This will be our first Christmas in Denmark, and it is fun watching the city get ready for the season.  Christmas decorations started appearing in the shops the last week of October and lights are being steadily strung in the streets.  Little kiosks have appeared selling candy apples and roasted nuts.

I have been watching the street decorations go up…wondering when will they light them?

And so this seems to be the weekend.

We were out last night and saw this one:

But all of the decorations are not yet lit and there is still plenty of prep going on.

There is going to be an ice rink in one of the squares.

It is still under construction:

But I am most curious about the Christmas Market that is being built.

I am guessing that these little houses will sell gifts and yummy treats:

And there are going to be rides!

I can’t wait to see the merry-go-round.

The current glimpse is just a teaser:

It is easy for a tourist to get around Denmark without speaking Danish.  Really, almost everyone does speak English.  But since I am  living here, I have found plenty of good reasons for learning Danish.

• When letters come from the bank or the tax office, it is tedious to type them into Google Translate.
• The Boy and I set off the emergency alarm in Ikea because I didn’t realize that it was an Emergency Exit door.  Oops.  And no, the sign was not in red.  It was in green.
• I have been out socializing with people who speak Danish and they will prefer to speak Danish to each other.  One of them will kindly turn to me and translate.  But this conversational pattern gets old and makes me feel dumb.
• I want to be able to follow the local news.  God forbid that there would be a major emergency that would need my attention – I would really be screwed.   But even a minor matter such as bad weather or a water main break  would be beyond my scope of comprehension.
• We were on a train that had an unforeseen journey change.  The announcement (in Danish of course) explained that we should get off the train at the next stop and then re-board on a different change.  Needless to say, we did not get off the train.  Our mistake ended up adding several hours to our journey.  And the conductor fussed with me.  And I had to get re-ticketed.  Not fun.
• I want to help The Boy practice Danish.  He is super-eager to learn.  Danish children begin learning English around age 10 or so.  Consequently,  The Boy is often maneuvering  through a world where everyone does NOT speak English.  He of course learns faster than me:)

“But Danish is HARD.”

I hear this all of the time.  Is it meant to discourage me?  I don’t know.  Do I think that Danish is hard?  Yes and no.  I can only compare it to studying Spanish, the only other language that I have ever really attempted to learn.

• The grammar is not difficult.  It is quite similar to English.  And the verbs are delightful!  They are the same for each person:  “Jeg er, du er, han her = I am, you are, he is.” Compared to Spanish the verbs are SIMPLE.
• Pronunciation is a beast.  Like French, there are lots of silent consonants.  Looking at the written word gives only little clues to the pronunciation.  By comparison, Spanish is just about always pronounced as it is written.  Someone pointed out  to me that even Danish children have to work really hard to learn their spelling.  Somehow, this made me feel better!  But my situation is reversed.  I tend to encounter the written word first then have to figure out how it is said.

Well, that is enough for now.  In a future blog post, I will explain my study methods and blog about my progress.

We have a produce market that I can walk to.  Back in North Carolina, we had an awesome Farmer’s Market as well.  But I didn’t go very often because it was a 20 minute drive.  And I kind of hate driving.

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to bring home these treasures:

Danish tomatoes, peas and strawberries.  There were little piles of pea casings on the streets here and there and I was intrigued.  Had I ever eaten fresh peas right out of the pod?  Honestly, I am not sure.  Mmm, they were so sweet!

I am a strawberry snob.  When I lived in the San Joaquin Valley of California we bought our strawberries roadside right after they were picked.  Then I lived in North Carolina which is also a major supplier of strawberries so we also got to enjoy rockin’ good strawberries again. So I didn’t expect to like Danish strawberries.  But they are good!  They are smaller and more tart than what I am used to, but they are delicious in their own way.

The peas and the strawberries are now gone from the market, but I am still getting Danish tomatoes at the grocery store.  Now the strawberries at the grocery store are Belgian.

This week I came home with Danish Clara Friis pears:

By the way, purple and lime green is a trendy home color-combo here right now.  Love it.

I moved to Denmark from North Carolina twelve weeks ago.  While we remain far from settled, I think that I am finally coming up for air.  Which means that I can begin to blog about our overseas adventure. I miss my family and friends a lot and I know that some of them are curious about the details of our transition.

Here is what I think I would like to blog about:

• Daily life.  It is really the little things that are so different.  Right now, I am really mesmerized by grocery shopping and cooking.  I have always liked to cook and I have always wanted to become a good cook.   On and off, this is something that I have worked on forever.  The fact that I now have a tiny, apartment-sized kitchen and I am completely confused at the grocery store is quite the game changer.
• Learning Danish.
• Danish Design.  Believe the hype.  It really is extraordinary.  I’ll try to blog a little about fashion but being fashionable is NOT one of my strengths.
• Journaling.  I am a journaling fanatic and I am always exploring different tools and techniques.  I have taught dozens of journaling workshops in the US and I can’t imagine living this chapter of my life and NOT writing about it!
• Challenges of the Expat Life.  I came here willingly.  Not just willingly – eagerly!  But life here is not all castles and cafés, and I will try to share those challenges.  But no whining!

I am going to re-launch this journaling blog.  For a multitude of reasons, I never really dedicated myself to getting it off the ground.  Now (for a multitude of different reasons) I am going to reenter the blogosphere.  I thought about erasing all of the old posts for a really clean beginning.  But, at least for now, I think I will leave them there.  After all, journals are like that.  Started.  Stopped.  Started again.

If you do your journaling in the morning, spend a few minutes writing about the upcoming day. After I do my freewriting, I often close out my journal entry with the question What’s On Tap For Today?

This is what one of my recent entries looked like:

What’s on tap for today?

• Exercise.
• Library Duty. (I volunteer at my son’s school)
• Prep for Scout Meeting. (I had to make a presentation)
• Get my homework done. (I am taking a class)

I wrote this in semi-darkness, still snuggled in my bed under the blankets. Rain was pounding on the roof. I had a coffee cup in one hand and my favorite pen in the other. I sat the journal down and went barefoot into the hallway. Uh-oh. Beneath my feet was wet carpeting. Looked up. Dry ceiling. Hmm.

Went downstairs. Discovered water streaming from the ceiling into the living room.  Oh great. Turns out the culprit was a leaky toilet valve on the second floor. While my husband got busy working on the leak, I got busy dealing with the mess.

Most of the water had landed on the floor and on the top of one of my bookcases, but it was spilling over the edge of the bookcase and some of my books were at risk. I grabbed some towels, got the books out of harm’s way, and starting wondering who we could get to fix the drywall. Obviously, what I had thought would be on tap for the day was waaay off base.

But something good did come of the mess. When I put the books back on the shelf, I comingled science and religion. I had had a science section and a religion section, and now I have the science books all tangled up with the religion books. Inside my head, good science and God get along just fine. Now they’re that way on my shelf, too. I’m a bit afraid that I am starting to sound like Laura in the “Glass Menagerie” when she talks about arranging her glass animal collection, but this little bit of book-rearranging-serendipity really did make me smile inside

I watched Dancing With the Stars this week for the first time ever.  While I love dance, the last thing I need is to get hooked on another TV show. Well, my mom was visiting and she wanted to see the season premiere.  So we tuned in.

For me, the most exciting moment was when Florence Henderson said that she keeps a journal at night and that she thinks she has written I will be on Dancing with the Stars in it fifty times.  And there she was!

That’s  a mighty awesome testimonial to the power of journaling.

Of course, just saying something doesn’t make it happen. But here is what can happen when you write your goals in your journal:

• You crystallize your thoughts. How can you meet a goal until you define it?
• Repetition can turn a goal into an affirmation. Affirmations are short, positive statements that you repeat to yourself. Writing them down makes them even stronger.
• You can only write the same thing over and over for so long without it having an effect on you. Eventually, you will likely either take an action to propel you toward your goal or you will revisit your goal. Either way, you will have learned something about yourself.

What could Jack Bauer and Harry Potter possibly have in common? I was sad when it was time to say good-bye to both of them.

It’s Monday night and Jack Bauer isn’t on TV.  Last Monday, the series finale of 24 aired and my favorite show came to an end.  I thought that the finale was pretty good.  It gave some closure but left the storyline open enough for the movie to step in.  After eight seasons, I just can’t believe that it is over!  The last time I had such a hard time letting go of a cast of characters was when I finished the final Harry Potter book.

It took me a long time to read through Harry Potter.  I read the first two or three as they came out and then I quit. About a year ago, I really wanted to finish the series and I had to start over.  I couldn’t remember enough of what I’d read.  And I couldn’t read seven books of a series straight through so I read one Harry Potter, then something else, then another Harry Potter. Even though I loved the series, by the time I was done, I felt like I had been reading the books f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

24 wasn’t a linear experience for me, either.  My husband had been a 24 fan all along, but I didn’t start watching until Season 6 was on.  It’s not a show you can easily jump in on– there’s too much back story.  So we watched Seasons 1 through 5 on DVD, mostly in the summer.  It took a couple of years to get through all of it. I don’t know … maybe I need to start watching LOST this summer.  I’ve never seen it!

Journaling tip:  I often weave what I’m reading or watching into my journaling.  It makes for a good prompt, and you’ll probably find that it is really easy to riff off of your thoughts about a character or a scene.

How about you?  Have you ever spent enough time with a character that you felt a void when the series was over?

Right now, I am a bit enchanted with sewing.  I’m making a stuffed dinosaur for my nine year old son. When I looked at the pattern, it didn’t really register with me how big this guy was going to be.

Wow.

Here is my progress so far:

Weekend one: Cut out the critter.

Weekend two: Did all of the machine sewing. I have very little experience with a sewing machine. I don’t remember doing much sewing as a girl. The first memory that I really have of using a sewing machine is when I was in my late twenties. I had decided to make curtains for my baby’s nursery.  At the time, I was working as an engineer and I remember laying the pattern on the fabric and thinking “Huh. This is just like doing a sheet metal drawing. How hard can it be?”  I think that I was on to something — I still like figuring out how the pieces are going to go together. The part that is hard for me is making everything look neat and smooth. That is why I like the idea of making stuffed animals – no perfectionism required. This is only my second attempt at an animal. My first one actually came out quite good, but I can’t find a picture (or the animal) right now.

Two years ago, I got involved in making a quilt for a class project. I opened up my home to a group of ladies who really know how to sew.  They brought their machines over and together we made a quilt.I was mostly in charge of food and beverages, but I learned a lot from them and it was a great time.

Back to the dinosaur.  The only problem that I had was that the bobbin thread kept bunching up. A new needle fixed that. Yeah.

By the end of the second weekend, I had realized that most of this project is going to involve hand sewing. I have some experience with embroidery and cross-stitch, so I am fine with hand sewing. But it is certainly slow going.

One cool thing about this dinosaur is that the legs and the neck will have wire in them. You bind the wire with fabric and thread. Leg parts:

Even if you use a pattern, there are still lots of things that you have to figure out on your own. I had to puzzle over how I was going to do these legs for a long time. Seam rippers are my friend. I now have one leg almost done and I’m reasonable happy with it.

It’s not just about the sewing. It’s about remembering the jean jacket that I embroidered when I was twelve, the weekend making the quilt, a bat costume that I made once for a six-year old child (but he hated it and that was the end of homemade costumes for me!), and the promise that a nursery holds.

Do you sew?  Do you have any memorable (good or bad!) experiences with a sewing machine?

Knitting, crocheting, needlepoint, embroidery… do any of these handcrafts stir up any memories?

How do you feel about homemade things in general?  Are they extra-special or are they second-rate?

Here are a few photos of my little patch of Earth, taken this week:

Azaleas

More Azaleas

Ferns

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. – Margaret Atwood