A Day on the West Coast

I was happy to have the opportunity to take a little trip to the West Coast a few weekends ago and now I'm putting up pictures.  It was the first time I've been able to walk at a slow pace and take my time with some pictures.  Here are the results.

I've discovered that it is very hard to find unique shots in Denmark.  There is an unwritten rule in Denmark that all houses must be either yellow, red, or white.  All roofs must be either brown, black, or red.  So every single house that you could possibly take a picture of has only 9 possibilities...

Here are a couple random shots from school.

Some of the students playing a game called rundbold.  It is the Danish equivalent of Baseball. 

Pancakes

Sunday mornings when I wake up, life on the farm has started.  The rest of my house wakes up around 7:00, has breakfast, and goes about their day.  I on the other hand have been conditioned over the past few years of college to stay in bed Sunday morning and many times not see morning at all...

But, since the commotion of the house often wakes me up earlier...I wind up hanging out in bed until around 10, until it gets uncomfortable.  By then I'm hungry.  The first couple of weeks I just had some oatmeal and called it a meal.  But then I thought to myself, "Why not make pancakes?"
Of course most pancakes I'm used to making from home involve the "just add water" technique. And still turn out pretty delicious. Seriously though, try Snoqualmie Falls Lodge pancake mix.

So I set out on a mission. I promised myself, by the time I left Denmark I'd have created the perfect from scratch pancake recipe.  It started with a casual internet search for the most basic recipe I could find, tweaking it based on what was in the fridge, and adding a few other fun things.  Kiwi yogurt adds an interesting flavor to pancakes. (Kiwi believe it or not)

I am pleased to announce that after three weeks I have done it!  Here a triumphant picture of last Sunday's breakfast.

Of course for scientific reasons and consistency I'll have to make them again this weekend to make sure it is indeed perfect.

More Than a Month..

Have you ever gotten so busy you put something off? I thought so.  I've been working away here in little Østervrå and have neglected to update my fan base on the goings on of Danish life.  Sorry about that.  But in reality there hasn't been too much fun stuff happening. Just work.  This job has definitely pushed me to really be creative and to think outside of the box when it comes to planning lessons.  I will never forget the shock of looking at that resource closet on my first day...it was bleak. But thanks to some generous people from home I received three boxes full of books and resources. And candy.

The pile o' goodies that came in the mail.

One of the big things we've done recently in school was a two week unit on Afghanistan.  I guess there is a museum in Denmark that works closely with UNESCO to provide information, supplies, and equipment for schools that want to learn about other cultures.  So one morning we received 7 large cases of Afghanistan stuff.  Everything from clothes and housewares to DVDs and giant binders full of information.  So for the next two weeks we organized school around what an Afghani school might be like.  So here are some photos from the time.

Every morning we gathered in our "Mosque" for a worship. The boys were in front and only they were allowed to answer or contribute during the worship. 

My outfit as the Imam of our Mosque. I only wore it once though.

Tea Time! According to the girls it's hard to drink something with something over your face...who knew?

After worship the boys and girls split up.  The boys learned about Afghani history and government.  The girls went into the kitchen and made a snack, followed by learning about the culture in a classroom.

Our Afghani time ended with a wedding play

A few weekends ago I was able to go visit the Danish side of the family that lives here in Denmark.  I haven't seen them since Christmas 2011 so it was really nice see them again.

We went for a walk on Sabbath afternoon to a place called Rebild Bakker.  Its a huge nature park here, that is actually dedicated to the Danish immigrants to America.  There is a big firework show there on July 4th!
We "hiked" (remember there are no big hills or mountains in Denmark) to a fresh water spring were I was able to find a clean place to taste the fresh water. It was actually really good, with a hint of lime.

Last weekend was eventful.  On Friday a man named David Gates was at the school to have a meeting with the teachers and a few members of the board and church.  This is the man who promised hundreds of thousands of dollars to the school last year.  And as the school hasn't received any money from him yet, some people were on the fence.  David is a man who used to work for the Adventist church but now travels the world helping various mission projects and spreading the Gospel.  He is definitely a faithful man.  He shared a few amazing stories about his faith and how God has rescued him and his friends from some dire circumstances.  One of these situations involved him being imprisoned for a few months without being able to communicate to anyone that he was alive.  He studied as a nurse before his evangelical work and his ability to save lives at the prison in turn saved his.  It was truly an incredibly story.

In his meetings he revealed that he himself has no money to give.  It all comes from him benefactors and sponsors around the world. But because of the politics behind the donations it takes some serious jockeying to move any funds.  He assured those at the meeting that as soon as he has money to give he will freely support the efforts of the school.  So after the meeting we drove home and because he had to be in Copenhagen by Friday night the daughter of the family I live with was going to drive him.  I rode with them and got dropped off by Vejlefjord so I could attend their yearly Galla, which is the equivalent of a Banquet.  It was fun to be back again see people I hadn't seen in a while and even meet some new ones.

Here are some pictures from Galla:

These are all of my guys rockin' the show!!!

Winter Break Journal

Tuesday 2/18
It's time for my first vacation of my year in Denmark.  I have no money, so guess where I went. Vejlefjordskolen.  I've realized I have a lot of "second homes," Walla Walla, Vejlefjord, and now Østervrå.  Anyway, I decided to come down here for a few days to see my Walla Walla friends and my little brother Mathias.  I think the kids here feel like I live here, which I'm ok with...I kinda do. Four out of five weekends I've been in Denmark, I've been at Vejlefjord.

I was happy this morning when I got a call from on of the teachers in charge of finding substitutes.  He said that one teacher had the flu and he needed someone for five hours of subbing, thats five hours I get paid for! So with less than an hour to prepare I came to the school building to figure out what I was going to teach to 5th graders for Bible and Danish, and to 8th graders for Danish.

I got through the day just fine, even though I was very nervous going into my first class.  But I was reassured of my career choice by the happy, laughing faces that I met.  They were excited to have an "English teacher" for Danish class.  All of the nervousness melted away the instant they started talking to me, asking my name, where I was from, why I was there...  On my way to my first class I prayed that I'd make it though the day with so little preparation, and He definitely answered my prayer.

That night I went up to the Bible Study in town.  It's the same family that hosted it when I was here two years ago so it was great to see them and they were thrilled at the surprise of me showing up at their door.  It was great to catch up with them over dinner and the meeting.  Then I went to a movie with the guys from my building 2 years ago, we have kept in contact over Facebook since I left and it was just like old times.  It really was great.

Wednesday 2/19
Today I had another 5 hours of teaching. A lot of Danish again, but some math as well.  It's amazing how much better I felt knowing the night before what I would be teaching so I could come prepared.

Thursday 2/20
What a day. I was supposed to take the 8am train to Aalborg to meet some friends and go paint balling.  Well traffic made me miss my train, and because I didn't know if I should take the next train and still make paint balling I waited around the station until after the next train left waiting to hear back from my friend in Aalborg. When we figured that I wouldn't make paint balling anyway I went back to Vejlefjord to sleep a little longer.  I did eventually take a train and arrived in Aalborg around 5 pm.  I knew which bus I had to take, but...this is a little embarrassing, it has been so long since I've taken a bus, I didn't think about getting on the bus going in a certain direction. I knew I had to get on bus number 14, so I did....going the opposite direction.  I didn't realize it until we hit the end of the line, but the bus just turned around.  So eventually I made it to my friends house for some much needed relaxation.

Overall my trip was fantastic and I'm so happy to have friends all over Denmark that I can meet up with on weekends and holidays.

Look! A Real Sign!

So believe it or not, until this point there has been too much snow for me to see this GIANT sign on the front of our building.  So I think I found a better cover picture.

That is all.

Around Town

I've had requests to post some pictures of where exactly I live.  

Please enjoy this tour of Østervra, some pictures courtesy of Google.

As you can see, pretty far north. 

The "A" is my school

My traditional Danish home.  A wrap-around farm-house style with a large courtyard.

The local pool the students swim at every week.

The outside of the Swim hall

The main street through town.

Local Park

The front of our little school.

I hope you have enjoyed this digital tour of Østervrå. Please feel free to tip your guide.

Updates

You may have noticed that the header picture has changed. Sadly it's not as great of a picture, but seeing as it was a picture of Vejlefjord and not the current trip to Denmark I decided to change it. This is the street on which my new school resides. Høngaardsvej, my new home.

Lets start with the most important things first: The Super Bowl. Everything that can be said has already been said by the 700,000 people in Seattle for the Seahawks welcome back parade, but I would like to summarize by saying: BOOM!
I was fortunate enough to be able to have Monday off of teaching so that I could travel down to VFS and watch the game with the other American Student Missionaries and some students.  Of course it was streamed live so it started at 12:30 on Monday morning and ended at 5:00.  In our midst their were only two rooting for the Broncos (and one was a pity fan).  It was an excellent time of bonding and probably one of the best Super Bowl parties I've attended.  I'm sure it has nothing to do with my team playing in it.  Although until about half-time I couldn't let go of the feeling that the refs might... have issues... like they did last time. But by the start of 3rd quarter I was able to put that fear behind me. Like 29-0 behind me.

Starting around 9:00 Melissa and I (she is one of the missionaries at VFS from Walla Walla) started making things for the game.  I made guacamole and deviled eggs while she made cookies and some amazing brownies.  And of course on Sunday afternoon we hit up the supermarket to load up on more than our fair share of processed junk food.  Here is a picture of our great Super Bowl party.

The guy in the blue T-shirt that looks depressed was our main Broncos fan

So at 5:00 we went our separate ways to sleep a bit and at 2:00 I woke up and drove back to Østervrå.

During the week classes went well.  Each day I'm getting more used to working with the resources I have and making the best of it.  Biology is the hardest to work with since I can't understand their textbook, so I have resorted to a project based curriculum for them.  It actually works out pretty well because they only have Biology once a week, just enough time to get a nice project finished.  If anyone reading this remembers a cool project they did in middle school or high school relating to Biology please feel free to describe it in a comment.

Then a wonderful present came in the mail on Thursday with all kinds of goodies to help supplement the schools resources.  My wonderful mother went to an education store in Bellevue and sent a huge variety of curriculum books and experiments, and phonics stuff.  Even a bag of Valentine's gummy candy. Priceless :)

This weekend has been very relaxing.  It is the first weekend I have been in Østervrå since I first arrived.  All other weekends worked out so that I was down at VFS.  Saturday night was the New Years Party (Nytårsfest), and no, I don't know why it was in February.  But many church members, community members and kids showed up to a great party.  The food was traditional Danish Smørebrød.  Or as it has been so endearingly translated Smorgasbord in English.  It literally means bread and butter, but it means so much more.  Traditionally you take a small, dense piece of rye bread, smear some butter on it, and I learned it has to be ALL the way out to the sides.  Then put pretty much whatever you want on top of it. Try: fruit salad, cheese, red pepper, pickles, various meats, veggie or otherwise; not all together of course, unless that sounds good to you.

Here are some examples.

Here are some other pictures from the party.