University of Iceland

Hey everyone! So, this week I wanted to write about what it is like to go to a university in Iceland. It´s hard but kind of cool. Hard in the sense of the language and cool in that the have events with alcohol on campus. Lets see, at orientation I was excited about the opportunity to meet new people and I spilt a glass of water down my pants so instead of making new friends during the only social time we had I was in the bathroom under the hand dryer trying to make it look like I didn´t pee in my pants. It brought a good laugh though. I have met 2 American girls with Icelandic boyfriends (I think we are starting a trend maybe) in my Icelandic Vocabulary class, which is nice to know people who are in the same situation as me. Plus I met a girl from Virgina which is really close to my home! They are just studying the language though. Which leads me to a really hard part about studying. Not only am taking 2 classes to learn the language but I´m also working on securing my masters project and taking a genomics class. I was taking a Human Genetics class on top of all that but I had to drop it. It was too much plus it was taught in Icelandic, the powerpoints were in Icelandic, and the lab protocols were in Icelandic. Then the professor told me that the final (50% of your whole grade) was based on what was said in class...hmmmm I hope you all can see the difficulty in that! So I dropped it and I´m moving at a snails pace through my master project but hopefully it´ll pick up once I´ve learned the language better. I was SO worried about doing it all when I got here and I´ve come to realize that life doesn´t always go as planned (which is hard for me because I'm a stubborn person). So maybe I have to take some extra time to learn the language before I can move forward but you have to take baby steps before you can walk. By the way I would like to say that I was through the roof excited about learning the alphabet song in Icelandic! haha seems weird because it´s so elementary but it was important to me. So, the interesting differences between Catawba (my undergraduate) and the University of Iceland (postgraduate). First of all, they have a policy at the university where the stop the class for a 5 minute coffee break half-way through the class. Which is awesome because sometimes your brain needs a minute to break whereas at Catawba they just keep going. Also, the university has events on campus which provide alcohol. That would never EVER happen at Catawba. For example, this weekend that just happened the university was having an October-Fest at the university campus. They had drinking competitions and you just paid for a ticket and they had alcohol and German foods. It was so cool. Catawba won´t even let you have your door open when you are drinking in your dorm room! It´s just a completely different atmosphere. Also, there are student groups on campus when I got here for orientation that were advertising for new students to come out and enjoy FREE BEER at local bars. To be fair though we are talking Europe where the drinking age is lower and everyone at the university is old enough to drink. Well, I´m off to watch my boyfriend play basketball tonight! Áfram KR!! I´d like to also say congrats to Finnur´s brother Gummi and his girlfriend Fia they just had a baby girl today!! Keep reading everyone and feel free to leave me comments.