Out with the old, in with the new...

Winter finally arrived last week. Monday (Jan. 22nd) we had a few inches of snow and nice brisk, cold weather. Something we haven't seen for a long while after living in Houston and having a warm Christmas holiday on the east coast last month. Saturday it snowed again, leaving another couple inches followed by a nice sunny and warm-ish day. I rode my bike to get a haircut in the morning, and discovered that what I heard was true. In every way, bikes take priority over cars. By 9AM the bike lanes had been plowed and the streets were still a mess. That made the intersections tricky because the cars dragged the snow across the bike crossing, but I survived. In the afternoon we took a long stroll down Østerbrogade to find a drill. Over the weekend we mounted some pictures on the wall (yes, we're still moving in) and took another long walk and otherwise relaxedasy since we're getting over yet another cold (not as bad as previous ones).

On the Danish language front, last Wednesday marked the last of our company-paid lessons. We miss our teacher, but she's been kind enough to keep in touch and we're planning to get together sometime next week. We found ourselves wondering what to do with our Monday and Wednesday evenings this week. Of course we should be studying, but we figured we'll take a week off before diving back into things.

Today we went to a language school to get signed up for a course that runs on Saturday mornings and uses computer programs to support homework during the week. We tested out at level three. I'm not quite sure what that means, because each program here has its own scale. In any case, the levels at this school go up to level six which is probably functional, but not fluent. If nothing else, we'll get to meet some other folks in our same situation.

In that vein, I went on Sunday to a meetup of an international residents of Copenhagen that get together monthly for "Vi Taler Dansk" meetings. The goal is to use what Danish we know and learn from each other in a non-threatening environment. The people were very nice and we'll enjoy doing more with them in the future. We played a Danish quiz game where we moved pieces around a board that was a map of Denmark with spaces at each of the major towns. We answered questions and had to visit four cities from all parts of the country. It was difficult to answer some of the obscure Danish trivia, but it was good practice and a nice chance to learn more about the land where we live.

So, between the meetups, our choir, the old lessons, the new language classes, and our few Danish friends, we should have lots of opportunities to practice. That's good, because we'll need it.