Earthquake!

Just had our first biggish earthquake, about 6.1, epicentre about 100km away. It is certainly a strange feeling watching the building you're in sway and jump about! My first thought was to press control-s to save my current document (only afterwards did I realise I had forgotten the 14 other open documents!), while Luce sped out of the house just in case the two upstairs floors also became ground floors. As for me, if the upstairs became the downstairs, I was just going down with it.
link to news article (in English)

Spring

I've been trying for a couple of days now to work out how to say this, and I really don't know of a good way. Basically, the rain has had two rather significant effects in the world. The first is kind of obvious - everything has turned green. The second, however, was less expected, and considerably more disagreeable. Due, I suspect, to the ground everywhere being thoroughly waterlogged, and, I believe, the fact that worms need air, not water, to breathe, they've all migrated out of their lovely underground abodes, and have decided to camp out on the footpaths everywhere. I kid you not, on my walk to (and from) the bus-stop on Friday, in some places I had no choice but to squish the worms strung out all over the footpath, because there was simply no other way through or around. UGGGGHHHH!!!

On a happier note, I got to go dancing TWICE yesterday, and have two new spins, plus some styling to practice :) And today I went horse-riding (ooh - tolting) :D AND luce lands in 4 hours - YAY!

Off to Norway tomorrow to give a talk, and to celebrate the 17th of May - more adventures coming right up!

Ert þú íslending?

Okay, so maybe it was rude to laugh, especially since the person who asked if I was Icelandic waited patiently until I said 'no'... Okay, so that took 4 months and 29 days. And so it seems I've reached that very dangerous point in language learning where my accent is passably Icelandic and my mumblings are heard as the proper forms of nouns, adjective, numbers, demonstratives, god everything... This is a dangerous point to be at, cos I still have lots to learn, but I now know why people have been talking faster and faster at and around me - they're assuming that if I can sound Icelandic, then I can understand it too. Oh dear.

Went in the Háskólahlaup (uni fun run - 60th anniversary of the Sports Centre) today. Did the 7km jobbie, in a shade under 40mins. Why so slow you ask? Well, for about a K there was one of those winds that you have to bend into, and when it stops suddenly you nearly fall over, and for about 3 K the wind came from the side and so my legs kept hitting each other. The kind of wind one avoids when one can, like in trainings...

Had guests on Monday night, a friend from uni and his Dutch girlfriend. Every time I opened my mouth to speak Dutch it came out in Icelandic, and every time Heimir looked at his girlfriend his English switched to Dutch. Luce and Yolanda were the only ones who could speak a Dutch-only sentence from one end to the other, and it made for very entertaining facial expressions and cries of exasperation - the kind of entertainment that one doesn't get in Australia very often at all!

So, tomorrow's another public holiday and I'm hooking up with Erla & son for a parade, I made a friend to go running with today, I bumped into several salsa people after my seminar yesterday (a couple of whom actually CAME to my talk on Australian English!) and have started getting email addresses to go dancing more often, and it's all feeling like home. Except that Luce went to Switzerland yesterday and I watched December Boys and Brent sent pictures from Arapiles and the Grampians and so I'm also all wistful and yearning for TREES and kookaburras and magpies and proper sunshine, not this woossie stuff... *sigh* Comments and emails gratefully accepted!!