Launch: Broadening Horizons

About three years ago, my paternal grandfather passed away. He was 95 years old and lived a full life. He loved to travel and he and my grandmother traveled all over the world until he was no longer able. That's why I decided to use a portion of the money he left me to go on a trip. From January 8th until the 15th, my roomie and I went to Reykjavik, Iceland.

Now, you're probably wondering, Why Iceland?, and I know, it seems completely random. But there's a story behind it! My roommate was looking for work abroad programs with the intent of maybe getting an au pair job in England or somewhere else English-speaking (she's a preschool teacher), but as she was looking through the listings, she stumbled across a work abroad program in Iceland for Americans and Canadians. The program involved spending a few weeks in Iceland building troll houses. In Iceland they're big on their mythology and a lot of people still insist that trolls are real. My roommate and I thought that the program sounded both hilarious and fun, so we looked into it a little more, and it turned out that we'd missed the deadline by a couple of days. So instead, Roomie went looking through vacation packages, and as there was an economic crash in Iceland recently, the price was great.

So we got our passports all sorted out, my parents gave me cold weather gear for Christmas and the two of us set off on my first trip overseas, and the longest vacation I'd ever taken without my parents.

And it was amazing. The country itself lies on the border between tectonic plates, so there are active volcanoes and earthquakes that shape the land. We visited waterfalls, glaciers, geysers, and fissures created by the plates moving apart. We went horseback riding through the countryside on Icelandic Horses who have been isolated on the island since they were brought there hundreds and hundreds of years ago. We went caving in a lava tube and heard a traditional ghost story in compete darkness. We ate traditional Icelandic food and fell in love with Skyr, a yogurt-like product famous for being high in protein and low in calories. We bathed in thermal pools. We stood on black sand beaches and watched the waves roll in. We went hunting for the Northern Lights. The sun rose at 11am and the sunsets seemed to last for hours. The entire experience was exhausting and neither of us have fully recovered yet, but it was definitely something that will be a lifelong memory. A once in a lifetime adventure. I think my grandfather would be proud.

~Fae