First Day

My first day of work was last Friday; I didn’t know what was going on most of the time. I was introduced to a lot of people; they have a staff of roughly 100. It is difficult to remember names with so many new faces, and new names, some of them very difficult for me to pronounce. After morning snacks and coffee we gathered in a room as a staff and everyone sang a song together, I tried to imagine the staff of GMD singing in the new school year. I didn’t join in the singing but wish I had of given it my best shot, a loud voice singing the wrong tune with an incomprehensible accent might have been just the start I needed. After singing the meeting carried on, in Danish of course, with a brief English section when I was introduced. I sat listening and wondering if staff meetings were better or worse when you can’t understand them, if I could have figured out when the meeting was nearing conclusion I would have raised my hand and said “I didn’t get any of that.” but I learned in subsequent meetings that it is harder to pick up on the cues that suggest a meeting is coming to it’s conclusion when you can’t understand a word.

At lunch I joined a table and promptly brought all conversation to a stop, they were too polite to continue conversation in Danish knowing I couldn’t understand, and so amid some awkward silence all conversation then centered on yours truly and it was challenging to find the time to eat. All the staff has been very friendly and they seem truly interested in Canada and my life there. The idea that I live on an island 8 hours away by ferry is a strange one; Europe is small enough that going anywhere is relatively close in Canadian terms.

Despite the language issue I did understand that teachers in Denmark are experiencing changes in their work situation and this topic seemed to take up much of the time. The way I understand it they are being required to log their working hours to increase accountability, I guess the idea is that this will demonstrate their productive use of prep time. Time for preparation and marking is a big part of a teachers work and here that is reflected in a teachers schedule, which (again if I understand correctly) gives a teacher half of their paid time for prep. I am pretty sure I have that right for those teachers reading this and experiencing disbelief. The current situation seems to be a reflection of what people think of teacher scheduling, I guess they want to be sure that teachers are using the time they are given and if they are logging the time that will demonstrate that they are using it? I must be missing something somewhere. 

Fart!

So language is pretty interesting. I took French for how many years at school? Do I speak French?

Most people in Denmark speak English and the few we have encountered who don’t seem to be immigrants to Denmark so they too are multilingual. Yesterday we had a meeting at the school the boys will attend, a reminder that our relationship with the Danish language is about to change. Our Danish has really gotten nowhere so far, we know how to pronounce a few words better than we did at first and subtitles on TV are bound to help (eventually) if you read them when watching in English, and of course the language also surrounds us when we are out and about.

What follows is juvenile I know but anyone who knows me won’t be surprised. The words that we learn first are those that are familiar and those that we need. Sometimes the familiarity is a similar sounding word that also means the same, such as ‘hi’ (hi), or ‘ni’ spelt 'nej' (no), ‘fra’ (from). Then there are the words that are the same in appearance but different in meaning, one of the most obvious here is ‘fart’ (speed). We have seen it in many different contexts; my personal favourite was on the side of a bus ‘Turistfart’. In many stores we noticed signs that read ‘slutspurt’, we thought that didn’t sound very nice, it turns out that it has to do with the approaching end of the sale, the ‘final sprint’ or ‘slutspurt’. 

Football

Settling in and anticipating the impact of school, everything changes next week. We went to the town I will be teaching in (spelt Koge, but with a line through the o, still working on proper pronunciation), a cute seaside town with an abundance of old crooked buildings lining the streets in the car free area of town. Crazy to walk by houses hundreds (500?) of years old.

We took a day trip to Copenhagen (Kobenhavn) yesterday and visited Christiania (I’ll write about it another time) and went to the FCK (FC Copenhagen) home opener. FCK lost their 3^rd in a row, a poor start to the season. Gus told me later that he might like watching soccer better on TV because then he isn’t distracted by fat drunk guys who are smoking all the time, I told him Mom won’t let me smoke in the house. Just kidding. There was one guy who was a bit distracting at the game, funny to watch elite athletes on the field and just off to the side is the drinking smoking guy who looks like he couldn’t run the length of the field yelling at them for making mistakes, throwing his empty beer glass in disgust; sometimes not knowing the language is a blessing.

Being there definitely beats TV though, we were at field level and no amount of TV watching can prepare you for just how fast the players are moving, I won’t question injured players anymore, any impact at the speeds they are travelling has the potential to hurt. The chants and cheering are pretty fun too, even if you can’t sing along and don’t understand what people are saying (again in some cases that might be best).

It won’t be the last time technology makes a fool of me (or maybe it wasn’t the technology) but I can accept my ignorance and I know I have learned something. A young couple in front of us at the game asked me to take their picture and I held it backwards at first taking a picture of myself looking rather confused. I guess I still think of cameras as having a small hole to look through at the back and a larger lens at the front, but this was a phone not a camera. We had a good laugh about it, they have a great picture of the half-wit who sat behind them at the game (an American I should have told them) and Gus called me a dork.

Ringsted - pronounce Rrringstill

We have had a look around our new town. Feeling very Danish with our cell phones, riding our bikes with strange Euro locks we have trouble figuring out, ordering something close to what we intended for lunch.

The town itself is relatively small; we can get anywhere we need to on our bikes. Yesterday was very hot, it has been quite warm since we arrived and some days are uncomfortable, probably only because of the climate we have gotten used to on Haida Gwaii. We realize that we are not really used to hot summer weather that continues day after day, weeks on end. I only packed one pair of shorts for the year; I had to buy some new ones at 255 kroner.

The currency takes some getting used to, everything needs to be divided by 5 to get an idea of what it costs in Canadian dollars, I suppose at some point we will just think in Kroners and know if something is expensive or not without having to do the math but we are not there yet.

There are of course many differences when you go somewhere new but it is the small day-to-day things that tend to make an impact. The carts in the grocery store for example, all four wheels swivel, awesome.

Tourist Transitions

We have left Copenhagen. On our last day we went to Tivoli, an amusement park in the center of the city, and rode a 100-year-old roller coaster that had a brake person who slows the ride using a hand brake. I am excited to know that we will be a short train ride away from Copenhagen all year as there is much more to see and do including taking in a football (soccer) game, two teams in the Danish Superliga are based in Copenhagen, FC Copenhagen and Brondby.

Our next stop following Copenhagen was Roskilde where we visited the Viking ship museum. Roskilde has a rich history and the museum tells the story of five Viking longships that were recovered from the Roskilde Fjord where they were used to create a barrier between the town and the attacking Norwegians.

One of the kinds of boats shown at the museum was a dugout made from a single log, not as impressive as a Haida canoe but the same idea. The museum also showed how the Viking boat builders made planks using wedges and I was reminded of how the Haida made planks that way too.

We will be moving into our house tomorrow and begin the transition from tourist to temporary residents, now wouldn’t it be nice if we had those permits…..

What time is it?

Today is our second full day in Denmark, the past two have been spent adjusting to time change and taking in as much of Copenhagen as we can under the circumstances. This morning I was up before 5 but that’s an improvement over 3.

Yesterday we did a lot of walking and went to our first castle – Rosenborg. We also saw the little mermaid statue in the harbour, Jesse and Gus took pictures with a Hans Christian Anderson statue, and we walked down many a narrow street, lots of brick and stone. I guess all we can do when we see new things is attach it to what we know and so I find myself comparing what I see to what I have seen before, a bird slightly different but crow-like (a kind of crow?), carless streets remind me of Quebec City, the bikes make me think about what Vancouver would like to be. I had heard about the popularity of bikes but I am still surprised to see so many. So many Danes, young and old travelling to work and elsewhere by bike! A related observation I think is that everyone seems fit, which I suppose you would be if you biked everywhere you went.

Today we go to visit our new home in Ringsted, Niels was kind enough to meet us at the airport when we arrived and we look forward to meeting his family. Niels has also started a blog – Christensen in Canada – this was meant to be.

Two Days to Ferry

It is Friday and we are on the ferry on Monday. I’m trying not to think about all that needs to get done between now and then, reminding myself that whatever shape things are in when we leave is just how it is going to be. Half of the things I have done over the past two weeks are things I may not have done for another year or more, and yet somehow they have to be done before someone else comes to live in my house. I’m sure they will appreciate the weather stripping around the front door, the rotation of compost, and the well-organized basement.

Yesterday I carefully crammed my stack of Masters related paperwork into a drawer and I thought about how this is what the upcoming year is all about. Teaching abroad is like going back to school, it is a way of making sure that I’m not getting too comfortable, that I’m not slipping into routines, that I am challenged and always applying new learning to my life and work. I remember the discomfort I experienced going back to school, my flailing in the deep end, but I know how to swim.   

My mind is occupied more frequently with imaginings of first days, first classes, first staff meetings. I have to remind myself that just because I can’t understand what they are saying doesn’t mean I should imagine they are saying bad things about me. Denmark: a different language, a different culture, and a staff larger than our school, a whole ocean of discomfort to flail about in.