So much has happened since I last wrote in this!  Yesterday (or early today if you count days as everytime you fall asleep for a substantial amount of time) I left the United States and officially began my four month stay in Denmark.  My mom got sick at the last minute and could not fly with my sister and I, but was able to get a refund of her ticket and hopefully will be coming to visit me in November when she has a break from work.  The flight was very long-my first international flight-and I didn't sleep much, just because there was a lot of hustle and bustle in the plane at all times.  Our flight landed in Oslo, Norway where we just barely made our connecting flight to Copenhagen.

My uncle's cousins, Claus and Søren picked us up at Kastrup, and we started our drive to Nykobing, where they both live with their wives, Kitte and Gitte, respectively.  On the way, we stopped at Køge and experienced our first open-faced sandwiches (mine had lox, scarmbled eggs, caviar, onions, and tomatoes- relatively harmless, while Claus chose to have raw meat topped with a raw egg- a somewhat more intimidating choice for me)!  I'm very slowly getting used to people speaking to me in Danish, me trying very badly to reply in simple English, them realizing I'm an American, and then having to try to speak back in English. In fact, Claus and Søren took turns translating all of the 23 options for open-faced sandwiches to me and my sister.  

We got to Søren's house in Nykobing, unpacked, and took a quick nap before we went to the old town of Nykobing where Claus lives, and walked around, seeing the old and new water towers, a beautiful old church, and one of the last two sugar beet processing facilities left in Denmark.  Dinner was very good, we had Hakkebøf, which is basically a Danish meatball with "soft" (aka fried) onions on top, boiled potatoes, cucumber salad, and tomato and mozzarella salad.  Our desert was the famous rødgrød med flød, which is basically a red berry pudding with sugar and cream.  Kitte, Claus' wife added almonds also which was a nice touch.After dinner, we went through old pictures of Claus and Søren (and the rest of their family) many visits to the United States and just shared old memories.  It was a nice relaxing break at the end of a very long day. 

I am, unfortunately coming to Denmark with almost no background in the language, other than being aware of the fact that in addition to our English vowels, they use vowels such as ø, æ, and å.  Now, let me tell you, I'm not sure how much exposure you've had to the Danish language but pronouncing these correctly is harder than taking the square root of 123942 in your head.  Just attempting to replicate the words they say to me causes everyone, especially the Danes, to burst out laughing.  

Since my Danish is so bad, I have decided to learn a few new words every day.  Tak- means thank you, and if you want to thank someone for a meal, you say "tak for mad."  The most important thing I learned today with regard to the Danish language is that if you just ate a huge meal and are no longer hungry, in English you say, "I'm full" while in Danish, it sounds like "I'm fuld" which means "I'm drunk."  Claus and Søren advised me to just speak in Danish and say I'm no longer hungry by saying "I'm maet."

That is all for tonight, my jet lag is really kicking in!
Til imorgen! 
(until tomorrow!)