The first month has gone by fast
- Laura Priske
- May 5, 2021
- 3 min read
A lot has changed for me during this first month. Homesickness and the fear of everything new has been on my mind quite a lot. But I have realised that the best thing to do is to get out of the house and explore everything new around me. I live in Grafarvogur, nice calm place, away from downtown Reykjavik, but going there is not a problem.
After the first week of being here I started sending out my resumes and letters to different companies, but with no result. So I decided to attend language school and learn Icelandic. Right now I am studying Icelandic 1, but I don't intend for it to be the only level I do. Even though it is my gap year, I feel it is great that I am learning something during that time, so that I don't forget my love for learning. In order to go to language school I had to understand the buses. Going to the school and learning the bus lines gave me my first independence because I was doing it for myself and I was able to do it alone successfully. After learning Icelandic for 2 weeks, I got the information that a food place is looking for new employees and training is happening in the next week. I took that as a sign and took the opportunity. I have learnt how to make cinnamon buns from scratch, so I already would say this work thing very successful. So after exactly a month of me being here I signed my contract, which means I will get my kennitala(social security number) and I can legally be living here not just on vacation.
While wondering around Reykjavik I also found a Red Cross thrift store. I have previously gone to some thrift store but I have always been take there by Björgvin. This time I could not resist and bought myself a dess for 1500 ISK(10-11 Euros) and a book for 100 ISK(0,72 Euros). The dress is expensive compared to Estonian, but in Estonia I would never have gotten a book for this cheap.
Also we have not been slacking on trash picking. I arrived here a few days before World Clean Up day, so for that day we went and picked up a lot of trash. We have also picked up trash while walking the dog or getting back from the bus. Here the biggest problem doesn't even seem to be littering, the problem seems to be trash flying. Due to the strong winds trash flies out of trash cans, that is why they build little "houses" around their trash cans. Also the thing that motivates them to sort trash and dispose of it correctly is free garbage disposal both from home and for bigger trash. All of that for free. Estonia might need to apply that because it seems like Estonians really hate the trash system right now.
I have also felt the impact of different landscapes. We decided to go on a little bike trip before the cold weather comes, or so I thought. We biked 40 minutes to the mall and then took the long way back home. During the first 10 minutes we had an uphill and when I had gone up a little hill I felt dizzy, thought that I would puke, I was red in the face and had a strong iron taste in my mouth. I am so out of shape that going up the hill was a little too much for me. The rest of the way was pretty good, a lot of down hill and on the way back I walked up almost every hill. The ride all and all was very nice and gave me a strong sign of maybe I should work out. The next day I thought that the bike ride wasn't bad enough and I should also climb a hill after doing an early morning test workday. It was not a high hill, but for a girl from Saaremaa it was a lot. We went up the hill for 40 minutes and coming down was of course much faster. There aren't any great pictures of me on the hill, but the blurry picture perfectly shows how excited and happy I was. And a sight that made low-waster very happy was Björgvin with his reusable coffee mug. Little thing make me very happy.
At the moment my life consists of language school, work and a lot of little adventures. But soon I will post about a big adventure. Until all the best to everybody!
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