Working Day: The 10th Day in Iceland (6 July 2008)

Waking up once at 5 a.m. by the heavy rain and the smell of fried onions, someone was sleepless and cooked at 5 a.m.! Anyway, I succeeded in continuing my sleep until 7.45 a.m. 

After coming from shower, I met the German girl Julia watching the cloudy sky in the dining room. From a window of the dining room, we hardly saw the mountains that used to be the background elements of the sea... 

The cloud was really thick today. The sky was white.

Updating this blog has become my routine. So, my work started with it as well today after the breakfast and laundry. Then, I continued the tree. The tree grew so slowly today, because I was too distracted by the trip planing for my last week in Iceland when TT coming over. We had first planned to rent a car and drive to the southeast. However, after checking different car rental companies, the tariffs seemed too hight (around 600 Euro/week). This meant that to travel by bus would be more economical (but of course less flexible).

Despite of this distraction, I had tried to work until 8 p.m. and stopped when discussing with TT about the trip on Skype. We finally came to the conclusion that we would take a bus to the first stop in Skaftafell National Park and stay at Bölti Guesthouse in the national park for 3 nights. Then, we would continue by bus to the glacier lagoon Jokulsarlon and stay at a farmhouse called Smyrlabjörg located 4 km from the lagoon for 1 night. On the following day, the bus would bring us to Höfn where we would rent a car. Then, we would drive the rental car and walk 40 minutes from Illikambur to the mountain hut Mulaskali owned by the East Skaftafell touring Association and stay there for 2 nights. We hadn't planned the rest of the trip yet but was thinking that we could drop by at one of the mountain huts on the way to Reykjavik. TT sent emails to check the availability of these three accommodations. I hope each still has room for us. Let's see...    

Our discussion ended around 10.45 p.m. I could still manage to continue the tree a little bit. The picture below was taken around midnight. I'm not quite sure if the tree became taller than it was yesterday.

 

Efficient Day: The 9th Day in Iceland (5 July 2008)

Waking up around 7.30 a.m. while everyone seemed to be sleeping, I took shower, had breakfast and started to update the blog. My legs and feet still felt sore from the marathon yesterday. 

I finished the blog around noon. and continued my tree. After an hour, I got 2 more rows as the picture below. 

The dish of the day was rice with red pork I marinated with the seasoning I took from home together with orange juice and roasted in the oven. It was a nice meal.

There was not much to say about what I did today because I just kept knotting the tree. I was glad that it has grown  quite steadily and the form wasn't too much alike a geometric cylinder. Sometimes, being a bit less perfect was the right choice, because the being made work became more living. My intention not to knot around any mold made the right approach for constructing a tree.

I continued and continued until late night. The photo below taken at 11.20 p.m. reveals how much I had done today! Very efficient, indeed...