Moving around Iceland

     Today I woke up at 9:00, yet it was still dark! Iceland is very, very, very different from the United States despite all the English signs. The sun is gone!!! Being from Gunnison, I come to expect over 300 days of sunlight. Not in Iceland! Here the sun rises at about 10:30 to 11:00 and sets at 4:00, and sometimes it's cloudy, too! That is just one of the many differences.
     So you wake up at 7:00, go to school or work, and then come home from 3:00 to 4:00, right? Not in Iceland! Iceland uses the 24 hour clock. You wake up at 7:00, go to school or work, and come home at 15:00 to 16:00! I have yet to see an Icelandic clock (one with hands and numbers in a circle, not a digital - I've already seen that), so I'm keeping my eyes open.
     This a kind of goofy one, but it is very noticeable - the toilets. On an American toilet, you have the bowl and then the plumbing is right behind against the wall. In Iceland, the plumbing is inside the wall. You also push a button on the wall to flush.
     An obvious difference is the language. Icelandic has a lot of kvs, ths, and other other foreign sounds, therefor making the language difficult to pick up. Thankfully, almost everyone speaks English. I'm trying to learn the language, but when my little Icelandic falls through, I can go back to English.
     Their roads and road signs are a little different, but not by much. For example, on the sign to cross the street, instead of a red hand to tell you to stop, they have a red man standing (he looks like to little men that tell people weather it's the boys or girls bathroom). The walk sign looks green man walking. And instead of using yellow paint to distinguish the sides of the road, they use white paint. Also, their speed limit sign is in kilometers and inside a red circle.
     Iceland uses a different power outlet than us. It looks like two dots instead of three. We have to use a  converter box to use our American electric items (ex. chargers). I personally think it looks like two eyes staring at me from inside the wall.
    
     Back to my story of the day. After I woke up we went to breakfast at friendly cafe (it wasn't really breakfast because we got there at noon - Joslyn and Spencer woke up at 11:00) and then drove to BiFrost. The hotel the night before was really wonderful, so I was expecting some glamorous, three bedroom apartment. Instead, we have a modest, two bedroom apartment in an ugly, cement building. At first, I absolutely hated it, but now I realize we could have done a  lot worse. I'm sharing a bedroom with Joslyn and Spencer that has two regular beds and and a bunk bed. Joslyn and I are sleeping on the bunk bed and Spencer is sleeping on one of the regular beds. All of our stuff is packed into the two closets and one set of shelves. We don't have much stuff, so I don't think my dad will be able to yell at us for having a messy room - yet.

Pictures Soon (we actually don't know how to post pictures yet),

Alex ( :