deev in Iceland

the falls, just before the camera broke. ahhh, look, a rainbow. yes, it was FREEZING!! below (sorry a bit out of order), ahhh, Jana, Matt and me at Pizza express. yummy, pizza...

about to set off whale watching, nope, no whales here, just me and tomas ready for the wind and waves. and below, warming up at the blue lagoon. it was something like 2 degrees, and we were swimming outside in warm water, MADDNESS, but it was actually beautiful.
oh, and last week Beth, Schelle, Chris, Me, Kate (a friend of schelles) and Xen (a friend of beths) went to see wicked. and it was.... you guessed it.... WICKED! it's the story of the wicked with from wizard of oz, and i think it is a really clever story. and onto my story...

well, after many a laugh by Tomas, I decided to give up trying to speak Icelandic. It is a language that i think i will never be able to get my head around. there are just some sounds my mouth doesn't know how to make. i will stick with espanol for the moment.

anyways, so, i get there on Sat to be greeted by tommi at the airport, (thanks heaps tommi) which was lovely. We then explored Reykjavik on the way back to Tomas' house. A lovely house indeed. The architecture is quite bland, but everynow and then there is a randomly designed house/building just to keep you guessing.

Sunday we went driving around Reykjavik on the Golden Triangle (first place of parliament, Geysir, Water Falls). TRUELY MAGNIFICENT! and i would have taken more photos, but my camera got wet at geysir, i was taking a video and tomas and i somehow got under tha path of the hot water falling... WHOOPS. but we were fine (water wasn't as hot as i would have thought) but wet and so quickly got very cold. by the time we got to the falls, my camera had decided to hibernate... very wise choice. so unfortunately only one photo, even though we were about 1m away from the water.

then sunday, a great day of whalewatching (only saw dolphins, but still, it was a lovely day and Reykjavik was magnificent once again) and then off to the Blue Lagoon to warm up after a cold day on the water. (a geothermal pool).

this morning was only -4degrees C. Not such a cold morning. And yesterday i had lots and lots of winter woolies on. Even though the weather was sunny, it was still really cold. the lake has started to freeze up. i was going to try and walk on it, but thought that would be stupid. especially if i fell in, so just looked at it instead.

by the way, the hot and cold water to iceland homes is all natural, so the hot water sometimes smells like rotten egg... a great smell for after the shower! nice and clean! oh, and they just run the water like it is infinite. i found it hard to do the washing up as i kept turning the tap off and tomas kept turning it back on again, guess i'm just used to water restrictions.

anyways, think this is enough rambling for the moment...
just finished to Sigur Ros, an icelandic band i bought on cd. hooray!

oh yeah, and before i went away on Saturday, I saw Matty and Jana for dinner on Friday night at the wonderful Pizza Express. We wandered all of Shebu to find a good place fore dinner and ended up there (about 20m from where i live). Ha, that would be right. And it was great to see jana again. Can't wait till just after new years when she will be back in london. a bit cooler next time.

chau,
dos besos,
deev
xx

HAPPY HALF-TERM!

YAY!!

congratulations schelle

well, we discovered that schelle has been living at my house for 6months now. and it has been a great 6 months, but the time has come for her to find her own feet in this big bad city. so, she has been looking around for a nice room to move into. and well, after 2 months of looking for 'the one' she has finally found it. congratulations.

my new friend from spanish class has a housemate moving out and i was chatting to him about my friend who was looking for a place. so schelle looked on wednesday, met the final housemate on friday and got the room. so exciting. she will be living just around the corner in a very nice flat with 2 other girls and nick. and i think she will be relieved just to be able to put her clothes in her own drawers.

oh and i like the place because they have pretty woman on DVD... SOLD!!

so I am excited for her and i am sure she is excited too. nice place, nice people, close to me and has pretty woman, who could ask for anything more??

xx

squirrels in the park...

check out my new streak of blonde hair!!! courtesy of Chris... ta chris! i'm loving it! just adds a bit of colour to my hair (looks a bit yellow there, but not too bad in real life). oh, it makes for a good moustache too, ha. ok, so quick description of the rest of the photos and then the goss... below is clement being a silly face and my new friend Nick my amigo from espana class.three very sexy ladies... schelle, chris et moi... below, schelle, matt, geoff, me and chris. always a great laugh when we all get together and go out. (oh jana, doesn't matt look lovely! haha)

and then ummm, the new housemate... barry, ummm, need i say more?? (by the way, he had just been at the gym, not always that sweaty.)

and now the goss...
well, i was walking home from work this arvo and i decided i must go back to the park to watch the squirrels. they intrigue me. the way their tails move when they pounce, the way they move sideways around a tree, the way they hold nuts in their hands. I have just become a fan of the little pests. ok, so that is my random story for the day, now what have i been up to??

it's hard to believe how fast time really does fly! i am now in week 6 of term which means at the end of this week it will only be one week until i go to iceland for 4 days to visit Tomas and have a bit of a holiday. (Tomas was on my tour of thailand... he was my peeing buddee, hooray for tomas.) so i am really looking forward to that. Iceland looks beautiful. Hopefully will make it to some thermal pools too.

teaching is still quite frantic, but i am enjoying it. today we made mountains out of clay and sand and then poured water over them to see the effects of erosion. we even put farm animals in to make it more 'realistic'. the kids loved it, and so it meant i had a good lesson too! And the best thing is that at the end of the lesson all the students were able to tell me what erosion is. Hooray... now if only my Industrial Revolution and King Henry VIII lessons go as well tomorrow. it really is very hard remembering which subject i am teaching, but the kids bear with me and we struggle through together.

oh, and last weekend, i had my first run into people i know... it was crazy. London is big and to actually see someone you know... crazy. so, story goes, I had my Happy Half Birthday Party (0r at least drinks at a cute pub in Notting Hill). a new friend from spanish class, Nick, came along and so did a person who schelle and I met in Copenhagen. Then on Saturday after i went shopping (and bought some skinny black jeans, aren't i now trendy!) I ran into Nick on the bus on the way home. then on the short walk from the bus to home I ran intoDan (the guy from Copenhagen. crazy!!! and really quite refreshing for london.

anyways, Schelle was away over the weekend in Budapest with Beth and Beth is coming to London this weekend. It will be really good to see her again and go party party in Londontown.
ok, so i think that is enough for the moment. there are probably a lot more things i could be telling you, but i can't think where to start at... so, some photos instead.

hasta luego.

more stonehenge shots.

and welcome the dutch photos from the weekend.

to check out me driving on the wrong side of the car (tongue out for concentration, hehe, didn't know i did that!) and more check out this website!

http://www.scoutingwasa.nl

click on nieuwe foto's NaWaKa en Stonehenge. then click on foto's patrick to see me driving. or just have a look at Patrick, Arnout and Sjoerd's photos.

ENJOY!!!! it really was a fun weekend.

xx

happy 1 year in the house

hello kiddies,
well, i have just reached my year in the house. My my, how time is still flying!!! it really is! i don't feel like i have been gone for very long and i have already been living at 62MG for a whole year!

as i said, it was great having Louis and Jose here for a visit and now we are back to normal (well as normal as we can be!). here is a photo from the Kensington, one of our many local pubs, where of course, we sometimes go on mondays for 241 mains.

Then on saturday morning Schelle, Christina and I went to a Walkabout to watch the swannies game at 5:00am. And well, it sucked when we lost. oh well, better luck next year ay! (not that i really follow AFL, but i had my pie and VB at 5:15am and watched the whole match!) After the match, we went back to sleep, then had a yummy second breakfast at Hampstead Heath before heading to watch World Trade Centre... INTENSE. and then on the way back we found some hair dye. So, i managed to persuade Chris and Schelle to dye random blonde bits in my hair (for old times sake, you can't see them until my hair is up, so not heaps radical) whilst we watched out lovely Johnny Depp. ahhhhh, what a lovely weekend we had!

and now, back at school. just started up a singing club on tuesdays, that went quite well today. 9 children turned up (which isn't bad seeing as we only had about 38 at school today). and on friday i am going to celebrate my happy half-birthday. so lots of fun stuff happening.

hope you are all keeping well. any news, let me know!
love ya all
deev

mat, me, clem, louis, schelle, jose and mat (across the front) at the Ken on monday evening last week. and below, what are mat and jose up to?? (never want to know with those two!!)

my pie and VB at 5:15am... never to early!! ha. and me, Schelle, Chris and Priscilla at the swannies match... go the swans.
hope you enjoy the piccies!!! xx