At the beginning I thought that three weeks would go by pretty slowly. I was wrong. When you're meeting new people, visiting new places, eating every meal together, cooking together, working together, sharing the same hostel rooms, and riding the bus everywhere together, time flies. I didn't have any time to be homesick or to be bored. I have been surrounded by the most eager, adventurous and caring group of people ever. We have experienced more in three short weeks than some would experience in over a month. Yeah, we had to get super cozy at times and we didn't have a lot of personal space, but it was wonderful all the same. We have basically become a family and we will always share the bond of this experience. I came into this only knowing Jessie Wheeler and Emily Ritz, but I have come out of this with fifteen new friends.
We have hiked until our legs and feet ache, we have explored a glacial ice cave, eaten putrefied shark, hiked behind a waterfall, hiked up volcanoes, slid down patches of snow and ice, visited lots of glaciers, watched seals swimming through icebergs, leaned over the sides of cliffs to see puffins, and so much more. We all ate too many cookies and napped too much, but we were always up for a new adventure. You knew that you had a real friend when they let you have the last ballerina, bourbon cookie, crème cake, or digestive cookie.
It's going to be so strange next year to see everyone in clean clothes and any shoes besides hiking boots. We'll all be heading back to the real world soon and this will seem like a good dream. It still hasn't completely sunk in for me that we are in Iceland right now. Maybe once I get home I'll be like, "Wow, I was actually in Iceland yesterday." I'll probably accidently refer to the restroom as the "WC" and no one will know what I'm talking about. I'll miss the pristine Icelandic tap water that is better than just about any bottled water. I'll miss all the yohoos and how excited we would all get whenever we saw any cat, dog, horse, or sheep. I'll miss the random geological stops and sketching different rock and glacial formations in my field notebook. I came into this knowing next to nothing about geology, but now I feel so much more knowledgeable about glaciation, volcanics, plate techtonics, types of rocks, and interpreting past geological events. I have been very fortunate to experience these things firsthand, not just from a geology book or lectures in a classroom. The world is our classroom and the earth is our teacher.
This trip has shaped me in many ways, and it has changed my perspective on many things. I would not trade these experiences for anything, and I cannot think of any better group of people to have had these experiences with.
Love you guys!
-HET
No comments:
Post a Comment