Home Is Where The Heart Is...

...hopefully there's a bed there as well.

So this weekend I will have been here one month! I am so excited to mark the occasion by just being able to stay in Iceland for the next three! It's just been a really wild ride, and I apologize profusely for not blogging--I promise I will make up for it!

In the last month I have been in and out of various offices trying to justify staying here when the law (and pretty much everyone I've spoken too concerning the issue) says that I should not have been allowed to come in the first place and need to leave immediately. My student visa has yet to be approved and it is explicitly stated that a person cannot be in Iceland while they have a pending application. And without going into further details--because I've been through them backwards and forwards several times a day for the past month--I can tell you that I will be staying. For as long as possible. And hopefully my visa will be settled... eh, before I leave would be nice!

Regardless of how stressful this venture has been, I am still quite blessed to be here. I have my own room with a very comfortable bed (NAU take note!) and is just five minutes from the beach, I will be starting geology courses next week, I've made some very interesting friends, a couple of which I hope to stay in contact with long after this semester is over, I have stood where two continental plates are rifting apart (a religious experience for me, I tell ya!), and the weather is just beautiful all the time... The scenery itself and just having a new place to explore easily makes up for the bureaucracy they put you through in order to stay.

When I was in the Reykjavik airport I was able to talk to one of my best friends, Kenzie, who very kindly listened to me deliriously gripe about not having a nice warm bed to snuggle up in after so much travelling... Ha, with all that has been going on, those feelings have come back on occasion, repeatedly making me realize how truly grateful I am to have a bed in the first place. I've not been through war, and the only times I've slept on dirt have been on my own accord, so maybe I don't deserve to be so thankful, but I am... There have just been days when I've felt hopeless and cold after walking back and forth through the rain and not getting the answers I was searching for... and the only comfort is being able to curl up in my bed under the NAU afghan my mom crocheted me.

Okay, so enough of the sentimental crap, you wanna see pictures, doncha?

1. View of my desk and more or less the room.

2. A view directly on to the left of the door once you walk in... Sink, cabinet, etc.

3. Said cabinet... it's so roomy!

4. The wardrobe directly to your right once you walk inside. Again, very roomy.

5. My shelves, they partition the rest of the room from the sink area.