Hello etc

Hello, everybody. Here is a blog that I intend to write to let everyone who is interested know how things go in Iceland. I am going up there to be an au pair for a year (well, almost a year), staying with a family in central Reykjavík. They have four children at the moment (15 year old girl, 11 year old boy, 6 year old boy and 3 year old girl), with a baby expected in March. Which is quite a lot of children, really.

As I'm sure anyone who's ever met me is aware, this temporary move to Reykjavík is pretty much a dream come true for me, because for a long time I have been quite interested in Icelandic history, literature, culture and language. One of my university tutors once said to me, in an exasperated tone, "Why don't you just marry Iceland?" Yeah, my enthusiasm for Iceland is at embarrassing levels. It wasn't always like this - I don't know what happened to me.

Before university (four years ago) I can remember toying with the idea of living in Iceland after my degree, but such a notion didn't really seem possible. After the first degree I didn't know what to do, so I did what a lot of people in my position do. I signed up for an MA. Nearing the end of that the real world was starting to loom over my comfy student existence in a very menacing way. And by then going to Iceland was pretty much the only thing I wanted to do - trawling through graduate jobs made me want to cry. I can't really believe it's all come together so smoothly... part of me still thinks it's a bit outlandish. But I booked my plane tickets today, and I'm flying out from Gatwick to Keflavík on the 22nd January. In eleven days.

I am in turns ridiculously can't-sleep can't-stop-grinning excited, vaguely uneasy and in a state of disbelief. All going well, this will probably be one of the most terrifying, challenging, exciting years of my life. Definitely the first time I've had anything worth writing a blog about, I should say. Hopefully it'll be reasonably interesting to read. Hopefully I won't forget about it. In the mean time, here is a quotation from W.H. Auden that I always enjoy:

"Few people take an interest in Iceland, but in those few the interest is passionate."

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