Daydreaming by the Ocean
2020 has been hard for all of us – there’s no doubt about that. After seeing all the 2020 memes on social media, it’s quite hard to believe that anyone might even dare to say they had a great year. Well, I’ll tell you a bit about my ups and downs over the last year and how I came to be an international student at the University of Iceland in the summer of 2020.
Return to the the windy island in the Atlantic
Photo / Contributed
After an eight-month stay as an au-pair with an Icelandic family in Reykjavík in 2019, it was clear to me that I had to come back sooner or later. Not because of the job, nor necessarily the family, and not even because I met my boyfriend here. Nope, just for my own sake! At least that’s what I tried to tell myself. Because for the first time ever, I felt like I was freed from caring about other people’s opinions and was finally taking the lead in my own life. Big words, I know. Maybe I felt that way because after graduating, this was my first time ever being on my own somewhere “far away” – at least as far away as you can call an island up north in the Atlantic Ocean. That’s why I had to come back sooner rather than later.
Let’s go back to the beginning of 2020. I was busy finishing my application for my Erasmus stay here at UI, eager to get one of the free spots, harassing the Erasmus coordinator at my home university non-stop by sending weekly emails and probably nearly annoying him to death. In the end he was right; I got the spot. As he had already said, Iceland is popular, but not that popular in comparison to other countries. I guess most people rather long for laying somewhere on the beach in the Mediterranean getting sunburnt – though I have to say, if you have that specific desire, you can definitely get that here. I had a wonderful experience at Nauthólsvík, burning my whole back and running around like a boiled lobster, all the while being laughed at for underestimating the Icelandic sun.
A virus stepping into the picture
Photo / Contributed
After I was confirmed for the stay, a big plot twist in recent human history came along: COVID-19. Suddenly, everything was different. I remember being terrified in March. Terrified because everybody was losing their minds facing the pandemic and terrified about not being able to start my exchange year here in Iceland. This was a thought I did not dare tell anyone, though. People were dying all around the globe and meanwhile, I was terrified for not being able to live abroad. What a first-world problem.
But all jokes aside, I was incredibly relieved when I finally got confirmation that UI would conduct the planned exchange semester. At the same time, I was still anxious and just waiting for anything that could still go wrong. Aliens or something – you never knew in 2020. When I finally arrived at the end of August and underwent the five-day quarantine, I was ecstatic. Life was pretty normal back in Germany during the summer, but here it was just like stepping into a time machine and travelling back to pre-COVID times. Still, because I had already lived in Iceland for a while during “normal” times, the differences were quite stark – especially in early autumn when the numbers started rising and courses were solely being held online.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it, making friends was pretty damn hard. I did not always feel comfortable meeting up with a ton of new people, and living on my own didn’t make it any easier. There were times when I was quite depressed and compared life to my previous stay in 2019. Additionally, the coming winter made it even harder. I wasn’t really admitting it, but looking back now, the darkness affected me, and the already gloomy COVID atmosphere lingering around Reykjavík was just (literally) taking on a darker colour. Staying positive was really hard – especially because being here during a pandemic was so much more different than I imagined it would be. But that was the moment when I learned one of my most valuable lessons last year.
When life gives you lemons, eat ice cream
Photo / Contributed
You cannot compare. Not to other people’s lives and not to your own life in another time period. I tried to see advantages in the situation and started taking time to do things for myself and enjoy what Iceland has to offer. One of my favourite things to do is going down to the ocean, looking for shells and stones, taking deep breaths full of the salty, cold air and daydreaming as I watch the early sunset. Sounds cheesy, but I promise that your soul is literally taking a breath while doing that. Being here on this cold and windy but very beautiful island has taught me to take a step back, slow down and not take things too seriously, maybe because I noticed that Icelanders don’t take themselves too seriously in general. One of my favourite quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr resonates very well in this situation:
[...] grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Keeping in mind what I can change and what I just have to accept, while at the same time making the best out of it, makes a huge difference. The COVID situation in Iceland looks better right now. It’s a new year, there’s still optimism in the air, and I mean, it can only get better, right? It can, I’m certain. Especially when you can go back to sitting in a hot tub at your local pool for some hours dreaming about the upcoming summer and eating ice cream afterward, saying, with a newly acquired Icelandic mindset, “Þetta reddast”.