Concluding

Conclusions are hard. They are often done at the end. I’m going to do a pre-conclusion to my blog, I may have a little under two months left before we fly back but in regards to the blog, I think I’m done, and have been for awhile. If I change my mind I can re-conclude, or post whatever really, no rules to this that I know of. I no longer have the necessary motivation to write about my daily life in Denmark, and I am tired of the travel-writing thing. All that remains is to conclude.

So here it goes: There are no conclusions. The exchange doesn’t really end when school does anyways, or when I go home even, and so how long do I keep this up? The experiences of this year will be with me for good and there will be plenty more to learn from those experiences as I move forward. For the sake of my colleagues I will try not to be the guy in the staff room who makes everyone role their eyes when I start with “When I was in Denmark…”, but expect a bit of it, next year at least.

Hamburg

(Not only am I getting worse at remembering to write, I am also getting bad about posting what I have written. This Hamburg bit for example is two weekends ago.)

This past weekend we made the trip to Hamburg, and though it meant a difficult Monday (and Tuesday), it was well worth it. The weekend started on Friday night when we visited the Imtech Arena and watched Hamburg win an important home game against Bayer Leverkusen. We have seen a few games this year but this was our first Bundesliga game and it was a whole new level, it surpassed all of our expectations.

We had heard of currywurst before this trip and though we were skeptical about what is simply a sausage in curry sauce, we tried it for the first time and I would have it again. Sometimes I think things taste better when you eat them outside, we had this experience in Munich at the Christmas market eating our way through the streets and the currywurst gave me that familiar feeling. Another highlight was the Fish Market on Sunday morning (which is much more than just fish) but for us it was also breakfast, your choice from a wide variety of fish on a bun. I had herring to start (how Danish of me) while Gus ordered smoked salmon (lox) and Jesse and Leanne ordered the same fish, which we later learned was mackerel. Gus and Leanne switched part way through and the mackerel was so good I got myself one too. Next time (I will be heading back with my Dad in May when we go take in the Hamburg vs. Bayern game) I want to try the smoked eel and I have done my homework, I will now recognize the word for eel though I can’t remember it without seeing it. I read somewhere that it is a good one and the eel salesman at another stall was entertaining enough (despite the fact that we couldn’t understand him) that I want to try the eel, maybe I’ll bring some home.

Hamburg is a working city, a busy port and this makes for a lot of water and we enjoyed the canals and the river views. We have recently come to accept that we will not make it to Amsterdam so we saw the waterways of Hamburg as something of a consolation. We also paid a brief visit to Hamburg’s red light district – Reeperbahn – but Leanne and I seem to be past the age (or maybe we’re just boring) where such neighbourhoods hold any allure, the boys were wide eyed and amused by the drunks unable to open the taxi doors at 9:30 in the morning and the sex shops advertising creative attire. We had a coffee and then hurried through the pee stink subway station to the trains to whisk us away to another area of town before we checked out and headed back to the ‘routine’ of our daily lives in Ringsted.

Ireland, land of Guinness

I have just returned from a study trip to Dublin, recovery is slow. Ireland is one hour behind in time and then on the day we returned clocks went forward and so I am feeling very much two hours lost. In addition to the time change the downtime that students used for either shopping or resting was spent making sure that everything was where we thought it was and that we knew how long it would take to get there and so much of the walking was done twice to avoid getting lost when trailed by a group of 29 students.

Dublin was in some ways more than I imagined and in some ways what I have come to expect in European cities. My favourite experience was the trip to the harbour town of Howth, a short train ride from Dublin, where we had access to a hiking trail along the coast; this was the Ireland of my mind's eye. There was a convenient pub located along the route (Gaffney's) where I enjoyed fish and chips accompanied by a Guinness, delicious. My other favourite was the Literary Pub crawl where we visited a handful of pubs in the company of two actors who told us about Dublin's rich literary history and performed scenes and quoted from a variety of texts. 

What was also of interest beyond the city was the experience of travelling like this with a group of students, not the same as a trip to the beach with 14 and 15 year olds. One of the most striking differences between here and home has been the different age group I teach, here my students are older, and as I have mentioned before, the drinking age is lower. The result is that most of the students on this trip were legal drinking age (18) so the expectations for student behaviour are formed with this in mind. They are supposed to be functional each morning, they are supposed to be on time, they are given a suggested curfew, and from there we just expect them to be responsible (and given this degree of freedom they were quite responsible). For my part it was a great leap of faith that was difficult to make, and then I found myself with my colleague and three students at KFC at 2:00 in the morning.

The author advises you to drink Guinness and all alcohol responsibly, this is especially relevant when in a town where a pint is never more than 20 paces away (author J.P. Dunleavy).

Ole’ Man Seifert

Last year one of my favourite things that happened in my classes was the advent and writing of the school paper; Second Beach Stag Party. Our boardroom sessions hold a place in my heart and I hope to continue with something similar when I get back, but in the meantime Ole’ Man Seifert has evolved.

In two weeks time I will be accompanying a class on a study trip to Dublin, and as we approach the trip our focus in class has shifted to all things Dublin and Irish. As I was doing my own reading I came across a column in the Irish Times written by a fictional character (http://www.irishtimes.com/ross-o-carroll-kelly-7.1837434), and I was reminded of Ole’ Man Seifert (who was a fictionalized version of myself, a little older, a little grumpier).

So now my students have created fictional Dubliners who are writing columns reflecting what we have been learning about Ireland and the whole process is a lot of fun. Our invented characters make us consider what an Irish character might be like, and through these characters I will be able to read what they have learned. A little fiction, a little creativity, but we still have writing reflecting thoughts on the materials studied.

Today’s class will start with a sharing of what their fictional character did on the weekend; Breen O’Sullivan (my character) works at Guinness with his father. He started Friday after work with a couple of pints with his da, and he stayed on after his da went home to have a few with his mates. He managed to pick up some food at the chippie and stumbled home knowing that if he went back to join his mates he wouldn’t make it home. When he got there he started watching his old tape of the Ireland vs. England match from Italia 90 when they tied 1-1 and Ireland went on to appear in the quarter finals where they lost to Italy 1-0. He sang himself to sleep (mostly The Fields of Athenry) well before half time. Saturday was a write off cause he felt like shite all day and Sunday he spent with the family celebrating the baptism of his sisters fifth child, finally a daughter. (My own character and his actions owe a lot to the recent influence of Roddy Doyle who writes Irish English so you can hear it)

Portugal

We recently put another stamp in our passports (metaphorically speaking since we haven’t seen a stamp since arriving in Denmark) when we went to Portugal on our winter break. For the boys it was love at first site, palm trees, ocean, and a guy playing the accordion on the subway with a small dog on his shoulder. This trip was planned with the kids in mind, not that they all aren’t, but this one even more so. 

We went to a town called Cascais, which took maybe an hour to get to from the airport in Lisbon.

The hotel was near the ocean and it had a pool, these being the two things the boys insisted on. Most of our time was spent either in or around the pool, or walking along the oceanfront. We were lucky enough to have our accommodations upgraded and on the days we had sun we saw it nearly all day from our wrap-around balcony on the top floor. The weather was mixed, but one day it was nice enough that we sat on the balcony in shorts and luxuriated in the sun.

The oceanfront was largely rocky with a few beaches here and there, but the rocks were beautiful and the crashing waves were dramatic. The times we could descend to the shore we had fun climbing and were thrilled with the proximity to the powerful waves whose fallout provided us with the occasional shower. 

On sunny days we saw lizards (one bit Gus’s jacket and wouldn’t let go) and even a snake.

Our one ‘tourist’ day we took a bus to a region called Sintra which is built on a large forested hill where we visited the remains of a castle built by Muslim occupants in the 8^th or 9^th century and the Pena National Palace (far more recent- 18oo’s). 

The bus ride was a ride I will always remember, the bus going quite fast down impossibly narrow and winding roads. We stopped off at the western most point in Europe and took some pictures, exchanging cameras with a girl and her mother and taking pictures for each other.

We stayed one night in Lisbon on our way back and enjoyed walking through town where at one point I was separated from the boys and Leanne for a few moments, long enough so that someone asked if I might want to buy some joints. Leanne thought it was funny because I also seem to attract the people selling religion, I had been targeted a few days earlier in Cascais, I guess I must look like I’m looking for something.

That was Portugal, a quick visit and one more country to add to the tally of countries visited. Strange how we can visit so many countries but if we were back home and travelled the same distances we could still be in Canada.

Captain Canada

These days I find myself thinking about being an ambassador for Canada. I’m not considering a career change or anything but somewhere in the paperwork that got me into this exchange situation it was mentioned that when you are a teacher on exchange you are an ambassador for your country, you are representing Canada. That made sense on a surface level but now it makes a whole lot more sense and I find myself thinking about it perhaps more than I should.

Take for example the staffroom. I remember when I was a student teacher that we were encouraged as practicum teachers to use the staffroom, I didn’t. I mean I went a few times but then it just started to feel like unnecessary pressure. It didn’t help me to be surrounded by swimmers when I was flailing about in my paddling pool. At home I always go to the staffroom, it’s like eating lunch with family in there. Here I started going to the staffroom but found it so difficult to eat, and talk, and think…. it is a big room, buzzing with Danish and picking out the English from all the buzz was too much for my ‘too many loud concerts’ damaged ears. Now I find myself wondering: “Does not going to the staffroom make me a bad ambassador for my country?”

Okay, so that might be a lame example, but I think it illustrates a point. If my students think I’m a hoser, then by extension the Canadian education system is a holding tank for hosers who are no doubt turning out another generation of hosers (Wikipedia suggests that the term ‘hosers’ is primarily used by people imitating Canadians as opposed to being a term Canadians themselves use). Likewise if the Danish teachers think I’m a hoser…

It’s a lot of pressure, for some I am the only Canadian they have ever met; their impressions of Canada and Canadians will be shaped by their interactions with me. 

So now I am faced with a dilemma, do I teach the content I had planned this week or lecture on the glory of double gold in both hockey and curling?

F*ck Skolen

I wish I remembered Catcher in the Rye better. Twice this week I have sat in the same bus seat and looked up to see the phrase F*ck Skolen; you don’t have to know much Danish to figure that one out. I wasn’t upset by the sentiment as Holden was, but it lingers with me. The first morning I saw it I shared it with my first class and they wrote the story behind it; sometimes F*ck school was written by a student who was bullied, sometimes one who was having a bad day, in other versions a teacher wrote it. I liked them all, I related to them on several levels (none more than the teacher who realizes what a phony they have become), but my favourite part of the experience was hearing F*ck school repeated again and again on a Monday morning.

Going for a walk

Recently in class a group did a presentation on British Columbia. They were given the task of selling a province as a tourist destination to the rest of the class, the idea being that this allows for a focus on being persuasive and that connects to the four kinds of writing required for the written side of the assignment…. The point I am meandering toward is that the video they showed had so many images of the coastal landscapes I love that I felt an ache; a longing to walk through a B.C. forest, stroll on a Haida Gwaii beach.

This year a typical weekend walk features the local creek. One thing I have grown to appreciate in Ringsted is the reminder of childhood that comes when walking by the creek (which was a river growing up). While the walk is usually to the same place and often follows the same direction there is always something different, largely owing to the recent seasonal changes. We have finally had some cold weather and snow and this has created much of interest to look at on the route along the creek. This weekend I walked the creek 3 times, once with Leanne, once with Gus, and once with Jesse.

It was Jesse who got me writing. I told him that it had been awhile since I last wrote and that I couldn’t think of anything to write because I felt like I was just waiting for the next school break. Who wants to read about my bus trip to work again, or my progression (or complete lack of) in the Danish language? I think he was joking when he suggested that I could write about my walks with my family, but he was onto something.

One thing that we knew going into this was how much we as a family would need to rely on each other, we knew the language differences (despite the high level of English) would be somewhat isolating, but we probably didn’t understand what it would be like everyday. Walks have become really important to us, I think a big part of it is the comfort found in walking, but we can also be anywhere when we walk. When we walk we are just walking together, we aren’t walking in Denmark, well we are, but we walk together everywhere we go, walking is not place specific. When we are walking it becomes easier to go anywhere in our thoughts, and in our conversations. I know that boys are better at talking when they are doing something and never is this clearer than when I go for a walk with the two of them. They are often so eager to talk that I have to tell them whose turn it is and have a hard time getting in what I want to say while letting them have their turn too.

On our walk Jesse and I talked about his writing too, he doesn’t write a lot this year, writing in English just doesn’t happen as much in a Danish classroom as it does in a Canadian one. I have been encouraging them to write a journal, to put their I-pads to a use in a new way, but as Jesse said, “What should I write? ‘Today I went for a walk’”. Not necessarily a bad place to start, you never know where a walk might take you.

Revisiting Lessons

I wrote once before about how I am now having the opportunity to repeat some lessons (they are better the second time around), most of what I am doing this year is new, although certainly at times based on things I have done at home, variations. I have been doing my introduction to Canada lessons over again recently and found myself in a position where I had to write another poem, this time it was suggested that I write an ‘I’m a Canadian’ poem. I guess I have written often enough that it is now expected that I too write when they are writing, as a student said ‘that’s how it works.” Here is my poem.

I’m a Canadian

Justin Bieber and Celine Dion,

that girl on “How I Met Your Mother”

when you talk about Canadians

I wish you thought of others

I’ve never built an igloo

though Whitehorse got pretty cold

I think I say ‘about’ pretty normal,

but that’s not what I’m told

I had a pet bear named Barney

I’ve put a saddle on a moose

A beaver dammed the crick again

I’ll have to shoot it loose

I hear that I am friendly,

I might be too polite

are these really qualities

that describe what I am like?

When I think about what’s Canadian

It’s really hard to know

But what I can tell you is this:

Denmark could fit into Canada 231.7 times

Dystopias and my first zombie novel

I just finished reading my first zombie novel, ‘Rise Again’ by Ben Tripp. I have no idea if it is a good zombie novel because I am ignorant when it comes to this genre, but I liked it. I think it appealed on the same level as a lot of novels for adolescents, I was entertained but it also made me think about humanity.

One of my classes has started novel studies with a focus on dystopias. A student suggested that zombie books are dystopian, and though I hadn’t really looked at it that way before I supposed they must be and it fits so nicely with the trend of zombie books and dystopias if they are all lumped together. In class we aren’t reading a zombie book, students are in groups reading ‘Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, or Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. This has led me to search for supplementary materials on dystopias, and Bradbury, and Atwood, and I was delighted to find a zombie novel co-authored by Margaret Atwood: http://www.wattpad.com/8283993-the-happy-zombie-sunrise-home-chapter-1-clio#!p=1. Now I have more zombies, and more Atwood, life is good.

One of the things I am growing to appreciate this year is my increased use of web- based resources, almost everything I do in class is on-line content, the novels are the first real exception. No one is burning or banning books so I don’t think I’m in a dystopia but without the print sources I am accustomed to having at GMD, resources are almost all computer based. This has made me think about the paper vs. screen arguments, is paper still the best way to go for learning? While I think that maybe it is for now, I’m not convinced that it will stay that way, we are still learning how to use the screens after all and for many of us paper is still more familiar, not so for our juniors.

In another class we are watching ted talks from a playlist titled: Our Digital Lives, in the last one we watched Clay Shirky makes reference to how the printing press gave us erotic novels 150 years before it gave us scientific journals, his point (I think) being that we have yet to see what the internet can really do for us. I think the screen reading issue might be the same, given time I think we will learn to get more out of it than we currently do and the longer we cling to paper the longer it will take us to make the transition. But what do I know?

For the record, I prefer books, lying in bed and reading on my computer just isn’t the same as reading a book, it’s just not hygge.

Home for the Holidays?

 I have had that song about there being ‘No place like home for the holidays’ stuck in my head recently, I don’t really seem to know the song so I’m really just singing that line over and over again and then it turns into some sort of mumble humming like it does when you don’t know the words. I’m not sure that I even think that home is an essential part of the holidays, family is, I offer as proof the ‘home is where the heart is’ stuff, but when the holidays are over we go back to life as usual and that usual involves home. This year the return to life as ‘usual’ after the holidays is a return to life that is not as usual as it has been for a number of years and this does not come without struggle.

January is never an easy time, it is dark, the days are short, and we are beginning our long wait for spring. Few are really excited to end the holidays and go back to work/school, but this year… this year every weekday is a struggle and each morning is a debate about the merits of school in Masset versus the experiences we are having this year. Each morning I feel as though we are being put on trial, how could we have done this to our children, tore them from the utopia that Masset has become in absentia and placed them into the purgatory that is school in Denmark.

To be sure it is a big ask of kids to pick up and move to another country where they don’t speak the language but I stand by my belief that it is good for them, that they will learn things this year that will make all the hardships worthwhile. Still it gets difficult when each day starts with sad/mad children who want to be at home. Lucky for us moods seem to be better after school and only decline again when it is time to get ready for bed because ‘you have school tomorrow’. But then maybe this is not so unusual at all and only a symptom of the long wait for spring.

Frankfurt

 The final stop in our German odyssey was Frankfurt, where once again we were reminded of Haida Gwaii, this time because we saw people from the island! We went to Frankfurt because we knew that the Koenigs would be there and we wanted to see them and to take the boys to the opera where we could see Michael perform. The boys declared our final night in Frankfurt the best part of the trip.

Our time in Frankfurt was brief but we stayed in a lovely apartment overlooking the river Main. The apartment had a small kitchen and our first night we had a great meal whose ingredients we found at a nearby market, few things taste as good as market fresh food. The next day we were anxious to see our friends and the morning was a countdown until their arrival, however we did manage to get ourselves into a church tower with a winding staircase that made us feel claustrophobic and height wary in turn. Our reward for having conquered our fears was a great view of the city when we finally reached the top.

In the afternoon we began our long awaited visit and were happy to feel a familiarity we hadn’t felt for some time (apart from the family visit, but that wasn’t the same either, these people live where we live). The opera was a great experience; so fun to see people you know in a different context than the one you usually see them in. After the opera I was introduced to someone else who lives on Haida Gwaii who also happened to be in attendance and after some autograph signing the star and we the entourage headed to a Turkish restaurant for dinner.

The food at the restaurant was great, but other than the food in front of us I found myself talking about the food on Haida Gwaii for the second time that day. We have been eating well and I’m sure the same can be said for the other Haida Gwaiians away but we all seem to miss what we have on the island, nothing beats Haida Gwaii fish… and deer, and chantrelles, and berries…. we have it good.

By the end of the evening the adults struggled to stay awake and conversation took a backseat to watching the kids enjoy the best part of their vacation, playing ‘Big Booty’ late into the evening.

Munich Again and Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Our second round with Munich was longer, the Christmas Market was gone, we stayed further out of the city, and I was sick for the duration of the visit. My fever and uncooperative stomach made things harder to appreciate, but didn’t keep me bedridden. The first day we visited the Allianz Arena, home to the greatest team to play the beautiful game. I am not a religious man but the feelings I got as I approached the site were as close as a secular man can get to religious fervour, or maybe it was fever.

The highlight of the arena was the F.C. Bayern museum, which chronicled the past of the club and included some especially interesting bits about wartime Bayern Munchen; stories of a Jewish trainer, buried trophies, and farmers supplying the travelling team with extra food when provisions were scarce.

The next day we visited the Deutches Museum, which was overwhelmingly large, you could take a week and still have much to see. Luckily the writing was mostly in German so that sped things along and we had to accept that we could not digest such a massive amount of science and tech history in one afternoon.

Our last day in Munich we visited the hunting and fishing museum which had a great collection of old hunting implements including a flask made from a large lobster claw. The fishing section included some west coast hooks that reminded us of Haida Gwaii (though these were from Bella Coola, they were similar). The museum also had a temporary collection of masks representing the Krampus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krampus), the demonic character who deals with the bad children around Christmas time. The masks are carved from wood and in addition to being cool because they look like something a member of GWAR might wear it is nice to see the darker side of traditions, in North America even the Grinch ends up with a big heart.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

For New Years and Leanne’s birthday we decided to get out of the city and went to a small medieval walled village northwest of Munich. Rothenburg ob der Tauber was quite possibly one of my favourite places I have visited, though the signs were clear enough that I would not want to visit in the high tourist season.

Inside the walls all the streets were narrow, winding, and cobbled. Many buildings were timber-framed and despite knowing that much of what we were seeing was re-built there was enough of the original that it all felt authentic. We spent our days walking the streets, the walls, and the paths into the valleys surrounding town. Jesse and Gus took advantage of the frequent holes in the wall to volley arrows at the ever-approaching Orcs.

We also took in the Christmas museum, the Criminal museum, and enjoyed hitting all the tourist shops that gave evidence of a far busier tourist season with the shop signs clearly printed in Japanese, and Bundesliga jerseys of Japanese players displayed prominently.

The Criminal museum like the fishing museum reminded me of Haida Gwaii, they had a fair number of shame masks on display and I remembered ‘the helmet of shame’ that sits in my classroom back in Masset. My helmet of shame was a student project that has been turned into a popular joke, but now I’ll have something to go with it and masks of shame will proliferate at GMD next year.

Christmas in Bavaria

Our guests left for Canada on the 23^rd and later that day we left for Germany where we spent the night of the 23^rd in Munich before taking the train to Bad Endorf on the 24^th where we stayed with Leanne’s friend and her family for 3 nights and experienced a Bavarian Christmas.

Munich is where my Dad’s family comes from (or there abouts) and I grew up hearing about Munich, cheering for F.C. Bayern Munich, eating weisswurst, and yes, wearing lederhosen. Our first night in Munich (we will return for 4 more) we stayed at a hostel close to the train station and to the Marienplatz where they have a famous Christmas market. We ate and drank our way through the streets and found our way to our first F.C. Bayern Fan-Shop. Here the warm wine is called Gluhwein (dots over the ‘u’) and we added cups to our collection. I should point out to any (are there any?) younger readers that the drinking is done for enjoyment of the beverage, we aren’t getting drunk, and what seems a bit surprising is that despite the fact that all around us people were drinking I don’t think we saw many who were drunk. To accompany the Gluhwein we ate sausages and sauerkraut, fried potato patties with apple sauce, something we called german pizza (a flat bread with sour cream, bacon, and green onions), and roasted chestnuts (maroni). It was the best possible way to start a Christmas vacation.

The next day (after a quick return to the market because we had to see it again) we were on the train to Bad Endorf, a one-hour train ride east out of Munich. Here we spent three nights with a family who treated us as though Leanne was their daughter and our children their grandchildren, we weren’t allowed to do anything to help because we were ‘on vacation’, which apparently means they pay for everything too. Their house was built 30 years ago in the traditional Bavarian style and Gus proclaimed it to be the most beautiful house he has ever been in. The view from the windows is spectacular, a picturesque town with a lake in the background all framed by mountains. Our Christmas was a traditional one and we were impressed by how calm Christmas is when the traditions are tied to religion rather that consumerism. The air was cleansed by the burning of frankincense, and we ate a simple and delicious dinner, the Chriskindl (Christ child) came while we were on a walk before dinner (he usually comes while the children are in church but Jesse expressed his opinion that church is boring…oops), and when a bell rang after dinner it was time to go into the tree room where we sang Silent Night (I felt like I was in the old Saturday Night Live Skit where Tonto, Frankenstein, and Tarzan sing. I know my kids don’t know the words and I wasn’t too sure myself), and then opened presents. I’m not sure it is an appropriate way to describe it but it was all very chill and I liked it a lot. We gave very few presents to the boys (a pair of socks was the big ticket) and they seemed to be okay with it. Santa Claus was nowhere to be found.

Christmas day we learned more about the town name. ‘Bad’ is the German word for ‘bath’ and on Christmas day we spent a couple of hour floating on our backs looking up at the stars from hot spring fed pools. On Boxing Day we went to two islands on a nearby lake, the women’s island and the men’s island. The women’s island is so called because of the cloister on the island and we visited the church and had lunch before moving onto the men’s island where there was once a monastery before it became known for the castle built there by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, our guides enjoyed calling him the crazy king and delighted in telling us stories of his eccentricities.

Not a Boxing Day sale in sight.

Almost Christmas

The lead up to the break was really busy, Leanne’s sister was here with her daughter for a week, and I started teaching another class. I didn’t write anything for a while; I couldn’t seem to find the time and so I think it makes some sense to write about the things that have kept me from writing.

The visit was a treat for all of us, nice to have a little family time near the holidays. It was especially nice to watch Jesse and Gus enjoy time with their cousin, and having someone with whom to share some of what they have experienced I think helps them to see that they have experienced/are experiencing a great deal. It felt neat to go from tourist to guide, not exactly expert guides but it was nice to realize that we now know some stuff about Denmark.

We knew we had to take them to Tivoli, the amusement park and gardens where the boys went on their first rides. Gus and Maria went on everything they were tall enough to ride, including one that would need a near 4-figure amount for me to even consider it.

The park is not open all winter but they open it around Christmas time and it was nice to walk around and see the Christmas displays, the lights, and to have a drink of warm mulled wine known as Glogg (again my North American keyboard fails me, the ‘o’ should have a diagonal line through it). After Tivoli we walked to Nyhavn and enjoyed the lights and Christmas displays in Copenhagen’s shopping district. So nice to walk the busy shopping streets but not feel the pressing need to shop. Our Christmas presents this year are the places we will see and the things we will do and this feels so much better than focusing on buying stuff. I take great pleasure in knowing that everything we buy has to come home on the airplane, it limits the purchasing.

Another highlight during our visit was our traditional Danish Julefrokost lunch. Most Danish breweries have a special Christmas brew and a glass of Carlsberg’s Jule brew complemented the meal nicely. We started with pickled herring on Danish rye bread, followed by smoked salmon, a baked whitefish, some pork served cold in an aspic like jelly, some duck served with prunes and red cabbage, and finally the traditional Danish Christmas dessert Ris a l’ amande (yes the name is French) which is rice pudding with whipped cream topped with warm cherry sauce. Not too surprisingly dinner was light later that evening.

The other time consumer before the holiday was the additional class that I have taken over for a colleague on a medical leave. While it will place more demands on my time I think I am accustomed enough to the school and system to handle it. It was strange to feel the first day of school jitters in the second week of December but also quite fun to start again with a new class who haven’t had the chance to grow tired of me. It is also a great opportunity for me to have a look at what I have been doing with my classes this year and apply what I have learned from my other Danish English classes to a new one. I know that I haven’t done a bad job with any of my classes but the first time teaching anything is never the best and I’m getting a chance to do for the second time what I thought I would only get to do once.

I don’t know how long I will be teaching this class, it could be the rest of the year, it could be much shorter, but the bonus that may come from this additional class is a trip to Ireland in March. Each second year class goes on a study trip and this particular class is bound for Dublin, a field trip for which I would be sure to get my permission slip signed.