After many years living abroad Alda returned to her native Iceland in 1994. She works as a translator, bringing Iceland to the world and the world to Iceland.

In The Iceland Weather Report Alda describes her life in ‘Niceland’, with almost daily updates on the weather and the Icelandic days - yesterday sunrise at 3.30am and sunset at 11.22pm.

Plus you can read a first hand account of this week’s big news, the strong earthquake which hit Iceland yesterday, near to Reykjavík.

Photo: Iceland in summer from The Iceland Weather Report

Multi-cultural couple Ben Curtis and Marina Diez write Notes from Spain from their home in Madrid. There are articles and podcasts on just about everything to do with Spain and its culture. We’ve written before about Spanish food, and there’s more of it here.

It’s an entertaining read for anyone who wants to find out more about Spain, but would be particularly useful if you are thinking about visiting or living there.

In the Notes in Spanish section you can find a free online Spanish course delivered by podcast. As well as providing an opportunity to learn and practice Spanish, the podcasts also discuss aspects of Hispanic culture.

Life in Leith, Edinburgh - ‘my own private soap opera’, as writer Peter describes it - fill Naked Blog. (for the easily shocked: don’t worry, there is no actual nakedness!)

Accounts of walking the nearby hills feature prominently, accompanied by plenty of photos of the beautiful Scottish countryside.

The writing is highly readable and astutely observed - a recent post was this week voted Post of the Week for Pete’s account of his visit to the Edinburgh Sheriff courtrooms after being summoned for jury service.

Little Jenny Wren is an artistic look at everyday life with a mother of three living in Tasmania, Australia. Jenny loves ‘all things domestic’ and in her spare time makes beautiful cloth dolls.

Photo: home-made bread rolls from Little Jenny Wren. Don’t they look delicious?

Especially interesting if you are eager to read all about life in Australia (and other countries) is the A Day in my Life project which Jenny started in March 2008. On the 14th of each month she keeps a diary of everything she does that day, and posts so you can read about it. She has been joined by more than 30 other friends who each keep diaries of their own.

Update: May’s day in my life stories are linked here. There are diaries from Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK, Canada, Israel and Germany.

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If this is your first visit to PocketCultures then welcome! Please have a look around - on this page you will find blogs from different countries, in Topics of the World there are articles about world cultures and in My Partner is a Foreigner you can read stories about multi-cultural relationships. After reading if you would like to comment or drop us a line we’d love to hear from you.