oh wow oh wow oh wow

Faroese is CRAZY! It's totally like Icelandic, but as pronounced by someone from where Elisabeth is from with a speech impodiment. Or should that be speech impodooiment. (Their 'ee' sounds come out like 'ooee' - it's hilarious!)

Well, in more newsy news, We (as in me mostly) had a massive weekend. On Friday and Saturday I had the Humanities conference (Hugvísindaþing). My talk went well, I got to talk for longer than I should have cos the next speaker was sick. And then I got to tag-team answering questions about LDR with Höskuldur Þráinsson. OMG. HIGHlight of my day let me tell you!!

And then I went out with people from the conference, and we had pizza and icecream and I got to ask everyone about how they fly in their dreams. This is totally my favourite question to ask a bunch of people. In my basketball team only one other person flew at all, which surprised the hell out of me cos it had never occurred to me that someone wouldn't fly in their dreams. But at dinner the other night all five of us flew. What's so interesting about this, is how everyone flies differently. We had 3 arm-flappers in our group (like swimming), and 2 no-control at all fliers, with one of these not really flying but doing more sort of massive jumps. He was also the only one who found it easy to get up in the air, for the rest of us the take-off is the hardest part, being easiest with a roller-coaster or something to shoot us up in the air. Only 2 of us fliers with some control over our direction experience gravity as being much stronger the closer we are to the ground, the other finds take-off and low flying relatively straightforward.

I've spoken with people who fly by projecting a force from their heart, chest or belly/belt down against the ground. These people often can't fly over water, as it provides no resistance. In the linguists group the other night I think I was the only one who could definitely fly over water (but I have to be pretty high up to do so), the others weren't sure or definitely couldn't. So: how do you fly? Special pose, force field, manipulating gravity, like treading water, special suit? Where does the energy/ability come from? Is it harder closer to the ground? How do you take off? Do you have control over where you fly? Can you fly over anything - water, buildings, mountains? How fast can you fly (I often find it much quicker in my dreams to fly than to run, with running too often being like Alice in Wonderland!)? Are you aware when you're flying that it's impossible? If so, does this make you unable to fly, or does it make you realise you're dreaming? What does it feel like? Do you always know you can fly, or do you only remember it once you're flying? Aaah, I want to go to bed now!!!

Okay, so then on Sunday was Auður's confirmation - I'll post photos soon. There was a ceremony at the church, then a lovely feast afterwards (oddly no pickled testicles or sheep's heads, but with food that made Luce and I look at it, go "Huh? What the-? Is that-? Oh!!" at the same time, which confused the people around us who were eavesdropping on the English I think!! Basically, you can buy loaves of bread at the supermarket which are sliced horizontally lengthwise instead of vertically in small squares as usual. It turns out they make these massive club sandwiches and rolled sandwiches with the massive slices of bread...), with 120 family members and close friends. (I really don't understand how Iceland has such a small population, when everyone has a million relatives!)

Watched the latest episode of Torchwood - I'm hooked on the AO Dr Who. I love Gwen's facial expressions and I wish Jack and Ianto would be more tender, I loved the episode Jack Harkness with the other Captain JH. *sigh*

Had my lecture on Australian English on Monday morning and got a round of applause - yay! The students reminded me of La Trobe and Monash students, very lovely and definitely willing to ask and answer questions. Interested in linguistics, which makes taking the class like having a sumptuous meal when you've been doing physical work. Replenishes you and makes the air taste sweet...

And at dancing last night a friend from the Háskóli came, his first time, but I think he's going to pick it up quickly. He's coming next time too. And there was a workshop on the weekend, and the guys were all dancing really well, with a couple of very cool new moves that are really energetic. It took me a bit to pick up on the leads, but I go there in the end. And with their better leads, my turns were far more balanced than usual, and I even did a couple of triple and quadruple turns, most importantly without even looking like falling over - woohoo!

And now I've just collected my last bits of data for my NJL paper, which I hope gets accepted. It's due next week, and I'm not finished! But at least now I know a bit about Faroese. I can't wait to get over there, it's going to be so cool!

And then I got to skype with Tönchen this morning, and Beth and Brent this arvo. When people sneeze, Ella apparently doesn't say 'God bless you' or 'Bless you', she says 'I bless you' :D Go Ellachen - you are God!! Hahahah :D