The new teacher walked confidently into the room wearing jeans and an open button-down gingham shirt over a plain white t-shirt, looking like a mix between Paul Giamatti and Tim Curry. His hair was wild and curly and his smile was big and full of humor.
I knew immediately that this was going to work out.
From the start it was clear that the new teacher had been teaching Danish longer than our previous teacher. He was infinitely more sure of himself and of the answers he was giving to our questions. Not only that, but his Danish was far easier to understand. Both because his pronunciation was clearer and because he seemed to have a better understanding of which words and phrases we had and had not learned in previous classes.
I already feel more optimistic about the class going forward. To be honest, I had started to seriously lose hope and motivation, and was beginning to wonder if continuing was a waste of time.
It's clear that he's going to be a tough teacher. Strict but kind. Insisting that we speak Danish whenever he's in the classroom, even before class starts and during breaks. But always with a smile on his face.
It's nice to feel a renewed sense of hope.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
En Film på Dansk
Strange as it feels to say, this is already the last week of module 4.1, and I'll be heading to module 4.2 next week.
Not only that, but it seems like we're changing horses midstream.
Instead of continuing on with our nice-but-frustrating Monday/Wednesday teacher, Studieskolen has altered the class a bit and we will have a brand new teacher next week. We'll still have our other teacher one day a week, but our less experienced teacher is being replaced by someone who has, apparently, been working at the school for many years.
I, for one, am relieved.
So, today was our last class with the aforementioned inexperienced teacher. We spent the first hour of class going over our homework, and took the following two hours to watch a Danish movie.
He asked the class if we would prefer English or Danish subtitles, and I think I was the only one to meekly squeak "...English...!" That's was my insecurity speaking. Everyone else enthusiastically voted for Danish.
So, Danish it was.
We watched a film called "Adams Æbler," (which, as you might have guessed, translates to "Adams Apples). This is a film from 2005 starring famous Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen. You might know him from the current American TV serious "Hannibal."
I went into it fully expecting to be completely lost, but I surprised myself. I actually understood most of what was said. To be fair, I would never have been able to figure it out without the subtitles. But with the subtitles, I found that I could follow fairly well.
This gives me hope. And maybe even a tiny bit more confidence.
By the way, speaking of subtitles... It's now a word that I often have difficulty remembering in English. I find myself always wanting to use the danish word (which is "undertekster").
I'm not sure I have room in my brain for both languages, and may eventually forget English completely.
Not only that, but it seems like we're changing horses midstream.
Instead of continuing on with our nice-but-frustrating Monday/Wednesday teacher, Studieskolen has altered the class a bit and we will have a brand new teacher next week. We'll still have our other teacher one day a week, but our less experienced teacher is being replaced by someone who has, apparently, been working at the school for many years.
I, for one, am relieved.
So, today was our last class with the aforementioned inexperienced teacher. We spent the first hour of class going over our homework, and took the following two hours to watch a Danish movie.
He asked the class if we would prefer English or Danish subtitles, and I think I was the only one to meekly squeak "...English...!" That's was my insecurity speaking. Everyone else enthusiastically voted for Danish.
So, Danish it was.
We watched a film called "Adams Æbler," (which, as you might have guessed, translates to "Adams Apples). This is a film from 2005 starring famous Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen. You might know him from the current American TV serious "Hannibal."
I went into it fully expecting to be completely lost, but I surprised myself. I actually understood most of what was said. To be fair, I would never have been able to figure it out without the subtitles. But with the subtitles, I found that I could follow fairly well.
This gives me hope. And maybe even a tiny bit more confidence.
By the way, speaking of subtitles... It's now a word that I often have difficulty remembering in English. I find myself always wanting to use the danish word (which is "undertekster").
I'm not sure I have room in my brain for both languages, and may eventually forget English completely.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
A Mixed Bag Round-Up
I've been a bit distracted this month, so it's been a full 2 weeks since my last post. But with April coming to a close, it seems like a good time for a quick round-up of recent events.
Let's go back to April 16th, which is the Danish queen's birthday. It's traditional for her to step out onto the balcony at her palace here in Copenhagen on her birthday and wave at the gathered masses. A girlfriend of mine who I met my first module of Danish classes wanted to go see, so she and I took my puppy, Wooster, and joined the celebration. It was a perfect day for it:
That's the queen in the red jacket on the balcony. Wooster was, as you might expect, quite impressed:
As far as Danish class goes, it's been a bit of a mixed bag. One of the main issues this module is that the "textbook" that they're having us work from is what appears to be a not-yet-published version of a future textbook. So we've been receiving each chapter as large stapled-together packets. It's chock-full of errors and missing information and incorrect page numbers, making for a lot of confusion. Not only that, but the DVD that they handed out to go along with the "textbook" was a burned DVD with a hand-written title, and which we were asked to download onto our computers and then return. In addition, the track titles on said DVD don't match the names of the assignments in the book, so it's a bit of a guessing game to figure out which video to watch.
Our Monday/Wednesday teacher actually seems to have gotten his act together a bit. Instead of just assigning a ton of homework and spending class time going over the answers to that homework, he's now having us work on more interesting, varied, helpful assignments during class. He still hasn't prepared enough to actually know all of the correct answers, but at least he's moving in the right direction.
It seems, however, that we are going to have a mid-module teacher change. The new course schedule came out this week, and it looks like our Monday/Wednesday guy is going to be replaced by a Monday/Wednesday/Friday guy (with Thursdays remaining with our other teacher) when we move to module 4.2. We've been told that this new guy has been teaching Danish for a long time and is very good.
And finally, today is my birthday.
The big 3-2.
Happy birthday to me.
Let's go back to April 16th, which is the Danish queen's birthday. It's traditional for her to step out onto the balcony at her palace here in Copenhagen on her birthday and wave at the gathered masses. A girlfriend of mine who I met my first module of Danish classes wanted to go see, so she and I took my puppy, Wooster, and joined the celebration. It was a perfect day for it:
That's the queen in the red jacket on the balcony. Wooster was, as you might expect, quite impressed:
As far as Danish class goes, it's been a bit of a mixed bag. One of the main issues this module is that the "textbook" that they're having us work from is what appears to be a not-yet-published version of a future textbook. So we've been receiving each chapter as large stapled-together packets. It's chock-full of errors and missing information and incorrect page numbers, making for a lot of confusion. Not only that, but the DVD that they handed out to go along with the "textbook" was a burned DVD with a hand-written title, and which we were asked to download onto our computers and then return. In addition, the track titles on said DVD don't match the names of the assignments in the book, so it's a bit of a guessing game to figure out which video to watch.
Our Monday/Wednesday teacher actually seems to have gotten his act together a bit. Instead of just assigning a ton of homework and spending class time going over the answers to that homework, he's now having us work on more interesting, varied, helpful assignments during class. He still hasn't prepared enough to actually know all of the correct answers, but at least he's moving in the right direction.
It seems, however, that we are going to have a mid-module teacher change. The new course schedule came out this week, and it looks like our Monday/Wednesday guy is going to be replaced by a Monday/Wednesday/Friday guy (with Thursdays remaining with our other teacher) when we move to module 4.2. We've been told that this new guy has been teaching Danish for a long time and is very good.
And finally, today is my birthday.
The big 3-2.
Happy birthday to me.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Watching Tragedy Unfold on Facebook
Social media is never more powerful than when something horrible happens. To be able to watch people come together with the common cause of disseminating important information as quickly as possible and to as many people as possible, and to cut through the chaos to try to pass on the facts as they become available... It's heartwarming in the midst of tragedy.
I watched yesterday's news of the explosions at the Boston Marathon break on Facebook as it was happening by friends who live and work in the area, and it was almost impossible to wrap my head around it.
I lived in Boston and Cambridge for the 5 years before moving here to Copenhagen, and was lucky enough to work with some really fantastic radio producers and reporters. Watching them spring into action from across an ocean to pass on as much information by as many social media networks as possible was truly impressive.
For all the criticism that people have for social media and how it can bring out the worst in people, yesterday was a perfect example of how it can also act as someone's only lifeline when disaster strikes and the phone lines are too jammed to check in on loved ones.
It makes me think about 12 years ago. At 20-years-old, I was living in New York City and taking night classes. On 9/11, my mother spent hours trying to call to make sure I was safe, but the phone lines were jammed. It was after 11am when she was finally able to call.
A little peace of mind in the midst of tragedy can go a long way, and I was relieved to be able to check in on friends in the Boston area all the way from here in Denmark.
Everyone I know in Boston is safe. I hope the same for you and your friends and family as well.
I watched yesterday's news of the explosions at the Boston Marathon break on Facebook as it was happening by friends who live and work in the area, and it was almost impossible to wrap my head around it.
I lived in Boston and Cambridge for the 5 years before moving here to Copenhagen, and was lucky enough to work with some really fantastic radio producers and reporters. Watching them spring into action from across an ocean to pass on as much information by as many social media networks as possible was truly impressive.
For all the criticism that people have for social media and how it can bring out the worst in people, yesterday was a perfect example of how it can also act as someone's only lifeline when disaster strikes and the phone lines are too jammed to check in on loved ones.
It makes me think about 12 years ago. At 20-years-old, I was living in New York City and taking night classes. On 9/11, my mother spent hours trying to call to make sure I was safe, but the phone lines were jammed. It was after 11am when she was finally able to call.
A little peace of mind in the midst of tragedy can go a long way, and I was relieved to be able to check in on friends in the Boston area all the way from here in Denmark.
Everyone I know in Boston is safe. I hope the same for you and your friends and family as well.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
The Results Are In...
You may be asking, "What results?"
If so, you can catch up by reading this post (and the post linked to in said post).
Got the call from Rigshospitalet a little while ago, and...
No terribly, horrible, no good, very bad gene mutation for me!
Not sure how one celebrates news like that, but...
Yay!
If so, you can catch up by reading this post (and the post linked to in said post).
Got the call from Rigshospitalet a little while ago, and...
No terribly, horrible, no good, very bad gene mutation for me!
Not sure how one celebrates news like that, but...
Yay!
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Studieskolen - Module 4.1, Correcting Teacher
Started module 4 yesterday.
Meet the new teachers, same as the old teachers.
Indeed, I have the same two teachers as I had for module 3, and things with our Monday/Wednesday teacher have begun in style.
And by style, I mean with me having to explain the difference between past tense and present perfect tense to the teacher, after he gave us the wrong answer on an assignment during class.
To be fair (sort of), he seemed to be much more prepared prepared for the start of module 4 than he was for the start of module 3. Then again, he didn't even know he was teaching on Mondays at the start of module 3, and showed up more than half an hour late.
You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes.
We also worked on an assignment in which we had to figure out where the "stød" (or glottal stop) was in each of the seasons and months of the year. If you've been reading my posts for a while, you know my feelings on "stød." Now, I've come around a little bit on the idea. A very little bit. For example, on words that sound almost exactly the same, sometimes the stød and the context of the surrounding sentence are the only way to know which word is being used. However, insisting that we listen for something that is both difficult (and often impossible) to hear and usually unnecessary for the sake of being understood... feels like a waste of time. Time that we could be using to learn useful things like... words and grammar.
Not to mention that stød is generally the least of people's problems when it comes to Danish pronunciation.
The good news is, our Thursday/Friday teacher is also the same as well, and I find her knowledgeable, easy to understand, and downright delightful.
Meet the new teachers, same as the old teachers.
Indeed, I have the same two teachers as I had for module 3, and things with our Monday/Wednesday teacher have begun in style.
And by style, I mean with me having to explain the difference between past tense and present perfect tense to the teacher, after he gave us the wrong answer on an assignment during class.
To be fair (sort of), he seemed to be much more prepared prepared for the start of module 4 than he was for the start of module 3. Then again, he didn't even know he was teaching on Mondays at the start of module 3, and showed up more than half an hour late.
You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes.
We also worked on an assignment in which we had to figure out where the "stød" (or glottal stop) was in each of the seasons and months of the year. If you've been reading my posts for a while, you know my feelings on "stød." Now, I've come around a little bit on the idea. A very little bit. For example, on words that sound almost exactly the same, sometimes the stød and the context of the surrounding sentence are the only way to know which word is being used. However, insisting that we listen for something that is both difficult (and often impossible) to hear and usually unnecessary for the sake of being understood... feels like a waste of time. Time that we could be using to learn useful things like... words and grammar.
Not to mention that stød is generally the least of people's problems when it comes to Danish pronunciation.
The good news is, our Thursday/Friday teacher is also the same as well, and I find her knowledgeable, easy to understand, and downright delightful.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
The Påskeferie Post
Prepare for a seriously broad generalization in 3...2...1...
The Danes are a bit funny about religion.
We're smack in the middle of "påskeferie," or Easter vacation, so I figured I'd take the time to discuss my impression of the Danish relationship with Christianity.
In the US, various forms of Christians make up the majority of the religions folk. The same is true here in Denmark, where the state religion is Lutheran. Nearly 80% of Danes count themselves among the Lutherans in the Church of Denmark. The Danes themselves, however, are not especially religious. Those that are will often state proudly how they go to church. Once a year, for Christmas.
Now, I'm not a religious person. Once a year is more than I normally go. Then again, my own religions background is a bit of a hodgepodge including Catholicism, Judaism, Unitarianism, and a stint in high school when I decided I wanted to be a witch.
The Danes get funny about religion when it comes to their perceptions about how the rest of the Christian world handles their religious life. A month or so ago, we were discussing the Danish tradition of "fastelavn," which is the Danish version of Mardi Gras or Carnivale. Our teacher discussed how, "back in the olden day," fastelavn was the big party before a (gasp) 40-day period of occasional fasting! But no one would do something as crazy as that these days, right? Truly, she didn't seem to associate the holiday with anything that might be going on in other countries today and didn't seem at all aware of Lent.
As I said, I'm not a religious person. And I have no issues with the level of religious life in Denmark. I do, however, think that the Danes occasionally have a habit of assuming that the way things are done here are the norm.
As far as I can tell, though, as far as religion goes...
There is no "norm."
The Danes are a bit funny about religion.
We're smack in the middle of "påskeferie," or Easter vacation, so I figured I'd take the time to discuss my impression of the Danish relationship with Christianity.
In the US, various forms of Christians make up the majority of the religions folk. The same is true here in Denmark, where the state religion is Lutheran. Nearly 80% of Danes count themselves among the Lutherans in the Church of Denmark. The Danes themselves, however, are not especially religious. Those that are will often state proudly how they go to church. Once a year, for Christmas.
Now, I'm not a religious person. Once a year is more than I normally go. Then again, my own religions background is a bit of a hodgepodge including Catholicism, Judaism, Unitarianism, and a stint in high school when I decided I wanted to be a witch.
The Danes get funny about religion when it comes to their perceptions about how the rest of the Christian world handles their religious life. A month or so ago, we were discussing the Danish tradition of "fastelavn," which is the Danish version of Mardi Gras or Carnivale. Our teacher discussed how, "back in the olden day," fastelavn was the big party before a (gasp) 40-day period of occasional fasting! But no one would do something as crazy as that these days, right? Truly, she didn't seem to associate the holiday with anything that might be going on in other countries today and didn't seem at all aware of Lent.
As I said, I'm not a religious person. And I have no issues with the level of religious life in Denmark. I do, however, think that the Danes occasionally have a habit of assuming that the way things are done here are the norm.
As far as I can tell, though, as far as religion goes...
There is no "norm."
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