F*** you house

Hahaha gotta love Reykjavík

brrrr

How do you know it's cold outside and it's not just you whining?? 

When people start walking on water!!

There are actually more people walking on the water than on the sidewalk ! 

These were the best. They just had skates on their shoulders, came to the pond and changed into skates and took some moves while passing over. How cute!

How did the first person that walked over know that it was frozen enough?? 

I know this is normal for Iceland, & other cold countries... I guess I've just been living too long abroad so I find this hilarious! 

Lava covered with Ice... ironic 

& this is only the beginning, before I know it everything will be covered with snow :( has it always been this cold in Iceland in the winter? 

Today I even parked my car illegally right outside the school. I was sitting in my car studying because it was too cold to walk from where ever I would find a free parking space and into the school library. I Parked close to get access to the internet hahaha

I am the lowest of the low 

Stooooorm

horrible weather

I just had to share this link with you. It's funny as hell, I laughed so much I had to pause it a couple of times so I wouldn't pee myself. I'm not exaggerating! 

The story behind this is that there has been horrible weather in Iceland, especially last weekend when the storm Sandy had just hit NY. The wind in NY went up to 128km/h while ours was 126km/h but occasionally going higher. Of course the altitude in NY is way lower than in Iceland so they had flooding and houses crumbling like packs of oreo's.

In Iceland however, we have too much pride to let weather stop us with this whole "we're vikings we can stand any type of weather" when actually they should have just had a national day off and not risking everyone getting hurt by going out into the storm.. the police emergency line got calls about tasks, roofs flying off houses, every minute for some hours which is insane considering Iceland only has 300.000 people. 

The schools didn't cancel classes until in the after noon, my friends school didn't give up until windows were being broken by flying objects and over 3 teachers had to go to the hospital after getting hurt from literally flying and crashing badly. You can only imagine having seen the video! haha 

& while all this is going on where is Katrín?? I'm driving this road... Sæbraut because my school refused to postpone a test that values 20% of my final grade. They didn't see enough of a reason to postpone the test.. Excuse me, a 10 meter long RV disappeared and was found far away smashed into pieces and you don't see reason enough to not risk 350 students wandering around since most of them don't have cars?

So anyway I had to drive for one hour to get to Reykjavík where I took the stupid test, which I by the way could in no way focus on since a bicycle literally flew past the window during the exam! But since I was already there I could just as well go to work too.  

Domino's made their home delivery time longer, there was the "right side" rule in many crossroads because the power was off the stop lights, and some places put a sign in the window to walk in another door because this one couldn't handle the wind. Just getting from my car and 150 meters into the school I needed help because I was taking 2 steps forward and 5 steps back, thank god some guy came to the rescue... On my way out I just kept sitting down and holding on to flagpoles to catch my breath because it was such a struggle, you can't imagine. 

then this happened.. fml

Oh and then a pizza flew into my window, never thought I'd use the window cleaners to get pizza off my car window! 

Fm Belfast

Iceland Airwaves is going on this week. There are extremely good bands playing all over, and then this stupid weather comes along and ruins everything! :( 

I didn't get a ticket since they were sold out even before I knew I'd be living in Iceland during the festival, then the weather got worse by each day so I didn't even bother getting a ticket from someone.. 

Last wednesday I was working @ Kex's off venue. So I got paid to listen to Tilbury & FM belfast, jeei.

FM belfast 

Par Avion 

VHS

vertigo

The thing with FM belfast is that they're such good performers... They could just stand there banging random stuff together and still make you have the time of your life. I liked them before but after seeing them perform live I love them! Plus their videos look like a 5 year old with a 10$ budged made them, which is pretty unique, no naked ass shaking girls there my friend! 

It might sound a bit weird in the beginning but trust me, if you turn the volume up, start jumping on your bed and dancing it will be soooo much fun! What is not so much fun though is when your enjoying yourself so much that you fail to hear someone entering the house. Next thing you know they're standing in your door with a weird face going "ok what the hell are you doing, should I be worried?" 

&

then one song with Tilbury, feel like I'm leaving them out! 

Tilbury 

Tenderloin

of monsters and men

First time I was going to buy an album instead of downloading it.

Excuse me? Of monsters and men is not available in the Icelandic store? haha!

So I went to the store and bought the CD itself. 

I've had around 8 friends abroad sending me messages telling me that they either went to a concert with them or heard them in the radio and absolutely love them. They certainly raise up my national pride! 

I didn't realize that they had made this many songs but my favorites are 

• Dirty paws ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgn8Eoh9aSY )
• Love love love ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj5JO9j5jiI )
• Six weeks (  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBtnnZX_jDU )
• Little talks ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6BC_uQEEmM )

Check them out, you really won't regret it! I promise! 

oh, btw... Today I was in such a hurry I forgot to eat before I went to work so after I had driven all the way to Reykjavík I stop by in a store to buy something also to have for the night since I was going to be working 12 hours straight. On the way to the shop I walk past a homeless man that asks me if I have any money, so I empty my purse to him giving him everything I had. He was soo happy and I just went on my way. After I had found everything I wanted in the store I realize I had forgotten my credit card at home and the money I gave the man was way more than enough to pay for everything! I then worked 12 hours with only a snickers my darling co-bartender had with him and orange juice... Am I misunderstanding or isn't karma supposed to work the other way around?? hahaha

two places at once

Today I managed to strike another thing off my list...

be at two places at once..

Iceland is both on the American and European continent and technically I live in America... only 20 minutes from my house there is a crack in the ground where the continents meet. 

Going there and standing in the middle is actually being in two places at once.

I've been there once or twice before but I've never actually spent time there and BEEN there... only stopped the car and run out for 2 minutes just for the sake of it 

wohoo

   

no actual reason for these two pictures, I just liked the colors in the environment 

and I found a hole where the lava had collapsed 

and reached the top of a mountain so I did a little stretch 

anyways I have a haircut tomorrow early so I'm going to go to bed, Good night! 

1017 meters

1.017 meters up. Felt great, the nature was so surrounding and overwhelming it felt like when you're surrounded by water. Gets a bit frightening because you feel you're such a small part of everything, like it could just grab you any moment. 

Anyways, the nature was so amazing and I took a billion pictures! Sometimes I even thought "Oh I'll have to show this to mom when I get back to Iceland" or calculating the time difference to iceland... not realizing that I was already in Iceland, can't believe it's all been here and I've gone all the way to Australia even before checking my backyard

DAY TWO

Day two was harder than day one... We had the best breakfast I've ever had though, breakfast burritos! mmm

We made a 20 km walk called Skalli, the pathway was always changing. The biggest challenge was the elevation, walking upwards so much was a bit hard but so rewarding once you got to the top. I had my backpack on so at some points I seriously though I was going to die! Considered just falling on purpose and sliding down all the rocks to go back to the camp hahaha! 

Before I left I had talked to some people that had made the walk before and they kept telling me that I couldn't do it and that I should start off with something easier, bla blegh bla! Which really motivated me actually, every time I wanted to turn around I thought about it and kept going, showed them huhh?

The first hill... you can see the group that left before us up there like tiny dots. This hill was so freaking difficult and it's way harder and bigger than it seems on the picture. The thing that was making it even more challenging was that the path was so gravelly so you couldn't get a grip anywhere. As if walking wasn't hard enough, I also had my backpack on which is a job all by itself and on top of that I had to be fighting to keep balance the whole time.

Finally up that first hill and the view was amazing. I thought this was the best. Later I looked back and this was borderline boring compared to what came later on. 

When you manage to get to the top of a hill you should always reward yourself with a Reese's cup. 

It has many purposes. As Adam is demonstrating here you can also use the cup as a Nutella spoon and then eat it. Giving you enough sugar shock to walk all over like a crazy person for the next hours. 

Now that I think about it I feel a bit silly whining about having to carry my backpack when I had half a kg of Nutella with me... in a glass jar! good prioritizing right? hahaha 

Looking back on the camping site. So cool how you can see the lava flow just stopping right there. I didn't even notice it was lava until A pointed it out to me

How did it manage to form and make this shape? Sometimes in places like these I wish I had just the basic understanding of geology. I sometimes stumble upon amazing things that I just consider normal but I guess some science freak would have a seizure of excitement seeing. 

. Later as we were walking we came to this big pile of rocks, sure they were nice rocks but come on, they were rocks. Adam however gets all excited obviously understanding what type of amazing rocks they were. Feels I'm kinda missing out on stuff with not understanding geology.

These piles of rocks are everywhere in Iceland. You can even find piles that have been in the same place for 1000 years, they were used as landmarks before the roads came so people would know where they were walking. Now, of course they are pointless since we have sticks telling us where to go and so on but everyone that goes adds on one stone to the pile. Every pile I came across I took the smallest rock I could find and put it on the very top. A tiny piece of me everywhere, yay!

vuhuu!! all excited after the nutella overload

just proof that I made it up there too!

You go to places like these where there is just the perfect background for some amazing photo. However arriving there is so hard that by the time you finally reach your destination your all disgusting and ruin the nice picture. Then you just hope to god people are so fascinated by the landscape that they forget to notice your being all disgusting hahaha

I can't even start to describe my happiness when I reached this lake. I had finished my water walking up that stupid hill and this was like winning the lottery! 

another hill.. yay!

it's not called ICEland for nothing. there we found a patch of snow, in the middle of the summer...

At one point we reached this great place where we decided to just lay down and enjoy simply being. That's one of the most important things. People are so obsessed with getting to their destination they don't realize that the journey is just as important as the arriving, even more important if anything. 

Then we decided to do acro yoga. It was the most fun ever. I've seen videos of acro yoga before and never thought I'd be capable of even thinking about doing it.

Sadly the self timer is only 10 seconds and finding the balance to do something more takes longer. After this he somehow, and I don't understand how, but he managed to get me upside down so his legs were on my shoulders instead of on my thighs like in this picture. That was crazy, exactly like in this picture but upside down, and the only thing holding me were his feet. After enjoying it for a while I of course started laughing and fell, which was surprisingly easy, no clue how but my feet just found the ground.

hahahaha

we found water again, in this weird way though, the ground had something or another chemical in them which stopped the water from going into the ground so it just laid on top of the moss like this. A explained it all and I want to say that I understood but aah

hahahah surviving out in nature, you suck up a big water drop you come across

I think it's so amazing how diverse everything is. In one place you have red rocks, next to that some grass, a bit away a chunk of piled up lava and of course on your right a geothermal pool!

katrín walking

how the hell does a duck end up there?!? haha

the rocks Adam really liked that I was referring to before

all the rocks were red & white... until all of a sudden they were all black & blue... what?

he looks like a walking 66°north advertisement.

aaand finally arriving back in the campside..

p.s. sorry for the really long post