Diary: Iceland & YouTube Meetup

These past two weeks have been pretty exciting, what with my (very intense) five days in Iceland and a YouTube meetup on the Saturday two days before I left. First of all, let's talk about the YouTube meetup. It was hosted by Dodie and Andie at Russell Square in the middle of London. Here's a video I made about the day. I met a bunch of lovely people and had a great time hanging around, watching Dodie and Andie perform lots of songs, and chatting to people in the rain as the ambient noise of several ukuleles surrounded us. It was such a refreshing and welcoming experience. It really felt like a little community of friendly people and I hope I can get to some more YouTube meetups in the future.

I was a bit nervous to go because I knew it meant being around a lot of total strangers all day, but I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to talk to people. Besides which, everyone's nervous in a situation like that, so I just talked to as many people as possible and didn't let any awkward silences phase me. I've definitely learnt that with strangers if you persevere with different people and move on when you're not sure what else to say or when you can't keep the conversation going, eventually you can usually find someone who is easy to talk to, and if not, people will probably appreciate you trying to talk to them anyway. Someone's got to start the conversations!

Secondly, there was Iceland. I flew out on Monday to Keflavik airport and got to Reykjavik in the dark. Most of the day was spent travelling, and then looking for food, so it was on Tuesday that the holiday began properly, and I went to a few art galleries and got a feel for the city centre (and the snow, all the snow).

It was really interesting to see some exhibitions all about Icelandic art, and I noticed a particular humour coming through in the accompanying text for many different exhibitions and museums. I liked that a lot because it lends such an extra bit of personality to informative text, which can often be bland for the sake of being educational and professional. There just seems to be extra humour to everything in Reykjavik. It's no wonder they have a penis museum (I didn't end up visiting it, but with laughs to be found everywhere else too, it didn't feel like much of a loss).

I spent most of my time in Iceland relentlessly shuffling across ice to get to different museums. The whole experience was exhausting, but good fun. One day was spent on a tour outside of Reykjavik to the Geysir area, Gullfoss waterfall, and a tomato farm (I loved the tomato farm). For rest purposes, I spent plenty of time in Lebowski Bar drinking beer, eating chips, and watching Seinfeld on a projector.

I was very happy to come home and get to walk on non-icy streets again. My feet almost forgot how to! Now that I am back, I'm focusing on finishing Jane Eyre (which I started reading in Iceland), doing some awful, chaotic paintings to throw myself back into creative stuff, and getting lots of rest and drinking lots of tea.