Christmas with family

It has been a busy week here and I thought I'd share a bit of what we've been up to!

My parents arrived in Karup last Wednesday morning to experience their first Danish Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve at Ole's sister's house so that they could get a taste of the 'real' experience, complete with roast duck, pork roast, caramelized potatoes, and of course, rice pudding with a whole almond for one lucky recipient. We then did the traditional singing and dancing around the Christmas tree before dancing through the entire house singing 'Nu er det jul igen' (Now it is Christmas again). I did my best to teach the song to my parents as we rode in the car to the festivities and I think they did a pretty good job learning it!

Christmas day we did a more traditional 'American' Christmas here. We exchanged gifts and made a full turkey dinner. I actually made Ole wait until Christmas Day to get his gift, which was quite hard for him! Here are some pictures from our Christmas feast...


Once we were done eating, my father was assigned the duty of getting the remainder of meat from the turkey bones. This task was supervised VERY closely by a couple of four-legged detectives. Their job was to catch anything that accidentally 'slipped' from the counter...


My father is quite the dog lover, and the big brown eyes of these two meant that there were quite a few 'slips' during the process!

On Sunday we had a traditional 'Julefrokost' here with Ole's family. My mother-in-law did the parts that required actual cooking of anything traditional. She does these things much better than I ever could!


What a wonderful Christmas from start to finish. I hope yours was as Merry!

Graduate!

This morning, December 22, 2009, I attended school for the last time - to pick up my official certificate of completion:

"Bevis for Prøve i Dansk 3"

Yes, I know I already told you all this before but humor me! Rumor has it this means that I can speak Danish now - umm, sure. Well actually I can speak Danish, it's the understanding when others speak Danish that seems to still be my greatest issue. Oh well!

Look at the picture. Really look at it. What do you see?, other than some official looking envelope. Chocolate? Yep, that's there too, compliments of the school.

But look again...

I have HAIR!! Sort of a salt and pepper look at the moment, but I'll take it. Still no eyelashes which means that I still can't wear mascara (pout).

I'm pretty sure, when I walked up to shake his hand, that the school director (who I never saw before today) was probably thinking... "what the heck happened to her hair?" Little does he know!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Where, oh where, does the time go?

It was Thanksgiving last I wrote a post and now, suddenly, it's almost Christmas! We spent Thanksgiving weekend relaxing at a spa in Poland and then I spent the last few weeks gearing up for my big final exam in Danish.

The grading system here is a bit odd to me, but the final result was 7, 7, 7... the last 7 counts twice but the three 7's, rather than 4, looks more like winning the jackpot in Vegas, so I'm going with 3. Finishing school is a bit like winning a jackpot!!

Moving along... in just 4 days my parents will arrive from the US for their first Christmas in Denmark! We've been busy get the house ready for their visit and for once, the weather gods have cooperated and sent some snow. Hopefully it will stick around so we can have a white Christmas.

First - the tree. We went to a local guy we'd been to before and he had the perfect tree for us - Ole actually picked it up off the ground and said, "how about this one?", and that first pick was the winner!

We happened to have had the dogs with us at the time, and our car has a split folding rear-seat, so lowered the 1/3 side and pushed the tree through the opening. This meant the dogs had to shove over in the back seat and share the remaining space. They were quite confused by the tree in the car, but surprisingly, they haven't touched the tree in the house!

Our tree now, all decorated...



The guy had a table full of free tree pieces he had cut off of other trees, and since I had planned on trying to make my own wreath, I took a huge pile of trimmings. I spent a few hours this afternoon attempting the wreath. It's not perfect, and now I've learned a bit for the next one, but here is my hand-made wreath!...