| 12/25/06 HI ALL!! –hej alle sammen!-- ..."and so it is Christmas"… All I have to say is WOW! I have now been in Denmark for almost 5 months and the time is flying by. I am now with my second host family and really enjoying their company. We have just finished decorating the Christmas tree and making Christmas decorations. It is a very common tradition here to make all different kinds of decorations out of paper. I had been told that months ago, but I NEVER would have realized how amazing these decorations could turn out simply from paper. I’m getting to be pretty good, too, if I do say so myself. J (maybe I’ll write a step-by-step instruction book when I get home) School is going…well…as good as at could possibly be. During class is torture, because it’s the most boring thing I could ever do, but as soon as we have a break, I’m full of energy and wanting to try to speak with EVERYONE. I don’t understand enough Danish to be doing all my work yet, but I’m doing well enough to talk a bit with my classmates. At the moment, class is more about learning DANISH than learning anything else. One day last week we were working with the newspaper, which is of course in Danish. A boy in my class spent the entire class teaching me every word I didn’t know in the paper, instead of actually doing his own work. Also, every time we get a handout, I go through and highlight the words I don’t know. Then, either one of my classmates can explain, or I bring the paper to my language school. Twice a week I have language class for 2 and a half hours. This is very helpful because it’s been very hard for me to learn Danish on my own. Everyone seems to speak English here, and at the same time wants to BETTER their English. The exchange students from other, non-english speaking countries don’t find this difficult at all, but since my English is pretty decent ;) they all want to talk to me. I have just recently told my class that I ONLY want them to speak Danish to me from now on. When we come back from winter holiday, this will start… uhoh! Well, today was the last day of school before the holiday, so we had an assembly with the whole school in the …“together room”, is what it’s called literally… I’m in the music class so it was our job to entertain the assembly by singing and playing songs. My class pretty much volunteered me to sing a song, because…they’re just so kind. Haha. I got very lucky, though, with the fact that they sing a lot of songs in English!! PHEW. I think music is such a great way for me to express myself here, because it’s something the language and culture barely affects at all. Sunday night my host family and I are going to my host mother’s house and celebrating with her family. Then Christmas Day, we’re just relaxing at home. YAY! The day after, we’re visiting the other side of the family. Maybe that’s why they want a day of relaxing in between. We all know how stressful Christmas “vacation” can be. A very common Danish tradition is to dance around the Christmas tree. The tree is brought into the center of the living room, and the whole family stands around it holding hands. Basically, then you just walk around the tree singing Christmas carols. It gets a little tricky though in one of the songs when we switch which way we walk about 3 times. (All my poms training is really paying off!) I have been listening to Danish Christmas songs for the past month or so…So I think I’m ready to take on this challenge. Well, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Glædelig Jul, Aly (my name is officially not Alyssa anymore here, because no one can pronounce it, haha) VanLanen |
