During our first week in Sólheimar, we hosted an open house and invited everyone from the village to come to our home and mingle. We baked all afternoon in anticipation for the party and set up coffee and tea. Slowly interns and volunteers trickled in, filling the house with foreign sounds and dialects. We’re three weeks in now, and I’m still astounded by how many different languages I hear everyday. After a while the first home people arrived! I was so excited because I really wanted the chance to talk to them and get to know everyone in the community better.
It’s a tricky thing, to communicate with people who don’t speak your language, and harder still when they have their own minds working against them. In the case of the home people, some of them don’t speak at all, Icelandic or otherwise. There are two barriers to be broken, which is an exciting challenge that the CELL students face. I’ve gotten a little bit better at communicating since the open house; our Icelandic classes are helping with that.
After everyone had their cookies and coffee people started to migrate into our little living room where music was being played. Adrianna and Emily had their guitars, Savanna broke out her ukulele, and Teddy had his harmonica. Soon enough there were 25 people gathered in our tiny living room, but it was just filled with bodies. There was a community growing between us, it was tangible in the air. Adriana strummed the opening chords to Hallelujah and we all sang together, the home people, the interns, and even baby Jan who’s two years old. It was an unbelievably moving moment. A universal understanding connected us all, and for a moment those barriers that stood between us were broken. We were all the same.
I thought back to my phone interview when I was applying for this program. I was asked if I’d ever been a part of a community, and if so what the community meant to me. Until that point I really thought I had been part of connected communities. But after experiencing a string of experiences similar to this one I can see how much I’ve been missing. In a matter of three weeks I’ve experienced more of a community at Sólheimar than I have in my 21 years of life. I can’t wait to see how our little community will be even stronger after three months.
Bless bless,
Emma McCully