Waiting for the flybus now to take a group of us to the airport. Yesterday was a relaxing day. I slept in and then went shopping. Decided I really had no desire to buy a sweater so I bought some gloves and a hat and then splurged on a gorgeous handmade silver necklace with a piece of smoothed volcanic rock in the center and a handmade glass candle holder. Much more my style then one of the sweaters! After a course evaluation we went out to the super fancy super expensive Perlan for our farewell dinner. We had a blast, got [View Full Entry]

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I can now say that I have eaten at all of the best restaurants in Iceland. However, I haven't eaten much at any of them. Just got back from one of the top restaurants and ate 2 carrot sticks, the piece of potato and dessert. The rest? Smoked salmon for appetizer and what else, but lamb for dinner. Seriously? I realize that the organizer of this course likes to eat well and doesn't like "typical" foods but when you are ordering for 50 people for 2 1/2 weeks straight, you order some variety. If I never see lamb again, I'd be [View Full Entry]

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Today was great! We continued our lab work starting at 8:30, running some geochemical analyses in the morning. My group finished early so we had over 4 hrs before our next lab session due to the 1 1/2 hour lunch break. I went back to the hotel and took a wonderful 2 hr nap and then stopped to get some quick lunch while walking back to campus. Our next lab session was not quite as successful since our DNA extraction showed no results but based on our other experiments, it wasn't necessarily unexpected due to the environmental conditions. Our last lab [View Full Entry]

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It has been a long couple of days! Yesterday we boarded the bus early to travel back to Reykjavik. We traveled north through a mountain pass (another bumpy, rocky road...I'm pretty sure my brain has dislodged by now!) and following the western coast, stopping at various historical and cultural sites along the way. I'm exhausted right now and can barely remember half of the places so I really can't do them justice in this blog tonight! We focused a lot on the Icelandic Sagas which you're best off looking here for an explanation o [View Full Entry]

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Today we had a bunch of lectures in the morning on glaciers and the origins of life. After they were over we were having lunch and talking about how we were disappointed that we haven't had any time for real discussions. We've been lectured at but we're not talking! So we began planning a meeting for this evening to have a round table discussion. Before we could do that we went on an excursion to Landmannalaugar to sample from some hot springs, hike a bit on the lava fields, and we could go swimming in the geothermal river. It was another [View Full Entry]

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Not a lot to write about tonight but I'm not sure I'll be able to post tomorrow so I thought I'd put a quick note up. Today was our last day in Hrauneyjar and we were able to sleep in a bit which was glorious! I slept until 10 and then took a shower and made my way over to the main hotel. The manager here is so incredibly nice and even though breakfast ends at 9, they held it for all of us late risers. We had 2 lectures before lunch about life in ice, rocks and where it may, [View Full Entry]

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Today was amazing! First, I was able to catch the midnight sunset last night which was beautiful right behind our building. We started early and had left the hotel area by 9:00. After driving about 30 minutes on paved roads we turn off of into the inland roads. These are only accessible 2-3 months out of the year and can be closed down at any time depending on volcanic, tectonic, glacial or weather events. We lucked out and they were all open (that usually doesn't happen until late July). We were on our green bus which looks similar to any coach [View Full Entry]

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Today was actually a lot of fun even though we only had lectures. The bugs from hell got way worse and the hotel was incredibly smart and started selling us mosquito netting headcovers for 500 Krona. Totally worth the $4!! We had lectures throughout the day on glaciers, volcanoes, and climate change. It is so nice to have geology lectures and know what is going on. We were quite enjoying when the astrophysicists were asking questions such as "What's ENSO mean" and "Why is Iceland even here" (geologically speaking of course). After a week of barely understanding, it's great to be [View Full Entry]

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I actually wrote this last night but am just getting a chance to upload it! Hi everyone, Well today was a long, fun and interesting day. After my last post we innoculated our samples. After the past week of feeling like an idiot, it felt great to watch the astrophysicists have no clue what was going on during the microbiology lecture and lab and have to ask us questions!! After that we had lunch and headed back to the hotel to get our bags (they were very nice to let us leave one small thing each behind so they can enjoy [View Full Entry]

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Feeling much better today. Not 100% but good enough to get moving this morning. I was sick until about 2PM yesterday and finally got smart and opened the windows to let some air in, and then ran to the store to get some crackers and stuff, packed and slept all afternoon and night. I vaguely remember waking up when my roommate got back around midnight, fell back asleep, and didn´t wake up until it was just about time to head to breakfast. They had to split the groups for lab work this morning so I´m in the computer lab playing on [View Full Entry]

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