A Very Expat Christmas

We didn't have a particularly Danish Christmas this year.

Instead of celebrating on the 24th, as they do here, we kept with American and English tradition and celebrated our low-key Christmas on the 25th.  My husband made an amazing duck for lunch, plus Christmas pudding with home-made custard, and for dinner I made some steak and potatoes.  I got my husband the Game of Thrones books box set, so we both spent much of the day reading.

It should be noted that I am still on book one, which we bought several months ago, while he is now more than 300 pages into book 2, having started reading it yesterday.

In other quasi-literary (well, not really) news, we spent the evening of the 23rd out to dinner and a movie with a classmate and her husband.  We went to go see The Hobbit (or "Hobbitten," as it's called here).

I've come to expect the Danish subtitles when going to an English language film here, but I tend to forget that any parts of the film in any other language (say... Elvish for example) would also only have Danish subtitles.  So, I found myself putting my Danish lessons to good use during this one, and surprised myself with hour much I was able to understand.  There were still plenty of words that I didn't understand, but I understood enough to figure out what was going on.

As far as the movie itself, my husband and I agreed: It was a fairly good movie that couldn't decide which audience to play to.  The book is basically a kids book, and the way the movie started, I thought perhaps the movie was going to play more towards a younger audience too.  But as it went on, it got darker and more graphic, and it seemed to fall into the same feel as the Lord of the Rings movies.  Despite that, though, we definitely enjoyed it.

Next, we'll start watching seasons 2 and 3 of The Killing (or "Forbrydelsen").

With English subtitles, of course.

The Danish Language Learning Process

Last night, I went through the pronunciation guide and lesson #1 of Teach Yourself: Complete Danish for the 2nd time.

The good news is that I have about a year to learn the language.

Today, I thought I might explain my process. At the recommendation of my fiance, who is already fluent in Danish, I am going through each lesson at least twice before even trying to pronounce the words or do the exercises. Well... I'm trying. I still can't help but try to repeat what I'm hearing. Any fly on the wall listening to me would think I was insane.

Last night, a friend told me he'd never heard Danish spoken, so I sent him a youtube clip from "Forbrydelsen," the original version of the TV series "The Killing" which takes place in Copenhagen. His response? "It sounds like English. Backwards."