Lessons from the Home by the Airport

TROY, N.Y. - First day at a job. Awkwardness abounds.

For reasons I can't get into I was telling two younger workers a story about my travels in Iceland. Every night at the Reykjavik Youth Hostel, I would gather with six or seven other young backpackers in the living room. Every half an hour, we would put on our hats, scarves, mittens and coats and walk around to the back of the one-story building, where there was no outside light. Then we would look up.

About 15 seconds later someone would inevitably say, "It's still cloudy," and we would head back around front and back into the living. In six days, I saw no lights.

Just then, a woman of about 65, eating a cup of yogurt at the next table spoke up. "Excuse me," she said, her wrinkled lips softly speaking the words, "Did you just say you use to live in Iceland?"

"No, sorry," I said, "I just went there on a vacation."

She didn't look sad. "I used to teach there," she said.

"I worked in Keflavik," she said, pronouncing it with deep Scandinavian guttural sounds, not the warm grandmotherly voice she uses in English.

It was the early 1960's and she was right out of teaching school. An agency that provided English teachers in Europe said if she'd go to Iceland for a year, she could have her pick of assignments the year after.

"And that didn't sound like a bad idea," she said. "I thought, 'why not.'"

She lived in a tin-roofed apartment building. She spent half her time teaching blonde Icelandic children, the other half teaching American military children. Both spoke English at the same level. Icelandic is not a very useful language, so the natives spoke several other languages.

She found the Icelanders a proud but secretive people. Her window into the culture was a young university student she met, who would take her out to parties in Reykjavik on weekends. The city was small then, but the parties were legendary.

"They can outdrink anyone," she said.

There were other perks to the job. She flew free on military planes to England and Ireland during school breaks. She got to hang out on base, eating missed American foods and hearing a familiar accent. Soon enough her "hardship post" was over, and she flew to sunny Spain, where she taught for several more years.

"I'd love to go back," she said. "You don't hear too much about it. You're the first person I met that actually decided to go on a vacation there. That's very interesting."