Iceland Day 7 ended with a bang... After our deCode visit, we went to a lovely reception at the National Museum of Iceland We were able to get a quick tour of the museum, saw a tiny figurine that is thought to either be Thor or Christ.. which I think is a great summary of their Christian and Pagan roots. The museum gives a wonderful walk from the beginning of the settlements in Iceland through to modern day, discussing both lifestyle and religion of the people. It is a beautifully designed museum as well. The reception was lovely, it was good to get a chance to say a final thank you to all the people who had worked so hard to make the Global Health Forum possible and it was nice to get one last chance to chat with our fellow Icelandic students. But I had one more chance coming that I didn't know about...
Following the reception, my plan was to eat and sleep but on our way back to town with Terra, Jaimie and I and Terra found ourselves in a bookstore buying all kinds of Icelandic music and getting to know the staff there who had heard of both Vampire Weekend AND Beirut - fabulous bands, check them out if you haven't already! Then we had a quick meal and a long chat and all of a sudden it was 9PM and we had plans to meet at 10PM to go out... ah well, who needs sleep? So the group (including two of our new Icelandic friends!!) met in the lobby of our fab-o hotel and went out for fun night of chatting and checking out "the scene" in Reykjavik on the weekend. It was a fun night, had good chats, heard good music, great people watching UNTIL.... we decided to try some of the local favorite schnapps, Brennivin, as per our Icelandic friends recommendation. Yep, it is as strong as they say... and we were homeward bound not long after but before we left, we did get a couple very impressed looks from the Icelanders who heard we had survived our shot of Brennivin. Jamie and I stopped for one last meal at Pronto Pizza before turning in at
The nursing crew was scheduled to meet at 10 for a trip to the flea-market but I wasn't packed - shocker and one nurse didn't show so we delayed our start and then spent our few remaining hours shopping at the main strip in town and checking out the flea-market which is a very different side to Reyjavik and definitely worth the stop. The main shopping street is very fancy in Reyjavik and full of fancy people so it was good to see that there are common folk in Reyjavik too!
One last bus ride to the airport, final check-in, tax refunds, last ditch effort at shopping for the family and sad goodbyes and I was tucked in for 6.5 hours for my ride home. They played this sappy movie "P.S. I love you" which opened the floodgates for my wanting to be back home with my husband and my lovely little life in Minnesota.
It really was a fantastic trip though. I am a geek at heart and I LOVED learning about all the different topics and thought the variety was perfect, albeit not linear. As I have said to my new and my old friends, this trip is going to be to one of those "great weeks of my life". Upon hearing this, a professor questioned me, saying "but you did this without your husband". I replied, "I am a pretty independent soul" and really, I am grateful for that, grateful for this opportunity and for all the fun memories.
Thanks so much to everyone I got to know on this trip, and thanks to everyone else who made it possible, how lucky we were to be in that little piece of the world in that little piece of time.
an attitude of gratitude can take you far.)
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