A few favorite moments...

I'm realizing that I've lived in Denmark long enough now that the line between what seems new and different to me and what seems normal to me has become blurry. Sometimes I find myself thinking, 'I should blog about that,' in reference to some moment or observation. But then I second guess myself because I can't remember if I've already written about it or something like it, or if it's not actually unique anyway. Then I find myself wondering if it's not unique and never was, or if it is just no longer unique to me. Anyway, I write this blog as a family record of our experiences here, so I suppose I shouldn't over think it and just write.

Maurie, Annicka, & Heather
and the faestelavn barrel

Back in February, we celebrated Faestelavn (pronounced something like "festalow") with our Danish friends. Faestelavn is a Danish holiday quite similar to Halloween. Kids dress in costumes, and schools and churches host Faestelavn parties complete with bean bag tosses, fishing ponds, and other school carnival type games. There is plenty of candy, although much of it here is black, salted licorice which I don't think we'll ever acquire a taste for, and special bakery treats which are DELICIOUS and it's a real shame they only make them during Faestelavn. :) Whereas Halloween is a Fall festival, Faestelavn is a celebration of Spring. The main event during any good Faestelavn party is singing and dancing in a circle together and then 'beating the barrel.' A wooden barrel with a black cat painted on it is strung up like a pinata. Everyone then gets in line and takes turns beating the barrel with a wooden bat. Turns are taken until the barrel is smashed and broken quite literally to bits. The game is over only when the last piece of wood hits the floor. 

Grant gave himself away as the only
American in the line-up with that baseball swing.

Beating the barrel is quite fun and obviously lasts much longer than breaking a pinata, although I found myself wondering if anyone had ever considered utilizing safety goggles during the fun and games. It was hilarious and dangerous to see giant splinters and shrapnel flying out from the barrel as it suffered blow after blow. Similar to a pinata, the barrel is stuffed with bags of treats for the participants. A paper crown and bragging rights are given to the one who breaks the first piece of wood off of the barrel--this person is honored with the title of "Cat Queen." The one who hits the final piece of wood off of the rope by which the barrel was strung up is crowned the "Cat King."  

Our "Cat Queen" Travis

One of the funny things I'm surprised I've grown accustomed to is having several different types of money in my wallet. I'm not suggesting I ever have much of any but, because of our trips or the kids' class trips, it's become normal to have Danish kroner, US dollars, British pounds, Swedish krona, and European euro all at once. Even Ben was recently counting his money to prepare for a day out and had to make separate piles for his euro, dollars, and kroner.

The incredible language ability of people here is something I'll probably never grown accustomed to. In church, Grant and Ben attend a class taught in English but the teacher is Swedish. Sometimes she can't think of the right words in English, so she speaks in Swedish. Then our boys' friend, Benji, who speaks Danish to his mom and Swedish to his dad translates into English for my boys. Benji is nine years old. I mentioned before that I help teach reading to the first grade class at my boys' school here. One day, my curiosity got the best of me and I asked each student who came to read with me what language they speak at home. Almost none of them speak English at home. In fact, most speak a different language at home, attend school where they read and write in English, and also learn Danish in school. One boy I asked told me that he speaks Danish to his mom and Russian to his Dad. (This boy could not be more than seven years old.) He then asked what languages I speak. When I answered that I only speak English he responded incredulously, "Only one?" Yep. When I teach these kids rules for reading English, I find myself wondering how many rules for how many different languages they must have in their heads. Yet somehow, they keep track of all of it! I really think we do ourselves a dis-service in the U.S. by not learning even a second language in any real way. I cannot count the number of people here who have been sincerely surprised to learn that we do not speak Spanish, at least. Danish kids begin learning English in the 1st grade. By the time they graduate from their high school equivalent, they usually also speak German or French. 
  
We have learned a tiny bit of Danish during our time here. We're mostly surrounded by English between school, work, and church, though, so learning much Danish has been a challenge. I know enough to get by at the grocery store. Trav and I know how to greet people, say thank you, and exchange a few pleasantries. The kids, of course, know more than we do. But even they feel like they can write and read better than they can speak. It's the pronunciation that gets ya. It's a very difficult language. Add to that the fact that only Danes speak Danish (and there are only 5 million of them), so they are completely unfamiliar with accents. This makes pronouncing words in a way that Danes can understand almost impossible. For example, I was once giving my address to a lady from church. I told her we live on "Ellekrogen." I did my very best to pronounce it in the Danish way, but she had no idea what I was saying. I tried again. Still nothing. Finally, I spelled it for her. She then said, "Oh! Ellekrogen." I wanted to point out to her that that was EXACTLY what I had said, but I knew it wouldn't matter. :) 

During Primary sharing time at church, Grant and Ben are taught in Danish with limited and occasional translation. I play the piano in Primary now, and it's quite fun to be there with them and see how much they're understanding. They participate in activities and answer questions. They usually speak in English but have understood the Danish to even participate. They both regularly recite scriptures in Danish, but give their talks in English (one of the teachers translates into Danish for the littlest kids). Ben surprised everyone recently, though. They were playing a game where they were trying to be the first to recognize a primary song and say its name. I played the song and Ben rose his hand first. When the song leader called on Ben, he gave the name of the song in Danish. Everyone in the room was so excited! The funniest part was that the song leader then turned to me and said, "He said it in Danish!" --As if I hadn't noticed. :) When the teacher's congratulated him for answering in Danish, Ben said, "I can't remember what it's called in English." (It was "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam.") 

One of our friends here has a daughter who plays handball. Handball is a game that was invented in Denmark. It's like a combination of basketball, soccer, and hockey. We went to watch so we could learn a little more about it. It was really fun to see and interesting. It looked like a lot of fun to play! It's a very rough, fast-paced game. It's a big deal here.



We also recently attended a professional soccer game in Copenhagen. It was so fun! Of course, the stadium was HUGE--only rivaled by football stadiums I've seen in the U.S. It even had a retractable roof. It was really cool to watch such a high level of soccer. Without a doubt, it was more rough, physical, and dramatic than I expected, and had the best ball-handling and passing I've ever seen in person. It was super fun to watch! If I had understood what the crowd was saying, I might have joined in the non-stop chanting with the drum that went on for the ENTIRE match. These people love their game. Of interesting note...as we walked from the stadium to the train station to go home, we noticed that the parking lot at the stadium was empty of cars but there were hundreds of bikes parked everywhere!

Not bad seats!
We were close enough to see spit flying when the players and ref yelled at each other!

We've been really taken aback by how eager people here are to share their country and culture with us. Many have gone out of their way to do so. One of Travis's co-workers, in fact, recently took a day off of work to spend it with me in Copenhagen. Her name is Anne, and she just wanted to show me around. We had a wonderful day together. We went to museums, she drove me around the non-tourist parts of Copenhagen that have a whole different kind of charm to them, and we ate lunch at a small, quaint cafe. At one point, we saw an injured bird with a broken wing struggling on the side of the road. She was quite concerned about it suffering and took the time to stop and call the animal authorities. Even this was a noteworthy cultural experience to have through her. I really enjoyed chatting with her throughout the day. It was so interesting to listen to her tell me about the city she has lived in her whole life and obviously loves. I was so flattered that she would take the time to share this with me. 

Easter break was a really fun time for our family. I wrote in a previous blog post about our trip to Oslo, which was a definite highlight of the week. But we also enjoyed our days at home. Of course, according to the unwritten code of 'how to start time-off from school' that I was raised with, we began the week with some good spring cleaning of the house. Living in a small house has wonderful perks, though, as we were able to finish the work in just a day. Travis, Ben, and Grant went to see the Blue Planet together. (It's the famous aquarium in Copenhagen. The rest of us had already seen it, so chose to stay home to save the expense.) They had a lot of fun. 

On another day, we went to a place Anne had shown me on our tour of Copenhagen. It's called Blocs and Walls and is an ENORMOUS rock wall climbing facility. It is a giant warehouse 3 or 4 stories tall and is all rock walls to the top. They have sections for free climbing and all the high stuff is for climbing with ropes. It was really fun for the boys to try. It proved to be harder than it looks, as there were several experts there who could climb to the very top in under a minute, but we had a great time. 

                                                                                                                                                                                We managed to stay home and "do nothing" for all of one day during Easter break. This was per Ben's request. :) He loves to be home. We were surprised by store closures during the break. Grocery stores were closed all day Thursday and Friday, and open only on Saturday during Easter weekend. Unfortunately, we were in Oslo on Saturday so never had a chance to restock the kitchen. This whole thing caught us unaware so by the time I went shopping Monday, we were down to rationing out food. We had to get pretty creative putting lunches together Monday morning. Even though it was inconvenient for us, I think it's a great thing about Danish culture that when there's a holiday, it's a holiday for everyone.  

Last Saturday we spent a couple of hours at Bakken, the oldest operating amusement park in the world. It was founded in 1583. Entrance to the park is free and its in quite a nice setting as it's surrounded by Dyrehavn (the Copenhagen equivalent to Central Park), so it's a nice place to just walk and enjoy an afternoon. (Now I am starting to sound Danish.) We paid for one rollercoaster ride together--which was a fun, medium intensity wooden coaster, and bought an ice cream. After carefully choosing how to spend our limited money in the park, we were disappointed to find a 510 kroner ($75) parking ticket on the car at the end of our afternoon. Bummer. But the afternoon was fun and Bakken probably warrants another visit when we have more time and can splurge for unlimited rides.  

Newspaper article about Jared's Eagle Scout Project.

Jared has been working toward the rank of Eagle Scout since before we came to Denmark. Through a lot of effort of meeting with different organizations and trying to find a place where he could get involved here, he was finally able to talk with some people in our local kommune (similar to city government) and organize a service project for them. He had 30 volunteers from his scout troop, our church, and our friends who helped dig out an invasive, poisonous weed from an area surrounding a nearby lake. The kommune was so excited to have his help they had a newspaper reporter interview him to highlight his community service as an example. The people at the kommune explained to us that community service is not done here because everyone is used to the "state" providing what is needed. They were thrilled to have a foreigner show how to get involved in helping out. It was a good experience for all of us to get involved in service and it was a great experience for Jared. We're very proud of him!

Trav and I recently made a neat discovery of a place called Copenhagen Street Food. Trav had actually been there a few months ago when he and Kyle were on their quest to discover Copenhagen's best 'dogs.' He and I finally got around to going there together and we took with us our good friends, Ann-Mari and Mats. The place is a giant warehouse built on a pier in downtown Copenhagen. It's crammed full of food vendors selling foods from world wide cuisine. The four of us browsed the entire facility and then separated to buy what had looked the tastiest to us. We came back together with dishes to share while we chatted, people watched, listened to the music, and just enjoyed the fun evening. That night we sampled BBQ pulled pork complete with coleslaw and chili sauce, kung-pow chicken, Vietnamese noodles and vegetables, potatoes deep fried in duck fat, and a Brazilian meat kabob. It was all tasty and definitely wet our whistle to go back some time. Just outside of Copenhagen Street Foods is a fantastic view of the city. There were little fires burning and people sitting around visiting. At the edge of the water, with the buildings of Copenhagen as a backdrop, it was about the coolest setting for a dinner date! It was a great evening to share with Trav and good friends. It reminded me how grateful I am for the many good friends we have met here. Ann-Mari and Mats, and many others, have truly made our experience in Denmark. I will forever be grateful for the good people--on both sides of the Atlantic--that the Lord has put in our lives.