10 reasons to visit… Iceland
Last weekend I had the very fortunate experience of being taken to Iceland for my birthday. I was only there for three full days and I don’t think I have ever fallen in love with a country as quickly as Iceland. Here are my top ten reasons to visit, but first, if you ever get the opportunity to go, take it; I guarantee you wont regret it.
1. Blue Lagoon
This was my first port of call from the airport. You can definitely visit the lagoon before your departure or just after you arrive. The lagoon is such a surreal experience; it feels completely wrong to be getting into a bikini when it is -2°C outside. It is a mad dash to get into the lagoon but once you are in you’re instantly warmed up. Swimming around the lagoon you come across warmer patches and under normal circumstances you would be swimming away very quickly, but on this occasion you welcome them. There are free face masks around the lagoon, so everyone looks particularly funny swimming around with grey faces. When we eventually decided to drag yourself away, I have never felt my skin feel so soft. If you have time, sneak up to the viewing platform to really see how blue the water is.
2. Northern Lights
I was very fortunate that I was able to see the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) for a whole hour. To try and describe the Lights is very difficult, because there isn’t anything that compares. They suddenly just appear, a glow, which ‘dances’. They move all over the place and constantly change in size and appearance. They need to be on everyone’s bucket list – they are simply beautiful.
3. Food
I hadn’t really heard much about the food in Iceland before except that it was rather expensive. They are in fact known for their seafood and lamb, and I had the best food I have ever had there. I wish there were restaurants like that in London, because the meat was so tender. We ate at Mar and the Seafood Grill, both of which I would highly recommend. For more atmosphere I would pick the Seafood Grill and sit in front of the kitchen. In regard to price, if you have a budget you can stick to it, you may just have to have one course instead of two or three, but it is worth it.
4. Twilight
In Iceland at this time of year the sun doesn’t rise until about 10:30am. I don’t know how they do it, I’d never to be able to get up and be at work when it is still so dark. Before the sun rises you have a twilight period, where everything becomes a very light blue. I have never seen a sunrise with such a vast range of colours. It is also the best light to take some stunning photos in.
5. Landscape
I was able to see where the Eurasian tectonic plate met the North American plate, which was unreal. The landscape is vast and there are a lot of volcanoes, which have shaped the land. As you travel throughout Iceland the landscape drastically changes, but it is stunning at the same time.
6. Snowmobile
Snowmobiling is an adrenaline experience and one where you don’t want any cameras to be around. To get to the snowmobiles you are transported in an old military truck across the Glacier, which is very exciting. On arrival, you have to put a boiler suit on top of your other clothes, as well as a balaclava, a helmet and shoe protectors. They certainly keep you warm, but moving is a little restricted. The snowmobiles were very easy to drive and the added bonus was that the handlebars were heated so your hands couldn’t get cold. This was an additional feature on our tour – if you have the option to add it on too, go for it.
7. Waterfall
I saw the Gullfoss waterfall just as the sun was setting. As you walk down towards it, you can’t actually see the waterfall, just hear it. It isn’t until you turn the corner that you can see it, and it is such a shock to see the sheer size of the waterfall. In winter it is surrounded by snow and ice which I think added to its beauty. Prepare to be stunned.
8. Geyser
I saw the Strokkur geyser, which has reportedly been around since 1789. It explodes every seven to eight minutes and is truly fascinating to watch. You can see the water begin to bubble and somewhat pulse, right before it explodes. When the geyser does erupt it is predominately steam rather than water. You could stand there for hours watching it erupt.
9. Café
On the final day I unfortunately woke up to a very extreme storm, which even cancelled flights. Additionally this meant that the whale watching tour that I was supposed to go on was equally cancelled. However, this turned out to be a blessing; instead I bounced from café to café and it gave me a real opportunity to look around Reykjavik. The cafés were so cool; for much of the day I stayed in one called Laundromat, which has a definite American feel to it, and in the basement you could also do your laundry. Once I had breakfast they didn’t pester me to order more or to leave; I simply sat there and read my book and people watched for hours.
10. People
Everyone was so friendly in Iceland, always smiling and saying good morning or afternoon. In the café or bar people were always chatting to you and sharing experiences about Iceland. They just couldn’t do enough for you.
I had an incredible few days in this amazing country, and I can’t wait to go back and see even more of it, especially the volcanoes.
Have you ever been to Iceland? Have you seen or experienced any of the attractions above? We want to hear about your trip!
Amy
7 ways to stay motivated in your language learning
So we’re now a few weeks into 2015, and chances are all the resolutions we made in a fit of great excitement on January 1st are a dim and distant memory. If one of your goals for this year is to learn a new language, here are a few tips to help you stick at it, even when real life gets in the way, and your motivation starts to fade…
Make it fun
You’re far more likely to learn if you’re enjoying yourself. Of course, the best way to pick up a language is to take a trip to the country where they speak it, but that’s not an option for most of us, particularly so soon after the expense of Christmas! So instead, get yourself an app like uTalk or pick up some Flashsticks to post up all over your house (and office, and car…). Or if you’re on a budget, make up your own game. There is no right way of learning a language, and everyone’s different – but wouldn’t you rather be having fun while you study than poring over a grammar book trying to memorise verb endings?
Make it a competition
I’m currently learning German, and know for a fact I wouldn’t be if it weren’t for the uTalk challenge. I don’t really need to learn German – I’m not going to Germany in the immediate future, nor do I have a German mother-in-law to impress – but I fancied trying something new and different. The problem with learning a language just for fun, though, is that it’s very easy to give up without a pressing reason to keep going. The uTalk challenge gave me that reason; I’m a very competitive person, and I wasn’t about to let my colleagues beat me (well, except Nat, who destroyed us all). Knowing that I had to come into work each morning and update my score on the board has kept me motivated, and as a result I now know probably several hundred new words that I didn’t know before.
Focus on the end goal
While there are many people who, like me, decide to learn a language just for the fun of it, there are many more who do it for a specific reason. So if you feel your enthusiasm starting to wane, focus not on learning the language, but on what it’ll mean when you’ve learnt it. Maybe it’s a new job, a new relationship or a forthcoming trip. If you concentrate on what you’re getting from knowing a new language, suddenly putting the time in to study won’t seem nearly such a chore.
Reward yourself regularly
Remembering your ultimate goal is important, but that can sometimes seem far, far away. If you were about to climb Everest and didn’t plan to stop till you got to the summit, you’d probably never start (and who could blame you). So make sure you set yourself achievable ‘in-between’ goals, and reward yourself appropriately when you get there. Personally, I find chocolate to be an excellent incentive. Or you could allow yourself an episode of your favourite TV show, or a shopping trip. Whatever works for you and will keep you motivated to press on.
Set aside time
Life can be incredibly busy, and often it feels like there isn’t enough time to do everything, so learning a language can slip down the to-do list behind other, more pressing tasks. To combat this argument, try setting aside a fixed amount of time each day, or a few times a week, which is only for language learning. Where that time fits into the rest of your schedule is up to you, but the important thing is that nothing else gets in the way. And if you can make use of ‘dead time’ like your daily commute, so much the better – that way you’re not using up hours that would ordinarily be used for other jobs.
Tell other people
I’m a great believer in this one. Tell friends and family that you’re learning a language, and chances are at some point, they’re going to ask you how it’s going. And if they don’t, ask them to. If I know that at any moment someone’s going to demand that I say something in another language, I’m much more likely to keep learning it, just in case. (Of course, when they do ask me to say something, my mind will instantly go blank – but that’s another story.)
Don’t give up, even if you slip up
As with any goal, there are going to be pitfalls along the way. You’d have to be incredibly determined (and slightly superhuman) to never have an off-day or consider giving up. And that’s ok, but the important thing is to pick yourself up after this wobble and keep going. Knowing you’ve overcome a few obstacles is only going to make the moment you have your first conversation in another language that much sweeter, because after all…
Good luck (or should I say Viel Glück)!
Liz
Inspiring quotes for language learners
As you’ll know if you follow us on Facebook or Twitter, each week we share a quote that we think is particularly helpful or inspiring. So for today’s blog post, we’ve collected together a few of our favourites, to help motivate and encourage anyone learning a language. Feel free to share any that grab you.
You’ll find more of our weekly quotes on Pinterest and We Heart It. And if you have a quote you think we should share, please let us know!
My uTalk Romanian journey so far
Having a look at the uTalk challenge scoreboard in the EuroTalk office, it looks like I’m some way behind with my Romanian learning. But I haven’t give up yet! Here’s what I’ve learned so far about this language.
1. It’s a lot like Italian
This is very helpful for me, as I already understand a reasonable amount of Italian (even if it’s only from watching too many episodes of Inspector Montalbano…), so words like ‘la rivedere’ (goodbye, like the Italian arrivederci), ‘buna seara’ (good evening, like buona sera in Italian) and many colours and adjectives are very similar (‘urata’, ugly, sounds like the Italian word brutta, and many others like ‘plin’/pieno, ‘trist’/triste, ‘rapid’/rapido, ‘negrul’/nero or ‘verdele’/verde). Numbers are also very close to those in Spanish or Italian.
2. Sometimes you can make words just by adding ‘ul’ to the end
Ioana helpfully informs me that this is just the masculine ‘the’ (the feminine is ‘le’), but it still seems like a reliable strategy to guess words. After words such as ‘trenul’, ‘aeroportul’, ‘pasaportul’, ‘doctorul’ and my personal favourite ‘biscuitul’, I started guessing other words like ‘vinul’ (correct!) and ‘mapul’ (sadly incorrect), which occasionally works.
3. The speaking game is really fun and addictive, and probably the best way to learn
I don’t know about other people, but for me, producing the language is the key to remembering it. So, speaking or writing the language is key. Repeating the phrases and then using my own recordings to identify the pictures is weirdly fun and helps me to remember better than simple guessing of pictures in the easy or hard games, which encourage recognition but not reproduction. Of course the ultimate test is the recall game, where you have to remember and say the word or phrase yourself and then check it. These games can take a while to get 100% on, but are an excellent tool.
4. You have to learn to make some brand new sounds
Romanian has a few fun letters that we don’t have. ‘â’ (with a little hat) sounds like an ‘uh’, not an ‘a’ at all. So ‘Cât e ceasul?’ (what’s the time) isn’t pronounced how it looks to English speakers, but like ‘Cuht e chassul’, because the â is a different letter, and ce is a ‘ch’ sound like in Italian. It also has a funny ‘I’ which looks like this: î and sounds like another ‘uh’, which is difficult to describe. This sound is in words like ‘închis’ (closed) which sounds more like ‘unkees’. These sounds are pretty fun to pronounce if you ask me, and Ioana says I sound ok, which I put down to repeating after the native speakers in uTalk.
5. They invented crazy words for vegetables that make no sense!
Ok, maybe that’s a bit harsh, but my knowledge of French, Spanish, Italian, English and German can’t help me when it comes to learning the names of vegetables that have names like ‘bamele’, ‘ardeiul’, ‘porombul’ and ‘varza’, which don’t relate to any language I know. They can’t even call zucchini zucchini: it’s actually ‘dovleceii’.
Somehow I don’t think I’m going to beat Nat in the uTalk challenge, but I’m having fun with Romanian anyway!
Alex
(Editor’s note: it turns out nobody could beat Nat, who completed the challenge in Icelandic a couple of days ago. She’s now considering which language to learn next – any suggestions?)
A language learning love story
Why learn a language this new year? Well, for one thing, you never know where it might take you.
Meet Ed. He thought he was just going out for a meal with friends. Little did he know what was about to happen…
And if Ed and Mei Li have inspired you to learn a new language, why wait? Download uTalk or visit our website now!
