Life changes...

 

 Well, these past few weeks have been quite intense... Starting with the conference for IAVCEI where i participated as volunteer and where i met vulcanologists from several places in the world. It was a great chance to meet among others the top vulcanologist from Colombia, Marta Calvache. Unfortunately, there were not so many times to speak to her but definitely she will remember me. Or at least i hope so... 

 During those days of the conference, one of the colombian delegates asked me to introduce him to the volcanology teacher at HÍ (Ármann Höskuldsson). During our conversation, something was said and everything turned out in a very strange way, from where i got, among others, an invitation to join that teacher in a field trip and serve as his assistant.... 

 

 

 Continuing, there was a visit of a chilean delegation that came to Iceland to seek possibilities to make business here and expand their geothermal industry, and for whom i got the chance to be a guide in a little trip around the south. There i was lucky to make that contact and to receive very nice advices from my fellow chilean geoscientists. It was just too funny hanging out with them because even though in theory we speak the same language, chilean is quite complicated to understand. Often i had to stop and ask for explanations, which led to tons of teasing for the constant misunderstandings.... And since i was the only non-chilean in the car... 

Then Hlíðaskóla started again... and all the preparing with it. Hlíðaskóla will represent an enormous challenge this year because among others i will be in charge of some new polish students who have recently come to Iceland (besides the two colombian refugees who i was already in charge of). As of today, it has been good. One of the polish is responding very positively. He is also very smart and has a strong will to learn. He has started to involve in more activities with his classmates and has started to show some advances in his social skills (already making friends). In my opinion he has a huge advantage over the colombian kid who is in the same class; and is basically the interest in improve his own situation or just basically the interest.... The polish kid has shown huge interest in the languages and his environment whereas the colombian has shown none.... Anyway, achieving some positive results at least with the polish boy will alleviate part of the frustration surrounding the experience with the colombian kids.

Last but not least, last week took place the field trip i had been invited to... or more proper to say, that i had been forced to go to (as a matter of fact... hehe). It all started with tons of stress because i knew he was going to be measuring me, testing me and may be even taking advantage of me, and i just wanted everything to be perfect. Part of my future depended on the development of that field trip... Luckily, at the end everything was fine. The Erasmus students who were taking part in the field trip were usually happy with my explanations and tended to look for me when something was not clear for them. Thing that helped me get points with the teacher.... Whatever the reason was, he actually, contrary to any forecast, congratulated me and gave me some compliments.... which needless to say give a sort of victory feeling... Let´s see what this experience with the teacher will bring me. For now i can say it filled me with satisfaction, i never expected to hear those compliments from him.... But anyway, despite all the stress... the trip was also really fun, met lots of new cool people and had a great time....

Well, that is all i have to say for now...

Cheerios.... 

 

   

Athugasemdir

[Jonas (IP-tala skráð) 16.9.2008 kl. 13:38]

Hey Jorge

Good to see that you had a good trip in our lovely country.....

I am now in Copenhagen but, would not mind to be in Reykjavik and Askja.

Jonas 

[Fríða Magnúsdóttir (IP-tala skráð) 19.9.2008 kl. 15:35]

hi Jorge miss you tons !! is this the field trip you took when my good by party was Well im glad that you had a good time and that the trip was a good one for you