mishmosh

I was in culinary school with class time in French but a pretty international student crowd (everyone spoke conversant French, but everyone spoke near-fluent English so that’s what we defaulted to) but lived with a flatmate and neighborhood so was immersed when I wasn’t in class. I’d never lived in a francophone country-just studied it in school for over 8 years-and only six weeks made me a lot more conversant with slang, idioms, and even just regular conventions of casual speech.

We spent 5 days in mid June skirting the rim of Iceland’s biggest glacier, seeing 5 sheep and 0 people, fording 22 rivers or creeks, and arrived in Reykjavik on Independence Day. The wilderness is bizarre and breathtaking. The people in town were incredibly nice, but it did feel a bit strange to be absolute tourists who could barely even pronounce the local words.

Caveat: It’s an expensive country to travel in, because of the high-tech and high-price-tag civil engineering that gives you a fighting chance against the awesome forces of nature. Our wilderness trip (no guides—just food and bus tickets out there), hostel fees, one bus tour, and one really nice dinner out added up to about 900 USD per person. I’d just graduated college when this trip happened and the timing was just right, but would have liked to have saved more money and, most of all, spent more time there.

More in July-August on my weblog