English in Iceland and Icelandic in England

It's been another good weekend. On Saturday Joanna and Jolyon started their Saturday School with the Mother Tongue Association which offers 'instruction in the second native language (other than Icelandic) for bilingual children [living in Iceland]'. Jolyon signed up to meet other english speaking children as much as to keep his english skills up. Joanna signed up as an english teacher for the 9-12 year olds ... that means that she is Jolyons' teacher, as well as seven other practicing teenagers ... I think Jolyon finds it quite cool and is very chilled about his mum teaching him and even calls her 'mum' in class, all this despite the internal hormonal hyper-action ... cool, dude! I think mum is cool but dad is a bit ...uhmm ... NOT COOL!!!!!

Does anyone know of something similar in Yorkshire for Icelandic speaking children ... I didn't think so! I'm trying to think of ways to keep Jolyon interested in learning Icelandic and to let Elijah learn it along side his english. I intend to speak Icelandic to Elijah at home but ideally we need an environment where he is regularly around people that are speaking the language amongst themselves, that's the best way to learn ... listening ... I don't know any Icelandic people living near Wakefield, Leeds or Sheffield in Yorkshire, do you?

Back to the weekend ... me and Elijah had a good morning at my parents whilst J and J were out doing their english stuff. Then I left Elijah with them and the two J's and I went to the cinema to see Garfield 2 as a bit of a treat for Jolyon as he'd done so well this week at school and held it together. Alot of that film is filmed in England and I was impressed by the fact that Joanna recognised the castle which provides alot of the back-drop (isn't that what you say in film-land?). I won't spoil it for you by telling you what castle it is ... or more rightly ... I won't tell you, because I can't remember the name ... Harold ... Hammond ... Harry? ... it was a man's name beginning with H anyway, comments welcome.

Anyway, back to work ... we are visiting England in the near future for a week and would love to see you all although we won't get time to visit everyone ... but hey, there will be plenty of time in the new year when we move permanently ...

By the way, today marks the start of my third week of running (for health not for president) and I'm still sticking to it. This week the routine is 90 seconds jog - 90 second walk - 3 minute jog - 3 minute walk (repeated twice). To me a 3 minute jog seems alot, to alot of people reading I'm sure it seems like nothing ... they're right, I've got no stamina ... yet ... but I had to start somewhere and that somewhere was very-slowly-land ...

Love you