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!!!

All aloneeee

Took mom off to the airport a few hours ago after a crazy morning of cleaning and packing things up for her to take home for me. =) Then we went to a nearby bakery to buy some pastries to carry home and off to Amagerbro Station to catch the Metro (subway). I over-questioned my abilities to get on the right train, so we ended up going back and forth between a few stations until a nice woman showed us exactly which one and which way we had to be going. Oops! (And I'd been so proud of myself for getting to and from the airport to pick her up last week!)

So we got into the airport, checked her in, grabbed another nice woman to take our picture and she was off to home. =(






After leaving the airport, I went shopping and bought a cute basket to put Marie & Casey's mail in & a few presents for people. =) I also bought a few grocery things and hit the bakery on my way home to get a few pastries to last me the weekend. YAAAAY!


Although I just had to post that as of 1:35pm (mom's plane took off at 1:20pm), the sun came out for the first time in the last week!! Mom complained all week about how there wasn't any sun and it comes out just after she leaves. hehehehe. Oh well, we had a fantastic week anyways!!

Tivoli!!!!

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...

Yes, I'm still alive!!

...and in Denmark! =)

Things have just been really really busy lately. Teaching is still exhausting (for a wide variety of reasons I don't really want to go into here) and my mom arrived here on Saturday to visit for this week!! So we've done lots of exploring and wandering around the city and stuff; it's a good time!


Just finishing up making some dinner right now, but for those people who want to know what's happened in the last 2 days or so (ADAM).... you can check out my mom's blog about being here: www.heleneindenmark.blogspot.com


(I KNOW! My mom has a blog!!!! hahaha, I'm working on catching her up to the 21st century.)

I'll try and get more stuff up soon though! It's looking like it'll be another busy busy week! I have tonssss of pictures that I'll try to put up probably tomorrow afternoon/evening. =)


I'll leave you with the highlight of my entire day, a conversation with one of my students (J.)...

[J. slides off her seat and under the table to pick up an eraser]
ME: You looked like you were melting... are you the Wicked Witch of the West??!
J: YES!! I AM!!
ME: Do you know what I'm talking about?
J: Yes, I do!! [giggles]
ME: Okay, so where is the Wicked Witch of the West from?
J: Norway!
ME: [laughing] Nooooo, you don't know what I'm talking about then.
J: YES, I DO!!
ME: Then where is she from?
J: America!
ME: [laughing even harder] No! It's from the Wizard of Oz.
J: I know!! I saw it in America first and then in Norway!

(She's from Norway.)
She cracks me up and is the sweetest little kid I've ever known. Can't I take her home with me? ;-)