Weekly VLOG #6 (23/08-29/08): Culture night, the ocean and the lack of trash bins!

I am getting behind on these vlogs! However, let me tell you about the week that I had (23/08-29/08).

It started by my friends calling me and asking if I wanted to join them in watching the fireworks that were about to happen during Reykjavíks Culture Night (Menningarnótt). I jumped on the offer since I had been moping all week since I was alone (I talked about that in my last vlog). I was as well facing couple of my anxieties, crowds and going somewhere alone and hoping to find my friends.

Luckily I found them quickly and had a nice night! The next day (Sunday) I went to the beach, Icelandic style, which is in winter clothes! The beach was gorgeous and very refreshing. I found so much of sea glass!

As it was the last week before my classes would start I had to do some paper work and as I was walking around getting things done I noticed how dirty and trashy Reykjavík actually is (and I will have a full post on that later) and I noticed as well one of the reason why it is so trashy! There are NO trash bins anywhere! 

I as well did some necessary food shopping and realized even more how odd it is just to buy food for one and how much impact my betrothed had on dinner ideas. Even though I felt at times that I was doing it all by myself I can see now that that was all a lie!

And the at last the video! 

Weekly VLOG #5 (14/08-21/08): On being alone and first food shopping!

Another week has passed and I am still in Iceland. We had a lovely weekend where we got to see some fun things (and I got to film some fun things for My Year in Iceland). However, on Monday my dearest boyfriend left. It was quite odd to be on myself when I haven't had to be on myself for so long, it didn't help that Skype wasn't working well and there was only minimal communication between us. 

Doing things by myself was quite odd and I won't lie and say I wasn't feeling horribly lonely, because the truth is that during this week I felt lonely. But time won't stop just because you aren't feeling the greatest so I had to shake it off and start doing things. 

I went food shopping and that was such a huge culture shock! Not only was I having hard time finding where the food was located in the store but I as well was just shocked by the quality of the food and the store. In Geneva I always shopped at Migros since they had the lowest prices and were closest to where I lived. So in Iceland that store for me is Bónus. However, Bónus is so dirty and unorganized that I wasn't even sure if they still were actually selling food for human consumption! As I was walking through the store scolding myself for being such a snob and not appreciative of the fact that there was at least a grocery store in a walking distance from campus I managed to pick up some food for me to eat. So I would say that the grocery trip was somewhat a success. 

I feel that a big part of my week was just me wandering around trying to find things. I have never lived in this part of Reykjavík before so I don't really know where things are. One of those things were a pharmacy, I walked what seemed to be a lifetime just to pinpoint down a local pharmacy that I had found online only to see that they were under renovation and of course they didn't mention that on their webpage. The other one was the bank, but I found that one quickly and was blessed with great service.

And talking about good service, I have been happily surprised with how great service I have been having here. Iceland is frequently known for bad service and I would in the past agree with that, however, I have been getting marvelous service this time around! People are actually polite and acknowledge the fact someone has entered the store. The only place where I have gotten repeatedly bad service is Hagkaup, which is both strange and not so strange. Hagkaup is supposed to be a better quality food type of store but at the same time it is mostly a facade of just upping their prices and pretending to be better and that is visible by their horrible service and quite rude staff. 

And that is all for this week, and below is the super short vlog since I haven't really gotten in the habit of vlogging.

Bisous

Weekly VLOG #4 (08/08-13/08): Fêtes de Genève fireworks, packing up my stuff and moving to Iceland.

I wanted to add a blog aspect to my occasional weekly vlogs and as well try to vlog more often whilst I am in Iceland. At the moment my vlogs are a week behind since it gives me time to edit them without being stressed and I like having a bit of a barrier between when things happen and when I share those things with the internet. I plan on having the vlog at the bottom of these posts and adding some pictures in the post that I haven't shared before on instagram.

Anyways, back to my week. Packing my things was strangely hard, when I started emptying my closets and drawers I realized how much stuff I actually had! It didn't help that the fireworks for Fêtes de Genève were going on and it felt like our windows would explode from the noise. I am not a big fan of fireworks, I might even say that I find fireworks extremely annoying and I hate them a little bit. I just don't see the attraction, they are loud and smelly and super wasteful!

Or flight was on Tuesday and we barely managed to pack all our things before we had to grab a taxi to go to the airport. We flew with Icelandair in a direct flight from Geneva to Keflavik. It was one of the best flights I have ever been on! Very calming and Icelandair has just the best food on board its flights.

When we landed in Iceland the weather was pretty nice, it was quite windy but not a cloud in sight. The first couple of days we were just hanging around, but I needed to get things sorted for my University housing and to see how and where everything was.

We took as well a lot of walk, and on one of our walks we saw a smack of dead jellyfish. I found it strange to see all of them just floating around lifelessly. Jellyfish are my favorite animal and I somehow just felt sad seeing them all dead.

I managed to do a lot of the paperwork and got the key to my dorm room! It was much bigger than I thought and even though I share a kitchen with 7 other persons I have my own bathroom.

So, that is how my week has been!



Bisous