Saturday, December 22, 2007

It will only get better from now on

December 22nd: a magical date.

Why? Well, because it's the winter solstice: the shortest day of the year! As you can see from the chart below, the sun today rose at 11:23 and set at 3:30, just above 4 hours of (alleged) sunlight. This being my first winter at this latitude, it's been difficult getting up in the morning at times, to say the least. But from today and for the next 6 months, each day will be a bit longer, until we hit the summer solstice and its 20+ hours of light goodness.

4h 06m 45s

Of course, by Monday we will already get 10 hours of daylight and temperatures as high as the hottest summer days in this fair town (19 degrees!). But that's because we will be in Beirut for two weeks :)

In the meantime, Jo and I would like to wish any readers of this blog Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

There's a tree behind us, I swear

The downtown Christmas tree, an annual gift from Norway, located by the Parliament

On an unrelated note: does this hat make me look Amish? Because that's not my intention...

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hæ hæ! Gleðileg jól elsku Jade og Jóhanna :O) Takk fyrir skemmtilegar stundir á árinu sem er að líða. Vonandi eruð þið komin heil og höldnu til Líbanon!
Jólaknús,
Heiða

Stephanie K. said...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you both as well! I love this post, because I always count down the days til Winter Solstice too. I know I don't have it nearly as bad here as you do in Iceland (I admit, the days are twice as long this time of year), but it's always a HUGE relief to know the worst is past and the days will start to get gradually longer. P.S. Your advice about not moving to Iceland is duly noted. ;) I hadn't really considered it; areas closer to the equator are really more my scene...

Anonymous said...

Gleðileg jól -- and thank you for sharing your experiences in Ísland with us! (I've been enjoying this journal since not long after we visited last summer.)

Djaddi said...

Thank you all for your wishes! Hope you had a good Christmas / New Year's Eve.