Geysir

The next day at Solheimar we spent about 12 hours working on a project for a German professor from Sweden, Wolfgang Brunner. Our assignment was to create a spaceship that could sustain life for 6000+ years. You would think that planning a space adventure for that amount of time would require years and years of research and planning...Oh well. We can be a little unprepared for a space exploration. The workshop was in the Sesseljuhús house, and it has a very comfortable and cozy atmosphere. You are supposed to take your shoes off when you enter someone else's house/building, so doing classwork in socks created a very laid back attitude. It is also customary to take many breaks during a school day, and our professor, Wolfgang, was amazed that we were working for 2 hours at a time. Our renewable energy course, taught by Professor Jonas, has a break every 45 minutes for coffee and tea. It's amazing we get anything done!
We also had to go around Solheimar and visit the different workshops and interview some of the employees. Along the way a barn cat decided to join us. He had killed a mouse earlier and was very proud of himself...

Here's a view from Sesseljuhús of some of Solheimar.


This is the green house at Solheimar, where they grow tomatoes, peppers, and more!

Here's a view of one of the guest houses! We stayed in the one on the far right of the picture. There was a big kitchen and each night a different group had to cook dinner for all 20 people. While the kitchen was very nice, we had very few utensils...and of course we didn't realize this until we had 20 minutes to start and finish the cooking...amazingly we managed all the same.
From Solheimar we left in direction of Akureyri, but with many stops along the way.
First we went go Geysir. It is the first scholarly documented geyser, and is the origin of the word "geyser" (I know, surprising, right?) Below is the main geyser, though it hasn't been active for many years. While we were all waiting for something to happen here...
...there were explosions behind us!!
The water is scalding hot, and has various minerals which create beautiful colors.
When the geyser isn't going off, it's funny to watch a bunch of tourists staring at a puddle.
You would be anxiously waiting too!

Iceland really looks like some sort of unreal fantasy land...the steam and moss and flowers mixed with the sheep and horse farms...it all makes for a pretty breathtaking scenery
Here's a glacier from the road!

Well despite the sunlight it's midnight here. I'm a few days behind in my updates, so I'll try to catch up tomorrow! For now, here's a picture of me with my host family! The parents are Oli and Abba, and their daughter, Thora, is on the left.