Last Day, Iceland stuff

Here's my blog for when I'm in Iceland.

Here's a mini photo blog for Iceland too, because I'll probably update that more than the real blog.

Sorry, I took so long to post anything that I forgot most of what we did. On the last day we had to walk all over because the train station was closed for repairs. We got on a bus to go to another train station and after that we found out that the entire line we wanted was closed for a bank holiday. So we took a different line.

After getting to the airport and going through security, we got some lunch at an Italian place. I got a pizza and sandwich (I think).

27th, Thursday

We went to a makeup shop to check to see if an order Roxy had put in had arrived, and while we were there we wandered into some stores that sold books and pop culture merchandise. We also went into some vintage clothing stores. Afterwards we went to the War Museum, which featured exhibits from almost all the wars Britain has been involved in. Admission was free (it might have only been free past a certain time, I can't remember) and they searched our bags briefly before we went in. The first room has airplanes, tanks, and a trolly while outside the building itself is a giant cannon. I took some photos for a man and his mother in front of one of the tanks. They were from Australia and the man said he had just spent two months in America (Delaware and some other more eastern state) for training for volunteering to help starving kids and that sort of thing.

They had models of houses from WWII, models of clothing, food, toys, and they had simulated trenches (including the smell!) along with a lot of picture and movie exhibits. The trench simulation was in my opinion too short to really have any effect on a person but Aino had thought it was good. However my eyesight is quite good in the dark so I could see everywhere in the trench just fine anyway despite there being few lights (and the lights that were there were flickering). I really liked the models of the houses, it was surprising how small everything was. Even the beds were a lot smaller than we have today.

The gift shop had some nice things like postcards with old photos and some toy and candy replicas, but I was overall disappointed. I thought there would be more clothing replicas and just replicas in general, a lot of it was the same images printed on different things (like a postcard, t-shirt, fridge magnet, and mug). I bought some things for dad there.

After this we met up with some more friends who are also visiting London at the same time and we ate at Pizza Express near Victoria Station. It was good food, but it was a bit expensive and they only cut half of everyone's pizzas into slices, in addition they had immense trouble considering splitting a pizza into half with one half one type of pizza and the other another type. It was also extremely loud and we could only hear about half the table when we were trying to talk.

When we were done we went to Christine's house, who lives nearby, and talked for a while. We eventually caught the last train home but instead of the normal forty-or-so-minutes, the last train takes two hours and it goes to a bunch of stations no one had heard before. Most of the train got off at the first stop because they didn't recognize where it was going, but we stayed on and got home in the end.

26th Wednesday

We went to The British Museum. It was really big and built like a maze, and had a lot of statues and old artifacts from various countries in it. Snorri and I weren't as interested in the museum as everyone else so we walked around while they looked at all the exhibits. After a while Roxy, Snorri, and I went to a convenience store and bought ginger cookies/biscuits and drinks, while the others continued to look around the museum. I bought a lemon-lime water drink that wasn't carbonated, and the others bought various things, and then we returned to the steps of the museum. They were shooting a movie on the steps of the museum, all the actors were Indian and one of the staff(?) was holding something like a really long mop. There was a lady in a business suit who walked up some of the steps and then turned around to talk to a man, but I couldn't hear anything they said even though they were fairly close.

Erin, Snorri, and I went to Piccadilly to wait for Aino, who I met last year in Iceland as well, (Aino is from and lives in Finland). According to a friend, the statue in the middle of Piccadilly is the god Eros and this place used to be a meeting place for lovers. There are a lot of French tourist groups and classes that go on field trips to the museums. There was one at the museum and there was one at Piccadilly too, and I've also been seeing lots of English classes with students in uniforms at all the museums.

24th Monday

I arrived at the airport and made it though the American security check just fine, but after I had gotten off the plane in Canada they thought I was suspicious (Because I was bringing two things of luggage for a one week flight) and so they put me in a different area and started to interrogate me. They asked me stuff about where I lived, who I was meeting, what I was going to do in London, had I been out of the country before, et cetera. They were really quite mean about it and after nearly everything I said the staff member said "You know, for some reason I don't believe you."

They told me to write down the names, phone numbers, and addresses of everyone I was going to meet, of my landlord, of Arlene who I visited in Canada a few weeks ago, and of my parents. They asked if my parents knew I was going on this trip (despite me being a legal adult and having already told the staff I didn't live with my parents) and after I gave them my dad's number they left, so I assume they called him. I hadn't memorized numbers or addresses for anyone because I had the important ones written down and all the unimportant ones are in my phone, which doesn't work anywhere outside of the US (not even in Canada), so I hadn't brought my phone. They couldn't believe that I hadn't memorized all of these numbers or that I hadn't brought my phone despite me telling them where all my friends were from (various countries in Europe, hence never memorizing their numbers because I won't need to call for help or call them at all because of the expenses) and telling them my phone doesn't work in Europe or Canada. They kept asking me tons and tons of questions and I had looked down to turn off my ipod because I had been listening to it while I was waiting for them to finish doing something in another room, and they got mad at me for not looking them in the eye when I was turning it off (because I was looking at the ipod itself to make sure it turned off).

They found three things suspicious. One, that I was bringing two bags and that one of those was a bag filled with gifts for friends. Two, that I was bringing so little money (they asked me how much I was bringing and when I told them, they said "You can barely survive one day on that amount" despite it being a lot more than that would take, and I told them I was staying with a friend, eating their food, and not planning to go out and do expensive things and they acted like that was unheard of). Three, that I was meeting up with friends because apparently... friends don't meet up together in Canada. I had a subway map with directions on how to get to the meeting place where Snorri would be waiting and they kept folding and unfolding it, looking at the back as if it would magically hold some clue as to what I was doing wrong despite it having nothing but meeting instructions on it.

After about two hours of this, they went to actually rummage through my suitcases to check and make sure I wasn't packing anything contraband. I had been doodling some pictures about the volcano and how it was disrupting flights, and once they saw that they asked me if I was "going to go to any protests" and if I had "very strong opinions". I told them I wasn't and that I had opinions but they weren't strong and I wasn't going to act on them. Finally they let me go, but I still had to go to the ticket counter and everything to pick up the tickets for my connecting flight... which was arriving in ten minutes by then. I ran through the airport and got to the security check where I was stuck in a line that was going slowly, except most of the people in it were all from Scotland and all friends of each other, and when they found out when my airplane was supposed to leave they all let me cut ahead of them. I kept running because the security check was at about the middle of the airport while the gate for my flight was at the very end, and when I got there they said it hadn't even started boarding yet because the plane had been late.

I went through the English customs just fine, but at baggage claim I found out my baggage hadn't arrived. So I had to file a missing baggage form and use Gunnar's (Snorri's uncle, the one we're staying with) address and phone number so they could drop it off.

I met Erin at the airport, she's from Ohio and she's visited Washington before. From Heathrow we traveled by train and eventually got to Victoria station where we met Snorri. We had a bit of trouble finding out exactly where to go because I mistook a store name in the directions as a street name, but a man who was probably homeless saw that we were lost and helped us out.

From there we wandered around until we settled at Piccadilly, where we were meeting the other Icelanders who were also going to be staying at Gunnar's place. For the rest of the day we basically wandered around some more.

Flight information, general info

For most of the time I'm going to be staying at Snorri's uncle's house, Snorri's the one I stayed with while in Iceland. Then on the weekend I'll be staying at a hotel because we'll be going to an event in the city that would be too troublesome to go and come back all the time from. A lot of my friends are going to be on this trip, around ten or fifteen of them.

Leave Monday, May 24, 2010
Air Canada 8094
Depart: 1:50pm Seattle, WA Seattle/Tacoma Intl (SEA)
Arrive: 2:39pm Vancouver, Canada Vancouver Intl (YVR)

Change of planes

Air Canada 854
Depart: 5:05pm Vancouver, Canada Vancouver Intl (YVR)
Arrive: 10:15am London, United Kingdom London Heathrow (LHR)

xxx

Return Monday, May 31, 2010
Air Canada 851
Depart: 1:15pm London, United Kingdom London Heathrow (LHR)
Arrive: 3:35pm Calgary, Canada Calgary International (YYC)

Change of planes

Depart: 5:30pm Calgary, Canada Calgary International (YYC)
Arrive: 6:03pm Seattle, WA Seattle/Tacoma Intl (SEA)

Today was the last day.

The night before Arlene's mom had given me bags of barley and brown rice because they hardly eat it. She also gave me a jar of home-made miso and some prepackaged miso, bonito flakes, and a one-dollar Canadian coin with the olympic symbol on it. I took these home with me. That morning we had food waiting for us on the kitchen table because Arlene's mom was at work, so I put some in a lunch box to eat on the Greyhound later. It was potato salad, breaded chicken, breaded pig heart pieces, and rice wrapped in seaweed with a filling that I don't know the name of.

We went to Metro Town (the mall) and played the arcade game Pop'n Music (the link isn't the same version as the one I played, ours was newer and two-person instead of one) one last time, and went to TNT which is a mostly-Chinese food store. I bought a lychee green tea drink, youkan which is a Japanese snack, and dried fish. People tend to stare at me when I go into those stores because I'm white and out of place.

Then we went to the Greyhound station to drop off my luggage. We put it in the locker but the locker was broken and all our coins got stuck, so we had to run around the building trying to find someone who would help us with it. No one who worked there had accentless English. Eventually we got a refund and managed to get it put in a different locker.

Then we took a bus to Arlene's mom's workplace. We chatted with her for a few minutes and she gave us a bag with a juice box and some Girl Guide (Girl Scout) cookies in it that a coworker had given her that morning. She took a couple photos with us and then we had to go back to the Greyhound station because I needed to leave. Arlene waited in line with me until the bus started loading.

The border went okay. Going to Canada they asked tons of questions and even made me show my school ID to prove I was a student. They also looked up Arlene's address to make sure it was real. But they didn't check any of our bags. Going to the states, they only asked two or three questions but they scanned our bags. I brought food and meat along and you're not supposed to do that but they didn't even ask me if I was bringing any (they asked the people before me but skipped me somehow) and didn't say anything after my bag went through the x-ray machine.

Today we first went to the "regular" mall, meaning the non-Asian one. We went to the post office, I sent a package and bought some postcards while Arlene sent two letters. There was nothing to do or buy in the mall and we wanted to find pig hearts so we took a bus to the Chinese marketplace to see if they had them for sale. They didn't, so we took a bus to China Town and wandered around until we saw a meat shop.

We bought two hearts for $2.20 and went home. It had been raining off and on all day, but as we were down the street from Arlene's house we heard a loud thunderclap so we hurried home. We cooked the hearts according to the directions in the previous post, it tasted like stew meat only it didn't fall apart as easily as stew meat. We put it in the fridge and we'll make something that includes it tomorrow. I think it's the type of food that needs a sauce or something else to eat it with.

Then I tried natto and rice, it didn't taste good or bad.

Arlene's mom came home and she gave me some rice and materials for miso soup so I can make them when I get back to America. She showed me how she makes miso (letting soybeans sit in a giant bucket for a while, then mixing it with already-finished miso if it's not quite done) because it's a lot cheaper than buying it in the store. She gave me a package of pre-done miso and miso she's made and she showed me how she makes the soup. She also showed me how to read the package information of how much bonito (seasoning) flakes to put in the soup and how much miso and water to put in, et cetera.

Arlene's mom explained their family religion (Buddhism) to me and explained where she works. She works in a government-funded grocery store where the food prices are really low, and the idea is that drug addicts will buy food instead of drugs with their money. There are apartments for drug addicts who are quitting around the store and there is also a nurse's office and a needle exchange somewhere nearby too so they can use clean needles instead of reusing dirty ones and passing on diseases. Arlene said she thinks one of the previous managers of the store stepped on a dirty needle and contracted some form of HIV from it.

Yesterday we tried to go to a fabric store but they were closed on Sundays, so we went back to the mall. We looked for pig hearts but they were sold out and nowhere we asked knew where we could buy them. Even one of the stores that sold chicken hearts, when we asked "do you sell any hearts?" they said they didn't.

We went to an Asian food store and bought some food we hadn't had before. One thing was Vietnamese rolls with noodles, vegetables, and shrimp with dipping sauce. Another thing was rolls made in swirls as a mix of bread and red bean paste.

We also had shaved ice. The ice was lychee flavor and the flavoring on top was taro and red bean with sticky rice balls. We went to the arcade again and then we went home.

Arlene's relatives came over and so did a friend of her mom's, and we ate a large dinner together. We ate tempura, salmon, strawberry daifuku, rice, and pickled white radish.

Today we met up with both Arlene's friend from yesterday and two more of her friends. We went to a mall and played in the arcade, I played a game where you press buttons to a musical beat a few times. We got bubble tea and I bought dried fish from a Chinese store, and we wandered around. We took "secret passageways" though various parts of the mall, which were just hallways that the staff normally use. The staff at this mall patrol while wearing roller blades. There was rumours that the mall was going to shut off the lights at eight at night because it was Earth Day, but after waiting we asked some staff members and they said they hadn't heard of such an event.

There's an Asian shopping center across the street from the more regular mall. Although both have lots of Chinese everywhere the shopping center is like you're not even in Canada anymore once you get to the marketplace that's inside. They sell a lot of food I can get in Seattle but there's some things that I either can't find at home or don't know where to find or can't get simply because going home with them would take too long and they'd spoil, like meat.

Arlene's friend from the first day had to go to a birthday party and the mall was closing, so we decided to go back home. We wanted to get pig hearts at the shopping center because I hadn't been able to try them in Iceland, they were about $2 for two, but we didn't manage to get there in time before the center closed. So we went back to Arlene's house and ate dinner which was sticky rice and pasta with shrimp and ginger in it.

I forgot to bring my camera so there's no photos for today, but tomorrow I'm going to a fabric store and I'm going to buy those pig hearts so I'll take photos then. Snorri gave me a recipe for how to cook them:

Clean the meat of fat, sinuses, veins etc.
Cut into bites (not too small).
Roll them in flour with salt and pepper mixed in. A clear plastic bag is a good option.

Brown the meat (don't burn it) on a big pan with cooking oil or margarine and olive oil.
Add water to the pan so it's just floating above the meat.
Add a bouillon cube.
Wait for the water to boil.

Lower the heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes with a lid on.
Stir every few minutes and add water if you think it's needed.
Have a taste too, you add spices as suits your tastes.

The image gallery for this trip is here. I'll edit images into this post soon.

Yesterday I went to the greyhound station. The website said you had to be there an hour early to check in but I found out that if you're going to Canada you actually don't. The bus itself was pretty full and stopped in a total of five places, the last two with which we got about ten minutes for break. I think one of the stops the greyhound made was in Mount Vernon, and another was at the duty-free for Canada. But the duty-free didn't have anything good in it and the prices were just as expensive as if you bought things outside of it. The greyhound bus took about four and a half hours, apparently we finished a little late.

I met Arlene and one of her friends, and we took the Sky Train - a train that runs to different cities on tracks that are above the ground - to the town near where Arlene is, then we took a bus to her actual house. I met her mom and dad we talked and I was shown around the house. They stuffed me with food (Miso soup, tofu, ham, pineapple, and salad) and we met up with Arlene's friend from earlier to walk around outside a little bit. By then it was around eight-thirty and already dark so we couldn't do much.

We decided to stay the night at her friend's place and that's where I'm at now. We're going to leave for Arlene's house to have breakfast soon.

Bus Information, General Info

Ticket Info: (I'm taking the Greyhound from Seattle to Vancouver)

Departing SEATTLE, WA - 26 Mar 2010 at 01:35PM
Arriving in VANCOUVER, BC - 26 Mar 2010 at 05:35PM
Carrier: GLI
Schedule: 6516

Return Trip
Departing VANCOUVER, BC - 30 Mar 2010 at 02:15PM
Arriving in SEATTLE, WA - 30 Mar 2010 at 06:30PM
Carrier: GLI
Schedule: 6579

I'll be staying at Arlene's place with her family. Again, I don't know how often I'll update the blog while I'm there.