Monday, November 26, 2007

10 days left!

That's right folks, I will be on a plane on my way home in 10 days! It's kind of a bittersweet thing; I think I will be ready to go home though. =) Here's the update of the last few days and such.

Last Wednesday:
Mom moved her stuff over here from the hotel in the morning, but I was reeeeally not feeling well at all so I was pretty much crashed on the couch until 1pm-ish. I finally dragged myself up and we headed off to lunch. We got to the O'Leary's at about 2pm and both had the Larry Bird club sandwiches (BLTs basically), which were really good. I also got my french fries!! YAY! They also had a ton of Boston sports memorabilia, which was really cool.


Red Sox wall




Celtics wall



Then we headed off to Tivoli across the street! We walked around there for about 4 hours and bought tons of things, so much that we couldn't go on any rides because we had too many bags. =) My mom also took a picture of a couple at a booth dressed in full Viking gear, which lead to us chatting with them for at least an hour as well as buying a bunch of stuff. I now have 3 beautiful (handmade in Sweden) glass bead necklaces! The couple, Jacob and Hanna, told us a ton of cool stuff about the Vikings and a little bit about Sweden. It was really neat!


We finally tired out around 7pm and headed home for dinner.



Thursday/Thanksgiving!
I headed off to school and mom stayed home at the apartment, where she proceeded to vacuum, do the dishes, and wash most of my laundry! (Thanks Mom!!!) =) My day was very long and frustrating, mostly due to some issues I've been having with my teacher there. On top of that I also fell down about 5 stairs at lunch and bruised my leg, shoulder, and arm up from catching myself on the banister. However, things got better from there!

Mom showed up at school around 3pm, spent a few moments chatting with Carolyn and Mairead and then we took off. I'd had an issue with my phone in the morning so we walked to the prepaid phone shop (turned out that I'd just been randomly outside of the service range) and she lovingly put up with my ranting for about 30 minutes. =) We then went on to Bettina & Jan's house around 4pm, where she got to meet the whole family except Victor. They were very sweet and Bettina made several yummy baked things. We stayed there until a little after 6pm to go to the Hard Rock Cafe and Bettina insisted that I come over for dinner sometime this week. Not sure when that'll be, but it'll be nice to have dinner with them again before I leave.

me, mom, Bettina, Amalie



We got to the Hard Rock Cafe at about 6:50ish and went into the back room with a bunch of other Americans. It was way funny to be in there and listen to everybody talking about the difficulties they've had around here and stuff. A few minutes after the food came out, our waiter Lucas came around to the tables and said that he had bad news....there was some sort of problem at Tivoli (which is right next door) and the electricity was going to be shut off in 20 minutes! But our meals were free!! We quickly ate the not-so-great food and cleared out, saving $80.

(Mom's plate, obviously. My food didn't touch on mine!!)


On our way back to the station we walked past Tivoli and noticed people were still going inside, so we asked the security guard. He told us that it was just a problem at the front gate and that we could go in for free "as his guests." That saved us about $38! At that point we figured that we didn't want to press our luck too much, so just went on the rides that were closer to the ground instead of the giant swings ride that I had wanted to go on. We went on the smaller swings and the ferris wheel and had a lot of fun. =)






Friday:
Like I already posted, that was the day mom left to go home & I was left alone here. It was a really bad afternoon/evening emotionally though. I'm actually starting to look forward to being home in a few weeks, just for the comfort of being in my own country again. It's so uncomfortable to be in a foreign country and trying to do everything by myself. Like I told my mom, it's exhausting trying to blend in and pretend to know what I'm doing!! It's also not nearly as much fun to be a tourist on my own. I'm also REALLY sick of the few tv stations that I can watch in English and nothing being open past 7-8pm at night!!!


Weekend:
I perked up some over the weekend though. I just relaxed for almost all of it and it was GREAT! I'm finally just about healthy again and rested up. =) Saturday was beautiful and I ventured out wandering for a little bit, but yesterday was very cold and rainy.

The end of my street




Today:
School was surprisingly better today. Carolyn and I chatted a bit about some things and hopefully things will also get better after the open house on Wednesday afternoon. The kids are rushing to complete their imaginary city brochures by then, which makes things veeerrrry stressful lately.

I was also somewhat efficient today and got a lot of things done, including a bulletin board that I've been trying to get together for a few days. Yay! The kids are also making a lot of progress on their brochures and I'm much more confident that they'll all be done in time. =)

It was really really cold today though. It was snowing like crazy this morning and randomly on and off all day. They don't often get snow here so the kids were really excited about it (and took foreverrrrr getting all of their snow gear on and off)!


Plans for this week:
  • Hopefully getting things done on my teaching portfolio, I have tons of pictures and other "evidence" but gotta start plugging everything in!
  • Getting Carolyn to sign off on my teaching hours that I've done here
  • Hanging out with Mairead and Faye next weekend and being tourists and having lots of fun!!! I'm way excited for this and determined to make it happen. =)
  • Cleaning/organizing the apartment because Casey & Marie come home next Monday!
  • Taking tons of pics at the Open House on Wed. for my portfolio, since I did a lot of full responsibility teaching during this project because I often had my own groups that I worked with every day.
  • Probably staying after school very late tomorrow to laminate all the brochures and finish getting the room ready for the Open House (which is actually during the schoolday, 2-3pm).
  • ENJOYING MY LAST FULL WEEK IN THE COUNTRY!!!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

on that last bullet: GOOD! you deserve! i know you've done a lot of hard work to get where you are today and have been continuing in that hard work while you've been there. grey skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face, etc!

love you!!!!!!!
smiley

Helene said...

I miss you .. I'm glad things are looking up. I know it will all work out. Look how far you have come! No one (well, except for me) really believed you'd get to Denmark and have the success you are. You are a strong, amazing, young woman and I am very, very proud of you and all you do.
Love you bunches,
Mom

Sue W said...

That's pretty awesome that you got so much stuff for free!!!! VERY COOL! :) Lucky ducks!
I'm glad you discussed the difficulties and how you feel about being over there, and how hard it is.. its good to know :)
So glad your weekend was good and you're feeling better! Miss you lots and can't wait to hear all about it!
~Susie