bye-bye Víðihlíð

This is my last post from Víðihlíð, tonight I'll be sleeping in Kópavogi! The shame of it! No, actually it's quite a lovely area :) Oh, and I finally got to go to Þórsmörk, and it was definitely as beautiful and special as everyone has said. Not to mention lovely and warm - I shocked the hell out of the Icelanders after our 22km hike by lying down for a few minutes in the icy cold river beside the campsite to cool off and wash, while they only lasted a few seconds each :D Photos forthcoming.

June summer holiday

Phew! I've just returned from my 3-week trip to Europe, which is why I haven't been replying to emails. Will work on the photos when I have spare time from moving house and working. Here's a summary of my June so far:

1-6 June: NORMS Linguistics workshop, Hotel Fefor, Gudbrandsdalen in Norway. Highlights:

• Swimming in a mountain lake, fed by snowmelt from the highest mountains in Norway, at 1158 metres above sea level
  
• Playing Cat's Cradle (you know, that string game) for about 4 hours with Gísli on the last night
  
• Finding out that some Dutch dialects have subject-complementiser agreeement in embedded clauses, as well as subject-verb agreement (eg 'I know dat she is coming', vs 'I know dan they are coming'.)
  

6 June: Mark and Susana's wedding just outside of Rome. Highlights:

• Navigating from the airport to the reception in Italian, where my Italian consists of a few songs about Dario from the textbook Avanti! (Non sono Dario, sono Pino. Sono piccolo fratello di Dario. Dario e i gabinetto.)
  
• The bright green kilts worn by Mark, Luce and Matt. First time I've seen groomsmen more eye-catching than bridemaids
  
• Susana's family. First time I met them. I'm already disappointed that they don't live in Melbourne.
  

After that, coupla days: Rome. Highlights:

• The crazily thin Roman pizzas.
  
• The stupendously yummy chilli chocolate gelati near some church near the river.
  
• The insane, people-everywhere, churches-everywhere, mopeds-everywhere pace.
  
• The Colosseum. I could totally visualise Asterix and Obelix charging and sneaking about there!
  

After that, 3 days: Naples/Napoli. Highlights:

• Rosemary (Luce's mum)'s beaming face as she threw herself heart and soul into the pure insanity that is Naples
  
• Tango dancing in the posh part of Naples (thank god there was one!)
  
• Visiting the ruins of Pompei and seeing Mt Vesuvius
  
• The gum trees :D
  
• The yummy focaccia-based pizzas
  

After that, one night: Rome again. Highlights:

• How truly PEACEFUL the city was. In comparison with Napoli.
  
• Gelati
  

After that, 1 week: Rethymno on Crete, in Greece. Highlights:

• The totally bizarre driving style. Basically, you can overtake at pretty much any time, which means you drive on the shoulder wherever possible, to allow people behind you room to squeeze past, and to avoid oncoming overtakers on your side of the double lines.
  
• The Palace at Phaistos, and the Phaistos Disk
  
• Knossos
  
• BA-KLA-VA
  
• Kafaiti (it's the hairy one, my new favourite)
  
• Samaria Gorge - 17kms of white rocks, pink oleanders, orange cliffs, clear streams and the beautiful green of gum trees, starting 1km in the sky, finishing in the super-inviting mild waters of the Mediterranean Sea
  
• Down-time, where we could all just kick back and read our books, and continue to regain our sense of self after Napoli
  

Last 2 nights: Agia Pelagia, on Crete. Highlights:

• Finally having Luce all to myself!!
  
• Snorkelling several times a day
  
• The freshly-squeezed blend of pineapple and orange juice, despite the skepticism of the restaurant guy
  

Reykjavik again. Highlights:

• It was still light when the plane landed at 11:30pm, and it was still light when I got to bed at 1:30am
  
• The tap water is not only drinkable, but it is decidedly yummy
  
• High-speed internet on-tap
  
• Super-comfy bed and pillows
  
• Endless supply of scaldingly hot water at a good pressure
  
• The toasty warm inside, refreshingly cool outside
  
• I can finally recognise an Icelandic accent on someone's English, and it's beautiful!
  
• It's home. And only 4 weeks til I'm back in Melbourne, at my other beautiful home.
  

Creative in Reykjavík

Righto, I just wrote a poem. It's not even a sentence, just a very long noun phrase, and it's certainly horribly clichéed, plus it changes referent/topic halfway through without proper notice, but I think it fits what I can see right now. Sitting in my living room right now, with only candles and evening daylight outside to see by, is truly beautiful. :)

Reykjavík, sumarið 2009

The pink light
at half past ten at night,
like the world is lit by a sea of candles
stronger than the stars,
muted by the rain -
polishing the short-lived green
of the world outside my window.

Salsa dancing

My friends dancing salsa! On Kastljós (hahah!)

http://dagskra.ruv.is/sjonvarpid/4431388/2009/05/20/4/
Salsa á Hverfisgötunni með Tepokanum

A windy tale to rule them all

Okay, so I've had some stories to tell about the wild wind here in Iceland before, like trying to jump in a puddle, but getting blown off-course and missing, being unable to walk under a bridge because the wind just blew me backwards across the ice, being blown sideways off the bike-path, and 2 weeks ago getting caught in a particularly forceful gust at the wrong moment in a pedal (one up, one down), and being blown backwards on my bike. (Okay, that was my own fault for trying to take a short cut over the top of the Perlan hill instead of going around the cemetery)... But this just takes the cake. Fair dinkum, surely this will drive home to you just how ferocious the wind here can be: So, our uni foreigners' 'coffee meeting' group went on a walk about Reykjavík with a guide today. So that I could see the statues and so on, I tied my hair back out of my eyes. And... wait for it... THE WIND BLEW THE HAIR ELASTIC OUT OF MY HAIR!!!! Seriously, that can't be in the rules! I say, that's simply not cricket!!

twilight and twilight fans

Okay, so the more I read about the Twilight series, the more I realise I'm so not alone in being obsessed by it - the books, the movies, the audiobooks, edward, rob, jacob, bella, alice... I even read comments about the actors. But seriously, it seems like people with all levels of education are totally into Twilight - I laughed out loud at one fan's defense of the actors, about how they're real people with real lives, and about how we should stop expecting them to actually be like their characters, and all the celeb palaver, etc.

"People need to stop putting actors on pedal stools".

HA HA HA HA! ROTFL! Is that like some kind of shroom that makes you rush instead of hallucinate? Or like a racing rocking chair? AbsolUTEly LMAO!!!

RtR done

Well, the conference I was organising on 'Relating to Reflexives' in Reykjavík went swimmingly. 2 days of people yabbering about reflexives from all sorts of angles, including long-distance reflexives, logophoricity, methodologies, possession without overt reflexives, how to differentiate between core syntactic binding and non-syntactic coference, pronouns with local antecedents and more :D

We then headed around the Golden Circle (photos), with me acting as tour guide. Lots of hand-flapping during my retelling of the sagas, which I had neglected to brush up on. Dinner of steinbítur (world's ugliest fish = world's yummiest fish) down at the Hafið Bláa 'The blue sea' country restaurant on the south coast, near Selfoss I think. HIGHLY recommended! Food and views were exquisite!! (A seal and loads of birds watched us eat, through the floor-to-ceiling windows.)

I was very happy that my outside-in approach to binding for both Icelandic and Faroese was well received, since this is what I'm going to try to talk about at the LFG conference in July. Lots to do now!!