Eleven Hours in Iceland...

When I was booking my flight back to the Faroes, I was pretty excited when I worked out that, this time, it would actually be cheaper to fly via Iceland than via Denmark, That meant I'd get to see my Icelandic friend, Jóhanna, who I hadn't seen for a couple of years, and, well, Iceland is just a pretty cool place anyway!

There's something I love about a country where people use a beautiful, ancient language to discuss pizzas, clubbing and cinema times, where the scenery looks like something from another planet and where the cleanest people smell like egg.*

The only downside was that I'd just get eleven hours there. That would give me time to get to Keflavík Airport, get to Jóhanna's place, sleep a little bit, get up and get back to Reykjavík City Airport - this wasn't going to be a big sightseeing trip!

Fortunately, we actually managed to spend about half an hour in the city centre - and the fact I was limited to half an hour was probably a good thing. Due to the economic situation, Iceland has become MUCH cheaper than it was when I was last there, five years ago (for now - and Icelandic cheap still doesn't mean cheap cheap), which meant that books, clothes, etc. seemed pretty tempting. It was good for my own economic situation that my shopping spree was somewhat limited. And then it was straight off to the airport for my flight to the Faroes (on which there was an Icelandic AND a Faroese popstar!).

So this photo is the only proof I have that I was in Iceland at all:

And here's a rather nice photo of me and Jóhanna:
And, the way we were - the two of us back in 2005:
* I should add that this is due to the amount of sulphur in Icelandic water, I believe. The smell does go away very quickly, but anyone just leaving the shower will have the beautiful smell of egg about them for a good ten minutes or so...

The Summer of 09

And another summer has been and gone - and it was a great one this year. I managed to cram loads of things in. If I tried to write about everything, it'd just be boring, so I thought I'd just choose ten pictures which more or less cover what I got up to. Obviously I got a lot of work done too, but that isn't really fun to write about. Or take pictures of.

1. At the start of the summer I took part in my first ever car rally. And it was a great day - although unbelievably tiring! None of us had expected that the rally would take us all over South East Essex. Or that there would be so much walking involved (it was a CAR rally). But Fiesta Resistance and the Poddington Peas did their best and finished up in second place. (Robbed, I have to say).
2. Hayley Westenra came to Southend as part of her tour and I went along with the family. It was a great night - and she was a real professional, especially when the torrential rain came into the auditorium. Due to my contacts :) I was able to meet her afterwards, and she was very cool. Here's the proof!

3. Still in July, my brother went to a music camp in Swansea, Wales, and, as I have a bit of a thing for all things Welsh, I didn't pass up the chance to tag along with the parents. Swansea is a strange town - roughly divided in half, with half of the centre (around the train station) being not so nice and half of the centre being really nice. Mumbles and the Gower Peninsula were, however, stunning, and Gower reminded me a little of the Faroes...

4. I took the opprtunity to brush up on my Welsh and buy a few books, having my first ever proper Welsh conversation (admittedly only a few lines) with the lady in WHSmith (she started it!). Just a warning to anyone who ever visits a part of the world where they speak a different language with me - I have an incredibly annoying tendency (I'm sure) to read every single sign I see out loud.

5. Music Camp. What can I say? It's ALWAYS a major highlight of my year, and this year rocked, just as I knew it would. I won't say much more, because it's only really fun if you were there, but I just love the time spent with great people, in a great setting. With great ice cream.

6. After Music Camp, I got to hang out with my friend Grit (on the right) for a bit. Great catching up!

7. And then Katie used a large courgette as a telephone.

8. And the final few photographs are from Portugal, where I went with the family for a few days in September. A great view over Lisbon, just up from the Marques de Pombal.

9. Now I'm not really a fan of zoos or anything like that, but Lisbon Zoo is fantastic, and I got some pretty cool pictures.

10. A real highlight for me was when I went to the Salvation Army in Lisbon. It was great as I was walking through the streets of Picheleira alone (understandably, my parents didn't feel they would get much from a Portuguese service), it was very cool to hear the sounds of a brass band playing 'By the Pathway of Duty'. It was an excellent experience: the little band of about 6 or 7 that played really well, the joy and the relaxed atmosphere, the very friendly people, including those that helped us understand everything that was going on. I've said it before, and no doubt I'll say it again, but that's one of the things I love about the Salvation Army - I can go practically anywhere in the world and instantly find a group of friends. Immense.

Oh! What's Occurring?!

Dear Readers of Mitchenstein and Mitchenstein 365,

What's going on?? There hasn't been an update on here or on the mitchenstein365 picture blog for months! I can tell you now that I haven't given up at all - I'm still a massive fan of the ol' blogging and I'm planning to keep it up. It's just been a very manic time. Although you haven't seen anything new for a good long while, I can assure you that all the photos have been taken, the blog posts are in my mind and new stuff will be coming soon!

Thanks for checking by - keep on doing so, and maybe the next time you check in on mitchenstein (providing it's not like later today or tomorrow), there could well be more to read!

All the best - hope all's well with you!

John :)

Walthamstow! (Part Two)

One of the teams had the task of sorting out this:

And it's always amazing what sort of things end up in a place like this:

This rather fancy coat:

Chris with a corps flag from Chingford - anyone know when the corps in Chingford closed? Anyway, I'm a firm believer that there'll be another need for a Chingford flag at some point in the future, but I think we'll let them have a new one...

I REALLY wanted to take this crest home...

And quite a few stepladders...

(And obviously the usual supply of Salvation Army bonnets and mannequins were there).

And the day was rounded off with an excellent barbecue (seriously, seriously good food).

It was a fantastic day - great to be hanging out with a good group of people, and great to be doing something really worthwhile. Here's to a great future for Walthamstow Corps!

Walthamstow! (Part One)

OK, so it's been a little while since I blogged (but as I took so long to get all the Faroese stuff up, you've had a nice lot to read over the summer!), but here's something a little more recent...

A group of young people from The Salvation Army in our region went to Walthamstow for the day (can anyone hear that name without thinking of East 17?? Or am I just showing my age there?). The Salvation Army there stopped having Sunday meetings a couple of years ago, but efforts are being made to get the place up and running again and turn it into a real centre for the community. The plans I've heard for it sound fantastic. It's a massive building and in a great location.

Anyway, it needed a little bit of a face-lift - hence our journey for the day. I for one had an excellent day - it was great to meet new people, catch up with old friends I hadn't seen in a long time, and spend the day doing something really worthwhile (although a lot of hard work was involved!). So here's a few pictures from the day:

The upstairs team (which included me) await their instructions:

And then it's off to work!

I really got into this painting malarky (But it's hard work!).

But then all work and no play would have been boring...

The kitchen team:

Beth and Katie did quite a lot of this during the day...

The toilets team:

More to follow!

FAR23.1: Going home...

P.S. It was about 5am when I recorded this, and I was shattered! I think that comes across...

FAR22.1: Excursion Thursday (Part Three)

Destination: Vestmannabjørgini

It’s often said that there are three places you have to visit if you want to be able to say you’ve ‘seen’ the Faroe Islands: Suðuroy (the South Island), Mykines and Vestmannabjørgini, or the Vestmanna Bird Cliffs.* I’d seen the first two (see here and here for Suðuroy, and here for Mykines), but still needed to see the Vestmanna Bird Cliffs, the top tourist attraction on the Faroe Islands.

Two of my Faroese friends, Sámal and Henrietta, had never been to the bird cliffs either (so I guess they have never really ‘seen’ the Faroe Islands), so I thought it would be good if the three of us went and checked them out – I also wanted it to be a little thank you to them for everything they’ve done for me while I’ve been here.

The weather was terrible during the day, but turned wonderful as soon as we stepped onto the boat for the tour – after the fantastic weather in Mykines, my Faroese friends have begun to think that I always bring sunshine with me. I like that.

I’ll just show you a few pictures from the tour – the scenery was amazing, but, as everyone knows, it never looks as great on photos as it does when you’re actually there: This was our tour guide – and in thirty years (or something like that), he’d never been able to do a tour in just Faroese, with no Danish or English translation needed. I liked that too.
Sámal and Henrietta sporting the lovely hats we had to wear as the boat sailed in and out of the cliffs. *Obviously Tórshavn is another place you’d have to visit, but I can’t get my head around the idea that anyone would actually come to the Faroe Islands without coming to Tórshavn, so that doesn’t need to be on the list.

Happy Third Birthday!

Three years! Today marks the third birthday of this, the mitchenstein blog. When I started this blog, I was 22, an undergraduate, in England and sporting shoulder-length hair. Today I’m 25, a doctoral student, in the Faroe Islands and have an ever-increasing forehead. But still going strong!

This year’s been somewhat unusual – downright surreal at times – full of highs and lows, of course, and quite an adventure. In the past year I’ve spent six months in the Faroes, been on (Faroese) national TV, had a double-page write-up about me in a (Faroese) national newspaper, completed my first year of the mitchenstein365 project, completed the first year of my PhD, met Dr. Karl Kennedy and got a Gospel Choir going. Blog-wise, I also started doing some videos, which is kinda cool and fun to do – not sure how much fun they are to watch!

Usually, whenever this blog has had a birthday, I’ve done a huge blogging spree, blogging every day for a whole week. But not this year. This year it’s all in the one blog post!

I usually do a big thing about Mitchenstein in Statistics, but I think we’ll leave that this year too. All I’ll say is that I have written 181 posts on mitchenstein – 55 in my first year, 64 in my second year, and 62 this year, but that is an increase, because 4 of last year’s posts weren’t written by me! :)

Every year I look back at the ambitions I set for myself the year before, and see whether or not I’ve managed to achieve any of them. Last year’s ambitions were:

1. Keep this blog going.
ACHIEVED

2. Get a book published.
NOT ACHIEVED (but I hadn’t written one, so it was unlikely).

3. Raise some money for charity.
NOT REALLY ACHIEVED (I took part in some events that raised money for charity, but unfortunately I didn’t really achieve anything myself).

4. Get a piece of music published by The Salvation Army.
NOT ACHIEVED (But again, I didn’t write anything, so the odds were against me).

5. Learn to speak another language fluently.
ACHIEVED (Admittedly it wasn’t completely from scratch, but my Faroese is about fifteen million times better than this time last year. It hasn’t always been easy, but I’m so glad I insisted on doing everything in Faroese when I arrived here).

6. Start a gospel choir.
ACHIEVED

7. Read more.
MEGA-ACHIEVED (see here!)

8. Be tidier and more organised, and go to bed earlier.
NOT REALLY ACHIEVED

9. Learn Welsh.
NOT ACHIEVED (I’ve managed to pick up quite a bit from watching Gavin and Stacey with Welsh subtitles, but I wouldn’t really say that got me fluent... By any stretch of the imagination. But I can tell you that ‘What’s occurin’?’ is ‘Pa newydd?’).

So some new ambitions for this year are needed, namely:

1. Keep this blog going.
2. Learn the guitar. I don’t even really like guitars, but while I’ve been away I’ve realised how useful it is to be able to play chords on the guitar. If I could achieve this, it would be excellent.
3. Get a book published. Or just something.
4. Keep up my reading this year. At least 12 books.
5. Not lose the Faroese I’ve learned while I’ve been here.
6. Read a book in a language I’ve not read a book in before.
7. Be tidier and more organised, and go to bed earlier.
8. Write some music.
9. Be fitter.

Thanks to everyone who checks the blog, and the mitchenstein365 blog. Who knows what the next year will bring? But whatever happens, I’ll try to make sure I get the interesting bits on here. And I'll make those bits that aren’t so interesting a little more interesting than they are, and get them on here too.

And, because it’s tradition:

2006-2007

2007-2008

2008-2009

FAR21.4: Excursion Thursday (Part Two) (3/3)

After a lot more walking, we reached our destination, and it was beautiful:

And I was shattered!

Looking out over the Atlantic, from the westernmost point in the islands.

Once back in the village (and after some of the islanders had very kindly made waffles for us!) we played a few tunes for the locals - the whole village turned out to listen.

The whole gang.

Sailing away from Mykines.

Passing some pretty cool islands and formations on the way.

FAR21.3: Excursion Thursday (Part Two) (2/3)

Not long into the journey, I saw my very first puffins!

Then I saw quite a lot more...

Walking... (Again the camera doesn't show the steep drop on our right).

Still walking, with Mykines Village in the background. And this photo really doesn't show how steep it was or how far we'd already walked.

By this point it was like 'So what else is new?' ;)

More walking... And we were fooled into thinking we were going to have nice handrails the whole way...

We sat down for a well-deserved break - and at this point the weather got really hot. So much for having to cancel the day because of rain!

And then we carried on! More to follow...