Sick & busy

So, in addition to being so busy with everything these past few weeks I've also been fighting off some lovely germs that my kids have shared with me. I was just a little rundown from it, but it finally kicked my butt today with nasty headcold stuff.

I made it through the day barely, but I was definitely sitting on the floor beside the desks helping kids write their paragraphs for a project. It was quite funny though because my head was barely above the level of their desks and they really didn't know how to take that. =)

My mom came in to school today and met my students, teacher, etc. The kids were thrilled with the pencils (with eraser-ends!!) and some pencil-top erasers she brought for the other pencils that don't have the erasers on them (because they drive me INSANE). I wrote their initials on them with Sharpie, but I'm sure they'll still be lost before Friday. They were very cute today though and really tried very hard to do all the things we asked them to do. It was good.

Then mom & I went shopping for a little bit at Waterfront Shopping (a mall in Hellerup, near the family's house) and in downtown Hellerup, then back to her hotel to change into jeans and sneakers. YAY! We had originally planned to go to the Round Tower (google it, way cool!) and look at the sky from their observatory on top, but decided we were too tired and it's cloudy anyways so we wouldn't see much. Came back to the apartment, made dinner, washed dishes & laundry, and mom called some people and chatted with Skype....... which is pretty much the coolest program ever created! =)

She went home around 8:30pm and I've tried to catch up with some online stuff, but going to bed very very soon.

I'm taking tomorrow and Friday off from teaching to hang out with mom before she leaves, so we've got lots of stuff scheduled!!

Wednesday:

• Mom's checking out of her hotel and coming to stay at the apt. with me for the last few days she's here, saving several hundred dollars.
• She's getting here about 10am-ish, taking over my computer while I get ready (since I'm sure I won't be by then).
• Then, we're going to eat lunch at O'Leary's, the Boston-based sportsbar in the central train station. YAY BOSTON SPORTS! =)
• After lunch we're off to Tivoli: http://www.tivoli.dk/composite-4983.htm <----AWESOME!!!!
• Not sure what we're doing afterwards, probably just crashing. =)
• Christian (Marie's brother) is supposed to come by at some point to pick up his mail & Marie's extra key, but not sure exactly when. He seemed like such a nice guy on the phone tonight when I called him about the mail he got; he told me that I should definitely call him if I have any problems with the apartment or anything. Very nice of him!

Thursday:

• I'm teaching all day and not sure what mom's doing, but she's meeting me at school in the afternoon to go to Bettina & Jan's around 4pm.
• I called Bettina tonight to see when they'll be around and we decided that after-school Thursday is the only time/day that works before my mom leaves Friday @ noon-ish. She's going to bake a cake and make tea/coffee; I told her not to make a big fuss and she said it'd be easy because she's not even making us dinner or anything.
• The reason she's not making us dinner is because mom and I are going to Thanksgiving dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe @ 7pm! I'm way excited because not only am I getting a real Thanksgiving dinner (even though I'm out of the U.S.), it'll be my first time going to any HRC! WHEEEEEEE. I'm sure lots of pictures will be taken with the new camera my mom brought me to use for now, since my camera decided to die on Friday.
• Not sure what'll happen that night, maybe back into Tivoli for a little bit to get pictures of all the lights at night? I dunno.

Friday:

• Leaving from the apartment in late morning and mom flies out at about 1:20pm, I think?
• Then trying to figure out what I'm doing over the evening/weekend, maybe going to hang out with my new friend Faye. =)

Faye is a girl that I met last week at school when she was in substituting for the teacher nextdoor. She's 24 years old, from England, moved here for her boyfriend (who works with the elephants at the zoo!!), and has been in Denmark for only about 1.5-2 weeks more than I have! So we bonded about the craziness of living here, not speaking Danish, and substitute teaching. She's actually certified to teach high school science, so we have a lot in common!! She doesn't really know anybody besides her boyfriend & some casual friends from school, so hopefully we can meet up and have fun sometime before I leave; she's very nice and makes me laugh a lot.

Random:

• I don't think I've mentioned that I have been watching a lot of tv at the apartment, basically the Discovery Science channel and the Animal Planet channel. They only have about 30 channels and at least 3/4 of those are in Danish! I have managed to catch a couple of movies in English on TCM and some other channel, but my regular tv channels are generally restricted to DS, AP, CNN, VH1, and MTV. CNN and VH1 are pretty boring most of the time and MTV seems to be permanently stuck in the late 80's-early 90's (For example, a show consisting of Beavis and Butthead commenting about TLC songs). Soooo yeah, Discovery Science it is!
• I went to the Experimentarium in Hellerup on Sunday. It was an extremely awesome hands-on science museum!!! Mom and I spent several hours there and had a ton of fun. I also bought 2 plate-spinning sets! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_spinning Yes, exactly like the ones I used to use in gym class @ Mahar. I'm getting ready for my back-up plan of joining the circus! =)
• It's really annoying that they don't really have tissues in Denmark. I don't know what they use, but I haven't seen ANY around in stores or anything! Luckily, my classroom has about 40 little packs of tissues sitting on a shelf so I took a few to use until I feel better.
• I introduced mom to the famous Danish hotdogs........I think she's had like 5 in the past 4 days. =)
• My daddy got into an accident with his car today at home. He couldn't really explain it all (he has brain damage from an aneurysm) but something about him spinning around in the snow today and getting a flat tire, possibly dents too. So yeah, that's a little worrying! He doesn't usually drive in the snow at all but I guess it hadn't started when he left the house. He's okay though and supposedly some guy he knows is going to fix it for him?? I didn't quite get what he was telling us.
• My teacher is frustrating me quite a bit lately. I don't want to go into it here though. Just yeah, frustrating.

Anyways, I'm gonna head to bed now to get better. I was going to head to bed early, but figured I had to put an update up to keep everybody up-to-date (and for my memories later). Hope everything's well at home! Missing everybody...