Undrun! (A surprise!)

Today is Monday. So at five minutes before 4pm I get all my Icelandic books together that I use to teach my Icelandic class at BYU and head over to the classroom. The class is held in the JKB, or the Jesse Knight Building, which used to be the Humanities building until the new Joseph F. Smith building took all the Humanities folks in. When I get to the classroom each day, there is at least one student already there and then the other two wander in. This is the ICLND 202 class and we are having lots of fun this semester putting everything they have learned up to this point into practice. Today we talked a lot about eating at restaurants and what words you would need to know to seem like an Icelandic pro, like "þjónn, ungfrú, flesk, sykur, reikningur, hrísgrjón, smjör" etc. It is a fun class and each of the three is learning a lot and getting better and better.

Once class was over today, I wiped down the white board as usual and then began to leave with the students. Right outside my door though a young man stopped me and said, "Professor Allred?" I said that I was he. He then introduced himself as Eric Ellsworth who had just received his mission call to serve in Iceland. I was really shocked! He is a current BYU student from California and had looked up the class online and found out where we were and dropped by to meet me. The three students were jealous that he'll be getting to go to Iceland in July after being in the MTC for two months. He will be replacing Elder Soelberg who goes home by himself so Elder Ellsworth will go to replace him by himself. Kind of a bum deal in the MTC not having a companion to speak your language to though.

I had Eric come over to my office in the next building and printed a picture of all the elders who are there now and labeled them for him. He recognized President Olauson in the picture which I was impressed with. He is very excited to go to Iceland. He is just beginning to learn about one of the most interesting places on earth. He wants to begin studying the language now, so I suggested he come to the Icelandic class if he could. He will be free to come on Mondays and Fridays, so he'll come then.

I snapped a picture of him before he left. Welcome to the family Eiríkur! There's no going back now!