Planning, summer house in Laugar

Planning, planning, planning...

... last weekend (23.-25.6.) we finally stated off national planning for next term which will be finalized after all MC members are in the country.

We had a great time together (there were current and new members) and we came up with really interesting ideas and suggestions and had a nice teambuilding.

There is few shots from the weekend:

our summer house (thank you Kristín and Visa ;-)

balanced scorecard in action

Varði and þórdís - main cooks of the weekend (thanx for delicous hamburgers and lamb)

eating yummy food


and evening chilling in private hot pot :-)))

17th June, independence day

Unfortunately, this year I couldn´t attend parade and all actions going on whole day during 17th of June, when Iceland is celebrating biggest national holiday of the year. I was working the night before and the night that day as well, so i had to catch some sleep. But for sure next year I won´t miss it (can´t miss it ;-)

This is the only picture I managed to make:

BBQ party & Lena´s birthday

On 3rd of June our house shaked in it´s foundation and we hosted a party! It was mainly because of Lena´s birthday, but also we wanted to do kind of "get to know each other" as we were meeting just in the house and chatting a bit, but not having a real connection.

It wasn´t a really big party, there were just ppl from our house + 2 more friends. As we agreed, everyone could bring jsut 1 more person, so I invited Þórdís and Sveinbjörg invited her friend. So we were: Lena, Inga and Saskia (all from Germany), me and Þórdís, Sveingbjörg and her friend whose name I forgot already :-( (Icelanders). In the evening also Anda (from Holland) joined us for a while.

I´m not going to write how fantastic steaks Saskia made, how nice salads I and Inga did and how everything was tasty and mainly how much fun we had together. Just watch pictures :D

yummy food ... eating in the garden

Dudettes from Laugarásvegur 24: Saskia, Anda, Inga, me, Sveinbjörg and Lena.

Hottest girls of the evening! Lena and Þórdís making sexy picture... we were just missing 2 sexy guys for them. Even Sveinbjörg didn´t find any while driving down the Laugavegur (favorite icelandic activity on Friday´s and Saturday´s). Damn! .. guys, where are you? You cant miss these two cuties!

How to get rid of a drunk Icelander???

Hey guys,

somebody as any advice how to get rid of drunk Icelanders who are irritating me, esp. those who are staying in the guesthouse where I do work?

I had one such like that tonight. He was almost 1 hour standing at the reception and talking some bulshits to me. He told me I think fifty times how beautiful I am, asked me if I want to marry him, if I want to go for a holidays with him to some place abroad (he named at least 3 or 4 places), ten times he asked where do I come from, if I am religious, he said also that he really likes me and then he proposed to go and make a children ... uf!

And the best out of everything was when he said that he wants to see my hand and he will tell me my future. No way! I´m not going to show to anyone my hand just for fun and letting him to read about me. (well, i am not sure myself if the lines on hand means something but even if not, he doesn´t have any right to ask me for such a things). I´m not going to allow anyone to enter my personal space if I don´t want to and drunk people are in that "not wanted" group for sure.

It was so irritating and I didn´t know what to do with him. I can´t call police, can I? So I was asking him all the time to go to bed and get some sleep, i told him also few times that he is really drunk, ..... I started to be angry because being nice and saying nicely "stop disturbing" didn´t help so I told him some a bit not nice stuff (but still i can´t be not nice if he is our guest) and finally finally he left to his room. I immediately went out of reception (locked the door) and went to he breakfast room. Firstly because I wanted to get rid of him and secondly I was getting hungry.

I just hope that he is now going to stay in his room and not to come back again. God pray!

I think I will start to be reilgous ... if those cases are going to happen more often.

If someone from you know how to handle such a situation, please, give me some advice! I really appreciate that.


p.s. He was 43 years old, but looked like he is 60 or even more... and he told me that he lost his mind few years back and that he is the only genius in Iceland and that there is a lot of people who want to kill him ........this scared me even more.

I am pleased to inform you ...

Reykjavík June 8th. 2006

I am pleased to inform you that you have been accepted as a student in the programme of Business Administration at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Iceland for the 2006-2007 academic year.

...


Officialy I can say to all of you now, that I am staying one more year in Iceland and I will be finishing my studies here. So hopefully in spring next year I will reach bachelor degree.

I am really happy with this announcement :-)))). Now I feel much more relaxed and can fully focus on planning my upcoming year here. Before I was so stressed because I didn´t know if I stay or have to leave back to Czech republic, if we have to search for new MCVP XD in AIESEC, what will happen with my job as I promised them to stay till the end of October and so on and so on.

So now I can celebrate ;-)

p.s. The fact that I am staying one more year in Iceland doesn´t change anything on my relationship towards all of you, my friends in Czech republic and also around the world. Keep in touch my sweethearts.

Samiskolen

So finally I got pictures from my boss and I can show you the Sami children which were staying in our guesthouse.

Because I got to know aslo some more interesting things by chatting with one of the teachers (basically the only one speaking English), I will share it with you :-)

These children were from the north of Norway, region where Sami people speak the sami language, which is spoken also in Sami area of Finland, Sweden and Russia. The area where are they from is bigger than Iceland but number of children in whole school is just 16! 16 kids from all over this area gathered together to study all subjects at primary school in Sami language. This shool is the only one it´s kind in that region.

Entire Samiskolen in Iceland ;-)


Sami in Norway were fighting for independence, but it didn´t have success. Nowadays, they have partly independency - they have own flag, parliament, they can teach at school in Sami language. But there is one problem, now more and more kids borned in originali Sami families are speaking Norwegian as their mother tognue and thus that they are not interested in Sami. There was also big decrease in the number of population in 70´s and 80´s - norvegian government was sterilizing girls and women of Sami not to have Sami kids (it was something unwanted in Norway). But now they have the rights to have school and teach all subjects in Sami if there is particular number of students which want to join the studies. There is even a university which is teaching in Sami.

Sami flag

Region, where Sami people live is really huge (going from the middle of Norway up to the north, all over north of other neighbouring countries). In Norway they range over few regions, from two most southern Sami regions they don´t understand each other well. ... it is so interesting!

You can find some maps and more info also on www.wikipedia.org if you are interested

...small note

Hey, i just realized, that the text i wrote yesterday is a bit random. so please accept my apologies as I was writing it in the morning after my night shift and was quite tired.

One more thing .. I have a good news for your :-) My boss managed to take a picture of those Sami children in their nice costumes, so as soon as he sends it to me, I will upload it here. The teacher from that school gave us Sami flag .. so it´s now hanging in our reception and always when I look at it, it reminds me them... hope to have more experiences like that.

5th night done, 5 to go

On 4th of July I started to work night shifts as a receptionist in the Guesthouse where I was working so far as a mate.

This job seemd to be quite easy, interesting and fun, but I wasn´t so right. So far it is not so much fun as there are no guests or just one or two checking in during whole my shift and totaly quite sleeping house isn´t fun at all. But i hope for good as the season is speeding and more and more people are showing up (we are fully, sometimes even over booked for some days already ;-). It is not also easy job as I though. There are 2 things which make it hard - first is my language barrier and the send is night as factor itself. As I know just very little from icelandic, I can´t communicate on phone in this language and i have to ask always to speak in english (that was os so far), the bigger problem of this is the computer program where we are doing bookings/check ins and all the other stuff around guests. The things is that it is almost all in icelandic (you get to the english parts after clicking through few windows :-(. So i have to learn all words by heard or just by the places where it lies on the line and know what does it do when I press this button.
The other factor is work in night. I thought I will get used to is, that it is 12 hours as 12 hours, no matter which part of the day. But if matters! And a lot!!!! I have problems with eating now as my eating habits are fucked up, I can´t sleep after shift enough as there is day light all day long, I feel like after hard non stop partying few days in a row and having hangovers ... so i just can hope now that i will get used to it soon. Today i felt much better than yesterday so maybe it´s already coming to the stage of getting used to it.

I have to tell you two storries from my work:
First one is about the school kids which were staying last 3 night in our guesthouse. They are from north of Norway, from the area where Sami people live (school is called "Samiskoli"). They speak norwegian and Sami language (Sami je jazyk lidi z Laponska). Sami is similar language to the language of Eskymo people. It was so interesting to talk to their teacher about Lapland, their people, see their fancy costumes (really colourfull and very interesting, e.g. shoes had the front part up .. looking like a hobbit shoes ;-). Pity, that I couldn´t take a picture of them.

The other storie is from two nights ago. I was in breakfast hall and making a small sandwich for myself when someone knocked on the door and asked for the lighter (i have to say, it was 2 or 3 a.m.), I couldn´t find any so I told that guy that I don´t have. But because he saw me toasting a bread, he asked for permition of using a toaster to light up his cigarette. I was first hesitating if I should let him in or not. Was worried if he was some stranger. But he didn´t look anyhow drunk or after using some drugs, I decidet do let him light up the fucking cigarette and kick him asap out. He introduced himself as Damon and asked me for my name. Because I looked at him untrustworthy, he said "To be sure I am not lying I will give you my card" and he took out of his pocket his business card where stays "Damon Younger", he light up a cigarette, thanked and I kicked him out. It was really wierd, i felt kind of strange...
So immediately i finished my snack I went back to the reception and searched google for the name "Damon Younger" just from curiosity. And guess what did i found! He is an UK actor, he played in few movies. I though that this is a joke and I was trying to find some picture. I did and unbelievably it was his face! He played in movies like: Little trip to heaven, Dirty pretty things and he made also commerical for Pilsner Urrquell. He has own webpage(www.damyou.net) so if you are curious, you can check it out ;-) This story made me curious and when I have free time I will go to DVD rental store to have a look to one of those movies.

So, i think last two days were getting more interesting and I hope I will have more interesting stories to share.

By the way, if you are travelling around and need to find some hostel, you can book it over this web page (it is also in czech): http://www.hostelworld.com/ or www.fastbookings.com ... (of course there plenty of them).