My very first post!

Hi everyone! My name is ZhuZhu (pronounced like JuJu) Cai, and I’m excited to share with you new findings of food around the globe and great adventures! Let’s start with the most recent stuff!

I’ve been to many places, from Canada to China, and also to… Iceland!

Yup! That’s right! I’ve been to Iceland. Crazy, right? Just so you know, Iceland isn’t as icy as its namesake. It’s kind of… green? Brown? Something like that. Well, I had a pretty fun time in Iceland, eating warm noodles and waffles, and also having very good lamb! (It’s fresh from local farms!) You also can’t forget about the yogurt, or skyr, as they call it. (pronounced skeer) The biggest and most exciting thing in Iceland, of course, is the Northern Lights! Or Aurora Borealis. I went chasing the lights! Two nights without avail, but, like the saying, the third time’s the charm! The lights were beautiful, like green streaks someone painted using a paintbrush that was bigger than the Earth!

Here are some myths I heard along the way:

Apparently, in some places like Siberia and Northern Mongolia, there is a tale about the Northern Lights that says the lights were the tails of foxes that danced in the sky, leaving streaking trails of brightly colored ribbons of light in their path. Another myth, this one from Iceland and other Scandinavian countries, says that the Northern Lights represent the spirits of the dead, traveling along a river of iridescent greens, blues, and opalescent purples. How nice is that?

Also, in Iceland, I learned that there are a lot, and I mean, a LOT, of black sand beaches! Literally! The beaches are covered in black sand, coating the huge hexagonal columns that rise up to “meet the sky”! The hexagonal columns were said to be formed after volcanic eruptions and out of basalt! In Icelandic myths, these great columns of towering rock were once said to be large trolls that pushed ships out into the sea!

I am so happy to visit the same country where the Game of Thrones was filmed! It amazes me how wondrous and beautiful this small island is! I even got to climb a glacier!

(Though sadly, it is melting because of warming temperatures up north. I’m lucky to have seen it with my own eyes.)

I went to the capitol most of the time, and Reykjavik is a beautiful city. It’s really cool to visit local bakeries, pose in front of the beautiful Hallgrimskirkja, a towering Lutheran church with a unique organ count of 5275 pipes! That’s crazy!

All in all, you have to visit the natural hot springs in little pockets of Iceland, go on tours with great, friendly tour guides, and see the black sand beaches and puffins that circle high above for yourself. In Iceland, there’s always a place to relax, to entertain, and to just explore! “Þetta reddast”, as the Icelanders like to say, “things always have a way of working out in the end”!