Merry Christmas to All!

I was hoping to post some pictures off all the nice snow, our 'currently being refurbished' kitchen, our beautiful Christmas tree and more....but I can't find the docking station for my camera, so that will have to wait.

I guess things have changed on the blog. Before I was away in Europe and I was writing to keep my friends at home in the loop. Now I guess I'm home and writing to all my friends in Europe :-)

So I've been home for three weeks now. It' nice to be home, especially for the holidays. I've been keeping pretty busy. Mostly with the Pilots license. Before I left for Europe I finished everything off and just needed to take the actual flying test with the instructor. But the four days leading up to my departure were all rainy and I never got it done. So now I"m back again, basically I just need to practice enough to get myself ready to take the test. But once again time is limited. Looks like I'll be heading down to Olympia around the 5th of January. So I HAVE to get the license finished before then. Hopefully early next week, cross your fingers for me.

Speaking of the job, I'm getting excited. I got the company website, www.soloy.com and it looks great. It's a nice small company that does modulations to small aircrafts and helicopters. That includes installing new engines and doing all the testing to go along with that. So I'm stoked, it looks like a great job where I can learn a lot, hopefully I will get some hands on experience!

Other then that I've just been enjoying some free time. Did some skating, played some hockey, played in the snow trying to make tunnels like a 12yr old, a little quadding here and there, fighting with the dog, saw the new Rocky movie. All that good stuff.

I hope everyone, everywhere had a Grrrrrrrrrrrrreat Christmas! However, wherever and with whomever you celebrated it!

I leave you with a little Dr. Seuss, from 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'

He stared down at Who-ville!
The Grinch popped his eyes!
Then he shook!
What he saw was a shocking surprise! Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any presents at all!
He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming!
IT CAME!

Somehow or other, it came just the same! And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
"It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"

Iceland Part Deux

Well this post took a little while. But I didn't want to add it until I had all the pictures from mine and Nory's camera. So pictures have now been added to the Photo Gallery
http://www.uncasvet.com/cgi-bin/emAlbum.cgi?cmd=show_thumbs&path=Iceland&tn=1

Day 3
So after staying in Arnes, we got up early the next morning and headed North towards the big attractions of the Golden Circle. First off we hit an old volcanic crater which was big and deep. The whole area is chock full of volcanoes and the land around it was very rocky with remnants of lava.

Then we headed up to Geysir. The original! All Geysirs were named after this one, the original in Iceland. Unfortunately it doesn't erupt nearly as often as in the old days. We actually never saw it blow it's top. But there was another one near it, that erupted about every 5 mins. Iceland has a hot and a warm geothermal area. The warm is a mere 100 degrees C, but this area of Geysirs is in the hot part, i.e. 250 degrees C. Little too warm for a bath.

After that we headed up to Gulfoss! The most famous waterfall in Iceland. 250m long with a 32m drop. It was magnificent! The path down to the waterfall was pretty icy, on the way down we sorta skated it, but the way back was tricky. I turned around and Nory was on the ground, half underneath the guide ropes trying to stop himself from rolling down the hill. But the view was sure amazing. Almost like a black and white photo due to all the snow and rock.

Then we headed to our hostel. The plan was to drop off our stuff and then take a short drive to Thingveller. But after we got to the hostel, we found out the shortcut road to Thingveller was in poor poor condition and travel was not recommended. So here we were, with nothing else to see for the day, stuck in a town of 2oo people at 3 in the afternoon. So we drove around....for 2 mins. The natural sauna was closed up, but luckily for us the swimming pool/rec center was open. So we swam and played some B-ball and wasted as much time as we could. Our hostel was pretty much empty except for two students who attended the local sports college. So Nori and I played chess most of the night and kept a lookout for Northern Lights although they never showed.

Day 4
Now we took the long route to Thingveller (it's actually spelled different in Iceland, it's gotta funny character that looks sorta like a P).
This is the place of great historical importance for Iceland. For a lot of reasons actually. Backtrack some millions of years, Iceland is actually made up of two plates. Half of Iceland is part of the North American plate and the other half is part of the Eurasian plate. And they meet right in the middle at Thingveller. So this is literally where Iceland came together, and actually where it's moving apart. 2cm each year, the plates are moving apart.

Not only that but this is the place where the people of Iceland came together from the 1100's. This is where they formed the government, made decisions, accepted Christianity, handed out punishment and much more. This truly was the center of history for Iceland. It was really cool!

Lastly we headed back to Reykjavik. We went and toured the amazing church and took the elevator to the top to get a great view of Reykjavik. After that we simply toured the center. Entering the little shops, buying souvenirs. After that we headed back to the hostel to drop off the rental car and then headed back to the center. After a really expensive dinner we headed back to the church. We bought tickets to a Christmas concert for that night! It was pretty cool, with a big church choir and that massive church organ, as well a famous Icelandic singer was there and she obviously quite a favorite in Iceland. The people just never stopped clapping. We got two encores out of it!!

And that was all she wrote. The next morning we got a bus ride to the airport and parted our ways. Nory going back to Denmark and me heading to London for one day to meet up with Sergi.
But it was an absolutely amazing trip, I'm so glad I got to do it. Thats it for me! Hopefully another post soon about life back at home!

Iceland

Ahhh beautiful Iceland! Well the first thing you have to do when you get to Iceland is check your calculator at the door, because if you start doing all the conversions to find out how much everything is actually costing...it will kill you.

So what have Nori and I done...

Day 1
Well after we got off the plane and got our car rented we decided to head to the famous Blue Lagoon. Even from the air we could see it...it is this hazy light blue color. As can be expected the smell of sulphur was pretty strong from the geothermal springs, but the water was gorgeous, especially since it was around plus 2 outsides, so the whole lake was enveloped in steam, you could hardly see 15m in front of you. Nori and I tried the silfra mud, caking it on our face...for that smooth sensous feel!

After that we headed into town and found our hostel...after a couple wrong turns. Then we headed into downtown Reykavik to check everything out. Although, the Friday night, nightlife in Reykavik is supposed to be pretty wild, we checked in early as we were getting up early for a long day of driving.

Day 2
We got up at 7am and started driving south. It was dark as we expected so we drove some, 8am, 9am...still pitch black....10am....yep still dark. Wow, I thought i was used to the mimimal daylight hours from Canada, but not getting light until 1030 or 11am...that is rough. Everything seems so dead.

Anyways, we headed down to south passing waterfall after waterfall...and taking pictures of waterfall after waterfall. Then we came to Skogar, the first big attraction. It was a massive waterfall, witha town of...50 people around it. Everything was dead, we never saw a single soul. So we hiked up and around the waterfall. Legend says there is a treasure of gold behind the waterfall, but I couldn´t convinve Nori to go for a swim and get it.

Then we kept on driving. We wanted to head inland to the tongue of one of the glaciers but the road was óffroad´which is prohibited by our rental car. Luckily...I didn´t read the rental contract...so we went anyways. At the glacier, I warned Nori how dangerous it can be to walk on the glacier because you could fall through a hole. So what does Logan do, walks on the ice...in front of the glacier. Underneath which, the water is melting and flowing. CRACK, the icebreaks!Lckily, with my catlike reflexes, I managed to scramble back to safety. Other then the wet pant leg and shoe, I was alright.

Then we did some more off road driving, this time to the coast where there we birds but the thousands and then some. Plus some magnificent rocky cliffs and black sand beaches.

Next we drove on to Vik. Not a lot there, but we found this really cool store that sold souviners. The cool part though, was that the actually had a mini factory in the back and made nearly all of the stuff. Especially all of the Icelandic Wool wear.

Finally we backtracked and headed inland to Arnes. When we got to the hostel we found that we were the only two staying there. Surprise surprise. We kept a lookout for the Northern lights, but they never showed.

Well 2 minutes left on the expensive internet. Guess our final two days will have to wait until i get home!

Cheers everybody! Miss you all in Denmark already!

Logan