Pludselig Kan Jeg Forstå Dig!

So... all of a sudden, I can speak Danish.

I'm not sure when the shift happened from me feeling like I just didn't understand enough Danish to converse to suddenly feeling fairly comfortable with it.  The change seemed to just appear from thin air.

It's a nice change.

Last week, I was hunting for a used digital piano on what is basically the Danish equivalent to Craigslist.  I wasn't feeling terribly optimistic, because I'd never had a response from anyone I'd ever contacted from the site about anything.  This time, however, I felt at least confident enough to write my inquiries in Danish, so I responded to two ads.  And within an hour, I had responses from both.  I arranged to take a look at one of the pianos, and when I was biking there, I decided I would try to get through as much of the conversation as possible in Danish.

We ended up doing the entire deal in Danish, and he actually seemed surprised to find out that I wasn't Danish.  Point for me!

And just now, while out walking the dog, I struck up a conversation with a woman who's daughter I normally see walking their dog.  She asked me where I was from, and when I told her, she said (in Danish, of course), "Oh, yes, I thought I heard a bit of an accent."  She was then surprised to learn that I'd only been here a little over a year.

Granted, I've gotten pretty used to responding to the kinds of questions other dog owners ask, so it wasn't anything too complicated, but I'm feeling a little bit proud of my Danish skills lately.

It's refreshing to suddenly understand most of the conversations going on around me.  There are still countless words that I don't know, but I'm feeling more and more confident that I might be able to do fairly well on my PD3 exam in November.

Studieskolen - Module 5.1, The Remix

Oh, hi there!  Thought I forgot about you, eh?

Nope, it's just been a busy Summer, with doctor visits galore, classes, traveling to see a sick relative, and having family in town.  Not to mention a puppy who's managed to end up with giardia, which has been... smelly and time-consuming.

But, as planned, I have returned for another go-around with module 5.1, rejoining my class from before the Summer "break."  And boy am I glad to be back.  It's nice to see familiar faces and to hear familiar Danish.  Plus, I really do like the way our teacher teaches.

In other news, last week I embarked on what I'm calling Project Let's-Find-Out-if-Ruby-is-a Piano-Prodigy.

In preparation for auditions to try to get into a music program at a university here in Copenhagen, I've started to take piano lessons.  I've never taken lessons on an instrument, and have only really learned to read music as a singer, so... I'm leaning towards me not being a prodigy.

That being said, I do have the advantage of already knowing quite a bit about music, so the teacher has been able to skip a lot of the basic music theory stuff and jump right into trying to train my hands to listen to my brain.

I'm convinced my left hand is controlled by someone other than me.