Caught, Blue-handed.: First 2 weeks in Iceland

Exchange has been great so far. I've been in Iceland for about 2 weeks or so and we already had numerous house parties and fun! Lessons have been very artsy-fartsy and I'm not too used to doing so many readings per lesson. Anyway, even though the weather hasn't been very nice (it has been raining almost everyday since we got here), we trekked to some places around our school / house and the scenery has been breathtaking.

A welcome party for incoming freshmen and us!

Our first trek was up a volcano just behind our school and it was pretty steep (probably because we weren't supposed to trek up that side of the mountain). Then in the few days after, we visited a river and some waterfalls behind our school too. All in all, we took 3 hours to trek per day and it was manageable and fun but COLD! This week, we only headed out once to the lake that was in front of school.

The taller one of two volcanoes behind our school

Steeper than it looks!

This was our view from the top. Spot our two friends below.

View of our school campus from the volcano top!

River behind our school

We followed the river up the mountains...

And we reached the top where we saw some small waterfalls.

Another waterfall nearby school. It probably took us only 15 minutes to walk here.

Our school, Bifröst University (pronounced bee-vroost university) is situated away from the rest of the Icelandic civilisation and the campus only has about 400 people. Iceland only has about 300 000 + people in total. Our school campus includes a hotel, a coffeehouse, a library, a supermarket and housing for everyone who studies here. Needless to say, we stay in the school itself and just outside our door we have the gym and an outdoor hot tub. :D

Our house, the closest apartment to our classrooms

Front door, our house is on the left and my room is the top left.

Back door with Regine standing there !

My comfy home!

Sam's room across the corridor from mine.

My own personal toilet. This is the best !

The building of the library, laundry room and one of our classrooms

Samkaup, the supermarket in school.

The coffee house which is now one of our classrooms

I took up 4 modules here and my favourite so far is Icelandic Language and Culture. I suppose that is because the prof makes it fun and we sound like idiots trying to pronounce certain words. Anyway, pretty much of what I do everyday is eat and sleep and COOK ! Hahaha. Because our house has 3 Koreans and 3 Singaporeans, we have been dubbed the Asian House and we are all noob cooks. But so far everything has been good. We have been eating well everyday and enjoying all our Chinese dishes we picked up from somewhere or another. Thank God for mums !

Some of our local fare (photos taken by Regine)

Our very own Icelandic hotdogs. Did you know the Icelandic Hotdog is the best in the world?

Thomas and Theo (2 awesome french exchange students who are probably the best chefs among all of us, baked us some potato yummies! )

Beer chicken which our korean housemates made for a party. The meat was so tender and yummy !

Our school lent us a car to share among 22 of us (all the exchange students) and so we have set up a system to bid for it. We have always been booking it just to head to Bonus (the cheapest supermarket within the area) every once or twice a week or whenever we run out of food. So this week, we decided to book the car for the whole day and we drove to South Iceland (my school is in the west) to visit the Golden Circle where we went to Þingvellir, Gullfoss, Strokkur and Geysir. Gullfoss was the highlight of the day since it is the 2nd largest waterfall in Iceland (the first one is too far away). We also stopped when we saw a couple taking photos with horses and we did the same!

Cheap groceries for the win!

Our school car

Saw this on our random trip to Reykjavik. So pretty !

Felt like heaven was shining down on the ocean, reminding us of its beauty...

As mentioned, this is the best hotdog in the world and we were the first customers there that day to try it. So yummy!

They didn't have a single drop of ketchup in it. They put raw onions, fried onions, a hot dog, sweet brown mustard and a special mayo sauce in it. Yum!

On our day trip to the golden circle, we stopped by KFC for our first meal of the day. Loved that we didn't need to cook that day!

Sam, me and Regine

Saw this strange place and we just decided to stop for awhile to take pictures

Þingvellir (pronounced as thingvetlir)

Natalia and I funking around

Natalia, Regine, Sam, me and Seongjin

Geysir

Strokkur

Horses !

Gullfoss

My handsome baby and me ! (:

The fun thing about the nature in Iceland is that we are allowed to get super close to the attractions. So beautiful. (:

I also celebrated my birthday overseas and for the first time in Iceland. I baked myself a brownie cake with snickers together with Sam and Regine. It was so yummy, it kept "shrinking" whenever I wasn't looking at it.

I don't know why I put 4 candles in a row. I meant to put 2 and 2 but it looked like a square and I thought a line was cuter. Hahaha... okay I'm overthinking it.