Out and About II

It has been a busy few weeks. Anya's weekly routine, along with any other appointments, includes "baby singing" and mothers' group meetings. Baby singing is held at our local church and is led by a violist from the national symphony who happens to be from Wisconsin, though she has lived her for 30+ years (I guess she likes it). The class is all in Danish and includes 10 children and lots of fun activities accompanied by singing or viola. The mothers' group is the second in which Alexa has participated. The first dissolved after several mothers moved away. Being English-speaking groups, the mothers are all from somewhere else and move on for various (generally work-related) reasons.

Late September saw our first dinner out with Anya staying with a babysitter. We were invited to join some people from work for a dinner at a nice restaurant north of Copenhagen. We dropped Anya off with the babysitter (at a friend's/coworker's house) and we were off for a nice night with adults. We missed Anya, of course, but she slept peacefully and was happy to see us when we picked her up. This was followed the next day by a "team-building" event that Andy had at work. It involved sailing out of the Copenhagen harbor and back (about 4 hours total) followed by dinner at another fancy restaurant, this one run by a famous (in Denmark) chef named Bo Bech. The restaurant won a Michelin Star and featured all kinds of interesting creations on the menu, the highlight being deep-frozen almond milk, cooled in liquid nitrogen, whichs sublimated immediately in our mouths. The dishes were interesting for their creativity, but also for the absurdly small portions.

The last week of September took me on a field trip to northern Spain. There was beautiful countryside, good food, nice people, and of course - rocks. This picture may appear to be from a fancy hotel bathroom, but it was part of a new ampitheatre carved out of a mountainside where there used to be a quarry. The rocks reflect several episodes of alteration which give the interesting patterns. Earlier in the week, we were in the Sierra del Cuerra montains from which we could see the Atlantic coast when the clouds lifted. Although it was fun, it was difficult to be away from Alexa and Anya. I'm glad I don't have to travel more than I do.

In the past weeks we began working our way through Matador. This a famous (again, in Denmark) Danish television series. It has nothing to do with Spain or bullfighting, Matador translates as "kingpin" or "Monopoly" (according to my handy Dansk-Engelsk dictionary). It is 24 episodes set in the years 1929-1947, of which we have the first eight. We're already hooked, and fortunately the DVD's have English subtitles, though we could get by with the danish subtitles (for the hearing impaired) as we sometimes do.

On a final note, I include a picture of our orchid which unlike other plants we have had in the past, thrives on benign neglect.