Week 8

When we moved here, I thought it would be a bummer to go back to working five days a week instead of four ten-hour days, mostly because I loved my three-day weekends! I mean, one whole weekday without kids to get shit done was awesome.

I'll say that the two-day weekends do kind of fly by, but the work week flies by, too! I don't know. I feel more balanced. But that also means I look at the day and think: Oh no! Did I even take pictures? Did I make notes in the draft blog? What did we even do this week?

The answer is usually: A lot!

Friday

There was a vague threat of rain on Friday, and of course, that meant we had an opportunity to pull out our new rain gear. Kaden dressed Harrison in his rain coat and rain pants for the bus ride to school. I especially love that he's waterproof from head to ankle, but also, he's wearing Crocs and socks. Haha.

Waiting for the bus and ready for rain!

One thing I've been noticing during our time in Denmark is the number of hooded crows. I saw my first one a year and a half ago when I was here for work, and now I can't stop noticing them. That's not super amazing or anything, but every time I see one, the song "Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow" (Jethro Tull's Christmas album...check it out) gets stuck in my head, and I find that annoying since it's not Christmas.

Behold, Friday's hooded crow.

I know I've mentioned the amazing canteen at work, but I don't know how much I've said. Basically, ALK has its own kitchen, chef, and staff dedicated to making lunch for ALK employees. You pay a token fee from your check, which works out to less than $2.50 USD a meal, and you get to eat an incredible lunch every day. It's definitely one of the best perks about working here.

The first table is the main dish and whatever goes with it. There's usually a vegetarian-but-similar dish next to it. One day a week, the main dish is all vegetarian, they serve fish on Thursdays, and some days, there's a little plate of leftovers from the day before at the very end.

The second table is the salad table. You can almost always get assorted greens and load them up with all kinds of fresh veggies (I personally go for broccoli, sliced peppers, shredded carrots, and cucumber chunks every day), but there are always at least two other salads that are mixed and range from simple to totally weird (but probably normal here?). There are a variety of oils and dressings and crunchy toppers at the end.

The third table is the smørrebrød table - you take a piece of Danish rye bread and then cover it in piles of assorted meats, paté, remoulade, tuna, chicken salad, thin-sliced pickled cucumbers, fish cakes, herring, tapenade, or whatever else they put out that day. Sometimes, there are like sliced roll-ups (like in a tortilla), crusty bread with herbs and meat baked on top, or mini pizza slices at the end of that table.

The fourth table is coffee and water on tap (still or sparkling). You also pick up your silverware there.

The fifth table (and my personal favorite) is the bread table. There are focaccia breads (chili focaccia, sea salt and rosemary focaccia, feta focaccia...), rolls, Italian bread loaves, French breads, breads baked with lots of seeds and grains...you just stroll up, slice off what you want, smear it with butter, and enjoy. It's fresh and hot and perfect and amazing. Sometimes, they put a dessert at the end of the bread table, too. As if they needed to make that table any better.

Emmentaler ost (cheese) bread, couscous salad, open-faced French hamburger on toasty bread with shredded horseradish, diced white onion, and some kind of drizzled sauce, green salad with fresh veggies (and some baked zucchini chunks with chili peppers).

Zac and I left work early because we had interviews for Danish lessons in Lyngby! We are not required to learn Danish (unless we want to take the citizenship test), but we both want to, and it would certainly make some of our work communications easier. The Danish government provides free Danish lessons to immigrants within the first five years, but many of the lessons are in Copenhagen and are two hours each, twice a week. If you throw in the hour of travel there and the hour of travel back, that's two nights a week our kids are basically on their own for dinner and bedtime, so we've been searching for a more workable option.

A colleague recommended classes by a company associated with the Danish Technical University (DTU), so I looked those up and was happy to find an option that had in-person classes one night a week in Lyngby (much closer than Copenhagen) with supplemental classwork online. They require you to go to an interview for class placement, so that's what we were doing Friday.

We thought maybe they'd bring us in to interview together even though we had two separate appointment times (one after the other).

They did not. And it was totally inefficient. Get it together, SpeakSpeak.dk.

I was called in first and had to fill out my contact info and my CPR number. I was asked about my educational background (how many years of school did I have, what was my degree, what was my field of study, what is my field of work, have I ever studied a language before, etc.). That took about 5 minutes, and the other 25 minutes were spent telling me about how the program works.

There are three different categories: Danish 1, Danish 2, and Danish 3. Danish 1 is for people who don't know how to read or write. Danish 2 is for people who have not completed advanced education. Danish 3 moves a little faster and is for people with higher education degrees. Within each of those, there are different modules, with Module 1 being total beginner Danish and then moving up in skill from there.

Once the interviewer described all of this, he told me I would start in Danish 3, Module 1. He gave me some info about the class location options, the different schedule options, and the testing interval requirements, and then it was my turn to wait in the hallway on a bench while Zac spent 30 minutes hearing the exact same info.

I ask you: Why could they not have combined our interviews and saved everyone a half-hour?

As we walked down the stairs to leave, I asked Zac if he was able to start in the same level and module as me so we could have classes together.

"I don't know. They told me I had to start in the first one."

"Right, the first module, but which Danish class?"

"There were three. They said I have to start in whatever the first one is."

"...The one for illiterate people?!"

He couldn't keep a straight face after that, but he had me for a second!

We decided Lyngby had a pretty cool downtown area, so we stayed instead of heading straight home. We walked by restaurants, ice cream shops, chocolatiers, coffee shops, flower stands, record stores (yeah, we stopped, but we didn't stay long), and many other places. We wanted to sit and have a coffee at Espresso House, but even though there were people sitting outside drinking coffee, Zac pulled on both doors and neither one would open. We moved on.

After browsing a sporting goods store and trying on a bunch of really big fluffy parkas, we decided to try the coffee place again. This time, I pushed the door and it opened right up. Oops.

At work, Zac's manager had brought the whole team flødeboller, and Zac thought the kids would really like them. They're basically some kind of flavored whipped cream fluff surrounded by a chocolate shell. We picked out a variety pack and headed home.

Flødeboller! They're like thrice the size of bon-bons, but I don't think you can tell that here.

For dinner, we thought it would be fun to thaw a loaf of rye bread and make our own smørrebrod. (Again, I say "we," but I haven't even made a dinner once in Denmark.) Zac and I have been enjoying it at work, and we picked out some meats, tuna, smoked salmon, pickles, and remoulade to make our own at home for dinner.

Are we smørrebrod-ing right?

Harrison basically hated it, and Kaden and Khloe missed out entirely because Vibe offered to take them climbing with the boys! Zac and I liked it, but we need to find more toppings.

Kaden and Khloe had fun at the climbing gym, and Vibe bought them pizza for dinner.

We ate flødeboller without them, but they got to eat some when they got home. Here's Harrison with half a flødeboller for scale.

Saturday

Saturday, September 23rd, was International Day at the kids' school, which is apparently such a big deal that it counts as a school day! A few weeks ago, parents were called upon to sign up to help at their home country's table - there are 46 nationalities represented at North Zealand International School this year.

I tend to sign up for a lot of stuff, so I didn't do it this time. I reasoned that we didn't have our things from the U.S. yet, and I didn't know what would be expected for the table display, the cultural presentations, the food and treats, etc. It felt like stress I didn't need, and I was sure there were plenty of representatives from the U.S. anyway.

Buuuuuut...you know me. I started brainstorming. What would the U.S. table look like? How would I choose which parts of American culture to highlight? What do we eat that other countries don't eat?

Long story short, I emailed the coordinator the day after sign-ups closed and got signed up for our country's table. I also volunteered to donate a country-themed gift basket for the raffle. (STAAHHHPP, Lindsey!!)

I selected a cool USA map puzzle with little graphics on each of the states that represent something unique or famous about that state, a Rawlings baseball, Pop Tarts, a couple little American flags, supplies for beer pong, and a package of postcards featuring our National Parks and illustrated by US artists. I tucked it all in a Body by Scotty jute bag to really round out the American-ness.

(Shout out to my colleagues from the U.S. who were conveniently coming to Denmark for work the week prior. Courtney picked up my Walmart order, and Val stashed the items in her luggage plus donated the Body by Scotty bag.)

We borrowed Vibe's car for the day, but that meant I had to wake up early and ride her bike (which was at our house) to her house to get it. It was a nice workout in the morning, but her seat didn't agree with me very well. It was a small price to pay for the convenience of a vehicle though! I will add that this was another Denmark First for me, since the drive from Vibe's to our house was my first time driving a vehicle in Denmark! Oh, and since I had left my license at home, so it was also my first time breaking the law in Denmark. Nice going, Linds.

The other USA parents, who were much more practiced than me at International Day, decorated the table the night before. They had balloons and stickers and informative trivia cards. There was a Texas flag, Stars and Stripes banners, and a copy of the Declaration of Independence. I printed a few pages to illustrate the size differences between vehicles in the USA and Europe, the different measurement units, and a Fahrenheit vs Celsius scale. I also tried to illustrate the US custom of sending photo cards for all major events, but since our things hadn't arrived yet, I couldn't really showcase that very well.

The United States table before the chaos began.

I also thought really hard about what to serve for food/beverage that would be "American." I mean, they have cheeseburgers and fast food here. They eat pizza and hot dogs. They drink Prime and Red Bull and s'mores. My American peers were serving up chili and cornbread. The other couple wanted to make Fluffernutters, but the director said maybe we shouldn't because of peanut allergy, so they didn't do that.

I decided on soda floats.

Dr Pepper and root beer are not things your usually find in Denmark. Apparently, there is a medicine that tastes vaguely like these things, and they just don't like the taste. We've seen individual bottles of Dr Pepper in the grocery stores once in a while, but it's hit and miss. You can find cans of A&W at the big candy stores, too, but they're expensive. I decided I would order some Dr Pepper and root beer online so people could try it if they wanted to, but to also have Pepsi and orange Fanta on hand for the less adventurous.

After I pitched this idea and the group was totally on board with it, I asked how many soda floats I should prepare to make so that everyone could have one. The director said she made 50 L of homemade lemonade last year. I did some calculations and figured that I should prepare for about 400 floats. Ugh.

I leaned in though. I bought 400 biodegradable 2-ounce paper cups, 200 paper straws, and two flats of Dr Pepper from German Amazon (the root beer wouldn't have made it here in time). I bought 6 L of Pepsi, 6 L of orange Fanta, and 12 L of the cheapest vanilla ice cream I could find at the grocery store. When the straws arrived, I cut them all in half and sealed them in an IKEA zip-top bag, and I did test runs to see how much ice cream I was scooping from the container with an ordinary tablespoon. I borrowed two small coolers from Vibe and froze some water in plastic soda bottles I pulled out of the recycle bin for ice packs.

We loaded up the car with everything but the ice cream and drove to the school. The kids immediately found their friends and ditched me, but that made me happy. I'm glad they all have people who are excited to see them at school. I went to the table to set up, and Zac drove home since we wouldn't need the ice cream for another hour. We didn't want it out of the freezer any longer than it had to be.

I had given the kids a big American flag for the flag parade, so after we set up, the kids from the school lined up with their flags (alphabetically by country) and paraded around the outside of the gym. Kaden wore our flag like a cape and the kids marched along with their other American friends.

Waving the national flags in the gym before presentations.

Everyone gathered in the gym afterward and waved their country's flag, then some of the groups performed traditional dance styles from their countries on the stage. After that, the kids went to the "Passport Agency" to get a little paper passport book that they could fill up by going around to the different tables and getting a "visa" (which was usually a sticker or a stamp) at each of the countries they visited.

Harrison learning about South Africa and holding his "passport" booklet.

As adults, we started serving up treats, giving out candy prizes for trivia questions, etc. Zac arrived with the ice cream just in time.

I had to explain soda floats to a lot of people (no one read my explanatory sign), but once I started doling them out, I served continuously for the entire event. It was SO much work, but everyone loved them.

Huge mess. Next time, I'll bring towels. I have a list of lessons learned.

Once Zac started helping me, it went very smoothly.

Several kids had come up to me asking if they could just get a cup of Dr Pepper, but I had calculated a perfect ratio of ice cream and soda and I didn't want to run out of soda before I ran out of ice cream. Of course, there was no guarantee I would use up either one, but I wanted to make sure everyone who wanted to try one would get one. There are like 350 kids at the school and their families were also present. I kept telling the kids to come back right before the event ended and I would give them a cup of Dr Pepper if I still had enough left.

It turned out that the way I was scooping ice cream into the cup made it tough to pour soda all the way into the bottom before it started foaming. Consequently, we were using less soda than I had calculated, and I had plenty left. A girl asked me for an entire can of it because she loved Dr Pepper and she couldn't find it in this country. She was so sweet, but I knew I shouldn't set a precedent. I told her she had to put it in her bag, tell no one, take it home, and chill it before she ever spoke of this transaction.

But kids are not trustworthy.

Ya know in the movies where there's like one zombie, and it seems manageable, and they dispatch it and think everything is fine, but the noise made like 100 zombies start making their way over to your exact location? Yeah. It was like that.

I gave away all the remaining cans of Dr Pepper in the flat that I had opened (which was probably around $30 of soda, but they just kept coming. I didn't know what to do, so I just told them I was done and we were leaving and I was not opening the second flat of soda no matter how much they begged.

Next year, I will not deviate from my policy of not giving out soda, regardless of how innocent and sweet the first zombie is.

After that, we took Kaden to town to try to buy him some basketball shoes. There is a sports store in Birkerød and we were sure they would have what we needed. They closed as soon as we got there, but they let us in anyway. We kind of saw where the sports shoes were, but we didn't see any that were actually basketball shoes so we left. I know we are supposed to shop at the stores in our own little municipality to ensure they stay in business, but half of them aren't open on Saturday or Sunday, and the ones that are might only be open one of those days and close at 14:00.

It rained a little in the evening and we were treated to a pretty double rainbow. It's one of the perks of living in a place where the weather changes a lot - so many rainbows!

Later that night, Zac and I had some drinks and listened to music on our lovely couch. He doesn't share his feelings very often, so up to this point, I've been low-key worried that he spends every day masking his displeasure at moving across the world and losing a bunch of our money, but as we sat there, he smiled at me and said, "I love you. I'm happy that I'm here with you."

Awwww.

Sunday

Since we struck out with the basketball shoes in Birkerød, we went to Hillerød. There is a shopping center there with three stores that had sports shoes of one kind or another, so we crossed our fingers. It turns out that they really don't sell basketball shoes here. In the U.S., there's an entire wall section dedicated to basketball shoes. We searched three stores and only found two pairs of shoes that might count as basketball shoes. Poor Kaden. He was struggling to keep it together. I know he wanted us to take him to Foot Locker in Copenhagen, but he needed them for practice Monday night and there was just no time for that trip. He had to make a choice.

No, it's not a great pic. But as you can see on the wall behind him, no basketball shoes. He was just kind of sadly putting his normal shoes back on in this photo after striking out twice.

We finally settled on a pair and he's been satisfied with them, so I guess we did all right, but in the future, we'll have to just go to Copenhagen. Sorry, small businesses.

We also browsed Bilka, which someone said was kind of like Costco, but it's much closer to Walmart.

Regardless, it was fun to walk around, and then outside Bilka, we found a Ben & Jerry's shop!! We refrained since we needed lunch and not ice cream, but it's never been so difficult to make a responsible decision.

Zac has also been browsing used cars, and there was a VW Golf he wanted to check out near the shopping center. The Golf and another Golf we found while we were there were pretty nice, but they weren't exactly what we were looking for and didn't have much space in back for the three kids at once. Kaden found a Tesla to sit in though, so he was happy.

We've also been really worried about the amount of moisture in our basement with Kaden sleeping down there. I have to admit, it was kind of disgusting and unbearable when we first arrived. If you left a blanket or pillow on the couch down there, it felt kind of funky after a couple of hours, but if you left something on the floor...eew. It was so damp. Kaden was really maintaining a brave face while hating his life down there. We decided to solve the issue with a dehumidifier, so we picked one up while we were out and about.

We plugged it in and set it to 50%. The internal RH meter said it was over 70% humidity, which was definitely not comfortable, but also not as bad as it was when we first moved in here. I will tell you now, he empties that thing twice a day and if he leaves his door open, it can only get it down to about 60% at best. When he closed his door, he got it down into the 40s, so we're hopeful at least his room can be comfortable, even if the rest of the basement is a little musty.

In other news, Marabel spends more time upstairs and she's still cute.

Han, on the other hand, has been getting on our couch every time we leave the house, and we can see he's been on it because there's hair all over it and there is almost always a brown butthole print on the cushions. Freaking. Gross. I've washed our cushion cover three times in the last five days. I don't know how to keep him off of it, but Zac and I are furious.

Monday

We all left school and work early because we had appointments in Copenhagen at the Citizen Service Center to get the kids' CPR numbers activated. We are now all allowed to stay in the country for the next few years. Yeah!

Just a family of documented immigrants at the train station!

We picked up Chinese food in Birkerød for the first time, and it was really tasty. Different from our go-to Golden Dragon in Post Falls, but we all liked it and it was just as good the second day. One point for local businesses.

Kaden had basketball practice, and Khloe had theater. Kaden actually had a really tough time at practice. I guess Mondays are really tough, and they work out hard. He struggled when he got home for a little while, but he didn't want to quit even though he was completely exhausted mentally and physically, so that's good. He'll definitely be cardio-fit in no time!

Tuesday

It was me and Zac's 8-year anniversary! He went to the store and bought some wine and chocolate. We shared the chocolate with the kids and then devoured the rest in bed watching shows. We decided to save our celebration until Saturday when we could go out for a nice dinner.

Zac has been really enjoying his new co-workers, and they are happy to give him all kinds of recommendations for cool things to do and good places to eat. We tucked away some of their suggestions for Saturday.

Zac also found this amusing sign in the bathroom by his office...

It's basically a hilarious guide on how to properly use and store the toilet brush.

Wednesday

Zac had to work from home because...OUR THINGS WERE BEING DELIVERED!!!

I saw this as I walked up to the house after work:

The house was definitely chaotic, as the movers had to unpack some of the boxes so they could remove the packing materials, so as I walked around, it was messy but exciting.

Zac was most excited about having his good knives back in the kitchen. Harrison was most excited to have his Bruder trucks. I was excited to see our guitars. Kaden was happy to see his BMX bike and the video game systems. Khloe was happy to see her art stuff and her fuzzy blue blanket.

I think we were all happy to use our own table and chairs again, and it's nice to have more than a couple of plates and bowls. Oh, and our big bath sheets are real nice to have.

I worked hard to help Harrison organize his room. He was pretty stressed about the mess, and he didn't know where to put things. Zac worked on the kitchen to get it functioning, and by the end of the evening, we felt like we had made some progress.

I'm not sure the pano-pic does it justice, but we got it in pretty good shape and he's been playing trucks ever since.

Zac and I played guitar in the evening until our fingers hurt. We're pretty soft, but it was still fun.

Jacob brought the fifth and final free/donated bike over to our house as well, so now we have a nice selection of bikes that need just a little bit of work.

Thursday

After work and school, we spent some time unpacking more boxes. Slow and steady. There was a chocolate cart at work, so I bought treats for everyone.

The marzipan bars were amazingly good, and the things in the container are called rømkugler (rum cakes). They are kind of a cake smushed up and soaked in rum and then covered in chocolate. There were six different flavors, but four had a much stronger rum flavor, so it wasn't surprising that the kids liked the other two kinds better. It was fun to share them all though.

At the store, I got some saft for the kids to try, and they really like it. Zac discovered saft is also a good mixer for rum.

We got a huge stack of mail, and there was a catalog from a local toy store in the stack. It was their Halloween costume edition. I may have mentioned it (unsure), but because the Danes already have a holiday where the dress up in costume (Fastlavn), they use American Halloween as an excuse to be gory, horrific, and terrifying. Halloween here is not for cutesy costumes.

Exhibit A: Children's costumes in the Halloween ad

Vampire, death-day dress, superhero skeleton.

Zombie dress, zombie doctor, zombie nurse, butcher.

Not just a pirate, a zombie pirate. Not just a slice of pizza, a slice of zombie pizza.

Anyway, it should be quite a time. I'm looking forward to seeing the local celebrations.

* * *

Eight weeks in, everyone! I think I'll keep the weekly updates going at least until the three-month mark, and then it might make more sense to do smaller posts that are just about one thing or another. I don't know. Your feedback is welcome in the comments or by direct message to me!