This past week we started a new class and had a new professor from Portugal, Paulo Ferrao.  Great professor, great class!  

First of all, before I go one about the weekend, Saturday was officially “International Women’s Day”, so congratulations to all the women out there!   Although I never heard of this holiday, it is very popular in Poland, Slovenia, and other parts of Europe.  Unbeknownst to the girls, the boys had gone out and got us flowers which they handed out to all of us congratulating us on “our” day.  It was really cute.  Then the one of the girls asked, “ I know there is father’s day, but when is guys day?”…the response was priceless…. “Every other day besides today is guy’s day”…typical.   

After a long week, there was trip planned to see several sites in the northeast area of Iceland. And so the journey begins  , two vans, two drivers    , 18 people   , lots of cameras, some great music from the RES Bounce CD compilations, and THE SUN!!!!   

First we went to Godafoss, Water fall of the Gods, where statues of pagan gods where thrown into the waterfall when Christianity was adopted as an Iceland faith.  I don’t know what was a better site, the sun or the waterfalls?!        They were both great and it was perfect day for touring the country…or so we thought.  The weather here changes faster than New England.  We later drove through complete white out conditions.      

We passed through a small town (which entailed a café and gas station) that was having a motor cross race, so we stopped to check it out.  They were done racing for the day, but said there was another huge snowmobile race a bit further north that we might want to check out.   

Next stop, Dimmuborgir, the most recent volcanic eruptions was about 200 years ago.  So these rock formations are the newest part of Iceland.       

Next was a geothermal spot just north of a Geothermal power plant.  The water coming out of the ground was nothing I’ve ever seen before.  It looked like oil and smelled like rotten eggs, great combination. 

http://www.youtube.com/v/po0zS6WQtNk

We tried to go to Dettifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Europe, but the road was closed because of the snow. Instead we stumbled upon the motor cross race that we were told about earlier in the day and decided to stay a bit.   We “ran” into some problems with the silver van, namely snow and after several valiant attempts at pushing the car out, we resorted to the local Icelander and the big ass 4×4 vehicles.      http://www.youtube.com/v/jL47-ASntDg

After a long day of sight seeing and a great road trip, we returned home to the RES dorm.