Today has been a long day! Work was slooow. I work in a class which is supposed to have twenty four children but today we had just three. It has been one of those days where you watch the clock every two minutes. Everyone wad tired and the children were grouchy. I could not be happier about today being Friday!
I am very much looking forward to the weekend and what it has in store for me 
Back to reality. After 24 days of touring the country and having our families around it has been hard to regain momentum. I took the day off work yesterday to catch up on sleep (much needed) and nurse a headache.
Being back at work is great…although there are a lot of changes being made; with two of my friends leaving over the next couple of months. I shall be sad to see them go.
This was just a little update to reassure you (and myself) that I haven’t forgotten how to blog. I shall be updating more regularly from now on. Promise 
My parents stayed for an amazing two weeks. On the same day they left Sam’s parents arrived and they stayed for a fun filled 10 days. Here are just a few more pictures :p
I, with my family, drove the entire coast of Iceland in six days. I’ve been waiting to update you until I had uploaded the pictures but can’t find my cable…again. So, before I give you an in depth story I shall give you a brief glimpse of what we got up to…
Going clockwise we stayed Laugar after seeing Gullfoss, Geysir and thingvellir. We bathed in hot tubs and drove mountain roads. We then arrived in Akueryri were we swam and ate whale. The next day we took a drive to Húsavík where we sunbathed and drank coffee. We also went whale watching and visited the, world famous, penis museum. That night we stayed in a hotel in the middle of the mountains, bathed in hot tubs and ate Icelandic salmon. The following morning we saw Gódafoss, Mývatn, Dimmuborgir and the most amazing sight ever at Námaskarth; one of the biggest solfatara sites in Iceland. We then ended up in a rather shabby looking hotel in Eithar but sat outside drinking wine until the early hours of the morning with the sun still shining. The next day we stayed in Eiglstathir where we swam and relaxed in the 24 degree sun. The last day was twelve hours of driving. This involved the worst road ever! Imagine a gravel road high up in the mountains with no barriers, a twelve percent drop and a hair-pin turn. Fun. Once that was over we had the beautiful views of the east coast. We stopped at the famous ice lake where we took a boat ride and ate one thousand year old ice which is supposed to make you look younger. We visited the Skaftafell museum and glacier. Then headed home past the ash filled fields. It was amazing!
I can’t wait to look at all our photos and put them on here. The pictures above are what Sam took with his phone…
My parents are arriving in Keflavik tomorrow and so that means lots of housework to try and prove to them that I am domesticated and all grown up. As a rule I am quite good with keeping the place clean and tidy and I even like doing laundry! But obviously there are things that get forgotten about during everyday, working life. For example, I discovered that I have eight mugs that I didn’t know had and I re-discovered a book that I had lost about two months ago. The book was slyly hidden behind the radiator and was obviously pretty cosy there as it took a lot of persuading to get back out.
I can’t clean the house thoroughly without a good soundtrack to keep me going; so I chose a selection of my favourite songs to keep the duster moving. Finally the house is complete. There is not one cupboard, not one shelf, not one grain of dust that hasn’t been scrubbed or dusted. So now I can relax, drink wine and enjoy the glorious weather that we are having. Tomorrow is going to be fun…and very clean
The town, Kirkjubaejarklaustur, in South Iceland is concerned because there are no children being born. The amount of children in the area has declined so much that there is no need for a primary school this autumn. The chairman of the area has two ideas on how to increase the baby making. One is to ban birth control so that people will have no choice but to reproduce or take a vow of abstinence. The other idea is to create a “love week” to encourage couples to get together and create, a much needed, child. People are now being encouraged to move to the area for it’s beautiful scenery and good schools (with no waiting lists!) to try and boost it’s population.
Elsewhere in Iceland there has been a major baby-boom ever since the financial collapse. Iceland is known to have one of the highest numbers of young mothers in Europe with girls having children from as early as 16 years old. This is normal to them. In fact I have been asked many times by my Icelandic friends “Why haven’t you had children yet? You’re 20 years old and you are in a relationship!” Well, my dear Icelanders, 20 is still quite young and I’m not in a rush so please wait at least 6 months before you ask me again! It is a question I get asked all the time at work. I think I’ve mentioned before how they made pretend bets as to when I would get pregnant (most of them went for August). No pressure then!
Quite often, in Iceland, if you’re young and have a baby you give it to your parents to look after whilst you continue to party and have a baby-free life until you’ve left school at the age of 20. Obviously, this isn’t always the case but it is common.
I found a good article called Iceland is knocked up… Here are just a couple of paragraphs which I thought were funny/interesting:
Earlier in the term while working on a group project my classmates and I took a table across from a toilet. We counted 11 different pregnant young women use the toilet.
Honest to God I was shocked. My friends were so blasé about it, “Oh that’s how it’s always been in Iceland,” one of them explained, “why shouldn’t women be young mothers if they want? The daycare here is so heavily subsidized that Icelandic families can easily pursue a double income lifestyle or an education while still having kids. It’s not even thought twice about, Icelandic women can do it because we have a support system that works. Also Icelandic mothers are really friggin’ organized.”
Even so, I pointed out, the amount of pending babies seemed unusually high and they agreed, then blamed the kreppa. The “kreppa kids,” as they have now been affectionately named, refers to the babies conceived in the aftermath of the economic crash.
Forgetting the “kreppa kids” or how young people are, I love the idea of a “love week”. To have couples up and down the country making a good effort to encourage the romance back into their relationship could only be a good thing right? I think they should go ahead with the idea (but without the pressure of creating offspring). 
