९ वो दीस: पयली रायड

This morning at nine o'clock, I fed the calves, like every morning. At eleven o'clock, three cabins needed to be cleaned. I did one by myself, and the woman from Germany helped me with the other two.

For lunch, we had hotdogs, as usual. After that, the couple from Germany and I went behind the already built cabins for tourists, where three more cabins were being constructed. Stani kept us busy for almost three hours painting concrete and placing some paper things between the concrete and wood. It was really exhausting but also funny. I spent nearly two hours stapling the paper things to the wood, and when the woman from Germany finished her task, she came to me. It felt really good to explain to her what she had to do. It felt good to know what I was doing.

At around five o'clock, we all went back to the main house for a 'coffee break' and made toast with cheese and sausage.

Afterwards, I sat in the living room with the others and wrote.

For dinner, we had homemade lamb from a friend of the family, with potatoes and red cabbage. It tasted really delicious. During dinner, the slightly older (maybe in her early 30s) daughter of Ingveldur mentioned that she brought her two horses and would like to go riding with the woman from Germany (they apparently knew each other from previous visits). Then she asked me (seriously, she's apparently quite successful as a police officer) how well I can ride and offered to join. Of course, I agreed.

We had agreed to meet at nine o'clock to prepare the horses, so I was at the stable on the dot. I was alone. Ten minutes later, Ingveldur's daughter said something about German punctuality XD. Somehow, we started quite quickly. I sat on Abba again. First, we rode to the construction site and then to the field behind it. It's just a huge field with a single dirt road that goes straight on forever. We even rode through a small creek twice. At the beginning, we were still going slowly, but once we left the construction site behind, the horses really took off. It would have taken about an hour to walk the distance on foot, but with the horses, it took only fifteen minutes. It was really fun. After half an hour, we swapped horses because Abba was still very untrained and started sweating immediately. A little later, we took a break by a relatively large creek. The others brought beer, and for me, there was something Icelandic resembling Fanta. The view was absolutely beautiful. I think Ingveldur's daughter noticed that I was still quite unsure and hadn't quite found my place in this family yet, so she offered that I could take on the task of training Abba and Mosa (another mare on the farm) for the next few months. Mainly focusing on Abba's endurance and Mosa's patience. I have no idea if I can actually succeed, but in the end, I said I would try. Then we swapped horses again and rode back. This time, in a gallop and at a really high pace. It was absolutely amazing. A feeling that is really difficult to describe. That's what freedom feels like (at least for riders).

We returned around eleven o'clock, and I sat in the living room with the adults for a while. In the meantime, Ingveldur's son, his wife, the three kids, Ingveldur's daughter, her boyfriend, and another friend of the family had arrived. So it was quite a full house.

This morning, I doubted that coming to Iceland was the right decision - I just wanted to go home. But this afternoon and evening, I really felt comfortable for the first time. Maybe this is the first step. Maybe it will really get better.

See you later,

Julia