Swimming Sunday

     Last Sunday, my parents decided to 'tour' some of Iceland (I guess living here wasn't enough). For us kids, it means spending the day in the car reading on the kindles or playing on the ipad. I can't say it's that bad because it gives me an excuse to read (not that I really need one, though. Mom and Dad love it when I read). Plus, every time we go driving, I get to see a lot of super cute Icelandic ponies! After driving around the area near Borgarnes for about an hour, we all went swimming at the hot springs in Borgarnes. It's a sweet pool, too! They have the tiniest lap swimming pool I've ever seen, but the in the outside area there are three slides, three hot tubs, a very shallow and little pool, and a larger lap pool. The three slides are green, blue, and yellow. Short and wide, the yellow slide is only about 12 feet long, yet probably 8 feet wide! Next highest is the blue slide. This is a like the slide in Gunnison. It is fairly slim (3 feet wide), but very windy and slow. The green slide had a top on it, so it almost felt like going into a deep hole. A very, very, wet deep hole that the sun shows through everywhere in the sides.
     Although the green slide was higher than the blue slide, it was a much shorter and direct (and fast) route to the ground (or pool) below. In fact, Joslyn and Spencer raced each other down them, Joslyn on the green and Spencer on the blue. To win you had to get down last. Spencer is not stupid in choosing his slide. But neither is Joslyn. While Spencer was busy slowing himself down on the already slow slide, Joslyn zipped down the green and then came back up for round two in the green slide. When Spencer reached the bottom, he was shocked to see Joslyn was still in the slide. Spencer would have won if they had set the ground rules beforehand, but that didn't stop Joslyn from gloating her victory to everyone - especially Spencer!
     Hot tubs are supposed to be hot, but I don't really see the point in having one so hot that I'm not allowed to stay in it for more than 30 seconds. The temperatures were 37, 39, and 42 degrees Celsius which is about 98,  102, and 108 degrees Fahrenheit. They were so relaxing, too. My mom and dad insisted on staying in them almost the whole time.
     Another place I swam was the outside pool. There were diving blocks at the end of it and I dove off of them with Joslyn after we swam to the other side. Then, Spencer joined us and we began to pretend to eat him over and over and over. Each time, though, he started to thrash around when we grabbed his arms and legs. I guess he didn't like being eaten, or it was simply getting old. The nice thing about this pool was that it wasn't that hot so we were all able to cool off in it. Or as much as you could cool off in a hot spring.
     My mom, dad, Joslyn, Spencer, and I all went into the inside pool to check it out. There were tons of pool toys and a foam turtle which I tried and tried and tried to straddle, but always failed by being tipped backwards by the turtle shooting up from under me. My mom could do it, but I just couldn't balance right. There was also a toy boat that I kept pushing around the pool. Sadly, the toys had to stay in the inside pool, so I had to leave the toys to play on the slides.

     I enjoyed the pools for about two hours before it was time to go home. Joslyn and I had swam in the pool at our school, but this was the first time my family had gone to a pool together. I'm surprised we waited three weeks to use Iceland's natural resources, but better late than never.

Bless,

Alex : )