"Min nye ordbog" and Olympics in Denmark

One of our early sources of information on life in Denmark was Joel's Blog (link not working at this time). In one entry he expresses his satisfaction with his new dictionary, or ordbog (lit. "word book"). Since Anya arrived, our formal Danish lessons have stopped and we are supplementing with Danish programming and newspapers - alternately the tabloid Nyhedsavisen and the intellectual Weekendavisen (wiki). We are planning to subscribe to receive Politiken (wiki)1 or 2 times per week.

Anyway, I digress. Our new Danish dictionary contains a pronounciation guide - something we'd been lacking beyond the basic material in the small Berlitz dictionary. As we and other Danish students have learned, it's the pronounciation that trips us up. We can manage with the grammar, and our vocabulary is getting bigger (slowly), but without knowing how to pronouce these new words on the page they're not much use in conversation. To supplement in the pronounciation department, I've discovered a large number of Danish podcasts that will keep the melodious tones of the Danish tongue in my ear, should I choose to hear them...

Enough on Danish. We have enjoyed watching our first Olympics in Denmark. Being up with Anya in early morning hours has allowed us to see many events live (6 hour time difference from Beijing). The sports broadcast here are often not what we're used to seeing in the US. We got the normal offerings of track & field and swimming but also copious amounts of handball, badminton, ping pong (sorry, I just can't bring myself to call it table tennis), and sailing. There was some drama with the Danish sailing team in the 49er division (don't know what significance 49 holds). There are no "human interest" stories and events are covered start-to-finish (including the marathons, triathalon, long distance cycling, preliminary swimming and track heats, all of it). Much has been written about Danes having low expectations, so no medal is taken for granted and there is genuine joy in getting a bronze medal not to speak of gold. As of this writing, Denmark has achieved its goal of seven medals. In all, it has been a good few weeks for Denmark and for us.

In Anya news, her food reperitoire now includes broccoli, buckwheat cereal, rice cereal, avocado, prunes, and carrots.

I dag er Anyas (halvt års) fødselsdag

Today is Anya's ½-birthday. She celebrated by turning over and pushing up today without getting her arm stuck. We celebrated by eating some birthday cake after she went to sleep for the night. Recently, after learning to turn over, she's been waking up to discover her arm is stuck underneath her. She calls for mommy and daddy to fix this situation and then begins the process again. She's always happy to see a friendly face at 4:00am.

We had a very nice visit with friends on Sunday and enjoyed a nice Danish lunch with gravad laks, shrimp, herring, chicken, Danish meatballs, leverpostej, and lots of accompanying goodies.

I came across a new (to me) Danish word in some of the reading material from the visiting nurse. We're preparing to feed Anya solid food and the nurse provided a 100+ page book published by the government. Granted there are lots of pictures, but it's very thorough nonetheless. It recommends cooking more for dinner and saving the "rester" for the childs lunch the next day. Rester=leftovers. I can remember that.

The sunset cannon just went off - 9:04pm, the days are quickly getting shorter, autumn is not far off. In four months it will be going off sometime between 3:30 and 4:00pm.