Why, Hello There!

Family, friends, random Brazilian man who stumbled here through a misspelled Google search…welcome!  For the next indeterminate amount of time, I hope to document my thoughts and adventures as I navigate the ambiguous realm of the twenty-something.  I recently left my job to gain experience in the field of environmental sustainability in the hope of pursuing it as a career.  Over the next few months I’ll be travelling around to various – and mostly undecided or unconfirmed – locations to develop my individual views on the matter, on what’s working, and what role I might possibly be able to play in the whole thing.

First stop, a three-month internship in a sustainable eco-village in Iceland called Sólheimar, where my time will be split between the sustainability center and forestry internships.  Why, you may ask, would I move to Iceland in the middle of the winter, with only four hours of daylight, and lots of cold things and not so many warm things?  Well, sure why not?  Iceland is a bit of a dark horse, a country you wouldn’t often catch yourself thinking about of a rainy afternoon, but which nonetheless seems to be unexpectedly popular.  The most common reaction I’ve received since I found out in early November I was accepted to the internship has been something along the lines of, “Oh wow, I’ve always wanted to go there!”  (Actually, to be fair, the most common reaction was an uncomfortable silence followed by a forced, “Oh, good for you; that’s interesting…”, but that was before I adjusted my explanation of the internship so that it didn’t sound like I was running away to a puffin-ruled communist enclave on an isolated fjord.)  It’s a bit of a mysterious fire and ice wilderness type of a place, and so the fascination is understandable, really.  Who wouldn’t want to sit in a hot spring in the middle of the snow, or frolic with puffins partake in completely non-communist activities that are in no way dictated by avian overlords?  Exactly.

Puffins and breathtaking scenery aside, Iceland has a unique and rich culture due to its physical isolation, and from an environmental standpoint is strides beyond most nations because, among other things, of its use of geothermal energy.  According to the Iceland Energy Authority, 87% of Icelandic buildings get their heating and hot water from geothermal energy (and additionally 75.4% of the nation’s electricity comes from hydro power, bringing their usage of fossil fuels to just 0.1% of their overall energy consumption).  I can’t do much more than regurgitate statistics at the moment, but I’ll hopefully get to learn a lot more about a culture that is sustained this way in the coming months.

So I have two days of gratuitous frantic packing left, and then I depart for the wintery, constant night of Iceland.  Until then I’ll leave you with some of the natives to set the mood.