Remember what it feels like?

Whew. It's been quite a whirlwind for the past two weeks. I have so many things on my mind worth putting down and writing here that I'll probably forget most of them as I'm typing, but oh well. To give you folks an impression.

The New Year Eve was indeed quite a show. Being able to watch it from one of the high points in the city, Perlan. The restaurant itself was apparently blocked from common people for the occasion, but there were quite a lot of us on top of the hill, and the view from there is not a very shabby one either. The sky was thoroughly coloured by rapidly burning patterns of lithium, magnesium and all that fun stuff you got to burn in the chemistry classes back in secondary school. After midnight the city was completely covered in a puffy gunpowder smoke cloud. It was quite a change from all those peaceful rural and firework-wise tightly regulated New Year Eve's I've spent with my cousins at Hirvensalmi. After the explosions in the sky slowly started to fade away, I strolled alongside the majority of spectators towards downtown. Laugavegur was populated by mostly drunken people mostly trying to make their way into the outlets where they could keep consuming those mostly intoxicating beverages they had been enjoying most of the evening. Then there were a few people, such as myself, looking like lost puppies and just observing the folk.

The following couple of days I spent battling off this fierce cold I apparently catched. I wouldn't really blame it to poor clothing choices, I think I've been pretty well prepared. I didn't really give it all that many thoughts, I was just busy dealing with what felt like all of the waterfalls in Iceland suddenly giving a presentation of themselves in my nostrils. Our house is on the colder side. The common areas are too cold, and my own room is either too hot or too cold, depending how I set the thermostat. I usually aim for the too cold though, as sleeping is so much easier then.

Along with the cold arrived a feeling of guilt, that there are so so many things to do and see in my immediate vicinity, and I'm missing all of them. Obviously, it would be just a couple of days before I'd dare to venture out again, but still. Nobody likes the nagging feeling in their minds.

And obviously it got better. We had an orientation meeting at the campus last Friday, with all kinds of more and less practical information handed and spoken out for us. Afterwards the crowd was split into small groups and assigned a couple of Icelandic guides who'd walk us around the campus, pointing out the functions in different buildings and their personal opinions of them, and mispronouncing the name of the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, who designed the Nordic House in the campus.

It turned out that there is a student council election coming up in few weeks at the uni, and our guide lads have something to do with it. Apparently also the exchange students are allowed to vote, so they invited us to the opening of their election office with a promise of some free alcohol and the honest statement that "foreign students are important to us because they're easy to trick."

"Oh well" thought our Finnish-Norwegian invasion army of six Finns and one Norwegian and met up later that evening, heading to check out the place. It turned into a rather delightful evening of conversations, first between the foreigners, then with the Icelandic to-be-politicians. I found myself talking about the differences of student politics in our countries and the differences of the parties running up in the election, our nations in general, receiving compliments about my apparently fair ability to pronounce Icelandic names, and teaching others to pronounce names for Aki Kaurismäki movies. Whoever said that Icelanders are kind of distant and difficult to get to know, well... At least I was delighted to find that untrue that evening. Even if some of those people only had interest in my vote in the upcoming election, I still enjoyed going there. I left with the happy, comfortable lightness in my footsteps. That feeling was one of the things I had been missing for so long, one of the reasons why I had to leave was that I wanted to experience it again.

A couple of days after I again walked home with the same kind of lightness after a delightful meeting and introduction to the café culture here in Reykjavík. How am I to resist a cozy, warmly lit place which plays the occasional Amon Tobin track on the background?

I was starting to remember what it feels like. After the few days of initial confusion about living abroad, I had been reminded why I had to leave. My footsteps feel so much lighter than they did back home.

My introduction to the swimming pools in here was a rather nice one as well. The following Monday saw the temperature drop to around -8 degrees. Unlike in Finland, that doesn't mean the outdoor pools are closed. I got to Laugardalslaug just in time to watch the gold and orange sunset slowly turn into the dark blue while I was resting in the long outside pool. The air was full of mist, the warmth slowly escaping from the water, only to be replaced with jets pumping new warm water inside in the corners. And the water felt just right, very soft and chlorine-free unlike in any Finnish swimming pools. Truly delightful and uplifting, again.

Today I also got my first real experience with the unpredictability of weather around here. After leaving my first Icelandic classes today I toured along a fellow Finn for awhile in the most perfect sunrise before ending up in the university bookstore. I spent in about 20 minutes, and at that time the weather had changed into an all out snowstorm. Judging by the amount of snow on the ground, it probably had snowed for awhile before I came out. You apparently don't need to blink all that many times if you'd like the weather to change.

So far so good. I realize that I'm still going through the discovery period, when pretty much everything (well, maybe except the prices) feels exciting. Knowing myself, the period when you just miss everything back home will eventually come. Still, I've already found a few good ways to raise my spirit in here. And I already know some things and some people I'll miss whenever I leave this strange little country. So far it has let me befriend itself.