Coming Back From the Holidays!

“Vor” í Reykjavík (“Spring” in Reykjavik)?

Well, as of 6:45 this morning (by the bye, that’s 1:45a.m. East Coast time—the time my body is currently running on), after some 14 hours of travel, I arrived back in Iceland for the next semester! It’s my theory that the “spring” semester was so named to give poor college students hope for better future weather while they slave away during the months that (in Iceland and the US alike) really must be properly called “winter.” Of course, it was about 20 degrees warmer in Keflavík when I landed than it was in the US when I flew out, so I can’t complain. But it was also dark for 4 and a half hours after that landing, so maybe that evens the score?

It’s exciting to be back in Iceland for another four months, even if they are the rather dreary ones weather-wise. But I’m looking forward very much to my classes—well, one in particular: Working with Manuscripts. Maybe they’ll go wild and crazy and let us look at real ones and not just facsimiles here! I’m also excited about upcoming visits from my family and several friends (possibly more than several!), and a planned class trip to the Westfjords at the end of the semester. Pictures and anecdotes to come!

In the meantime, may I reflect on a very lovely Christmas holiday? I happily realized that I had enacted all the forms of transportation suggested in “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays”: “Take a bus, take a train, go and hop an aero-plane, put the wife and kiddies in the family car….” Well, minus the wife and kiddies—but we did drive to my grandmother’s for New Year’s, so I’m counting it!


I flew from Reykjavík to New York because for some reason IcelandAir doesn’t deign to service any of the several fine international airports around DC. My sister, in her senior year at Sarah Lawrence, was kind enough to let me crash her study party during the last week of classes and final projects. I got to sit in on some terrific moments including a three-choir concert and a reading of (the whole) Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe in this amazing little place on campus called the Teahaus. Tourguides tell prospies it looks like Hagrid's hut, and they're not lying.

My sister was very sweet to include me in all the merry madness that is the end of a semester. She didn’t even complain about my ridiculous insistence on keeping her heater turned on or getting more than a few hours of sleep each night! What a martyr, what a love.

After a train ride from Bronxville into the city, I took the good old Chinatown Express (still faster, cheaper, and more reliable than Greyhound!) to DC and was finally home for the holidays.

Everybody has their own traditions and favorite things at Christmastime, and I don’t expect reading about mine will be of particular interest to anybody but the people who take part in them—and they don’t need to read them anyway. Suffice it to say, there was baking, decorating, two feet of snow, gifting, baking, Christmas-carol-singing, Christmas-light-looking, baking, Christmas Eve Mass, and did I mention the baking?

I apologize to my whole family’s collective cholesterol levels and promise to be better next time I’m home! (No one keeps a record of these promises, do they?)

Classes start tomorrow, and I’m in the midst of a quest to get out of the 8:20a.m. class that’s the only thing on my schedule for Mondays. I know, all of my friends who have real jobs hate me right now.

I hope everybody (all two of you who read this!) had a wonderful holiday season, and here’s to a happy, healthy, and blessed 2010!