Laugh. Dance. Learn Danish.

After much studying, I have officially passed Module 2 at Danish school. I can't confirm if I feel more confident trying to communicate with the Danes, I do however feel less lost when I go about town, especially when I am eavesdropping on conversations. I have actively been playing a little game: while sitting on the train I try to follow the conversations that are happening around me. I love hearing how people express themselves. "Hvad siger du?"(literally 'what are you saying?') seems to be a popular sentence... when I asked a Dane about this he said it's simply because Danes don't even understand each other! It seems to be an ongoing joke that even locals experience some trouble with communication. From what I hear this is not only in speech, but in writing as well. That's why my school has a course called "Danish for Danes".

I am going to miss my current teacher, Trille. I have decided to switch schools simply for logistical purposes - I can ride my bike to this new school! Thank you Trille, for being so fabulously entertaining for the last few months!! Here we are:

If I had 5 million kroner....

What I love most about my morning power walks is looking at all the homes in the neighbourhood. They are all so unique and different, it's also funny because the roads are not at all in a grid so I sometimes end up going in circles! The sun has been shining and it brings a great amount of energy - the sun comes up really early... and soon it will be coming up at 4am!! Long days indeed - in a good way, of course. It's really peaceful living outside of the city, I was reminded of the countryside the other day when I jogged past:

With animals come the smells... I was bike riding the other day and I literally had to hold my breath because of the horse manure! There is a horse race track up the road which should prove to be an interesting summer evening activity! Here are a few more:

Ordrupvej

In response to a few requests... our flat in Denmark.

Fried eel & Veggies

Over the last few months I've often looked out the window and say out loud... "Crap, it's snowing again!". It usually starts snowing just an hour or two before I have to go out - which makes my bike ride to the train station a little tricky. The best part is that it accumulates so freaking quickly! Chris is a trooper - through wind and snow he still commits to his daily bike ride to work. Winter has taken a toll on our poor bikes - everyone should also take note that gears don't change easily (or in my case, at all) when the temperature falls below minus O. Winter has also taken a toll on me. I am ready for some sunshine - I am ready to rise before 8am (in the summer the sun will rise at 4am) and ready to put our balconies to good use and have our meals out there. We went to Ikea yesterday to start picking out our patio furniture!

I am also ready to start speaking Danish. I need to find more opportunities to practice what I am studying... hopefully this practice will come as part of a job. The one language that is coming in handy is Spanish. I've begun teaching private lessons and I love it. It's a great challenge for me; talk about dusting off that good old university degree! I may pursue this new little hobby a bit further, I'm having way too much fun correcting homework and coming up with lesson plans.

At the grocery store the other day, I saw a man buy what looked like a thick black rope. I investigated a little further and confirmed that fried eel is a very popular dish in some parts of Denmark. Yummy?

The one thing we often laugh about is the amount of packaging that we end up with in the kitchen after cooking. It's really because a lot of the produce is sold like this:

I think I prefer Norweigan

It's been four months since I started going to Danish classes - at first the progress was amazing! Every week I'd pick up a few new sentences and often impress Chris with all my new vocabulary... Now I've hit a plateau, and I have realized just how hard this language really is - it's not complicated in terms of grammar but it has no logic or real structure. My Ellen Degeneres look-a-like teacher is great, she tries to correct us as much as possible, but she can only do so much. On another note, the one thing that still gets me here is the TV schedule. Programing begins here at any time - Ellen is on at 12:15, David Letterman is on at 8:45 my new favourite Canadian show Departures is on at 11:50. It's so funny to see the random programing but the best thing is that commercials are removed from the shows so there are no interruptions! There are German channels, Finnish Channels but my favorite is Norweigan! It's a really close language to Danish except it's much easier to understand! Okay, enough ranting... I am totally procrastinating studying for my test tomorrow....

The COP15 Post

It was really great to have something aside from Danish class to focus on leading up to the holidays. I volunteered with the english newspaper here and learned a thing or two. The publishing world intrigues me... especially in a foreign country. It's funny to compare the headlines in North America versus the headlines here. I find the danish media has less focus on the doom and gloom. And no one really cares about gossip... Who's Tiger Woods?

During the whole N1H1 scandal, the local scandal here was that all æbleskriver come from the same place! Æbleskriver is a fried dough dessert that all the groceries stores brand as their own during Christmas.

Here are some pics of my experience with the COP15. We had great bikes where we would put our papers each day and get out to the street, hand them out shouting "Get your english news, here!" It was inevitable that people would stop to chat with us, let us know what they were thinking and sometimes tell a little too much...

This is me on my bike on our way to one of the big protests. Check out the police officer with his pipe! We had to stop and grab a picture. And just for you Christine, "Hopenhagen" below!

This is not Denmark

Frozen lakes and bays... riding my bike has proved to be a bit of a challenge these days, when every few days we get a blanket of fresh snow!

Oh, what a night!

I've missed writing. Usually I go about my day and say to myself, "I should write about this on my blog". Then I think I'm such a good blogger, keeping my readers in mind ALL the time. For the last few weeks I fell out of routine. We had our first scheduled visitors, my brother and his fiancé Laura. We joked that they had this trip planned even before Chris & I confirmed we were moving here. I have always experienced the process of going to another country to visit family since we have always been sprawled across different countries but this was the first time I've been abroad and had family visit me. IT WAS SOOOO MUCH FUN! We laughed, we cried (due to laughter) and then laughed some more. Raul, how come are you so funny??!! It must be the stress of the engineering world that must have made you such a clown. In good planning practice, we had a full day by day itinerary scheduled. Some things we got to, others we didn't, simply because we were exhausted (from walking and the cold weather). Chris' brother Matt and girlfriend Marie were also able to join us so we had a full group. Copenhagen is extremely easy to tour with a group - especially in the middle of winter when tourism is low. Finding a table in a cafe was never an issue. Overall, I think they were all able to get a good vibe of what this city is all about - quaint, chilled and very pretty - graffiti and all.

Highlights definitely include new years eve. We had everyone over at our place for dinner. See:




But I think what everyone will remember are the fireworks. You see, there doesn't seem to be any regulations for fireworks in Denmark in terms of where you can set them off. So what you get is people setting them off EVERYWHERE!! Out of balconies, between cars on the roads, on the sidewalks, etc. If they all worked as they are supposed to this would be not be a problem but since they sometimes malfunction... well let me tell you - I am pretty sure we will all remember getting shot at by fireworks! One of the fireworks we lit in the park decided to explode sideways and made us run for cover! I have not run so fast since grade 6 track and field! I also haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Luckily Matt had picked up some safety googles for all of us so I think we were relatively safe. Aside from the risk of being burned! We headed into the city centre (cautiously) to see what was going on. I have never seen anything like it! Fireworks everywhere! A bar tender told us that the Danish spend 30 million krones on fireworks each new years. We sure saw it - from the pier - we had a 360 view of the city and it was amazing!

Can't wait to get the pics Matt (our photographer) took - stay tuned!

Also, very glad to report that the days seem to be getting longer already! It's almost 4pm and it's not dark yet!! So much daylight to look forward to in the coming months!!!

Merry Christmas! Feliz Navidad! Glædlig Jul!

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!! Really looking forward to Christmas Eve dinner, Chris is cooking up a storm in the kitchen: traditional Danish dinner, roasted duck with prunes and apples, cooked red cabbage and sweet potatoes. Rice pudding for dessert. We've had an amazing year of new adventures and many changes so we have much to celebrate this Christmas. We miss our family and friends but have some great visitors coming in the next few days so they will keep us busy and bring the "hygge" to us.

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Taking my new role seriously

I made myself laugh today... really laugh. I asked Chris to pick up a mop on his way home last night because I felt that our vacuum was just not picking up the dust. Granted, I am new at this, I've never been a stay at home kind of girl... so today, I unwrapped the mop... and began looking for instructions! How do I use this thing? Have I really never used a mop before? I found this hard to believe... but it's true - I've never mopped and I don't know how to. I will google it.

In the kitchen I have made much progress. I joked with Christine that I started calling myself Martha. My not so ginger bread cookies where a hit! Next time I go home to Canada I will be sure to bring back some molasses so I can make the proper kind . I made the Danish version, honey cookies. Check them out:



We are getting ready for the holidays, the tree is up (and it has real candles) and my advent calendar is more than half way eaten (organic fair trade chocolate, thank you Chris!) and there is snow on the ground. It's also really cold out - my bike will stay exactly where it is today. I think I will take the bus to my Jule party tonight.