The past three days working at the folk museum with Sigga were spent pulling weeds; cleaning spider webs, bathrooms, and glass cases; building storage shelves for artifacts, and putting up decorations for the
Irish Days Festival this weekend. For
the decorations, we put up Irish flags on the museum's flagpoles and blew
up lots of balloons. Each year Akranes
hosts an Irish Days Festival one weekend in July to celebrate the Irish who
first settled Akranes. The city has been
covered with Irish decorations like flags, balloons, and many other objects
painted orange, white, and green! They decorate more for the Irish Days festival than they do for the June 17th, their national holiday!
After work on Thursday, Sigga drove me to the grocery store
and bought me two popular types of chocolate bars in Iceland that she claimed I
needed to try. One had licorice and milk
chocolate and the other had peppermint liquid inside the bar – both were
delicious even though I’m not a big licorice fan. To our dismay, when we got back to the folk
museum so I could get my bike we discovered almost all the festive balloons that
we had put up all around the museum property earlier that day had been popped
by young kids. So much for being
festive.
Since the sun decided to come out of the clouds Thursday
afternoon right as we got off work, after Sigga and I went on our small car
trip to the grocery store I had to take advantage of the nice weather
and go for a run. I ran along the beach
and on the sand for a little bit. The
beach is made of tan sand that was surprisingly fine grains. If only the weather was nicer during my visit
then I would go in the ocean since there is a convenient hot water shower right on the
beach.
Here is a photo not of the beach but another area of the
coast on Thursday when it was sunny!
This weekend should be very fun with lots of family fun
activities Friday through Sunday such as a concert at the harbor, a dance, a
sandcastle building contest, sea swimming contest, paintball, carnival games,
highland games at the folk museum, potlucks on each street, hill singing, a
street market, and theatrical performances.
Apparently people from all over Iceland come to this festival, mostly
for the dance Saturday night where famous Icelandic musicians perform. Also, throughout July and August in Iceland,
each weekend there are festivals like this one but centered around different
themes in towns all across the country.
I’m looking forward to hanging out with Sigga tomorrow at the highland games, a barbeque dinner at her
house, and at the dance!
Unfortunately, although Þorunn’s street supposed to
have a potluck grill this evening, people ended up eating indoors due to the
windy weather. So we ate a late dinner inside
and had all of Þorunn’s daughters and their families over. I was able to watch the Brazil-Belgium FIFA
world cup game as dinner was being cooked on the grill. It was very sad to see Brazil score on their
own goal accidentally. They tried so
hard to win the game and make a comeback near the end of the game!
I can’t believe I have less than a week left in
Akranes. I feel like I haven’t spent
enough time here with my trip to Akureyri and my first homestay with Svona
dividing up by time between places. I
wish I had the chance to spend more weekends in Akranes since most of the businesses close when I get off work leaving me without a chance to explore the local
restaurants and shops.
Some more photo of outside the folk museum:
A photo of me making decoration's at Þorunn's house and photos of the decorations her neighbors put put on the street.
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