So for the first time in my history of being at Embry-Riddle, I FINALLY left campus for spring break, and yes, it was glorious. I’ve always worked on campus during spring break, and I decided that this was going to be the last opportunity for me to enjoy spring break without working about school or my job…haha, yea right. The teachers love to pile on the homework right before you get onto spring break. Sounds pretty evil, eh? Well, spring break wasn’t all break, but I enjoyed every second that I had.
The big question: Where did I go for spring break? Like my other blogs, which I’m sure you’re are tired of hearing, I flew back down to Daytona, FL to spend time with my boyfriend and to check out a few possible grad schools. We had a lot of events that we had to go to in a whirlwind, and so here I go:
I was able to meet with the ERAU Crew club and watched two of their boats compete. I’ve only been to a paddling meet back home. I have never a crew meet, so this was definitely an interesting experience to see what they do and how they prepare. As a team they take-off and put back on the trailer their boats, which was carefully driven behind their coach’s truck. They have to screw on the riggers to the side of the boats and then make sure that its level so that the oars will go straight while they race. The teams are split into different weight groups for racing to ensure fairness, kind of like wrestling. The steers make sure that they know what time their race is so that the team can bring out their boats and row out to the starting line. When the race starts, most of us will go near to the finishing line and start cheering for the team to stroke harder and row faster while the steer yells at them in the boat. Both teams did fairly well. My boyfriend didn’t get to row because he had hurt his back earlier that season, however his teammates and coach look up to him a great deal for support and help on the boats.
We had to hurry back to the boathouse in Daytona to put the boats and equipment away, and go home to shower and get ready for one of the main events and highlights of my trip: Þorrablót . Yes, this is a strange word for all of us to learn, but I had to learn how to pronounce it in Icelandic. This is kind of like their end-of-winter festival celebration, where back in the day, they would eat up all the rest of the food that they hadn’t eaten during winter…so from the examples the I had gotten from a few Icelandic buddies of mine, sheep balls are really good, stay away from the scrambled brains and shark that has been underground for three months. Well, when we got to Orlando to celebrate Þorrablót, of course everyone was speaking Icelandic. I had no idea what was going on…all I know is that everyone had a drink in hand. I guessed what was going on throughout most of the program: the host introduced himself, gave a background on the event, said some jokes, and called up the tables one-by-one to eat. There was a very long table full of food: squash, a type of bread with two different types of spreads, bits of shark, dried fish (which is very yummy!), lamb’s head, some chopped up lamb parts, and some amazing and soft lamb! The food was delicious
The rest of the night was learning some folk songs, some really random songs, folk dancing and waltz dancing. I had a really awesome time, and definitely thanked my boyfriend for an amazing evening of food, fun, and culture. The rest of the night, we chatted with people from Iceland, and mind you there were about 200 people there, chatted with people who married Icelanders, and those who have traveled to that country. This was definitely one of the best ways to interact and gain knowledge of another culture.