...því ég er kominn heim

...And now I'm in Iceland.

I know, I've become so predictable! So ridiculously predictable! When in doubt, I suppose just assume I'm traveling to Iceland.

But all this semester (after I also visited Iceland on my way to Scotland, in August/September) I've been longing for Iceland, always thinking, "Oh, if only I could be in Iceland..." And I have two weeks off between first and second semester, and it was very clear I really needed to take that time as an absolute, true break away from everything, so I could come back to second semester refreshed and ready to dive into it all again, after the exhaustion of first semester. And besides, you know, I'd been pining for Iceland. So Friday my last piece of coursework was handed in, Saturday I sat down to write all my friends in Iceland and book flights and make plans, I traveled on Tuesday, and here I am.

(I realized when I arrived in Reykavík last night that in total I'd taken: a bus to a train to a tram to a plane to another bus. If only I'd been picked up by car from the airport instead of taking the city bus, or if I'd had cause to get on a boat for some reason, then I'd have hit nearly every kind of standard transport in one day!)

Beautiful afternoon sun in Reykjavík:

I'm staying with my friend S. and his wife and their two little kids. It is so amazing to have this life in Iceland I can drop back into, these friends who enthusiastically invite me into their homes. S. keeps saying how happy he is that I chose to come and stay with them, and I keep saying how happy and grateful I am to be there.

The first part of the day we spent lazing around, eating breakfast and chatting. There are some renovations being done on their apartment building, so there was some banging and hammering happening somewhere in the background as we talked.

Then S. went into the kitchen and I heard him say to someone in Icelandic, "Do you want some coffee?" So I assumed his wife must be somewhere in the apartment, though I hadn't seen her.

Nope – I went into the kitchen and saw that one of the workmen doing the renovations was directly outside the kitchen window – the third-floor kitchen window – on a bit of scaffolding. That's who S. was talking to. And the worker was opening up the window from the outside, and S. was handing a steaming cup of coffee out into the cold to him. So S. and I stood there inside the kitchen and drank coffee and chatted with the worker standing outside the kitchen, perched in the air three floors off the ground, drinking coffee from a dainty cup.

I thought maybe they were friends, or at least knew each other a bit from the course of these renovations, but no – my friend asked the guy his name at some point in the conversation. It's just that S. is that friendly. It was so Icelandic: the kindness, the hospitality – and of course the coffee. Iceland runs on coffee.

Here's me by the ocean in Reykjavík at dusk, in the snow, happier than the happiest clam in the world: