Sankt Hans Aften

A lot has happened.

1. Camille got her mission call. Ogden Utah! She is leaving VERY soon. We are so proud of her. She will be an amazing missionary! We will be maintaining a mission blog for her.

2. We moved. To a much bigger/better apartment in Vallensbæk. That means we are more into the suburbs/countryside and not so close to the city (i.e. farther from work, church, school, etc), but it is WAY worth it. We have gotten so much help from family and friends with finding the place, moving, etc! They are awesome. I will post pictures but right now we don't have all our furniture yet, so I will be vain and wait until it looks nice.

3. Morten had a birthday. He is now 27. That was a few months ago actually. Wow it has been a while since I wrote.

4. We've been married almost a year. Next month. Wow!

4. I passed Danish module 2 and I will be moving on to 3 next month. I'm not really looking forward to going back to class but I am looking forward to learning more Danish.

5. We went to a bonfire on Sankt Hans Aften, the Danish Midsummer tradition. On the 23rd of June, the Danes light very large fires on all the beaches. It is a very old/important tradition in most of northern Europe, and came from medieval times when it was meant to ward off evil spirits. They even put a fake (life sized) witch on top of the flames. At the beach where we went, the fire was definitely the biggest I have ever seen, covering the same amount of ground as a small house. There were fireworks too. These are the pictures (taken with Morten's phone). It was almost 11 PM when this first one was taken. They couldn't start the fire until it got dark(ish).

Stevns Klint

A few weekends ago we took a "road trip" to where Morten's parents were camping. On the way we spent some hours at Stevns Klint - another chalky cliff by the ocean. It was beautiful! Here are some pictures.




The white chalk looked great under the green water.















We loved the rocks. I took some home to add to our random apartment clutter.









A viking grave mound. It's incredible how they are just scattered around everywhere.



During the "road trip" we stopped by "Stevnsfortress," a tunnel cut into the side of the cliff that was used during the cold war years as secret surveillance headquarters for the Baltic area. Naturally I was curious to go inside but we decided to wait until we have time to stay a while and justify the price.

Undskyld!

Yes, I never write in my blog anymore. Most (or all) of you have probably given up even checking it. Things have been crazy! I started danish classes again on tuesday and thursday nights, from 7-9:30, so beforehand I can go to the gym after work. We will see how it works out (haha no pun intended).

Amanda and Matt were in town this last week and we got to see them a few times which was fun! Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures. It made me think of how annoying it is that all my friends and their respective husbands are pretty much scattered all over the states and Brazil. Not to mention sisters. But I guess that is what the internet is for.

It has started the whole daylight from 4:30 AM until 10:00 PM thing now. And it will just get lighter and lighter until the 20th of June!! For the most part I like it, but I do tend to get a bit disoriented in the morning when I wake up at 5 and still have an hour and a half to sleep even though it's light outside.

Over all, life is crazy but good.

Jiggetty Jig

We are home again. We got home Sunday instead of Saturday because our flight from Dallas to Atlanta was delayed 3 hours and we missed our connection to Copenhagen! But it was actually really nice because Delta paid for a hotel, meal vouchers, and business class tickets for us the next day. I would highly recommend the whole experience!

It was wonderful to be with the family. Especially since this will be the last time we will all be together for a while because Camille is going on a mission soon. I love the feeling of a house full of people I love, of all ages, all making a happy noise and bustle, laughing about silly things.



Living far away from them is something that has always been a challenge for me, because while I absolutely love spending time with my family and I miss them profusely all the time when I'm away, at the same time I crave the challenge of living elsewhere, learning new things, and discovering different ways of life. It is also best for us to be in DK right now from a practical point of view. Morten's school, my job, etc. I'm learning not to analyze and second guess everything (as is my nature) but just to take each day and its challenges as they come, and do the very best I can with that.

On that note, I started my new job on Monday. It's for the same company (A.P. Moller - Maersk) but it's quite a bit more responsibility than the last position, which presents a big challenge for me. It is hard not to doubt my abilities, but it has only been a week so of course I feel incompotent and probably will for several weeks (or months) to come. My colleagues are always happy to help though and they seem to believe in me which is very comforting. What I have been doing so far is basically reading a lot of manuals about the system which I will eventually support. I have already answered a few support requests so far, but only with help from my manager. Eventually I will get to learn some basic SQL programming which fascinates me. The part that is the hardest is that, in order to be able to do my job which is mostly IT related, I also have to understand how the finance departments are using the system, which I'm not very interested in. Except for that though, it is very interesting and I am looking forward to learn more.

Other than work, we have been spending a lot of time outdoors because the weather finally turned nice while we were away. We got out our bikes again and I am trying to slowly get back in the biking habit.

I also got a lot of scrapbooking stuff in the states and am looking forward to have time (and space) to use it. Anja and I are going to a scrapbooking "messe" in a few weeks - it's basically a fair that lasts all day and we have reserved seats at a table where we can bring our stuff and scrapbook all day. There is also a course we will take. Looking forward to that!

Well I guess that's "it" for now.

Freedom Franks

I couldn't write about it before because it was a surprise for my brothers, but we are in the states now!! We got here to my parents house last wednesday which is also Nathan's birthday, so we thought it would be a fun joke to show up unexpectedly. It was fun - we got a classic dumbfounded reaction from both of them which was great.

It's so wonderful being here. We are enjoying ourselves immensely. As such, this is all I have time to write.

Slackerish-ness

Sorry I am a slacker and I never write in my blog anymore...in my defense I have been very busy/tired/sick (but happy!) in the past month or so. Whenever Morten and I are free at the same time (wonder of wonders) we spend our time together, and whenever I am free by myself I usually have Danish homework to do. Thus, blogging kind of went down the drain.

I started my danish class which is very nice but very time consuming - I feel like I can carry on a sort of normal conversation in danish now as long as the person I'm talking with enunciates and doesn't leave any words out (as the danes have a habit of doing).

A few weekends ago we went to Lalandia with Morten's whole family. It is a big indoor waterpark on another island (north, close to Germany). We stayed in a cabin and Morten and I got the loft. It was a bit cramped but we made it work. It was fun to go swimming and spend time with the family.

I discovered that roadtripping in Denmark is different than in Texas.

Instead of this...


You get this...


And instead of this...


You get this!


Here are some pictures from the trip...

This is Alex and Natascha coming out of the biggest water slide. I didn't take as many pictures at the water park as I would have liked to - there was kind of a lot of water everywhere.


We also made a little afternoon trip to Germany. There weren't any cities close by so the main purpose of our trip was to go to the shop where chocolate was about half the cost that it is in DK. The boat ride was fun, though a bit tempestuous.




Translation: if strange people come flying at your family from all sides, go right!


Hanging out...




This is the ladder up to the loft in the cabin where we slept:






Natascha sang kareoke:


On the drive home we took a detour to Møns klint. It is really beautiful there but that day was really foggy so we couldn't see much of the cliff. It was really cool in kind of a spooky way though, and we got some interesting pictures.

Closed Door; Open Window

As the title suggests, I have found another job. It's still in the same company, which I am very happy about! I will be a Prime Mover for some finance applications. For those applications, I will be the middle (wo)man between the programmers and the users of the programs. Kind of similar to what I am doing now but more IT related and closer to the actual programmers, so I am very excited about the possibilities - learning new things and gaining new competencies. It will be more challenging than my current position has been, and more rewarding. I will start in April.

Unrelated but vitally important (not really, I'm being sarcastic) - we saw both Twilight and He's Just Not That Into You this last weekend. Both were good! We normally don't go to the movies this much but there was just such a long dry spell for good movies, and now there are several interesting ones out.

We both have been reading the Twilight series (there are 4) and enjoying them quite a bit. It's fun to read books together with my husband - he is better at analyzing them with me than he is at analyzing what clothes I should wear. I guess there will never be anyone like sisters for that purpose.

So overall, life is good :)