I went out to dinner with two of my flatmates last night.
Tom and Judy are adorable, and hilarious, and I knew I would love them the minute we met. Being from England, they do weird cute British things like eat baked potatoes with canned spaghetti on top. Sometimes they add a piece of cheese. They also say things like, “I’m going to have a wee,” before they head into the bathroom.
Tom is the new chef at the cafe, and Judy is a barista. Last night we decided we would have dinner and go see the new Mad Max movie. There is a sushi place here in town called Kung Fu Sticks & Sushi.. The sticks part are just foods on sticks. One of the choices was horse. (we really wanted to try the horse tartare, but they were out of it.)
It tasted very much like beef, and Tom had joked about England, and how much flack they had gotten for selling horse meat marked as beef. He thought it would be amusing if Iceland had it the other way around.
I’ve decided to eat whale. I don’t know what the holdup was, but I’m over it now.
After sushi, we went to see Mad Max at the local theater, where I had a slushie…
The movies here are in English, with Icelandic subtitles. If you talk to most of the locals, they will tell you that they learned most of their English watching movies.
Another fun thing about the movies here is that they have an intermission thrown into the middle somewhere. The movie just shuts off for 10 minutes withoiut warning so people can pee, or purchase Raisinettes. Afer the movie, they open the doors at the bottom of the theater, and people exit that way. You are not to go out the way you came in. And usually the side door spills out onto an alley.
Last week sometime, I went with another coworker (Esther, from Denmark) to the local pool. In Iceland, they’re all about public pools. Because hot water is so abundant here, the pools usually have multiple hot tubs of varying degrees.
Here’s the catch with the pools, though. You have to take off your swimsuit and shower stark naked with a 20 other women before getting in the pool. Something I knew ahead of time, and something I assured myself I could get over when I got there.
So there Esther and I stand… In the locker room. She has already disrobed, and I stood fully clothed.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I say to her over a seated Icelandic woman’s head.
“Sure you can,” she chuckles.
I was already in full fear mode, a flashback from my childhood and an incident at the YMCA surfacing vividly.
“Nope. I really can’t do this.” My mind went to my escape route. Do I try to get my money back? Do I take the loss? Which way is the exit?
The Icelandic woman next to me asked where I was from, then laughed at the answer. Apparently this is not unusual behavior for an American. And you know what? I was willing to perpetuate the stereotype.
A few moments later a woman came by, and Esther asked for advice fo me. The woman directed me to a private changing room stall, and a private shower. I scolded the woman sitting next to me while laughing, “Why didn’t you tell me that!?” She laughed too. She ain’t got time for cowardly Americans with body shame issues.
I also got a new roommate this week. Her name is Sophie, and she’s from Colorado Springs. I adore her. We visited a famous poet’s home turned museum.
