Firsts of December

It's been quite a busy week now that December has started! Add to that the fact that I was still trying to catch up on our blog of adventures from taking a hiatus during November, and it turns out that I'm writing about the week on Thursday. Alas. But nonetheless, there have been many adventures so far!

Several weeks ago, one of the neighbors who is a teacher in nearby Esberg asked me whether I would come to her 9th grade English glass and talk to the students. She had talked with them about the idea, and they thought it would be easier for me to ask them questions and they formulate answers, rather than them asking me about life back home. So, this Monday I went. It was a dark and stormy morning! During winter, the sun doesn't come up until around 8am, and school started at 7:35, so we left town while it was still dark just after 7, and there was hail and wind. I had been awake since 4:45 when I woke up and wasn't able to fall back asleep, so it was already a long morning. I was hoping the kids were more awake than I! We started off the session with a number exercise. Cards with pictures of animals and the various numerals were put on the floor, and I would call out a number in English and the two teams had to race to be the first to hit  it with a flyswatter. It was their teacher's idea, and it really got them up and moving around. I think that was part of her 8.5 required minutes of physical activity. Somewhere along the way, the 25 minute outdoor recess has been changed to whenever you have a double-block class, you have to spend 8.5 minutes doing some sort of physical exercise. Doesn't matter the class. So, in English the kids raced to swat number cards with a flyswatter. It was fun. Then we talked for over an hour -mostly I asked them about places they'd traveled, where they would like to travel, what they do in their spare time, and things like that. They wanted to talk a little bit about the differences between cultures here and in America. Some are quite striking, but I also explained that there are many regional cultures in America that aren't quite the case here, so you can't just say "American youth do..." in many situations. I think they had a good time with it, and I had fun going. After that class was a brief break, so I got to sit in the teachers' lounge for some coffee and bread. The Principal was at our table, too, and she said I am welcome to come back any time, as much as I would like.

On December 1st, our nisse arrived as well as Elfie! We best be careful how many Advent and Christmas traditions we adopt at once, or we will be overcome with little gnomes! Together, Elfie and the nisse brought the boys another Lego advent calendar, so they each have one to open each morning, with a different piece to build. They have fun with that. And each morning they go on a hunt to find where Elfie might be hiding. One morning, there was a letter from the nisse as well.

It turns out that our nisse is named Charlie. Interestingly, Charlie's writing is very similar to both my grandpa's and Jeff's grandpa's.

Svea has a chocolate Advent calendar with princesses on it. I can think of nothing better for her as a prize! The boys have Lego, and she has chocolate. They are all three delighted!

December 2nd, the boys had a Julefrokost -Christmas Luncheon- at the Hotel downtown. They had to wear their best clothes, and sat at tables with table cloths, candles, and fancy dishes. They got to have as much as they wanted, though they both mentioned that they had to take brown bread every time they went back to get more of anything else. Dessert was the typical Riceallemande with cherry sauce. Anders ate either 5 portions (per the teacher) or 7 portions (per Anders). Either way, a LOT of almond rice and cherry sauce! He was so excited about it!

 We had a bit of a challenge getting them in their dress clothes for the occasion. I had packed them each one nice pair of pants and one nice button-down shirt. We took them out in the morning, and realized that Anders' shirt was a size 10, and had French cuffs! Oops. Rookie mom mistake, I guess. Forgot the cufflinks. We found another button down shirt that worked better, good thing I'd brought a couple of others that weren't the "fancy" ones!

This is a photo of the whole group of them at their lunch. Looks like they had a good time!

We decorated our little tree this week, too. It didn't take very long! It's fun, though, and looks cute sitting in the window. We had extra ornaments (surprise, surprise) so we hung some red yarn between the window locks and hung the ornaments in the windows as well.

Pretty neat what you can find at the recycle shop when they first set out the Christmas things! I even like the embroidered tree skirt. It doesn't quite fit over the bucket the tree is planted in -we bought a live tree, hopefully someone will plant it!- but it covers it up a bit. I like that it has little candles and nisse on it. I really like the paper star-flower ornaments. There was a whole bag of them, mostly white and red, that I got there as well. These also look fun hanging in the windows.

Jeff had agreed to do a lecture for a university course back in the states, so he was up at 1:30am talking with them. So many times since we've been here, he's been up at the wee hours of the morning! Definitely not what we are used to back home!

Another first of our December was the pulled duck tacos we had for dinner one night. We got there, said, "ooh, tacos!" and then looked at the picture next to the meat, and it was a chicken. Ok, we thought. Not ideal, but probably OK. Then the chef was telling us what was for dinner. Sometimes I can pick out some of the words and figure it out, and I definitely understood the word "duck" in his description. Yes. So, we had duck tacos for dinner. The boys didn't know what it was, and Anders loves tacos so he had one. I asked if he liked it. He said "yes, it's spicy!" and went to get another one. After he'd eaten the second one, he said "Is this chicken?" (he saw the picture too), "no." "turkey?" "no." "then what is it?" "It's duck." "What do you mean, duck?" He raised his eyebrows. I explained that it was duck meat. He didn't seem to mind, though. But his third taco was just cheese.

Today my Grandma is 85. We are sorry to be so far away and miss her birthday party. The kids took a picture this morning to send to her email machine, so it will be a fun surprise when she gets that after she wakes up. It's hard to get them all to look the same way at the same time! And somehow, it seems I manage to have Svea dressed in pink and the boys in blue, every time I want a picture of them all together!

Sixteenth Weekend

Well, now I am almost caught up. It is the third post for this morning, and the others were pretty quick summaries! Hopefully now I can get back to the regular rhythm of weekday morning writing, and keep up more regularly.

Our weekend was fairly quiet at first. We watched Disney, as we always do to start off the weekend. I'm not sure if the kids love it or not, but they love the tradition of it for sure. They are always eager to get their jammies on, pull out the big bean bag, get the bowl of popcorn, and sit down together to watch.

Last weekend, one of the boys who came to visit showed our boys how to make a spinning top out of the plusplus bricks. They spent much of this weekend making as many as possible, and then having contests to see which ones looked cooler when they spun. This might be one of the coolest toys I've ever seen.

Sunday was the JuleCafe at the Friskole. The preschool class was going to sing the Lucia song and do a short parade, and then sing a couple of other songs. It was very cute. I thought the white t-shirt with finger-painted gold wings on the back was a perfect way to do Angel costumes for little kids!

 The preschool parade was led by two of the girls wearing Lucia crowns (battery operated, definitely a good call!) And they walked in a line through all of the tables of parents and families.

 Each of the "big" kids held the hand of a "small" kid. Torben got to walk with his good friend Freya.

 Andreas picked Anders to be his walking partner. They were very cute, all the kids walking together through the crowd, while singing "Sancta Lucia..."

 This is an even better one of Torben and Freya. Wherever he goes, she is not far behind!

 Here are all the preschool kids getting ready to sing a couple more songs. They sang "Frere Jacques" in Danish and English.

 They also sang a cowboy song. It was in English, but not one that we had heard before. The kids all seemed to have a fun time.

 We left the JuleCafe after the kids were done, even though the party was scheduled for a couple more hours. Svea hadn't had a nap yet, and Jeff had to get back to the kitchen to cook yet another American Thanksgiving! Sunday night, we had all the traditional foods for all the folk school students. The turkey turned out fantastic, and Jeff left one uncut to bring to the table. They cooked five turkeys! Fifteen kilos of potatoes, seven kilos of sweet potatoes, plus cranberry sauce, beans, corn.

 It was the first Sunday of Advent, so they lit the candle on the table wreath as well.

Pretty much all of this was gone by the time everyone had gone through! But the whole turkey didn't get cut -there were still some leftovers!

One of the traditions in Scandinavia is that you set up a special little door for a Jule Nisse (Christmas gnome) to come to visit. Sometimes maybe the nisse will leave you little notes, or presents, and you can write notes to the nisse as well. We have decided to adopt this tradition as well, so we set up our door against the wall. We have the door on the counter, so the ladder isn't really necessary this year. But it serves as a good spot to store his wooden shoes and the wreath. There is also a metal plate, on which we can put the treats for the nisse, and perhaps where the nisse will leave presents for the kids.

Aha! And here is the photo of Thanksgiving leftovers! Even in Denmark, we had turkey leftovers. They actually mixed the turkey with the cranberries, and then mixed something else (cheese perhaps, plus some spices) into the mashed potatoes. It was a fantastic leftovers dinner!

And with the last of the turkey eaten, and the Elves and gnomes beginning to arrive, and the snow and ice coming and going again, it seems November has gone and December is here. We have been here nearly four whole months now. It will be four months next week. It is amazing how the time goes! The boys have fantastic understanding of the Danish language, and speak it often. It's fun that they can play with their friends so much more easily now. Svea talks all the time too, though primarily in English since she spends the majority of her time with me. She has started repeating words to get an understanding now, which is fun. If we tell her something is this or that, she will repeat the word as a question, and then repeat it again as a statement. 

Week 16

This week, I will have to summarize with one post. I am already quite a bit behind on the writing!

The boys had two field trips to farms this week, which were very fun for them. The first day, they went to the Arla dairy subsidiary nearby. They saw all kinds of dairy cows, and the milking machines. They were particularly fascinated by the milking machines -no one even has to touch the cows, mom!- And came home with lots of stories. They also each got a drawstring backpack with the Arla logo, a ruler with the Arla logo and a cow stencil built in, and an udder cup with cow spots on it. The next day, all of the kids from their class went to another farm nearby. While they were eating lunch, two cows gave birth! That was a bit surprising for our boys. One of the babies had a bit of trouble, and had to have chains put around its feet to be pulled out, the other came easily. The teachers all told me that the boys were quite wide-eyed at the whole experience! I bet they were! They also got to play in tractors and hay stacks at the farms, so all in all had a fantastic time!

 When the weather turned cold, they asked if they could go play outside. They were very amused at the "plate" of ice that had taken hold of the sand toys outside.

 At school they made these hedgehogs out of clay and the outer shells from some of the tree seeds. They were pretty cute. They sold them to the parents at the Julecafe -what a great fundraiser.

 Svea loved the crunchy grass, and was outside chasing the big kids while we were trying to eat breakfast in the morning. I went to get her, but thought the picture was cute and took it first. I figured my legs are still longer so I should be able to keep up.

 Anders was being goofy one afternoon, and put Svea's vest on instead of his own coat. I think the look on Torben's face says it all.

 I finished another novel this week. I didn't really have time for reading (well, I did at the expense of writing my blog posts...) but I had borrowed it from the library and it had to get returned. It was interlibrary loan, so not as easy to renew. It was a great book, made me want to travel to Italy.

On Thursday (American Thanksgiving Day), the boys' school had an Amerikansk Thanksgiving. Jeff made pumpkin pie, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, and their teachers made turkey and mashed potatoes. The kids all got to try all of it. It's fun that they go to a school where they can decide to do this, to share the traditions of our children with the children here, as well as our kids learning the Danish ones. 

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, we were able to get the WGN feed of the McDonalds Thanksgiving Day Parade in Chicago in the afternoon, after the boys got home from school. We were excited to see the WIU Marching Leathernecks!

 This Care Bear was Svea's part of the parade. Though she enjoyed watching all of it with me.

 Although it was Thanksgiving, that's not really a holiday here, so this is what we had for dinner. Fish with yellow sauce, bean salad, cabbage, poached eggs with tomato and bacon, and frikadeller -pork meatballs. It was all delicious, but definitely looked a little different from what we normally would have for Thanksgiving!

 Elfie found us! I think he was glad that we are much closer to the North Pole here, and he gets to spend a bit more time with Santa since he doesn't have to fly as far. The boys were very excited to wake up Friday morning and see Elfie looking down at the table while they ate their breakfast.

 And, this week I finished the Nanowrimo project! It took a long time, and a lot of time that I probably should have been doing other things, but I wrote a 50,043 word novel during the month of November. It was a fun challenge! I haven't actually read what I wrote. It might be incredibly horrible! But I finished it, and that was the goal.

 And this was nearing the end of our week. Svea has taken up colouring whenever she gets a chance. We bought her a princess color book a couple of weeks ago, and she seems to be really enjoying that.

Fifteenth Weekend

Well, I am certainly behind a bit on writing about our adventures! The fifteenth weekend of our trip, the weekend of November 22, we had Friendsgiving. Many of Jeff's friends from long ago when he was a student in Denmark came to visit- from Aarhus and Copenhagen, mostly. We had most of the typical American Thanksgiving foods -Turkey, cranberry sauce, green beans, corn, sweet potato casserole, gravy, rolls, mashed potatoes. The turkey cooked much faster than we anticipated! And we were told that the green beans were very trendy -crispy ones! We decided to opt out of the green bean casserole, and just went for green beans instead.

Saturday morning before the guests arrived, Anders and Torben and I went over to the folk school library to set up and decorate the tables. I gave the boys the candles (unlit), several tablecloths, a bucket of pine cones and dried chestnuts, glasses, plates, and utensils, and asked them to make it look nice. This was what they came up with!

 We set out the famous folk school songbooks on the tables, as well, so that we could sing a few songs. While the boys were decorating the tables, I was practicing to see if I could learn them well enough to play on the piano. We ended up singing only one. I think I didn't get enough practice time.

 It was very nice and cozy to have the 22 of us seated around a U-shaped set of tables. The children were placed at the ends so that when they all went to bed, the grownups could just continue conversation without shuffling around too much.

 By candle light, the room looked even more cozy. "Hygge" (hoo-ga, roughly) is the word here, and it's a feeling as well as an ambiance. It was such a great space to have our dinner, and the children all played really well together.

 A few pictures below are from the preparations, which began a few days before everyone arrived. Jeff did almost all of the cooking and baking. This is the crust he made for the pumpkin cheesecake. It was fantastic! I was glad there was a bit leftover so I could eat it the next day as well.

 Cooking the cheesecake in a waterbath ensured even cooking with no cracks. It was perfect!

 We had to rearrange the shelves for a couple of days to accommodate three turkeys for all of us! They thawed nicely, though.

 The gorgeous pumpkin cheesecake. It was so hard not to dig into it when it came out of the oven like this!

 Ah, and the pumpkin pie! Also turned out terrific. Jeff made the crust on this as well, and vowed to buy it in the future.

 It was fun to watch the boys come up with a way to set and decorate the tables. I gave them no instruction other than "set the tables and put out decorations" so I really enjoyed watching them do that. Anders primarily took charge of the plates and cups and utensils. Torben took care of the decorations. I don't remember if they discussed each taking part of it, or if it is something of the unspoken language between them that they just know what to do and do it. My grandma has remarked before that Jeff and I often do this -a project gets done with each of us doing different parts of it, even though we didn't decide beforehand who would do what. Maybe the kids picked it up.

 I thought it looked very fall like, and festive, the way Torben decided to put out pine cones and surround them with chestnuts. It sort of looked like a lot of little campfires on the tables!

 And here is the completed tablescape.

 I thought I would try making giblet gravy, so while Jeff was over at the folk school kitchen cooking most of the dinner, I boiled the daylights out of the neck and giblet bag, along with some salt, pepper, and sage. After a couple hours of cooking, the house smelled fantastic! I took the necks out of the water to cut them, and Anders and I were too grossed out and decided to toss them instead. I did manage to chop up all the other parts (mostly) and sauteed them in a pan with butter and onion, then put them in this bowl while I did the thickening of the gravy. By the time it was time to put the giblets back in (per the recipe I found from Paula Dean on Pinterest -yay Pinterest!) Anders and I again agreed that we just couldn't put this stuff in there and eat it. So we left the giblets out. The gravy was very good without the chunks.

 Svea was the youngest kid there, and enjoyed sitting at the piano for much of the evening. She can't hit the keys very hard, so it was pretty quiet playing. She was content, and everyone else could still talk!

We had a fantastic time. Some of these people Jeff hadn't seen in twenty years! So everyone's lives are very different now from when they knew each other before. They started arriving in the early afternoon, and we had crackers and cheese and vegetables out for people to munch on. We ate the full Thanksgiving meal around 7, and the kids played until about 9:30 when they started going to bed. The folk school library has six guest rooms in it, so it worked out really well that there were rooms for all of the families to stay. The students from the folk school were still out of the country on their various trips, so it was basically empty except for us. We hired one of the headmaster's daughters to watch out kids, so about 10 she and I walked the kids home to put them to bed, and then I went back to join the grownups for a while. I turned in for the night around 11:30, when some of the other spouses also left. Jeff got home just before 4am. 

The air turned very cold over night! The grass was frozen and crunchy, and we woke up to snow! It was beautiful, just a light blanket covering the grass and trees. 

We were up again at 8, and went to the folk school to have breakfast with our friends as well. Jeff made an American breakfast, too, for fun. We had American (small and fluffy) pancakes, bacon, yogurt and toppings, and fruit. It was delicious! Then Jeff gave them all a tour of the folk school before they had to start heading back home. It was a few hours' drive for most of them, and apparently Copenhagen got almost a foot of snow. 

It was a very fun, and very busy weekend. They all said they'd love to come back in the spring for a BBQ outside, too. So we will start the planning of that as well.