A Day Off, Part 3: Horses!

Icelandic horses are special, partially because of a unique gait that allows for a smoother ride over uneven ground, mostly because they're pretty.  We stopped to meet some horses on the way home from the waterfalls!

A Day Off, Part 2: Aldeyjarfoss

Next we went south to a smaller but no less impressive waterfall called Aldeyjarfoss.  It is off the beaten tourist path and the road there was pretty rough, but it was well worth the drive!  It is in a desolate volcanic area, which makes the waterfall even more gorgeous.

The rock formations are basalt columns

There's even flowers in the lava fields!

Click on the picture for a larger image

A Day Off, Part 1: Godafoss

All bugs are counted, all spiders are on hold until their food grows big enough to run experiments, and everything else is just waiting to be sampled, so today we took the day off and saw some waterfalls!  The first was Godafoss, the waterfall I saw on my first day in Iceland, but it was great to see it again on a lovely day!

National Day

Today is National Day, Iceland's independence day!  Iceland gained independence from Denmark in 1944 and this is celebrated every June 17.  We weren't sure how National Day is celebrated, but we were told that there would be a parade in Hofdi (the park with the trees by our house) that afternoon.  Everyone met by the entrance to Hofdi, where we felt a little awkward being the only foreigners there but luckily ran into someone we knew.  Everyone then processed to the open green space in the middle of the woods and took a seat on the ground; a podium and microphone were placed in the middle.

Then there were speeches, which were all in Icelandic so I couldn't understand a thing, but as far as I could tell, the priest opened ceremonies and said a quick blessing.  Then I think someone read some history from a book.  Next a woman in a gorgeous dress stood up and recited a poem.  I later learned that she is dressed as the Woman of the Mountains, a personification of Iceland.

Finally, it was time to play games!  I was too much of a wimp to participate in games when I couldn't understand the instructions, but Tony and Elsemarie played and it was great fun to watch! The first game involved everyone finding a partner and lining up two by two.  A single person stood at the front of the line and yelled something along the lines of "one, two, three, go!" and the two people at the back of the line split up and ran forward along opposite sides.  The goal was for the two people to reach each other again before the one person at the top of the column could tag them and take someone's place.

Next came the most epic relay race I have ever seen:
1. The first person runs to the opposite side of the field, runs around a pole three times, and runs back.
2. The second person runs to the opposite side of the field, finds a goose egg that has been placed in tall grass, and runs back.
3. Two people run across the field and back holding a ball between them with no hands.
4. Two people do a three-legged run across and back

Elsemarie and her new best friend

5. The last person runs to the opposite side, hammers a nail, and runs back.

Finally, a form of duck duck goose was played.  It was really neat to see the town get together to play games!  I haven't really seen anything like it in the States.

Out on the Boat

Yesterday I got to go out on the boat and help with some aquatic sampling!  I really lucked out and had gorgeous weather yet again - the lake looked like this:

Myvatn isn't supposed to look like that. This is a lake in northern Iceland that is usually windy and spawning large numbers of insects.  I'm not going to complain about it, though. 

Tony, one of the professors

We had some routine sampling to do at a spot in the middle of the lake called Station 33.  First off was the benthic sampler.

The benthic sampler collects small creatures that live at the bottom of the lake.  It had been left on the lake floor for 24 hours and it was our job to pick it up.

This is what was in the benthic samples after it had been filtered and all the good stuff put into a small tube.  It's mostly zooplankton, although I did see at least one wormy type thing squirming around in there.  I'll have to learn how to identify aquatic life next.

We also sunk a frame with a camera attached to take pictures of the bottom at different wavelengths, and collected these lovely cores:

Mmm, sludge

These samples were wrapped in varying layers of mesh to produce different levels of sunlight and then incubated in the lake to allow photosynthesis to occur.  This was done by hanging them from a floating rack just off shore and measuring the amount of oxygen when we put them in and after a few hours.  If photosynthesis was occurring, the oxygen levels should have increased, since the first step in photosynthesis is splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen in order to obtain electrons. 

Last night we saw a stunning fog roll in from the sea.

Fog over Vindbelgur

View from our house

And tonight was bacon night.  Due to mass quantities of uneaten bacon packets in our fridge, it was decided that every dish served tonight must have bacon.  As side dishes we had bacon and brussel sprouts as well as oven-baked fries with bacon sprinkles.  It was delicious!

Beats sheep head

It was a pretty low-key day of bug counting and spider catching today, except for one complication: black flies.  They are out in full force!

The only thing we had to do in the field today was catching spiders, this time at Hel, the lake with no midges.  However, Hel is notorious for large numbers of black flies.  We dressed accordingly.

Bring it, black flies

But the black flies weren't actually that bad.  By not that bad I mean that my makeshift gear was enough to block them and the head nets we brought were not needed.  Besides that, we had to care for the fruit fly maggots we feed to the spiders.  The flies lay their eggs in a dish of molasses and agar (a gelatin-like substance), and we can pick the maggots off that dish.  The problem was that molasses-agar mixture had been in the freezer all week, and the standard maggot-feeding procedure called for a hot water bath to melt it.  So we had to improvise with the research station's kitchen.

Tomorrow I get to go out on the boat and help with some of the aquatic projects!

Not Every Day is a Field Day

 Some days I get to drive around Iceland and see awesome landscapes, birds, lakes and flowers.  Those days are balanced by days where the only scenery I see is this:

Yesterday I received the questionable honor of digitalizing old lab notebooks.  This involves hitting a button, flipping a page, and hitting the button again over and over.  Also I did this while standing on a chair because I'm just a couple inches too short to comfortably see what I'm scanning.  But at least I got to jam out to music while I worked (although I did get some weird looks when people saw me standing a chair dancing and working the photocopier). 

I also did some small tasks for the aquatic side of the project, including finding a suitable piece of metal to fix a floating incubation rack, adding longer strings to the tubes below, and designing a labeling system to hold said tubes.

Also, somebody thought it was a good idea to give me a drill