School Begins

The girls' time of uncertainty and mystery came to an end when Maya and Molly started School yesterday. They were excited and content as well as nervous as they entered their classrooms. By the end of the day, they had engaged in new friends, got to know the playground (Molly even went to the school nurses' office with a cut eye from the playground...) and were so relieved to be speaking English with kids their ages. Maya's teacher is from New Jersey and is a petite, very organized young woman named Ms. Christianson. Molly's teacher is new to the school, from New Delhi, India, named Ms. Gupta. The school is bursting at the seams and so all of 3rd grade is in a portable classroom. Maya's room is on the second floor of the main building, mixed in with the middle school, which is very cool for her.

This morning I went to the "Newcomers Coffee" which was about 200 moms and I met several parents of children in the girls classes. I'm setting Maya up with a boy in her class who's a big skateboarder. He just got back from skateboard camp in England. When his mom told the boy that Maya carried her skateboard on the plane because it was that important, he considered Maya instantly o.k. There are several other girls in her class that are sporty and academic as well.

Molly's teacher was impressed with her immediately and told us we "were very blessed to have a child like her". 3 mothers came up to me and said their daughters came home raving about a girl named "Molly".

I was relieved to meet other people that spoke English as well. Some are ahead of my by a few weeks and others by a few years, but everybody has gone through exactly what we have. Our issues are no bigger or smaller than others. There's a common thread of shared annoyances, i.e. slow cable services, resident card issues, transportation, shopping, etc. And all the veterans adore the school and the community that it offers. This morning alone I chatted with parents from The Netherlands, Sweden, England, Scotland, Cyprus, Mexico, India, Hungary, Spain, Italy, China and Denmark, of course. Many families are on their 3rd or 4th international assignment and ask "Where have you been before this?" Portland, Oregon sounds a little country bumpkin compared to the rest.

I continue to shop at IKEA and other stores to supply our house. We have good news - our shipment is on schedule and if it doesn't go through customs, we may have it by August 28th. The girls are looking forward to sleeping in beds. And we want to get on our bikes. Biking is the way to go. While waiting for the bus today we counted the number of cars vs. bikes and it was almost even. Bikers respect the same rules of the road as cars.

Other good news: Craig's work permit and resident status has been approved and now we have to go to the local municipality and get our "CPR" cards - kind of like social security numbers. With this number we get resident services, including cable, television, telephone, utilities, doctors, dentists, schooling, library, etc. etc.

Craig's job is going well, but there is so much to do. He goes to Aarhus (3 hour drive, 4 hour train) every week for 2 - 3 days to the office and distribution center. The company transfered over the inventory and company data onto a different software program last week and it was successful. He will be working out of our home as soon as we get internet and all the office equipment. Until then he uses internet cafes and meets with business associates wherever he can.

We are all making huge adjustments, but because there are so many of them, they seem minimal. Denmark is easy to integrate because the city logistics and way of life are more or less similar to the U.S. We just have to learn the ways and language.

We had a great Danish weekend just last: went to the nearby mall's theater to see Mamma Mia on a Friday night, to Tivoli Garden on Saturday and to the beach on Sunday. There is a beautiful park and beach right in Hellerup, 10 minute drive from our house. Monday and Tuesday we did some school shopping. They mostly needed lunch boxes (here they just bring lunch in tupperware, no ziplock bags or foil) and "indoor shoes" to wear in the classroom.

We splurged and went out and bought a big TV and now the kids can watch 2 movies that we bought: old Simpons episodes and Ghostbusters. That's it for visual entertainment without cable or internet. However the family is getting really good at our laptop standard games, like Hearts, Mah Jong and Spider Solitaire.

I went to the local recycling center. This place was awesome! You drive around to any of the 20 types of materials and dump it for free including; computers, scrap metal, paper, appliances, yard debris, clothing, plastic pvc, and on and on. They have their junk down. It's a 5 minute drive from our house. I've also hooked up with our neighbor who's English and owns a yard service. He and his Danish wife have 4 children. He's going to handle our yard needs until end of September. After that no one touches their yards until April. We'll decide then whether to buy a mower and clippers and do it ourselves or hire out. Hiring out for services is barely heard of here. Everybody does everything themselves.

This is a long entry because I haven't afforded the time to be at the library's computers for this long. I'll try and do a weekly blog even so.

Please comment if you wish or send comments to my email: thecohen4dk@gmail.com

Hi Hi (which means bye bye!)