It´s been a while!

Hello everyone! Wow! It´s been 5 months since I have written a blog and I have been a resident in Iceland for 8 months. Needless to say a lot has happened since then. I will try to be brief.

I got to celebrate Halloween in Iceland because in recent years Icelanders have adopted this holiday. There was no trick-or-treating. Halloween in Iceland is for adults to throw costume parties and get drunk. At least that´s all that I could observe. Icelanders have their own holiday on Ash Wednesday that is similar to Halloween. Children have to sing songs to get their candy but they don´t go from house to house. They go to factories and stores to get candy.

I did miss Thanksgiving this year. I could have made a meal as I would in America but I had a project that was 50% of my Genomics grade and it was due on Thanksgiving day, therefore I choose to pass my class instead of cooking. Plus, the holiday only meant something to me. I´m sure my boyfriend would have appreciated it though if I had cooked a juicy turkey.

As for Christmas, that was hard. I did not travel home to America. I cannot complain too much though because my great best friend Megan Spidell traveled all the way to Iceland the week before Christmas to stay with me. It was a great Christmas present. The best. We did all the normal tourist stuff. Like visiting around the golden circle (google it) and going downtown, party, and just caught up on everything I´ve been missing in America. On Christmas eve I opened gifts with Finnurs family and the day before I ate some petrified shark meat that is the most awful smelling meat you could ever imagine. It didn´t taste as bad as it smelled but many young Icelanders don´t even try the meat. Then on Christmas day I ate Reindeer paté. It tasted gross. I actually did pretty good with the fact that I was away from home on Christmas. I had a few minutes of sadness but then I sucked it up and realized my life could be a lot worst off.

Now...New Years Eve was so exciting. I have NEVER seen so many fireworks in one day. There is no way, unless you´ve been here, that you could imagine what it´s like. It´s amazing. I shot off my first firework. I screamed I was so nervous. I also thought the firework was over and turned toward Finnur and another firework shot out. Luckily it missed him.

Now where am I...2010!!

In January I started my Masters degree research project. I have been isolating RNA and working on learning the amplification and hybridization and I am currently working on how to analyze the micro-array data resulting from my work. I have been working with some help at NimbleGen (a company that processes genetic information). Everything, so far...knock on wood, has gone well with my project and it is moving along well.

In the New Year I have not gotten homesick nearly as much. The longer I´m here the more comfortable I´m getting. It´s still hard feeling like an outsider all the time when people socialize with each other in Icelandic but I´m understanding more and more of the language all the time. I met a guy who´s been here 12 years and is still learning Icelandic. He can understand it and speak it but he said it was a long process.

I bought my tickets to fly home to America in June!! I´m so excited, words cannot decribe. It will be the first time I have been home in 11 months. It will be so great to see my friends and family. The main reason I decided to go home this summer instead of going home for Christmas this next year is because my long time best friend Amber McCurry is getting married to her great love Cale Foy. She has asked me to be her maid of honor and I am TRULY HONORED!! I´m so happy for her and to be apart of the wedding. I wish them both the most happiness. So anyone reading this...you know what that means June 26th (day I land in America) clear your calendars because I want you to come to dinner with me. I´m serious EVERYONE!! : ) I mean I want to see as many people as possible for as long as possible because I´m only staying for 3 weeks and I want to soak in every moment with friends and family!!