol got me tipsy, my alcohol tolerance is so bad! You should also never ever go into hot water if you've been drinking. I actually learned that last year when I went to the blue lagoon after a party but in my stupidity I made the same mistake again. Never again! 

The beer got the front seat in the bus. We know how to prioritize. 

Making a pee-stop. second and last picture I took in this trip. probably a good thing anyways

I'm SUCH a clutz! I have bruises all over, even in the palm of my hand (who even knew you could get bruises there anyways?) all these injures are of course non-related to that monday night! 

Little miss excited to go out walking with me and Guðrún. So cute, I put the thing around her neck and ran upstairs to get another sweater, I get back down and she's in the exact same spot hardly able to move because its too heavy for her to drag around. I see myself in that dog, both so pathetically helpless! 

I got a tutor in statistics, right next to this beautiful spot in Reykjavík. Hallgrímskirkja... I'll be going there every week to get information stuffed into my head. The thing with psychology is that it's in the medical department but doesn't have an entry exam. Which means the teachers have to find another way to get half the class to fail, my statistics teacher has decided that giving vague explanation of things is a great solution. No way I'm failing that class, so private teacher here I come.  

Then I had to run to go to work, somehow I managed to take this picture on the way.

I have figured out a new system how to take the bus. I never seem to be at the right place at the right time to catch these stupid public transports so recently I've just been going to the next stop and just waiting for the next bus thinking it can't take me further away than I already am. It's actually worked out really well, so far I've at least always ended up where I wanted within an hour. 

Now I have to go feed myself, go to class and then go to a dale carnegie class the school is offering for free! yay! I've wanted to go for so long, this one is for goal-setting and actually not the one I wanted to go to, but close enough! :D

the really expensive beer

In the last weeks I have completely rediscovered the meaning of the word busy. Before when I said I was busy I had no clue what I was saying haha! 

Saturday and Sunday I managed to work 20 hours straight, 10 hour break and then work again 8 hours. No wonder waking up this morning was so difficult! 

So one funny story from this week. On thursday at work I was selling this mexican guy a beer, it had been a little busy and someone had put 3333 into the register. So when I go to charge for the beer I accidentally charge him for 3333 beers. I noticed it while swiping the card and had a mini heart attack but thought, "oh surely it will be declined, nobody has so much money laying around on their card." Oh no, the receipt came out and the guy had been charged 2.860.000 kronur, or 23 thousand dollars... why the hell would you have more than 23 thousand dollars on your card anyways? 

My boss then spent half an hour calling the banks emergency number to cancel the transaction. It finally all got fixed and I'm so happy this happened with this specific costumer, not someone uptight or in a bad mood! haha For the rest of the weekend I got people coming up to me that had heard about it from around the hostel going "Hey are you the girl that charges mexicans 23 thousand for a beer?" or hesitating while giving me their card going "I'm not mexican so don't overcharge me... and I want to see the receipt"

Another funny thing about this was that only 2 hours before I had been taking to my boss telling him this story about a woman I was working with this summer that had charged someone 75.000krónur for a coke. It was a hilarious story until I had to go to my boss later that evening explaining "You remember that woman I told you about before? yeah that just happened to me too, only, it wasn't a coke it was a beer and it wasn't 75 thousand, it was 2 million and 860 thousand" You can only imagine the look on his face hahah! 

eagles nest

So this day we went up to the eagles nest. I explained it before but anyways, this place is where Hitler spent his free time coming up with his brilliant ideas! All the other houses that hitler had have been burned down, makes sense. Still good to keep this one as a reminder of what happened.

You see, the european person on average scores 10 points higher on an iq test than an Australian. So when an aussie comes to europe they will have a lot of trouble doing the easiest things like paying for parking since all the machines are made for people with higher iq's. Here you can see Nate trying to prove me wrong... and failing to do so.

The jewish star... aah I get such chills when I see pictures like these just because you know what the people in them represent 

A grave yard for the people that Hitler killed. It goes on forever... 

Nathan with his head up in the clouds, literally. jumping around on rocks. The amount of energy that this boy has is scary at times

The elevator that brings you up to the main house. It was designed like this because Hitler was claustrophobic. Mirrors all over that made the space seem not so small. I think his punishment should have been to be locked up in a tiny prison cell for the rest of his life. 

Going down to the underground where they would hide in case of an attack 

This note was on the outside of the house. For the life of me I can't figure out what language this is supposed to be! it's still annoying the hell out of me trying to figure it out haha

The fireplace that mussolini gave to hitler during the second world war.

And a normal picture of the house, not sure why the previous one came out so blurry.. 

-Kat

Dear handsome men. could you please just skip becoming a teacher. leave that up to the old bold men. Nobody's focusing on what your saying when you look like ezra fitz.
youre not doing anyone a favour

Welcome to college?

In highschool I took many psychlogy classes, general, child, criminal, happiness, biological and more... Each class that I took was one semester, 18 weeks, taught 4 hours a week.

Now? I got one HUGE ass book devided into 18 chapters. One chapter is general, One criminal, one biological... You see where Im going. Each chapter is taught 1 hour. So basically what Im now learning in one hour (have 3-4 days to finish it on my own)is equaly much as I did in 72 before!! And Im telling you its not any shorter or easier, on the contrary, its not even in icelandic!

You miss one class and shooo everyone is 100 pages ahead of you which means you then have 4 days to finish 200 pages... Throw in 2 jobs and any social life and boom you have the perfect recipe for depression. But hey at least the end Ill have the ability to fix depression hahaha

Ive been in the reading room now for 8 hours and off to my second job :( I better have a kick ass nice vacation in 12 weeks in a warm cozy and exciting place

worlds

Some pictures from the worlds !

& 1,2,3 start!!

It's so much fun taking pictures of this sport. They're always doing some super dramatic move that looks great on a picture. 

Insane jump, and the fall would have been soo far! guess that's why he feels the need to do that ridiculous face hahahaha! 

aaaah why would they make the fall so far down?!

Trials WM 2012.

Nice work of art there, but it made the wood lodge thinner & therefore harder to ride on... good thinking there

It's amazing to see these guys ride, it's like the bike is an extra limb missing from their body & the bikes work with them in an unbelievable way. There's a lot of falling and getting cuts from the pedals which I'm actually not a big fan of. On several occasions Kaye (Nate's mom) & I were about to have a heart attack when he'd come close to falling.

I'm so sorry for the embarrassment Nathan but I just have to post this video. I so luckily caught on tape when he fell in a rather stupid slow-motion way, I also got a lot of videos where he got through everything perfectly, but where's the fun in them?? 

hahahahah!! 

trip home

Finally after a 16 hour trip I have arrived at home. I'm tired and I want to go back to Austria! 

The last week has been wonderful in every way. I'm literally going from an Austrian fairy tale one day back to freezing Iceland & University the next day! First day of school is tomorrow since I've been away the last week. Now I better stack up with coffee and pull my shit together if I'm going to ace this semester. 

I swear to got I've gained like 5kg in the past week. If I didn't know any better I'd think Nate's dad produced mozart balls, his mom always had a sandwich ready and nate's mission in life is having his mouth full at all times!

The diet starts tomorrow... or you know, not an actual diet. More like a trying to go more towards the fruit section. I have a personal trainer, that I have not been using at all. Just got an email from him reminding me that you don't get fit unless you do something. jeez rub it in...

Now I've been going through some pictures from the trip and can't believe how few photo's I have. I literally have no pictures of myself from the trip haha! 

here are some pictures from the way home though...

Train station in Innsbruck

This really cute couple that was all mushy mushy for the whole 5 hours of the train ride. I wanted to spit on them. They were too happy and I was too alone hahaha! nono of course I was happy for them, maybe like 90% happy 10% jealous. 

wow think of actually living there. I could actually easily imagine having a holiday house in a place like this. So peaceful ! I spent hours looking out the window, you really see a lot of the country travelling by train.

London stansted here I come 

When is Starbucks ever going to come to Iceland? Probably good they're not here, I'd go broke from their mozzarella & pomodoro sandwich and frappuccino. mmmmmm! 

Sunset In London 

hahahahaha I love those head thingy's in the wow planes.

"Hi, I am your seat... nice to meet you, pleasure to have you sit on me"

Anyways, big day tomorrow. I better get some rest. I'll work on uploading those pictures asap. Goodnight!