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.

The New Years Look-Back of Awesome!

It's the end of the year, so it's time for the ONLY LOOK-BACK THINGY YOU'LL EVER NEED!

That's not true.  I just lied.

Let's be honest, no one actually needs New Years countdowns/looks-back of any kind.  But since we're here, and you've already read this far...

As far as years go, this one has been a doozy.  I have the pictures to prove it!

One year ago, I was working in Boston, living in Cambridge, and seriously stressing out while planning a wedding.  Shockingly, said wedding went off without a hitch.  It's true!  Photographic evidence, exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

We'd expected to move to Denmark in August, but found out just days after the wedding that we had to move at the end of June, just weeks after the wedding.  We did manage to fit in honeymoon in New Orleans, though.  Here's a lovely 'gator that we met there:

We arrived in Copenhagen on July 1st, and it was the perfect time of year.  It looked like this:

I've spent the majority of time since then learning Danish, but I've spent the last 2 months also looking after this little heathen:

Well, now you're up to date.  

As far as New Years in Denmark goes, it seems to start a few days in advance.  At least, it sounds that way based on the fireworks that we've heard for for the last few nights.  We have two options as far as plans go.  We may go to our local pub, or we may stay home and have a quiet night in.  The latter is the most likely, but... we're mysterious and won't decide until the very last moment.

Maybe we'll have an adventure!

But even if not, happy New Year to you from my husband and I!

Pitch Perfect Wannabe

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with two kinds of music:  show tunes and a cappella music.

As you can imagine, I was way cool...

An opportunity popped up out of the blue last week to audition for a local a cappella group.  I'd been considering trying to find a choir to sing with, and I've always wanted to try a cappella, but I hadn't really gotten around to taking more than a passing glance around the Copenhagen music scene.

But when I saw a posting looking for a soprano for this group, I responded without even thinking.

A few days later, I got word back that they wanted me to come in for an audition on December 12 (that's tomorrow, for those of you keeping track).  They sent along music for two songs that they wanted me to learn, one of which is in Swedish.

Oh, by the way, my Danish module 2 exam is also tomorrow.

Busy day coming up.

For now, I'm working on learning the songs, focusing mostly on the words for the Swedish one.

It would be a lot easier if the puppy didn't think I was howling in pain every time I started singing.  Every time, he stops what he's doing and jumps up to try to lick my face.

It's sweet, but... not helpful.

And speaking of the pup, he's been having a blast with the snow lately.  Here's a recent romp in the dog park:

How to Learn Danish From Your Dog

I don't think I realized how rarely I actually spoke to Danes until I started speaking to them every day.

In fact, the only times I really even heard Danish spoken was either by my classmates and teacher in my Danish classes, or when I overheard conversations while out and about.  I would generally tune out the latter, assuming I wouldn't understand anyway.

Now, however, Danes come up to me and start conversations almost every day.

How have I achieved this sudden conversational miracle?  After all, Danes are not known for being terribly outgoing while amongst strangers (unless they've had a few drinks, but that's true of anyone).

Here's the secret:  Find yourself a tiny, adorable puppy (He's so adorable that he now has his own YouTube channel).

I take my high energy puppy out for a walk 3 times a day, so I have conversations with strangers every day now.  And since they're the ones starting the conversation, and I'm tall and blonde, they have no reason to assume that I am not Danish.

Now, I'll be honest, a lot of the time I still have to stop them and explain that my Danish isn't very good.  But if I understand what they're asking, and know the answer in Danish, I'm actually able to have short conversations in Danish!

Granted, I hear a lot of the same phrases every day.  "Han er så sød!" is the most common.  It means, "He is so cute!"  I also commonly hear questions about how old he is, and if it's a boy or a girl, and what kind of dog is he.  Just being able to respond to a few simple questions has helped to boost my confidence and also seem to be helping me to tune my ear to everyday Danish as well.  While I can't always respond, and I still don't understand a lot of the words that people are saying, I find that I am suddenly having more luck with understanding the gist of what people are saying.

In my mind, this is one of the biggest reasons that it's so difficult to learn Danish while outside of Denmark.  The sound of the language is so different from what folks outside of Scandinavia are used to that it takes some getting used to.  And unless you hear a lot of different people speaking the language on a regular basis, this can be extremely difficult to do.

So, my advice if you find yourself in Denmark and don't have a lot of Danish colleagues or university classmates to listen to:

Get yourself a tiny adorable dog.  Like this one:

Giving an Early Thanks

Today, everything feels like a huge relief.

With the American election finally over, and Obama re-elected to 4 more years as president, plus the passage of some really great, really progressive legislation, I have this feeling that everything is going to be okay.

It also helps that today felt like a really positive day at Studieskolen

It's been a while since I've posted an update about my Danish classes.  As I've just come to the end of the first half of module 2 (also known as module 2.1), I feel like things are going really well.

I have to say, I'm enjoying class quite a bit now.  Maybe it's because we can all speak enough Danish to make jokes, or maybe I'm just enjoying the fact that I can now read (with the help of a dictionary or the occasional check of Google Translate) some short Danish novellas.  Either way, I feel really focused and as though I'm making progress.

It probably helps that I've managed to get a lot more sleep this week than I did last week, now that I'm only having to get up once in the middle of the night to take the puppy out.  And that the puppy has been amazingly well-behaved today.

So, a big thank you to my classmates for being warm and kind and funny.  And a big thank you to our puppy, Wooster, for behaving so well.

Most importantly, of course, thank you to everyone who voted in the American election yesterday.

Today, it feels like I can breath easier.

The Week of Worry

What a week!  Where to start?

It has been a week of worry, on various levels.

Starting with the largest:  I mentioned in my last post that Hurricane Sandy was heading straight for most of my family.  Sunday through Tuesday were spent trying to get updates from anyone who still had power, and finding out if everyone was okay.  Seems that they are all fine, thank goodness.

Then there was Monday's module 2.1 Danish test at Studieskolen.  The teacher had sprung the news of the test on the class on Friday.  I happened to be out sick on Friday.  Of all of the days that I decide I need to take my first absence...  I had nightmares about the test the day before.  It was a long test (took an hour and a half), but it was mostly a formality.  It seemed she only gave it to get a reading on who was still following the course, and if anyone should repeat module 2.1 before continuing to 2.2.  My test was full of minor mistakes, but she met with us individually afterwards and told me that I was fine and that I was clearly taking the class quite seriously.

And then, of course, there's the puppy.  Ladies and gents, meet Wooster, our 8-week-old papillon.

I picked him up yesterday out in Strøby.  Did you know that puppy training is exhausting?  I certainly know that now.  He wasn't especially happy overnight, so I didn't get much sleep at all.  Even when he was quiet, I was wide awake worrying about if and when he would cry again.  His little cry breaks my heart, and I have to learn to be less of a pushover.  Puppy training is shockingly tiring.

I think all of my worry over the past few days hasn't helped him to be less nervous about his surroundings, so I'm working on staying calm now.

So far so good.