Just *this* close to an international incident

Or "The further adventures of DAMN YOU DANISH!!"

When writing about nutrients and the digestive systems of cows, it is important to check that you wrote:

Syren optages gennem vomvæggen til blodet og er en del af koens vigtigste energikilde.

The acid is absorbed by the blood through the stomach wall and is a part of the cows most important energy source.

Not

Syreren optages gennem vomvæggen til blodet og er en del af koens vigtigste energikilde.

The Syrian is absorbed by the blood through the stomach wall and is a part of the cows most important energy source.

Vowels: non-exchangeable, returnable or refundable. Results may vary.

Alternative title: Damn You Danish!  *shakes fist*

Not that I’ve made any serious errors lately, but I did come close.  The Danish word for “savings bonds” is “obligation” so when asked, in Danish, if we have obligations, I was *this* close to raising my hand.

Obligations?  Yeah, I’ve got obligations!  I have two mortgages and a child in childcare, a car that needs maintenance and gas, a husband who seems to keep eating food despite him being fully grown so stop eating so much, m’kay?  Obligations?  Oh, I got your obligations right here, buddy.

Uh, wait, obligations means bonds?  Er, um, no.  No, I have no bonds.  Totally bondless here.  Double-O-uh-oh, that's me.

Thank god I’m always about 5 seconds slower in Danish.  Prevents some silly errors.

Then later I was asked if I had “strøm” and I was completely flummoxed.  Some hand waving and danglish later, we had ascertained that I had indeed a fully charged battery on my computer and yes, Jesper may borrow my charger.

Is it weird that my brain kept wanting to add “und Drang” after hearing strøm?  I have either too much education or not enough intelligence, and I’m not sure which.  But it definitely means I’ve had too many language classes, that’s for sure.

Meanwhile, when I write in Danish, I run it through Google Translate to catch the egregious errors.*  Like in spelling.  One wrong letter may not seem like a lot, but it’s the difference between the government-mandated garbage bins and government-mandated garbage bans.  Or the difference between putting a gin to your lips or a gun to your lips.  Or being stuck in a traffic-jam or stuck in a cow.  Okay, that last one only works if you are writing Danish (kø vs. ko), but you can see where a girl writing about farming might want to be careful about where she puts her Ø.

Sometimes I just write the wrong word.  I wanted to write a sentence describing how a virus invades a cell and turns it into a virus factory.  Fine.  Except my brain stuck “invander” in for “invader” rather than “angriber”.  “Invander” is a word, one I read all the time, it means “immigrant.”  So my viruses were immigrating to the bacteria cell and working in factories there.  Probably for below minimum wage and without access to union representation.  I was highly amused with myself for a while. 

It goes the other way as well.  The Danish word for clouds is “sky” and my little brain just will not read it that way.  “What do you mean there is sky today?  Isn’t there always sky??” I say.  By the way, saying that in Danish means you are being witty and clever in regards to the weather.  “Yes,” laughs the Dane, “I suppose we do always have clouds.”  *Confusion* 

I have a lovely image of the Danes meeting the English and exchanging vocabulary. 

“Så hvad er den der?” Asks the Viking, angrily stabbing his finger up at the heavens, obscured, as England always is during certain times of the year, with clouds.  He did not travel all the way across the North Sea for more of the same damn weather.

“’Wot ‘ar dem der?’  Why good fellow, that there is the sky!” Says the portly merchant, cowering with the other villagers in the town square.

“Sku?  Det er en god ord.  Jeg ta’ det og alle jeres gul!  Nu!”

Or maybe it was the other way around, since English is better known for stealing words from other languages.

“Øv, der er altid sky her!” says Svend Svendsen (Barbarian Invader Inc., est. 875 CE, “We invade, so you will pay”), shaking his fist at the clouds.

“He’s put off by… what was that?  The “sky”?  I say, what a nice word.  If I get out of this alive, I may want to use it in conversation with my neighbors over in Little-Big-Watting-Up-Downs-on-the-Slough.  I’ll appear very worldly and posh,” thinks social climber and sometime merchant, Horatio Bucket.  That’s Boo-kay, dear.

And the more tired I am, the more mistakes I make.  Thankfully, the Danish Boy is there to mangle English from time to time, for my amusement.  The other night he told me that the chimney swiper had come by for the chimneys.

And then he tells me about the new government substitutions.  You know, where they give you money for stuff.  Uh, subsides?  Yeah, that’s what I said, substitutions.

*Hugs him*  Isn't he cute?

* I do NOT write in English and then put it into GT to translate for me.  That would be the epitome of stupid.  GT makes for some hilarious translations.  It is good enough to give you an idea of what was written and it’s a fair dictionary (better than my normal English-Danish dictionary in regards to farm and technical vocabulary) but for the love of god, don’t use it to write your Danish for you!

Application for 25 hour days

Good lord, I’ve been busy!  Of course, other bloggers who are just as busy as I, or even busier (although it’s hard to imagine that it’s physically possible, I commute by ferry boat, damn it, surely that counts for something!), still manage to write posts.  Even if the posts are really short!  Surely I can write a short post!!  I can be brief and succinct!!!

Bwahahahaha!  Oh, it hurts, it hurts! 

I really shouldn’t compare myself to them, obviously.  They didn’t spend two days last week living in a caravan and getting up at four in the morning, dressing in the cold and dark, sneaking out to the car without waking husband and child, all in order to milk cows and spread hay and stack tires for six and a half hours.

Why yes, that *is* a pity banjo you hear me playing!

Actually, I really enjoyed my hard labor.  I just wish there were a few more hours in the day so I could nap, get my own chores done AND write a blog post every now and again.  I’ve got so much to talk about and instead I need to write two reports on my past two practical assignments on farms, two days on one pig farm and two days on one dairy farm. *  In Danish.  Balls.

I suck at writing Danish.  I suck because I write Danish in the same way that I write English, but alas, you cannot directly translate English to Danish (professional translators are laughing at me right now and pointing out that this is why they earn the big bucks).

Shakespeare’s “’Tis better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all,” for example, does not directly translate because you cannot use the word “better” when comparing two bad things.  You can say one is “worser” than the other or one is “less bad,” but never can you use the word “better.”

So back when I was in Danish class, I wrote a rhetorical question in an essay, asking if it was better to have higher unemployment than fewer hospitals, and the response was “You cannot say this, these are the same things.”  Which led to a hilarious debate on the welfare state and Danish stupidity - possibly not the best when trying to argue for a higher grade, but THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL!  I finally got the Danish Boy to explain later that night.  It took him a while as well, because he didn’t know what was wrong with the sentence or why, just that it was fundamentally wrong, and we had a good debate going (if by “good debate” you mean one person crying and the other looking like his head is about to explode), because he could completely understand me IN ENGLISH, but NOT IN DANISH.  Then, I demanded, “WHICH OF THESE IS THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS FOR FUCK’S SAKE!?”  Because nothing solves an argument like yelling biblical quotations and swearing.  And suddenly he had an epiphany.  “It’s BETTER!” he cried.  “I BEG YOUR PARDON!!” I shouted, now ready to set fire to Copenhagen and declare Danish to be an outlawed language of a subservient peoples who would cater to my every whim, mostly by NOT SPEAKING DANISH IN MY PRESENCE.  “You can’t use the word ‘better’.  You have to say ‘worser’ or less bad,” he explained.  “THAT’S STUPID!”  I replied, calm as ever, envisioning the high energy explosive that I would set under the Little Mermaid’s ass.  THAT’LL TEACH ‘EM!  “I didn’t make up this language,” he pointed out.  Damn him, he’s right.  Maybe I’ll hunt that particular asshole down and give him a carbonic acid enema.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I got a 2 on the written Danish portion of my language exam.  A 2, by the way is just passing.  As in “we understand that you wrote a series of Danish words that by themselves are fine enough, it’s just that the arrangement is incomprehensible because we have rules that we made up on a whim and deviation creates chaos in our little brains and besides which, you made 7 basic grammar mistakes in your email to your Canadian friend who wouldn’t understand Danish anyway, but we’re sick bastards who make you write emails to foreigners in our damn language because, as we previously pointed out we’re sick bastards.”

By the way, that paragraph?  Probably doesn’t translate into Danish directly either.  Danish: a language as inflexible as the rye bread they want you eat for lunch, day after day after day.

So it’s a good thing that I didn’t want to go to university anyway.  Even if the program would be taught in English.  Because my Danish is just not good enough to get into the “upper level” Danish class to prepare me for taking the exam that would qualify me for college level classes.   That’s like not doing well enough in junior high and therefore not being allowed to take high school and therefore not allowed to go to college.  Denmark wants us to be “educated” but not to a high degree, apparently. 

Anyway, ranting aside and back on the farm….

As I was standing on the retaining wall, waiting for the next load of tires to be delivered unto me (goddesses of modern agriculture demand offerings of tires), I was looking out over the rolling hills.  The some of the fields were golden with ripe corn, others the dark, earthy brown of freshly tilled soil, others still were bright green with clover.  On the clover covered fields were happy black and white dairy cows, munching away and lowing to one another.  Towering overhead were three very white modern windmills, powering away in the wind.  The sky was bright blue and punctuated with swiftly moving, puffy, white clouds that brought sudden downpours.  One particular cloud was busily pouring rain on what I suspect is Germany.  Because of the angle of the sun, a rainbow suddenly developed right then and there, arching across the sky, from one hilltop to another.  It was glorious.  I really could have used a camera.  But who the hell brings a camera when doing farm labor?  This is why I need a really awesome phone, just sayin’.

But it was one of those moments where you go, yup, this is what it’s all about and this is why this shit is awesome.

*Okay, I may not have to write some essays.  Some say I do, some say I don’t.  I’m going to have to figure this out before I spend an evening trying for subject-verb agreement.  Because otherwise, balls to THAT!

Danish is going to kill me

So I’ve taken the first half of my Danish exam; the half that covers reading and writing.  I won’t know my grade for a few weeks, but I’m fairly sure I passed.  Probably not with top marks, however. There were problems.  Like, I forgot to put the location and date at the top right hand corner of my “email.”  (In quotes because it was an imaginary email sent to an imaginary foreign friend.)

This will cost me points and while I don’t particularly care about getting a high grade, all I want is to pass, it does cheese me off that a stupid error like this will be marked down.  Because putting the location and date at the top right hand corner of an email is THE STUPIDEST FREAKING RULE ON THE GODDAMNED PLANET!

First of all, NO ONE DOES THIS. 

NOT EVEN DANES.

I went back through buttloads of emails I’ve gotten from Danes, official ones, informal ones, company emails, doctor emails, immigration emails, and not one, NOT ONE, has the following:

København den 25. maj 2012

Kære [name],

Blåh blåh blåh

You get the picture. 

The reason for this is because it’s THE STUPIDEST FREAKING RULE ON THE GODDAMNED PLANET!  Emails are time and date stamped!  You don’t need to write the date in the text because I already know that!  It appeared in my email box with a little tag telling me what day it came!

Secondly, I don’t freaking care where you were when you sent that email!  When the lovely people in my computer store wrote to tell me that my Mac had been shipped from China (we’re talking about an event many years ago), I didn’t care if they were sitting in Copenhagen, San Francisco, or Shanghai.  They gave me the tracking number and an arrival date and really, that’s all I wanted. 

Thirdly, do you have any idea of the time and effort it takes to get one line in an email to align to the right hand side of the page? Yeah, you say, you just have to include “rich text” and hit some buttons and VOILA!  But it’s an email!  You’ve got it set up to include an automatic signature because you are too damn lazy to type your name (and contact information if you are an official person or like to pretend to be one).  My father-in-law wanted help getting his email signature set up so he didn’t have to type “Kind regards, XXXX” every time he sent friends and family an email.  And yet I’m supposed to write information that no one gives a shit about or already is included elsewhere in the email WITH SPECIAL FORMATTING or you will take points away???

That’s BULLSHIT.

Whatever.  I’m going to lose more points because of all the terrible errors I’m sure I made when writing my essay. “Write simply,” advised my teacher.  “Don’t try to write at a high level, keep it to what you know you can say.”  This is all very well and good until I’m facing the clock and an essay question.  Years of academic training mean that when I’m in test mode, I can only operate as I have been trained.  There will be an opening paragraph that ends with a thesis statement.  There will be paragraphs that back up this statement, using personal experience, scientific experience, and historical experience, if I have time.  I will include and discuss whatever various points you tell me to include and discuss.  I will write a concluding paragraph in which I restate the thesis in a different way that points to the evidence I have outlined above.  I will do all of this in the time provided and leave myself 15 minutes to check for errors.

In English, I can whip out a well-reasoned essay of varying length and complexity in a very short time.  I can type almost without pause.  Doing it in Danish is a bit harder.  Part of my brain composes in English and another part translates into Danish.  Great, right?  Uh, no, not really, because Danish grammar is close but not quite the same as English grammar, and sometimes it is violently different.  The position of adverbs, for example, change based on whether or not you are in a subordinate clause or a main clause, whether you have begun the sentence (or clause) with the adverb or a question word or a conjunction or a verb, and whether or not you intend on emphasizing the subject or the verb. 

To write simply, I would need to stop writing sentences JUST LIKE THIS ONE, and instead make sure my clauses were arranged in descending order.

Alas, this turns out to be impossible to do in the allotted time. 

As for the reading portion, I thought that I’d done fairly well.  After all, reading is my strongest skill and I can breeze through a newspaper and get the gist of the stories (except for opinion pieces and editorials, which often use more complex grammar and vocabulary, in any language - check out your newspaper at home and you’ll see the difference immediately).  BUT THEN, the next day, my phone rang a little after 10.  Italics=Danish.

AG: Hej.

S: Hej.  Did you forget that we had a mother’s group today?

AG: No.  You cancelled it.  You sent me a text.  You have work today.

S: No, I have to work later today.  I wrote that I’d have to end it early. “Afslutter” not “annuller.”

AG: Balls.

So yeah, I can read a text on noise pollution and find within that text three examples of things you can do to reduce the impact on your ears, but I can’t understand a simple text message that relates to my daily life.

face/palm

Damn You Danish!!

I have a really hard time with certain sounds.  Vowel sounds, especially.

Danish is all about the vowels.  Silent consonants they have aplenty, but not so many silent vowels.  In fact, half the time Danish just sounds like a string of vowel sounds interspersed with sharp intakes of breath.  It's the perfect inverse of Polish.

Not that I know much Polish, apart from some choice swears and random animals, and I couldn't spell it to save my life... but... still...

Where was I going with this?

Right, so, there are a few Danish vowels that sound exactly the same to me.  Å, O, and Ø.

Danes will immediately tell you, no, they sound completely different.  They sound like å, o, and ø - DUH!

I spend a lot of time apologizing and saying "I just can't hear the difference!" and the Dane keeps saying "å - o - ø" again and again and all I hear is "o - o - o" and really, I JUST DON'T HEAR IT!  If the person over pronounces, THEN I can hear it, but since most Danes don't pause and over-pronounce the vowels in words, I'm often confused, or worse.

Confused because:
tog - train(s)
tåge - fog

Should someone tell me about one in the road, perhaps it would be a good idea if I know which one I should be looking out for.  Presumably I would see the train... but what if it was lost in the fog??

Worse because:
hore - whore
hår - hair
høre - to hear

Sometimes I tell people I cut my whores.

Sometimes a conversation with me goes:
Them: Did you hear what I said?
AG: I whore.
Them: Over-share much?

*face/palm*

Almost there...

Last week I passed the theory portion of the driving test that I need to take to get me a Danish driver's license.

Ja, bitches!  Hvad skal du være særligt opmærksom på NU?

Translation: Yeah, ladies of questionable politeness, what should you be especially aware of now?

So, next it is driving around, taking direction in Danish, being særligt opmærksom på bicycles, pedestrians, and stray cows... hey, it's the boonies out here... and then I'll take THAT test...

And then...

Then I'll have a Danish driver's license and I'll FINALLY be able to get someone to help me with my NEMotherfuckID so I can FINALLY log into bank accounts and tax accounts.  (You can only get phone help for your NemID if you have a Danish passport or a Danish driver's license... otherwise you need to rely on the very friendly, but not particularly well-trained in NemID shenanigans, Municipal Secretaries of Magic.  I'm not changing my citizenship, so a-driving I will go.)

Not that I really need to be able to get the damn thing to work, since it turns out that my accountant can log into my tax accounts.

Yeah, *I* can't get my NemID to work, so *I* can't log into my account, but my accountant, who I've NEVER MET can get all the numbers he needs to find out that I didn't pay enough in taxes last year.

This is not particularly what I wanted him to find.  I wanted him to find butt-loads of money owed ME.  This is normally the way of things.  But that dear Danish Boy of mine went and earned Too Much Money.  I don't particularly feel like we're living in a higher tax bracket.

So while I may finally achieve my goal of getting a Danish driver's license - and doing the WHOLE THING IN DANISH to boot - it's not like I'm going to be getting a CAR to DRIVE at the end of it.

Thus the ongoing argument around the house - Audi, Volvo, Benz, or an Opel named Oliver... is moot.

However, I've discovered my Drag Queen name:  Farlig Vejsving

Pronounced "far-lee vwhy-swing" or as we say it in America - Dangerous Curves... baby.

Actually I love saying ubeting vigepligt "oo-bee-ting vee-a-plickt" which means "unconditional right of way" or "Yield Motherfucker!"  This nudges out "methamphetamines" as my new favorite thing to say, which is probably a good thing for my small child.  Because the health nurse would probably be rather alarmed to hear my child pipe up with "methamphetamines mommy!" during one of our visits.

Not that my child is saying much other than "pbthaaaaaaarghl" at the moment.  But really, it's a small step from there to "methamphetamines."

The word.  Not the drugs.  I'm pretty sure my child is many steps away from drugs.

I'm a shoe-in for Mother of The Year, I tell ya.

More on driving Danishly

In Denmark I have my very own parking place.

Kidding.

"Gods" is Danish for "goods" as in merchandise and other things that are transported in trucks.  And it's pronounced "Gus."  Stupid silent D.

So anyway, on-line practice theory test - shows me a picture of a guy loading something on the top of his car and the question is about how far off the car can something stick before you need to tie a flag to it.

What I hear:

How far can Gus hang off the back of your car without a flag?

Insert moment of confusion.

Then: ding ding ding!  I remember that picture.  GODS! The test man is saying GODS! Thank God!

Only now I'm hysterically laughing.  Spawn, who was nursing, is being bounced all over the place (she's a trooper, she never let go of my boob.  OW.) and I'm missing what the test man is saying.

Doesn't matter, I've got to be særlig opmærksom (especially aware) of Gus hanging off of cars.  LOL!!

So I didn't pass...

Oh well.

I missed 9 out of 25 when you are only allowed to miss 5.  But I think I know which ones I got wrong.  A few I didn't understand at all.  No, really, the vocabulary was something I'd never heard before.  I had no idea what the man was saying.  So obviously I wasn't likely to get those.  But I'm slightly frustrated because some of the questions were unduly complicated, unlike the practice tests where the situations depicted were much more straight forward.  I've got to get back the mindset of the Danish equivalent of the US Department of Motor Vehicles where you don't think like a driver, but like an anally-retentive OCD-suffering five year old.

"I would have put on underwear under my pants, but you didn't tell me to put them on TODAY.  Then you didn't tell me not to pee BEFORE I put on my pants.  Therefore, it is not my fault that I peed in the car on the way to school and then mooned the principle.  Really, mother, it is ALL YOUR FAULT."

It's nice to know that driver's tests are universally more complicated then they need to be and do not mean that the people who pass are good drivers, just good at thinking like that nutty 5-year old.

There was an interesting mix of people taking the exam.  Most of us were fairly young.  ("Most of us?" Jesus woman, you are 32, not old, but a good deal older than the five 18 year olds that were there.)  There was an older guy there.  And by "older" I mean in his 50s.  I don't know if he'd lost his license or had just decided you were never to old to learn to drive, but it was nice to not be the oldest person there.  I also didn't do the worst.  That was left to a woman who missed 20.  Twenty!

There were several of us who spoke Danish as a second language, but I think I was the only one who had only recently learned Danish.

I'll find out tonight what I need to do now - how much will it cost to take the test again and when I can take it again and what I should do to study more.  I can pay to take all the tests on the website, but not a single picture or question there appeared in my test, which seemed to date from the 70's.  They were slides for crying out loud!  I really wish I could have seen the one's I missed and gotten the correct answers.  It would have made it far more easy to study.  As it is, I have to guess.

And until I pass, I'm forbidden from driving AT ALL in Denmark.  They took my American license away.

The joke's on them, though.  It expires relatively soon, so I'll be getting another one.  Bwahahahah!

Positive results either way

I'm taking the theory part of my Danish drivers license tomorrow.

In Danish.

Whether or not I pass, I still win.

Pass: oh hells, yes, I rock!

Fail: well, it's not like I actually speak Danish, so how can they expect me to pass the first time around!  I win for every question I get right!

Meanwhile, we pick up the keys to our house today!  I have a house!!  I've only been able to pack up my books and other office stuff because:
A) I gotta baby, ya'll.  She demands food and fresh diapers and when we're going "hands free" (i.e. in the baby carrier) she really hates it when I bend over (baby suddenly goes upside down and tries to slide out of the carrier... really not a pleasant moment for any of us) or squat (little legs get smooshed).  I gotta pack when she naps.
B) I done run out of boxes.  You can look at this two ways - I need less books or I need more boxes.

Trick question.  Obviously I need more boxes.

I also need more bookshelves.  I found more books behind other books when I emptied the bookshelf.  Some I had put there to save space and some I had knocked down accidently when stuffing more books into, what turns out to be, too little space.

I've recently been promised more books if I get my ass out to the Copenhagen area.

Seriously, you can never have too many books.  Only not enough room for said books.

It's May 1st or "May Day" - which in certain parts of the world is International Workers Day.  There's a tent in the park across the street and a beer stand and red flags.  I can see drunk communists from my backyard!  And they wonder why I won't put my child out in the baby carriage unattended.  Don't they know my child could catch communism???

Also hard to believe: some people will not recognize the sarcasm in the above paragraph.

As Americans are losing the right to collective bargaining - in Wisconsin they've already lost the right - perhaps we should take a moment to reflect on workers rights and raise a beer in their honor.

Or erect a large phallic symbol and get young girls to dance around it.

My new house has a flag pole - all I need are some brightly colored ribbons and a man with a goat.  ('Cause all pagan rituals involve a man with a goat, dontcha know.)

I would have arranged for this to happen, but I'm busy studying for my theory test.

Alas, I didn't go into labor yesterday...

So I had to take my Danish test.

This test was not the Last Danish Test, as in the one that I will have to take before I am free (FREE!) to be as lousy at Danish as I want to be.  This was the test that comes right before That One.  This one is the test that I took only 5 weeks after passing the previous Danish test, which was passed in a very Hail Mary Pass kind of way.

Which means I am fairly confident that I bombed it.

The tests are usually broken up into timed sections on writing, listening, reading comprehension and speaking.  One of my listening sections was about a dentist.  I needed to listen to what was said and answer some of the questions.  One of the questions was something about what was great about his school.  I think.  (Oh yeah, you always know you're going to do well on a test when you realize you don't actually understand the questions being asked.)

Anyway, I heard "comrade-ship" and "girls" - only now that I'm thinking about it... the word for "girls" is "piger" and there may be a Danish word for "peer" that is, well, pronounced "peer" which sounds to me like "piger" (the word for girls, remember) and that what he SAID was "I liked my classmates and peers" not "I liked my classmates and the girls."

Alas, the interpretation of that answer then colored ALL of my other answers. 'Cause this dentist sounded like a JERK.  I mean, WHO THE HELL SAYS THEY LIKED THE CHICKS AT THEIR SCHOOL??  (Apart from every self-proclaimed red-blooded male. [Public Service Announcement: if they actually call themselves a "red-blooded male" just save yourself some time and trouble, pour your drink over their head, hit them with your purse and GO HOME].)  Swear to god, after that I heard that answer, I heard that he liked owning his own clinic because he got to be the boss and he made lots of money.  The Ass!  Nevermind that the first answer I had given for that section ("Why does he like being a dentist?") was "he likes being able to help people who are in pain."

Poor dentist.  One misheard word and he goes from being a sympathetic character to my new nemesis.

Of course, I'm also biased having been subjected to a rather brutal dental cleaning recently.  It wouldn't have been so bad had I been to the dentist some time in the previous 5 years and had I not been 9 months pregnant (swollen gums - because EVERYTHING swells when you are pregnant - leads to copious bleeding).  Note: the dentist had to grudgingly admit that considering I was pregnant and hadn't had my teeth cleaned in 5 years... they looked fine and there were no cavities.  HA!

But the "piger" vs. "peer" error just highlights yet again the problem I have with Danish.  I just don't hear the difference between some words.  All those extra letters... and yet you don't pronounce half of the alphabet anyway and the other half ALL SOUND THE SAME!

On Wednesday in driver's ed I made a rather humorous mistake during the practice test.  I heard "should you turn on your headlights when there is a train?" And I answered "no" because, uh, duh.  But it didn't stick out as a completely stupid question because some of the questions on the practice test ARE incredibly stupid - "you see a girl on a bike in your lane, what should you do?  Should you speed up?  Should you pass her when it is safe to do so?  Should you slow down and follow her?"  Dude, you should TOTALLY slow down and follow her home and then honk and shout "hey baby, what's your star sign!!"  Wait, that wasn't an option?  Damn.

Anyway, the question was ACTUALLY "should you turn on your headlights when there is fog?" The answer, in case you were wondering, is YES!

Word for "train" = tog (pronounced toe)
Word for "fog" = tåge (pronounced toeh)

So the conversation during the answer part of the test went like this:
Drivers Ed Teacher: (in danish) Don't you turn on your lights when there's fog?
AG: (in danglish) No, of course not, that would be dumb.
DET: ???
DB: pssst...(in english)  Fog... we're talking about FOG!
AG: (in english) FOG?!? Oh, I thought the test said "Train"!
Class laughs, DB face/palms, I feel slightly vindicated because you do NOT turn on your headlights when you see a train, so really I was correct.  I WIN Y'ALL!
AG: (in english, under her breath to the DB) Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that - I haven't learned the word for fog yet!

At least this error made some form of sense.  A few weeks ago I missed a question (thank GOD this one occurred at home) because I heard "bamse" which means "teddy bear" instead of "bramser" which means "brakes."  Honestly, had I thought about it for a minute I'm sure I could have figured that out, because in a residential area "should you be prepared to use your teddy bear" really doesn't have ANY place in a driving test.  A test for pedophiles yes, but not for drivers.

Then again, this is DENMARK, it's all foreign and stuff.  Maybe that's just how they roll.  I mean, they think applesauce is a dessert, for crying out loud.  Eight YEARS and suddenly that stupid applesauce dessert people have been forcing on me makes sense now.  You put applesauce in a bowl, sprinkle toasted oatmeal on top and then squirt some whipped cream on top of that and then serve it to the American and call it "apple cake" and then wonder why she looks confused and then confusedly ask her "don't you eat apples in America?"  Seriously, maybe this is a country where you need to be prepared to use your teddy bear when you drive through a residential area.  Danish children tend to be suicidal maniacs running about in the street, perhaps rolling down your window and throwing a teddy bear in their general direction would distract them and you could drive away at faster than 5 mph.  And, by the way, OF COURSE WE EAT APPLES YOU IDIOTS!  WE DON'T SAY "AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE" FOR NOTHING!!!  But we eat applesauce with lunch or dinner.  As a side dish.  Yeah, crazy.  Like a fox.

Slowly I've learned that all the good food in Denmark is considered a dessert and you can only eat it after dinner.  Pancakes, æbleskiver, applesauce, pastries (like the ones Americans call "danishes"), and anything with fruit in it (other than yogurt, but only if the yogurt comes with the fruit already in it, if you add fruit, you may be making a dessert).  I often see Danes eating oranges as a dessert and to me, that's just balmy.  But then I've seen Danes eat potato chips (crisps to the Brits) as a side dish at dinner, along side a fine piece of roasted pork loin.  Yes, potato chips/crisps counted as the "vegetable" - not that all Danes see the point of having a vegetable with a meal.  Sometimes it's like the bloody Atkins diet around here.

So I've learned not to question the ways of the natives (the answer is always "but that's how we do it in Denmark" so really, why bother asking any more) which makes figuring out the driving laws sometimes a bit more complicated.  Especially when you hear either "garble garble garble garble" or you know, the wrong damn word that just happens to sound EXACTLY the same as another word.

At any rate, I'm going to make sure that I have my headlights on at all times, just in case of trains or fog (and the numbers two and twelve which ALSO happen to sound the same as "train") AND I'm going to start carrying spare teddy bears because YOU CAN'T BE TOO CAREFUL in residential areas.

Party like it's... wait, what year is it again??

The theme song for this post is brought to you by Jimi Hendrix.



So I'm taking driver's ed (because 16 years of exceptional driving experience in a variety of weather, countries, and vehicles and a spotless record means NOTHING to Denmark) and trying to memorize foreign vocabulary and listening to Nirvana Unplugged.

Suddenly it's like 1994 around here.

Except I do not remember being nine months pregnant in high school.  In fact, I think I weighed about half of what I currently weigh.  And rocked green corduroy pants, orange flannel and t-shirts with such witty sayings as "Cat Wants In/Cat Wants Out" with associated cartoon.  I suppose I could still wear such things and claim I was being "ironic" and then get shot for being a hipster.  Worse things could happen.  I could be trying to wear leggings and over-sized sweaters with large belts...

Only I'm struggling with the NemID nonsense (hey, got the DB at home for a few hours, best try to make use of his expansive Danish vocabulary while I can) and the circle of ridiculousness is right out of 1984.

I feel like I should be dancing the Time Warp... but that takes me back to 1975 and I wasn't actually BORN then. (If you are confused about this "Time Warp" thing, click on the link.  Not that you'll understand better afterwards, because The Rocky Horror Picture Show never did make any sense, but hey Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick [you may remember him as the Mayor in "Spin City" - oh yeah, THAT GUY] and Tim Curry in women's underwear!)

And I swear I keep letting the cat IN but not OUT, leading me to ponder the existence of some spacial-temporal anomaly which is magically letting the cat out and sucking digital signatures out of my computer (or wherever digital signatures are kept - I suspect in Pia Kjærsgaard's underwear drawer) faster than the Borgerservice can type them in.

Oh for the good old days, when you immigrated by showing up in some port, being checked for lice and TB and then released to the hounds.  Or even better, when you showed up in some port and stuck swords and axes into the natives until they paid you to stick swords and axes into someone else, usually their neighbor.  Remind me to change my ring tone to "Flight of the Valkyries" and to pick up a horned helmet from the museum gift shop before I take my driver's test.

Hvad skal du særlig opmærksom til, bitches?

(What should you pay particular attention to, oh driver's education student?)

I know I haven't been writing very often...

But Danish really rots the brain.

That and I'm expending considerable amounts of rant time on the Coat Factory Cultural Center with Associated Prayer Space.  Yeah, it's not as catchy as "Ground Zero Mosque" but has the bonus of being ACCURATE!

But I do have to mention one of my dear Danish classmates.  She's a sweet and loving person who is probably the least educated individual I've ever met.  She's really open to learning new things, but sometimes the mind is just baffled by what she doesn't know.

Things like: there are more than 40 spoken languages in the world.  Or that Chicago is in the US, but Canada is another whole country north of the US.  See Canada, no one believes you are another country.  Just give in and become our 51st state, okay?

She discovered Google Translate the other day and was so excited.  She just had to tell us all about it.  I was bemused.  But then one of my other classmates had also never heard of it before, so it was a good thing that I know how to use the Google and I could get the address for them.  And thus I learned several things that day in Danish class, like "the internet is not nearly universal as we'd like to think" and "Google has got to step up it's advertising."

She's also a big fan of the US.  Some of her family lives in Florida and some in Illinois.  Today she proudly told me that all Latinos love America.  My Danish teacher asked if this included Cuba and Venezuela.  Okay, okay, she says, but other than Cuba and Venezuela, everyone else loves America.  She has the most adorable innocent view of my homeland.  A very "An American Tail" kind of view.  Any second during class I half expect her to launch into "there are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese!"  What, does no one else remember that movie??  Sigh.  Y'all missin' out, y'hear.

Anyway, I hate to burst her bubble, because it's just nice to meet someone who actually likes my country and how, exactly, am I supposed to explain that we're a country of assholes and dicks?  It would be like kicking a puppy!

She really makes Danish class worth going to.  You never know what she's learned or what she wants to know about or what pronouncement she has regarding something she's been thinking about (like the "everyone loves the US").  Today's question - if you are a lawyer in the US, can you practice law in DK? She was very surprised to hear the answer is no.

Alas, she's about to stop Danish class.  She's 8 1/2 months pregnant.  Yeah, girlfriend is about to pop, she's HUGE!  I'm not sure when she'll be back and I will certainly miss her antics.  My husband wonders what I'll have to talk about now at dinner.  The other students in class are certainly going to have to step it up a bit.  Although today I did learn a bit about the international opium trade.  This will have to be investigated further.

On a completely unrelated note, I'll end with a funny.

Summer finally makes an appearance

I have got to buy an outdoor thermometer, because this is silly.

*This* being the state of affairs where I am wearing shorts, but then I see on the interwebs that it's something like 27 C which is something like 80 F and that's all well and good except that at NO time in my life have I ever thought that 80 F was shorts weather.  Therefore, it must not be 80, it must be slightly warmer.

Notice I keep saying "warm"?  That's because I may be wearing shorts, but it sure as hell isn't hot.  Yesterday might have pushed "hot" but only because I was wearing too many clothes.  Once I changed into shorts then it was perfect.

If I have somehow accidently acclimated to Danish weather, someone kidnap me and mail me somewhere really hot.  And deserty.  And full of antiquities.  Or at least pool boys and Mai Tais.

But I do believe that I can now say with certainty that summer has finally arrived in Denmark.

It will probably only last a week.

Typically, the grill isn't here, it's in Århus.   We tried using a disposable grill we had lying around.  Did you know they go bad?  Two years in a box in a dank basement and you just can't get the charcoal to burn.

Okay, the dank bit probably didn't help either.

In other news, because it's summer, my Danish class will hold a summer party... only we can't call it a party because we have Jehovah's Witnesses and they don't party.  So it's a sommerhygge.

Totally off-topic spat of hilarity - the link above leads to a wikipedia entry where it describes Jehovah's Witnesses as being "a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination" and I was, like, "wait, I don't remember there being anything about hats!" And then I caught my mistake.  But that led me to thinking, "wait that's a brilliant idea - hats!  If JW's start wearing hats, I can tell them apart from Mormons!" 


So a sommerhygge... we'll all be bringing some food from our homelands.  There will be dishes from the Philippines, Germany, Honduras, and Burma.  And of course, the US.  


This is where I had quite the pickle.  Because I wanted to make something that:  

1. was American but did not conform to the fat-American stereotypes - i.e. nothing fried or meaty or full of fat or loaded with sugar
2. was good to eat at 10 in the morning - i.e. nothing really heavy
3. was something people would want to eat
4. could use local produce (y'all might be shocked, but the cornerstone of Californian cuisine is that it is made of local, in-season produce so there *pbth*)
5. all of the ingredients could be purchased at Netto (cheap chain of grocery stores), because that's what I've got (if you'd like me to cook with specialty cheeses or meats, you'll have to bring them with you)
6. and something you probably will not get anywhere outside of the states

The first thing I pondered was apple pie.  Because the saying does go "as American as apple pie" and you can cut the sugar WAY back and go more savory - but apple pies are rather large and more of an autumnal dish than summer.  Then there was some free association...


apple pie - too sweet - maybe savory - or even tart - ooh good pun - tart - apple tart - fruit tart - berry tart - strawberry tart!! - strawberry shortcake...


Wait... strawberry shortcake.  


Now obviously Strawberry Shortcake may be heavy on the fat and sugar if you let it.  But it fulfills the other requirements (even though shortcake is basically the same as a scone and strawberries are found everywhere, the earliest Strawberry Shortcake recipe is found in an American cookbook and it tends to be more of an American dessert) and I can adjust the sugar levels very easily to make sure it doesn't get out of hand.  Best of all, it's now Strawberry season here in Denmark and you are required by law to eat your weight in strawberries and the only way Danes eat strawberries is with cream and sugar.  In a bowl.


It's alright, but dude, there are so many other things you can do with strawberries.


I hear they are good with balsamic vinegar.


Anyway, does not Strawberry Shortcake sound like The Summer Dessert or what?  The husband thought so and is now requesting I make a trial run tonight to see if it works.  Well, if you are going to force me to make and eat desserts...


I'll let you know how it turns out.

It's midnight on a school night and I am still up...

WHY AM I STILL UP??

This is the question I ask myself quite often on weekends.

Especially on Sundays, when I *know* I have to get up at some point on Monday.  In this case, I am due to get up in 7 hours so that I can have my coffee before staggering off to Danish class.

The rest of Denmark has vacation now and I am not for another two weeks.

Well, it seems like all of Denmark is on vacation, I'm sure plenty of you are reading this at work RIGHT NOW!  Haha!  You cheeky sods!

Germany is also having vacation as we speak.

This I know because I seem to have gone to sleep last weekend in Denmark and woke up in Germany.  It looks the same around here, but for the last week no one is speaking a language that I can communicate in other than order beer and ask for toilets.  Even my Danish teacher was getting confused and sometimes spoke to me in German.  Then my brain does this little jig in my head as it frantically looks for the proper vocabulary in the Danish file, then swaps to Languages-Currently-Not-In-Use and whips something out.  It is guaranteed to be wrong.

C'est la vie, non?

Staying up late on school nights is certainly not going to help my fragile language abilities.

But is nice about staying up late in Denmark during the summer, regardless of what language you may encounter the next afternoon morning, is that you can appreciate the sunrise at a respectable hour.  Like 3 AM.  And then go to bed and still get some fairly good hours of sleep.  Provided you are like me, part vampire, and sleep happily through the day.  And provided you don't have Danish at 8 AM.

It's the only time of the year I can pretend to be a morning person.

Just look at that sunrise!  How lovely.

Morning people love to talk about the sunrise.  About how it heralds a new day all fresh with no mistakes in it.  I'd like to point out that I always start my day without any mistakes in it... only I start later in the day to minimize the number of mistakes that can occur before the end of the day.  Forward thinking, that's me.  I also like my days like my wines and cheeses, slightly aged and mature.

But I do like sunrises.

Which would leave me with a problem if it wasn't for Danish summers.

This is that post...

I've been waiting and waiting to use this image (unless I've used it already, but I'm not going to go back through all my posts, no sir-ee-bob) and this is that post.

From Pictures for sad children.  I'm pretty sure John Campbell isn't Danish, or married to a Dane, or have had any reason to sit through a Danish party, and yet he really nails the experience.

This post may be a bit touchy, so I'm putting a break in it - continue reading after the jump.

My guardian angel!

I have the worlds best caseworker! And she's not even *my* caseworker. My caseworker is on vacation and the one who is supposed to be handling my case is... well, I'm not really sure, actually. But her office mate is the woman I talked to yesterday. This office mate is an angel.

This morning she called the Udlændingeservice on my behalf to find out what I needed to do before I left. She then passed along the information to me as well as the questions I should ask, so when I called the Udlændingeservice I could use those

magic key words "reentry visa" to get through to a person who could help me in my quest. I ended up talking to several people, one about the reentry visa, good only for 90 days, so it is imperative that I come back to Denmark in December and pick up my visa (because that will not be ready for pick up until half way through November IF I'M LUCKY) and one to tell me that, yes, I really can get a reentry visa while I wait in the office (open M-F 9-12, Thurs 12-1700) and that if worst comes to worst, I can come to Copenhagen and they'll do it for me, but that the Århus office should do it and if they don't they're prats.

Yes, I've already arranged with a friend that if I must run off to Copenhagen I have somewhere to crash.

Of course I'll run all this by the Århus office again tomorrow when I go, because the more people I can get to know where I am and what I'm doing, the more likely that information I need to be a good little immigrant will actually get passed along. 'Cause it's not like they tell you these things voluntarily. You need to know what to ask. They assume that now that you've got your coveted visa you will never again wish to step foot outside of Denmark. Silly silly me for wanting to work. I'm really hoping that because I'm working through a Danish university, it'll give me a leg up on the 'wow what a good immigrant ladder' even though I am doing it outside of Denmark.

I do feel like screaming to several people though. The next person who says to me "why didn't you ask" is going to get it in the teeth. If you don't know that you need to ask a question about something you didn't know about HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO ASK IT? And I did ask UdServ if there was something I needed and they just told me to wait for my visa and that they couldn't discuss my case on the phone. It was only after my guardian angel told me what questions to ask and about this reentry visa that I even knew I had a problem. All I got from the UdServ

was a letter saying I could stay and that was only because I'd ASKED for SOMETHING to prove I was here legally in case I needed to prove I belonged here. Did they say, Oh, and a reentry visa is a good idea in case you leave? NO!

If I get my reentry visa tomorrow, I am going to send my voluntary caseworking angel a bouquet of flowers.

Meanwhile I am DRIPPING in sweat, because there is NOTHING like RUNNING down to an office only to find that it's closed to make one damp and wilted.

I shall put this smell to good use and clean the kitchen. Then at least I'll have something physical to

show for my aerobic exertions. I mean, hey, if you are going to sweat through your clothes, you might as well do all the sweaty things you need to do at once.

I think I'll skip the library trip though. It's a large building, but I'm very very rank at the moment and all my clean clothes are currently in the wash.

Be grateful that the internet doesn't have smell-o-vision. That's all I'm saying!

Oh, and my international drivers license is this little cardboard booklet! I feel robbed! It's like the old Danish drivers licenses. Seriously, this is going to let me drive abroad? I have my doubts, but I'm going to present it will all the confidence of an idiot and hope that they buy my assertions that "no, really, this says I can drive here.... in like 5 languages including Japanese! I know it doe

sn't have Arabic... how about Swedish? Does this look like the face of a liar?"

I've got to practice my poker face.

Acutally, first I have to FIND my poker face.

o.O

No.

:-}

No.

Definitely not.

Hmmmm, nope, looks like I never had a poker face. Can anyone suggest where I can buy one cheap?

Success!

It turns out the letter was only referring to my participation in August not SINCE August as I had thought. Well, they did send the letter in Danish and HELLO I'm not graduated yet, I can't read your letter!!

But I talked to a VERY nice caseworker who made all kinds of notes for my file and then I got an email follow up from her because she'd checked my file and saw that my visa was expired and wanted to know if I'd gotten the paperwork back and that if I was thinking that I might not get it in time, I should get a special notation in my passport. I have since responded and said, well, I did renew my visa, but it hasn't come through yet - how do I get this stamp just in case I don't get my visa in time? I'm thinking that she might be a helpful caseworker! Praise god and pass the ketchup! Her English was phenomenal and she read my file! She READ my FILE! And then contacted me to make sure I hadn't gone and forgotten something HUGE!

I'm very excited.

Meanwhile, I may have just gotten my international drivers license. Well, I missed the FedEx guy, but he'll be back tomorrow and I've posted the note saying he can just leave it in the mailbox if I'm not home. Or peeing. But I didn't add that to the note. He might wig out and not let me have my proof of my mad driving skills. It will of course be in my maiden name because the department of motor vehicles will not change my name unless I walk into the office with a marriage certificate and/or a new social security card. I haven't gotten the new SSC or been anywhere NEAR a department of motor vehicles so instead I'm going to photocopy the document I got from the Danish Ministry of People Who Change Their Names, who brilliantly provided me with a document in English saying, "yes, you short sighted bureaucrat, she did bloody change her name now let her go about her life with some form of dignity." Because I'm running around with half of my official documents with one name and half with the other.

It's like having a secret identity. Or schizophrenia.

And I spend a lot of time explaining myselves to people. Yes: Myselves. Don't argue with me, I may be a dangerous schizophrenic, you never know.

Despite all the madness, I've had a good couple of days. I mean, I've had a cold, but I managed to work around it.

I worked a volunteer bar shift at a club/party Friday night, resulting in good times and a sexy voice (hoarse, very hoarse). You'd think it'd be dreadful to have to interact with drunk Danes, but really, it was pretty good. Think of it as another phase of projekt dejlig: interacting with Danes on their own turf, i.e. any place of inebriation. I managed fairly well in Danish and when it no longer worked and I apologized, in English, for not understanding or being unable to remember the number 80, most gasped and said "Oh my god, I didn't know you didn't speak Danish! I'm so sorry!" and then proceeded to repeat their request in English with good humor. It also helps that pick-up lines for foreign women by Danish men are very simple: "Where are you from?... WOW! What brought you here?" And are easily, gently, shot down by responding, "America... I married a Dane" and flashing the ring. I got my hand kissed several times. Even the guys who were trying to get me to discount their drinks finally gave in before my dazzling charming non-danish self.

Then today I worked out my little Danish problem, photocopied oodles of things that I needed for my research (although I just got an email saying now I have a print ready up at the library and I'm thinking: why didn't this happen EARLIER today?), returned books and, this was BEFORE NOON mind you, made my way towards the bus stop - this afternoon I went out of Århus to meet up with another blogger and her deliciously madcap children for some coffee and fresh air.

We both got a lot of it (FRESH AIR you Weirdos!), so if the blogosphere suddenly falls silent, it's because we both caught pneumonia and died.

(BTW: I've been drinking these vitamin C dissolvable tablets in water and they are AWESOME! You can't OD on vitamin C, right? 'Cause they're really tasty. I may have a slight addiction. Can you even be addicted to Vit C dissolvable tablets? God I hope not. Right, so I may die either from too much fresh air or possibly a slight over indulgence in vitamin C. You may take up to a year to morn my passing. Wear purple and sing dirges while you sweep. Yes, I meant to say sweep. 'Can't very well sing dirges while you sleep, now can you? And if you sing and weep at the same time, it'll sound all hiccupy and awful. I'm tone-deaf, but not deaf-deaf.)

Tilting with Windmills...

I swear Don Quixote had better success than I'm having at the moment.

Here's a question for you all - how many caseworkers can one foreigner have? Answer: I don't know, they keep popping out of the woodwork!!

The story so far: I needed to take time off of Danish, but I know I can't just stop coming, because it's part of my contract with the Danish government. So I first talk to my teacher, who sends me to Lisbet. Lisbet officially enters that I'm taking time off. She then tells me to contact my caseworker. Fine, dandy, I have a letter from my caseworker, Pia, so I have a name. I contact Pia, who tells me to contact Maja. Meanwhile I get another letter saying that my caseworker JULIE is on vacation and so Jane is now contacting me wanting to tell me that I am seriously endangering my chances of staying in Denmark because I've missed so much Danish.

Here's the REALLY funny thing - Lisbet, Pia, Maja, Julie, and Jane all have offices IN THE SAME BUILDING ON THE SAME FLOOR. Right next to each other and probably share offices in some cases.

Not that they ever see each other, because as far as I can tell, Pia's only in the office on Wed. from 3-5, Lisbet is only in the office from 8-12 m-f, Julie is on vacation and Maja may not exist, since I can't find her email anywhere.

Finding someone's email or any information about anyone is practically impossible because all letters to me and all information on the website is IN DANISH. This is the kommune's foreign resident department. The ENTIRE purpose of this department is to help integrate foreigners. Who can't bloody well use the damn department because they can't freakin' understand what's going on and who can't read the letters that are sent and who can't figure out what they're supposed to do about it because the web-site is in DANISH! Hell, my first caseworker barely spoke English. I was lucky to have my husband there to translate. Now he's not here, and while my reading Danish is considerably better, I still can't figure out what the hell's going on or who I'm supposed to see because I'm getting passed from caseworker to caseworker like a hot potato.

I'm leaving the country in less than a month and I can't guarantee everything is okay because I keep getting the run around!! And I'm sick of talking to people on the phone or in corridors because then I have no paper trail. I really need a paper trail at this point. I do not have a work contract or a visa for Qatar, I still haven't gotten my visa renewal from Denmark, and I have no proof that I've gotten permission from Danish school that I've taken time off, even though I was told I would get it.

Monday was supposed to be my fun free day... and perhaps it still will be, but I'm going to have to get up early to go over to the offices of evil and stomp around until I can get people to print out things that I can take to other people and MAYBE show that really, I have taken time off Danish and it's been PAUSED!

Jesus f*cking Christ on a g*dd*mned candlestick.

Free!... Okay "free-er"...

So today I arranged to take time off from Danish. I've even contacted my case worker to see if I can extend my 3 years of free Danish for 5 months (since that's the amount of time I'll be out of the country - I'm just going to have to suck up the loss of this month since I don't really have that good of an excuse for missing). I can now reset my alarm for 8 am instead of 6:45.

Now I just have to get myself up and out of bed and off to "work."

But I also get to stay up late working because I don't have to get up early if I stay up late working. Does that make sense?

Example: I have had to stop working at 7 or 8 so that I have time to eat, so I have time to do homework, talk to the husband via skype and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

This means that even if I'm in the middle of a thought or an article, I've had to put it down and walk away. I hate that. If I'm having an intellectual moment DO NOT BREAK MY CONCENTRATION!!

Interrupted thoughts at the computer lead to sleeplessness. But I couldn't get up and work because I needed to get up early for Danish! Vicious cycle at play there.

I think I'll scan my Danish study books into my computer, though. Just in case I get bored in Qatar.

My own projekt dejlig

Projekt Dejlig was started by another expat living and working in Denmark. It pretty much focuses on doing things to make the time you are here happier and better than it currently is.

There are no rules for projekt dejlig, because things that make you happy vary from person to person.

So anyway, I was reading through the blogs as I do, now that I've run out of images to sort and organize and I really need to get my butt up the hill to the library but once again today is NOT that day, and I saw on Moving at the Speed of Life some pictures of the Minnesota State Fair. And can I tell you what sort of homesickness that caused? Wait, why am I asking, it's MY FREAKIN' BLOG!

***CORRECTION: Not "Moving at the Speed of Life" but Melissa Barrett, seeing at Jacki lives in VIRGINIA! How embarrassing! Thanks Jacki for pointing out that I am completely insane!***

Okay, I don't come from MN, though I have relatives that live there. But really, American state fairs and many county fairs are really similar. Take the arts and crafts barn/building/tent. You will find some really nice stuff and some stuff where you think to yourself "An Obama portrait made of BEANS?? I hope they've hospitalized this poor woman and the neighbor is feeding her cats, 'cause WHOA!" And I'm looking at these pictures and, since I'm a very imaginative person, I completely lose myself in the memory of county fairs and summer in California and I can TASTE the ice cream and FEEL the hot nights when you pray for a breeze and I can even HEAR the dogs barking at the cats. (Wait, that's the neighbor downstairs walking the pomeranians.) And this wave of homesickness washed over me. It's also a wave of nostalgia, because now if I went to the county fair I'd be worried I'd run into my ex and his family, since at least one cousin will be entering a cow or a pig and so spend my time ducking around corners, not sitting on benches, kicking my heels in the dust and wondering if I should spend my last tickets on the ferris wheel or the graviton.

Feeling rather maudlin, I wandered next to the blog of the original inventor of Projekt Dejlig and realized that, yes, Virginia, it really is September and that means Fall and then the march to Christmas! And this is one of my favorite times of the year, because APPLES and CHRISTMAS! Every year I have great goals to really whip out a fantastic Christmas (last year's dinner for two rocked, but was slightly marred by the fact that we still had two of the former horrible tenants living with us and the house was a wreck and my Dane was driving the taxi that night and we'd not gotten each other presents because we really couldn't afford it and I couldn't go home and visit my family) and there's always something to sort of keep it from happening. Like a dissertation. Or work. Or Christmas suddenly sneaking up on me. I am LOUSY at sending out cards and I am ALWAYS putting off shopping until the last minute (even though I do love to buy people presents, I just never get around to it).

So my projekt dejlig for the moment is to have a hygge fall. Not necessarily a Danish hygge fall, but my own Americana version of it. Apple pie, apple cakes, applesauce. Big bulky scarves. Weird rain boots. (I need to get a pair of weird rain boots, but that's all part of the projekt.) Wool hats and mittens. If I do not suddenly hear that I'm going to Qatar for a dig, I will invite everyone to a Thanksgiving meal, American style with SWEET POTATOES WITH MARSHMALLOWS and an oversized turkey to feed twenty. The Christmas season will then commence and I am going to celebrate the hell out of it. Christmas music until I'm sick. Eggnog until I get e. coli or whatever is in raw egg. Mulled wine!! And I'm going to wear a Santa hat at inappropriate locations. (Adds to list: buy santa hat.)

In other news:

As you can see, this is my progress. Despite my best attempts, it has decided that it is 10 stitches across, not eight. I try to narrow it back down and then the next row, there they are: 10 stitches! Since it gets lumpy every time I try to fix it and since it seems intent on being 10 no matter what, I've decided to give in to it's wants. I've also decided it is NOT a bookmark, it is a scarf for my penguin. It'll match her little hat that's stitched onto her head. And since this is the nicer wool, it will feel soft when we cuddle (whut? why are you looking at me funny?).

And now I'm off to read Calvin and Hobbs in Danish to a friend. I sorta missed Danish class today as I was rocking out to the 90's until late last night and it hurt so bad this morning! I think I'm getting old.