Thursday was the first day of the institute. I thought it would only be 30 minutes from the house but it was more like 45 and I ended up being a few minutes late. We started with a lecture on Faroese youth today and then had our first language lessons. From a school years worth of watching Sjónvarp Førorya I’ve gotten a relatively good grasp of how to pronounce written Faroese words. I know a lot of people were struggling with it. All ð’s are silent (unless pronounced as y or v) and g in the middle of a word is silent (unless pronounced as y or v) and several different letter combinations are pronounced the same. It’s as bad as English except they had the chance to spell it fonetikly but decided to base spelling off of etymology. Written Icelandic and Faroese look very similar but are pronounced completely different.
The classes aren’t very hard. A lot of the history they talked about in the lectures I already knew about. Each class is 45 minutes long and they give us a 15 minute break in between. (Just like Umass except you don’t have anywhere to walk to so it’s really just a coffee break.) We go for lunch at 11:45 and comeback at 1:00. There are usually lectures until 2:45. After class on Thursday, Turið gave us a walking tour around Tórshavn. We walked all around the harbor, Tinganes and the old houses. The houses are really tiny and are mostly black with white/red trim and have grass roofs. They’re really cute. When I have my own house, I will paint it black and put grass on the roof.
On Friday we started off with the normal language lessons from 8:00 till 11:45 and then had a lecture on ballads after lunch. After school, someone suggested we go out for pizza at around 7:00. I ended up leaving the school at 4:30 and wandered around wasting time. It’s too far to be worth going home. Tórshavn is really cute, but it’s still pretty small and doesn’t offer much in the way of wasting time. I ran into Aaron, one of the other students (which happens anytime you walk around Tórshavn,) and I hung out with him until we ran into Jerry, who’s a film studies professor and is part of the institute too. He’s renting on of the old houses from Turið’s sister as he’s staying for 2 months and has his wife and baby with him. He invited us to his house for a cup of tea. It’s a tiny little house just big enough for three people. It’s hard to imagine 10 people living in a house that size back in the old days.
We sat around and talked for a good hour and went to the pizza place, but it was closed and there was a note on the door to “team Faroese” saying they went to pizza 67. It was good pizza. It came in personal sizes of 9” and 12”. You can tell where everyone’s from when you have pizza. Everyone uses a knife and fork except for the Americans, and everyone has they’re own style of holding it. When we finished it was still early and we went to Café Natúr again. It was about 11:45 when I headed home and the busses stop at 11:00. Hurray for walking home in the rain. I was wearing my new coat though and it really is rain-proof.
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