"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.

Land of Lego

Today is the 50th anniversary of the introduction of Lego. The Danish story can be found here. Google celebrated with a Lego-logo. Some Lego facts:

• 7 boxes of Legos are sold every second;
• 36,000 lego pieces are made every minute;
• 400 billion pieces have been made since 1949, enough to build 10 towers to the moon;
• the highest Lego tower built to date is 28.74 meters (94 feet);
• six Lego blocks can be combined in 915 million different ways (not including different color combinations);
• the name Lego comes from a combination of the Danish words "leg" (play) and "godt" (well).

Legos will become a bigger part of our life in a few years. Until then, I'll enjoy walking around the apartment in bare feet without fear of stepping on one of those little plastic bricks (sorry Mom & Dad). I'll look forward to a visit to LegoLand in a few years.

In other Denmark news, the national men's handball team won the European championship. This is the biggest sports news since the soccer/football team won the European championship in 1992, but like football/soccer I just don't get it. I would say that handball is more exciting than football/soccer, but I need someone to explain the finer points to be able to appreciate it more. More news about that here and here, and a description of the game for people like me.

Since I'm writing this, you can guess that we're still waiting for the baby to arrive. We're doing fine and will be all ready, as soon as I get the car seat installed...

On with life

The Phillies didn't make a good show of it, but just wait 'til next year... Until then, I'll try to develop an undying passion for soccer (just kidding). On that front, the news story of the week: American football gaining yardage on soccer.

We had another epic choir dinner on Saturday. Saturday was an all-day choir rehearsal followed by the dinner. It was quite a treat. The rehearsal was fun too, with the afternoon led by John Høybye, a well-known (in Denmark) Danish composer. Afterwards we relaxed while the dinner team prepared the meal. We were on the coffee/cake team that prepared the snack which followed the "light lunch." As you can see, this choir always knows where their next meal is coming from. The backdrop to our choir activities was the attempted occupation of another city building by Ungdomshus (Youth House) activists which occurred less than a quarter mile from our rehearsal. Streets were blocked off and several choir members got turned back when they attempted to go home before our big meal. Back to the meal...we had 5 courses (7 if you count all three appetizers as separate courses) ranging from cucumber soup to smoked salmon guacamole wraps to pesto pasta then the roast duck. Everything was delicious and we had a good time getting to know people and practicing our Danish with patient friends. It was a good exercise in immersion. I we did that every day we would be fluent and 50 pounds heavier.