Just a few brief notes
I remember walking underground somewhere near Sadovoe, and there was a band playing, and a bloke with a hat collecting money from us passers-by. He was saying, 'Help make the Moon green!' Everybody laughed.
Well, that´s what we´re doing here, basically: making the effing moon green.
Want a local joke? If you get lost in a forest in Iceland, just get up.
The countryside is all rocks and bushes and a couple of birches. There used to be woods here but about a thousand years ago people took care of them. Cut everything down. And now...
...Now there´re crazy people from all over the globe who come to this weird place and spend 6 hours a day planting trees. Guess what country sends the biggest number of volunteers here? Spain. Yeah. We´ve got 4 in our camp. There´s also a Hungarian, a German, two French people, two Canadians, a German American of Uruguayan origin (don´t laugh, the lady´s trilingual), another Russian and yours truly.
Love the people. It´s all about people when it comes to these camps, and we´re really lucky this time. Well anyway, like baba_grabli said once, if these guys don´t mind wasting their vacation working for free, they´re bound to be terrific folks =))
Love it, this time it´s much more international than in France last year. And much more relaxed. We´re having national cooking days now, known here as 'crap days'. Because one day the French girl said, 'We are going to make crap today', and nobody realized she actually meant 'crêpes'. The language thing is really funny, everybody talks like this: Aber nein, moi j´aime pas ce truc que tambien tiene this layer of cream above...
Love the hot pots, we have a jakuzi and a swimming pool. And a trip to the waterfalls. And horseriding... And we play Uno at night. Gonna reach professional level by the end of the camp. Well, it´s good to be a volunteer =)))
Love the weather: the sun comes out at about 3 am and is still there at midnight. The common phrase now is, We´re gonna have a sunny night again! or Oh no, it´s cloudy! - Don´t worry, it´ll clear up by midnight. It´s not that hot, but eberybody´s got sunburnt. In fact, my back hurts so much, it´s all because you work with your ass up, and the t-shirt is too short... =)) My whole body aches, I´m not used to hard labour XDDDD It´s exploitation, hey! =) And one of the local coordinators is wearing a t-shirt with Stalin on it. 5-letka za tri goda, C´mon, you dirty niggers, the sun´s up! =)
Don´t love the cities. The towns. The villages. Whatever... Reykjavik is smaller than I was afraid, it´s all about two or three-storey buildings, one shopping street and... well... We´re working in Mosfellsbær, which is a suburb of the capital. You see, they have Greater Reykjavik here =))) Like, Greater London =)))) So this place looks pretty much like the States to me. It´s all fields, detached houses, grass and a couple of trees here and there, no blocks, no small shops, just malls. You have no car and you´re in trouble.
Don´t love the prices. The whole team is obscenely sober coz a small can of beer costs about 5 euros. Fat chance to book accomodation cheaper than 60 euros/night (I´m staying several days after the camp to travel around, and everything´s already full. Fancy a week in a sleeping bag outside with +10° C???). It´s a problem to rent a car. Everything´s a problem if we think about the time when the camp is over.
sorry for writing in English, but I've got no cyrillic keyboard and you guys know how I hate Russian in latin characters