Coming Home?

I can’t believe that it is my last day in Iceland. As excited as I am to see people at home, I am terribly sad to leave. Right now, I am sitting in the kitchen, surrounded by the smell of French toast, Libby, Dom, Alex, James, Dom’s friend from Australia, Camilia, Liam, and Constantinos. Everyone from all floors has to use the third floor kitchen (my kitchen) as all of the other kitchens have been locked in preparation for the building’s transition into a summer hotel. It is such a sad transition to watch. Yesterday, Libby, Alex, Constantinos, Christian, and I came home from four days driving around the island to the sight of beds and desks littering the hallways and the smell of paint covering up all of the damages we have inflicted on the building throughout the course of the last year. It is too bad that they can’t wait just a little bit longer so that we don’t have to witness the change--- the building feels like it is being killed! My packing is coming along. So far, I have a densely rolled layer of clothes on the bottom of my duffle bag and have begun to work on fitting in my shoes in the most efficient way possible. My room looks messy, much to my despair, but my wall decorations still are cheerfully adorning the wall.
Wow. So much has happened in the last couple of weeks. We have been going NON stop! After 10 days of hanging around Reykjavik, taking care of various city-based things I had been meaning to accomplish, we set off on our glacial geology field course. Amazingly, we had STUNNING weather for the entire course! I was in a short sleeved t-shirt for a couple of minutes one day! It was unreal! The first three days of the trip were dominated by driving, walking around glaciers, talking, stopping for ice cream (our professors seem obsessed with ice cream and candy), and worrying about not having enough food. We were told not to bring our own food, that there would be plenty at the hotel, buttttt there was not. The first night, I resorted to mixing sugar with powdered creamer to fill up after dinner… not a good sign. I guess I don’t really feel like going in to all of the details of the trip, but in essence, I had an amazing time. I learned quite a bit, met a lot of really, really sweet people (who, unfortunately, had been in class with me the entire semester without me knowing just how cool they are), basked in the sun, and went on some fantastic morning runs. I got up at 6:15 each morning to fit in a run, and was pleasantly surprised each time by the calm, cool weather and light skies. As weird as the 24 (essentially) hour light can be, it sure makes it easier to get up. Man, this is making me sad to write about!
After the glacial geology course, we returned to Reykjavik for one night, before taking off again for a 4 day trip allllll the way around the island and a bit into the West Fjords. It was tons and tons of driving, but I think that it was totally worth it. We saw lots of the stuff I had been itching to see, including Myvatn, Akureyri, the East Fjords, the West Fjords, countless waterfalls, and endless amazing views. We were fairly packed into a little car, but people were in high spirits, so it didn’t seem to matter. We had been planning on staying in the car or sleeping right outside the car, but one of the boys didn’t have a sleeping bag, so we wound up staying in little hostels every night. We got an amazing deal at a little hotel in the West Fjords the first night, stayed with a friendly old Icelandic/ Faroese couple the second night, and then stayed in a tiny old church turned hostel for the last night. The final night’s setting was definitely my favorite—I had been intrigued by the cute little churches that litter the countryside, so it was great to get to sleep in one for a night. While it was definitely a functional little hostel, they had left some of the pews, the alter, and other little churchy bits intact, which made it especially quaint.
Oh man, I need to go close my bank account and take care of some stuff downtown, so the rest of this may have to wait. Maybe I will write an extensive and reflective post in an airport on the way home. All of this is just so, so surreal. Didn’t I just get here?! Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

School's Out!

After an intense finals week (actually, weeks), I "wrote" my last exam this morning! They definitely stuck it to us in terms of school work for this last little bit, but I suppose that 2.5 weeks of hard work is better than lots of hard work all semester while trying to fit in traveling and experiencing the country. Now, I have 10 days off before leaving for my glacial geology field trip. I was really hoping to get in some serious traveling during this time, but that is beginning to look more and more unlikely. Everyone's schedules are so variable due to continued finals and visitors that it is really hard to find a reasonable number of people to travel with. Because of that, I think we have settled on accomplishing everything we've been meaning to accomplish right around Reykjavik and then doing a whirlwind trip to the north after we return from our field trip, but before we head home. I can't believe that home is about three weeks away. I don't think I am going to truly believe it until I am in my bed. Even then, I imagine that I am going to wake up and expect to be in my cozy, little, heart covered bed in Gamli!

Because some people had already finished their finals before today and needed to get home for summer jobs, we have been watching the slow departure from the building. We had an intense good bye session for Jonathan, a second floor boy from Canada, who was the first member of my relatively central crew to depart. Tonight it Joel's last night, so we have two cakes to "celebrate" his departure. Joel and Jonathan are both dynamic members of the second floor, so their absence is going to be extremely noticeable. Sad. It is just really, really strange to not know when I am going to see any of these people again. I mean, the person who lives closest to me is Allie in BC, but BC is still quite an excursion from Walla Walla or Corvallis. Right now, we have grand plans about seeing one another again, and I am confident that I WILL see some people, but there are others that I probably won't, which is really too bad. I mean, I spent an entire semester of my life living with these people! There aren't THAT many people that I am going to live with for 5 months throughout the course of my life! Living in Iceland has been a totally unique experience, obviously. I mean, for the rest of my life, when I think back on my "study abroad," these are the people and this is the place that I am going to think of! How has this come and (almost) gone! I feel I pretty much take my life in Iceland for granted, but I really hope that I can remember for these last few weeks how wild it is that this has been my home. What a good home it has been, too.

There are so many straaannggee things about this country, but they all do so much to make it what it is. I feel like I have learned so much from being in a system that operates so differently than the systems I am used to in the United States. I've been here long enough that I have sort of stopped noticing the oddities, but I bet I am really going to miss them when I return home. What am I going to do when someone waves at me on a run?!

Actually! I got waved to REPEATEDLY the other day on my run! It was amazing! I couldn't stop smiling. When I left for my run, it was sunny and nice, but I could tell that I was running into a pretty severe cloud. As I neared the halfway mark the sky let loose in an intense hailstorm. I was running along one of the paths on the water, so I got the chance to intersect several runners. The first couple just stared straight ahead, as if they weren't being pelted by tons of little ice balls, but as the storm intensified, people started laughing and smiling! It was a pretty funny image. All of us running with our heads down, getting slammed by painful little beads. I couldn't remember the last time I had that much fun while running! I saw this one guy twice and both times he waved at me in a such a gleeful way. It made me sooooo happy. When I got home, I was completely drenched and my exposed skin was covered in little red bumps from the hail, but I was ecstatic. Joel wrote a little poem about all of his friends in Gamli (one line per person) and my line read "Sara the farm girl she just loves to run, I think she's a masochist because that's really not fun" and when I got home from that run, Dom said "Hmm... I think maybe you are a masochist" Ha!

Oh my gosh! The daffodils are finally blooming! I have to take a picture of them, because there are actually quite a few sprinkled throughout town. Let me tell you, they are certainly a sight for sore eyes. As sad as I will be to leave these people and this place, I am NOT sad about leaving the weather. I feel like I've been handling it a litttlee bit better than some people because of my western Oregon upbringing, but man, I am still ready for some warmth and sun.

On a completely different note, last Friday we went to a filming of the TV show "Icelandic Idol." It is just like American idol, but in Icelandic (and probably smaller scale). We were seated in the second row, which was pretty cool, because it really felt like we were in on the action. We had no idea what they were saying, of course, (except for when the hosts said two lines in English as a joke), but it was still entertaining. I felt SO bad for the guy who got voted off though. That is a hard thing for a person like me to watch in real life! We took a picture in front of the stage, so hopefully I get a copy of it to post on here! I had never been to a live TV show thing before-- it was really interesting to watch them do all the camera work. I never knew how many cameras were zooming around at any one time! It is sort of chaotic!

Well, I think I might head down to the kitchen for a last second floor hang out with Joel. Hopefully he sings along to lots of Neal Young tonight, since that is his specialty. He buys lots of Monsanto pesticides for his farm. Ha!

Melting the Ice in Spain!

After missing the bus from Cambridge back to the London airport (our only missed connection on the trip, and of course, the last one we needed to make)
NOTE: Pictures in reverse order again, sorry.

Eating our dessert platter in Cambridge

Scenic Breakfast Perch

On the bus from Alicante to Madrid

Waiting for our second couch surf host.

Eating a covert build-your-own-burrito lunch in Burger King when the beach in Alicante got cold!

Trying out the Capoeira instrument at our first couchsurfing house.

Guiseppe and Jonathan's apartment (our hosts)

Waiting for Guiseppe and Juan Carlos to arrive...

Delicious pears in the garden next to the Alhambra in Granada

Wisteria was blooming everywhere!

Teas, spices, and herbs in Granada

My typical traveling attire.

Sweets in Malaga!

The bull ring

Malaga view

Libby and Alex in the tree!

Burritos again!

Sevilla

A stressed out lunch in Sevilla

Mary.

Jesus on the cross

Metro in Madrid, we were pros by the end!

It's been a long time, but life is busy (for real!) here! We are in the midst of finals, and haven't seemed to hesitate about giving us all of the work that we should have had spread out over the year in a 2 week (for me) period. Well, actually, it isn't all that bad. I have just ramped back up to a normal Whitman workload. On Wednesday, we were given our take home final for glacial geology. None of us really knew what to expect, but we certainly did not expect what we were given... They gave us a week to answer 5 questions with a 4 page (single spaced) max/ per question. The example of the essay that got top marks last year was 25 single spaced pages long! Since that was the maximum length, I thought I was going to be way under since I am usually a fairly concise writer, but so far, I've been keeping pace with that limit. It has actually been sort of fun to settle back into an intense working routine. It was difficult to stay focused the first day I put in long thinking hours, but by now, I've pretty much slipped back into it. Next Wednesday is going to be a big day-- a 12-15 pg term paper, this big glacier assignment, and a 30 min presentation! Then we have 4 days to study for volcanology and nature based tourism exams, worth 80% and 70% of our final grade... But THEN we have ten days off before leaving for our 6 day glacier field course, which seems like it is going to be work filled, but SUPER educational.

Given all of the writing I am doing for school, I am not really in the mood to write a long post about all of my Spanish adventures, but I thought that I would just give a tiny update and post some pictures!

Overall, Alex, Libby and I had a great time living the Spanish life. The travel logistics were a little bit more difficult than we expected and things went wrong at every turn (for example, libby realized while trying to check in that she had accidentally booked her flight from London to Spain for 8 in the morning instead of 8 at night-- that military time...), but we all felt like it was a trip to be proud of. Some days, the name of the game was survival, other days, luxury. After landing in Madrid, we went to Sevilla, Malaga, Granada, and Alicante before returning to Madrid to fly home. We managed to live quite frugally, only spending 301 Euros/ person for everything (minus airfare) for the 2 weeks. We stayed with Alex's new romance's (I'm not sure what to call him) parents in Madrid, which was fun, but a little intimidating. I had to do most of the communication the entire trip because of my Spanish skills, but it was definitely great assertiveness training. Because I usually am worried about making sure I get my point across, I wouldn't beat around the bush when asking for something. Usually, it worked well, much to my delight! The spanish accent was definitely a challenge, especially in Sevilla, but my listening skills definitely improved during our stay.

Sevilla was completely insane, due to all of the Semana Santa (holy week before Easter) festivities. It was a struggle to find a place to stay, but we managed! I had to be a little bit insistent with some of the hostel owners (convincing them to let us stay in a small room and just sleep on the floor), but all of them ended up conceding. It was pretty interesting to be immersed in the craziness of Semana Santa. I can't remember ever seeing such intense religious fervor before. At night, parades of people dressed up in KKK outfits (almost identical-- incredibly disconcerting), would follow this big candle/white rose covered cart that carried a statue of an intense looking Virgin Mary. The processions included bands playing somber music, marching steadily along. The streets were absolutely jam packed-- not exactly my favorite city scene, as many of you know. I found a YouTube video that sort of captures the scene, although I must say, it felt way more intense on the streets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xIoTnAyYbs&feature=related

We met up with Libby's cousin, Ellen, our last night in Sevilla, and then the four of us traveled to Malaga the next day. We found a cheap hostel right of the bat in Malaga, which was a huge relief. It was also just a relief to get out of Sevilla. I think all of us finally felt like we could relax a bit from then on out. I am already spending too much time on this, so maybe I will just list a few things that we did for the rest of our time in both Granada and Malaga.

1. Beach
2. Aerial view of a bullfight on Easter. Happened across it on our way down from a castle. A bit traumatic, I must say. I am REALLY glad that we weren't closer.
3. Granada sights
4. La Alhambra
5. Lots of meals.

Food was a central focus of this trip. I felt sort of like Grammy McCune, always planning for the next meal! We ate lots of cold burritos and sandwiches, since we didn't want to spend lots of money going out every night, but didn't have any cooking facilities. I liked it though, it meant my knife came in handy every day! Alex told me to tell me dad that my knife was "the most useful and important item on the trip." Hahah


We couch surfed at two different houses in Alicante, which was actually really fun. We were worried that the first two guys we were staying with weren't going to show up, but they did! We had fun cooking them dinner (potato soup), going to their Capoeira class (Brazilian dance fighting), and then going out with them the third night we were in Alicante, even though we weren't staying with them any more. The second guy we stayed with was a police officer in Alicante. He had a really nice apartment and seemed eager to have people to talk to. We felt bad because we didn't spend a ton of time hanging out with him, but hopefully he enjoyed our presence while we were there.

Much to my delight, Alex, Libby, and I are still great friends after all of this. We know a RIDICULOUS amount about each other's lives, but I think living in icy Iceland and traveling together for 2 weeks can do that. I'm hard pressed to tell a story they haven't heard.

Ok, I really need to stop here and start doing homework! But, I will post again after Wednesday to give a more thorough update. I can't believe I am going home in a month! Life is CRAZY!

The Visit!

Bonus!

On the way to Snaefellsnes

Lunch in the car

Golden Sand Beach

Why didn't Daddy come?

Mossy Mats

On the way to the dramatic beach

It doesn't look nearly as dramatic as it actually was!

Þingvellir

Gullfoss

The lava tube

Their Guesthouse

Fancy ladies?

South coast!

Solheimajokull (one of Myrdalsjokull's outlet glaciers)

Glacier/Proglacial Margin

Lunch out of the wind!

Beach at Vik

Myrdalsjokull

Their cozy room!

I have been debating about how I was going to attack this blog post because I have a million things I want to say about the week I spent with my mom and sis, but I don't want to make this an oppressively long post... I think I am just going to go for it, but maybe keep extreme details to a minimum, except when they are absolutely necessary.

Just from this introduction, one can probably tell that it was a great week, jam-packed (Muir-McCune family style) with fun trips! We rented a car three out of the 5.5 days that they were here. After hitchhiking all over, having the ease of transport that comes with a rental car felt absolutely BLISSFUL! Having the car allowed us to get to quite a few places, although, of course, there were tons of things we didn't see.

Myrica and my mom flew in early on Sunday morning. They were expecting me to meet them at the bus station near my building, but I surprised them by catching the 4 am flybus and meeting them at the airport! I was paranoid about missing them, so I got there wellllllll before I needed to. Ah well, better safe than sorry. When I left, most of my friends were still up and about from the night before, which seemed pretty funny. When they finally got there, it was so exciting to see them come out from behind the sliding opaque doors! Myrica said that she could see people looking at us happily during our initial reunion, which was particularly fun for us since we all love observing random people's reunions at airports.

We took the flybus back to Reykjavik and then trudged and lugged our way through the driving wind and rain back to Gamli. Myrica was not impressed with the weather, especially since she wasn't properly dressed for a little bit of a storm. Shortly after getting home, we all sacked out in my room for a couple of hours, which felt super nice. After waking up feeling at least slightly refreshed, we took their bags over to Baldersbra (their guesthouse just across the pond, maybe a three minute run from my building) and then began our walk about Reykjavik. We walked up Laugavegur (the main shopping street) and ate a little something at one of my favorite cafes, Jomahlind (that'd be a phonetic spelling...). With food in our bellies, we marched on to the famous weekend flea market (Kolaportið) where we got a little bit of food and a cute hat to send to Todd in New Zealand (don't worry, he somehow figured it out without me saying anything already, so I'm not ruining the surprise...). We then spent the rest of the day traipsing about, seeing things like the hot pool I go to most often, the harbor, the library, etc. They also got to experience my beloved bonus grocery store, which was exciting for me! For dinner, we attempted to find this organic fish and chips place, but wound up eating some non-thai thai food instead. It tasted really good, but didn't taste like any Thai food I had eaten before!

The next day, I went to my morning class and then met up with them at about 10. My mom had rented a car (and learned about the rules of the road!) while I had been in class, so we were able to take off shortly after I got home. We were planning on visiting places along the south coast and going to the blue lagoon, but a navigational error took us to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula instead! I realized that we were going the wrong way on Hwy 1 about 15 minutes out of town, but instead of retracing our steps, we decided just to retool and go on to Snæfellsnes, a place that we were planning on going to later in the week anyway. I was a little worried that the weather was going to be nasty, but it wound up cooperating beautifully! Because Snæfellsnes is a fair distance from Reykjavik, we spent much of the day in the car, but that was okay because the drive was gorgeous. Myrica and my mom found the 6.4 km long tunnel that goes under the ocean a bit disconcerting, but we didn't get a flat tire inside, get stuck, have it collapse on us, see a leek, or experience any of the other disasterous things they were picturing! Once actually on the peninsula, we saw lots of amazingly lush (with moss) lava fields, picturesque cinder cones, striking basalt beaches, tall, snowy basaltic mountains, lichens galore, and much more. I think one of the highlights of the day for all of us was a stop at an absolutely MAGNIFICENT basalt beach. The entire beach was made up of smooth basalt pebbles and boulders and waves were SMASHING against the shore. We think that the shore must have dropped off dramatically, because big, blue waves would roll in and not break until they hit the beach. It was dramatic, to say the least. I'll post pictures of it, because my words can't do it justice. In retrospect, I think Snæfellsnes was a good choice for our first excursion, because it gave Myric and my mom a great taste of just how stunning Iceland can be. Or actually, usually is.

After dinner at one of the pubs downtown (the same place where I had my experience with rotten shark...) and a stop at the 1011 for some delicious gummy candies, we headed back to their guesthouse for the night.

We had the rental car for Tuesday as well, so the next morning, we popped back in the car and started our way around the famous Golden Circle. Our first stop was Þingvellir, the site of Iceland's first parliament, Alþingi, and more importantly (for me) the site of the rift valley between the North American and Eurasian plate. It was pretty cool to stand on the North American Plate and be able to SEE the Eurasian Plate across the rift!

After a bit of a walk-around at Þingvellir, we got back into the car and headed towards Geysir. Due to a closed road, we had to take the long way around to Geysir, but that was okay because it was a beautiful drive along the east shore of Þingvallavatn, the largest natural lake in Iceland. Arriving at Geysir felt a little like I was arriving at some place in a different country-- there were so many more tourists than I was used to seeing! We walked out to the area where there were lots of little boiling pots of water and geysers, including "Geysir," the oldest known geysir in the world! People were all crowded around Strokkur, the geysir that predictably erupts about every 10 min, which definitely alerted us the fact that we were not in the United States. There would be no way that people would be allowed to get as close to something like that back home. While we were leaving, we saw a few people get absolutely DRENCHED by the geysir! It went off sooner than it was predicted, so a group of people were caught standing in the wrong place! I guess the water must have cooled in the wind before it landed on them, because they didn't seem particularly distressed.

After Geysir, we drove a bit further up the road to Gullfoss, one of Iceland's most impressive waterfalls. Our Lonely Planet had warned us that Gullfoss was sometimes a bit of a letdown for visitors, but it definitely was not! It was so, so, so beautiful and powerful! The spray was chilly, but it was definitely worth getting a bit indampiated to have the opportunity to get close to the falls! As we walked down the path towards the rock that extends out over the top of the falls, we got an increasingly magnificent view.

I think I may start to be a little bit more brief, because I am realizing that this is going to wind up being an incredibly long document if I keep going at this pace! After Gulfoss, we started heading in the general direction of Reykjavik. A few of my friends had done the Golden Circle the day before, and so they advised us about a few neat places to stop in addition to the main attractions. One of those places was a 1300 m long lava tube that we never would have noticed from the road. We walked a ways into the tube, admiring the huge piles of snow that had accumulated beneath skylights in the tube and attempting to keep sure footing. At the place we turned around, the floor was covered with ice stalagmites from water droplets! They were so cute! Unfortunately, Myrica’s camera ran out of batteries at this point during the day, so we couldn’t do much in the way of photo documentation.

After emerging from the lava tube, we made the impromptu decision to tack on the Blue Lagoon to the end of the day! We decided to drive there the back way instead of going through Reykjavik, which turned out to be both a good and bad decision. The views were amazing, but the drive was looonngg on slow, gravel roads. We made it, however, and got to enjoy the Blue Lagoon for a little over an hour. We all felt like we’d had enough by that point, so it worked out perfectly!

On Wednesday, I had to give a presentation in my Quaternary Environments class, so Myrica and my mom entertained themselves while I went to class until 3 pm. At that point, my mom walked up to the Perlan while I ran back and forth, periodically checking in with her. It made my run more enjoyable, because I always had someone to be looking for! Iceland continued to cooperate and gave my mom some fantastic views of the city and surrounding area. I don’t know if I have emphasized enough up this point how AMAZING the weather had been. Of course, there had been bad moments, but on the whole the weather was pretty perfect much of the time that they were here. After much debate, we decided to get dressed up and go out to dinner on Wednesday night. We went to this little place downtown that I had walked by many, many times but never imagined that I would actually get to go to! Myrica dressed my mom and me in her forceful way “Sara. Put this on. No. Change your tights.” Etc, which both my mom and I like. We feel like we are in good hands when Myric is in charge of the clothing operation. We tried to get a picture of our outfits, but had a little bit of difficulty getting a picture that really captured it (as you can see in the pictures above). Dinner was delicious AND to top it all off, we saw Northern Lights on the way home!!! I couldn’t believe their luck! They were faint, but unmistakable. Amazing, eh?

Thursday was another adventure day—this time along the south coast. As per usual, the drive was beautiful. We stopped in at the famous bathroom at Skogafoss. It was so fun to show them where we had spent so much time. Looking at it (and smelling it) again, I was really impressed that we stayed in there and had such a good time! While on the south coast, we spent the majority of the time we were outside of the car clambering around on the proglacial landforms at Solheimajokull (an outlet glacier of Myrdalsjokull). It was particularly exciting for me, because I think this is one of the places where I am going to do fieldwork in May. I can’t wait! We climbed up a little ridge to get a good look at the glacier, and it was certainly dramatic. The stuff we were climbing on was covered in beautiful crustos lichens that were overlaying glacial striations. Pretty cool. We made sure to collect some rocks that my mom could bring home to my dad! It was windy, windy, windy, but not too bad when we were bundled up and moving around. After walking down to the glacial margin, we climbed back up a little ways and found a nice little nook that was out of the wind where we could eat lunch. After lunch, we hiked back down to the car and set off for Vik (the town that I was attempting to get to when we wound up in the bathroom). As it was already sort of late in the day, we didn’t spend too much time in Vik, but we did walk down to see the spires of basalt sticking up out of the blue ocean and the rounded, black sand beaches. On the way home, we stopped in Selfoss to get ingredients for dinner and so that my mom could buy me groceries! It was so fun to get fresh stuff that I never feel like I can justify when I am buying things for myself!

Upon returning to Reykjavik, we cooked spaghetti in Gamli and then ate and talked with some of the people I live with. It was fun for them to get to know my family and vice versa, I do believe. I do wish that they had had more opportunities to interact, but you can’t do everything, I suppose! After cleaning up dinner and hanging out for a little bit more, we walked back to their guest house for bed.

The next day was a sad day in mudville, as it was the day they had to leave! I couldn’t believe how QUICKLY it came! Actually, I could believe it, but it still made me sad! We spent the morning walking around Reykjavik, taking care of a few select shopping missions. I needed a new pair of jeans, which we accomplished, and Myric was feeling the need for a few accessories… My mom made a good point when she said that it was good Myrica hadn’t come to Reykjavik a few years earlier when she still shopped like a mad man! Her bank would have been pretty broken after seeing all the cute stuff that Iceland has to offer! After lunch, I, unfortunately, had to go give a volcanology presentation at one, so with a tearful goodbye, I forced myself to get it together and go talk about La Palma in front of my class. I was not that happy of a camper, but I recovered pretty quickly. I am just not much of a fan of goodbyes! While I was in class, they successfully caught the Fly bus and made it home without a hitch! It is so fun to know that they have been here and can picture many of the things and people that I talk about! I wish that everyone could come visit me.

My oh my. My fingers are exhausted and I imagine you are probably SICK of reading! Also, I’m in charge of cooking tonight, so I best go get started on my cheese biscuits and corn chowder! It is snoowwing to beat the band right now… spring still seems a ways off—although there are a few crocuses blooming around town, much to my delight! Alex, Libby, Sam, and I leave for Spain next Monday, so the next entry may be from a new foreign country. Wild!