Catch-up

So, I just realized that my last post was sort of a ditch of half-depression, and that I’d better get back to posting, lest everyone think I’m still living in perpetual “blah.”

I’m not, but honestly I’m not feeling the greatest yet either.  I’m still super stressed out about my test (both written and oral), fairly discouraged (depending on the day), and anxious about the future.  But…The trees are for real budding, and it hasn’t reached below freezing in probably two weeks now!  The bad news is that Andreas is still sick.  Still!  It’s been one thing after another, and if he isn’t sick for a day, he has allergies, but finally he’s going to see our doctor about it all and maybe get a referral to find out what he’s actually allergic to.  But his being sick meant that our three-day weekend (thank you Big Praying Day!), while not exactly a bust, wasn’t super fantastic either.  We’re crossing our fingers (yet again) for another good-weather weekend so maybe we can get out and do something FUN!  Like…you know…go downtown and use our Groupon deal at the super big candy store…

Danish classes have been going medium-well, probably.  The classes themselves are actually really good, and I feel like I get a lot out of them.  I’m also starting to feel comfortable with the other women in the class, so I’m generally not as nervous.  Except for today, when I had to give my little oral presentation in front of everyone, and my heart started pounding like crazy, and I spoke at a superhuman speed, and could barely catch my breath.  (Sorry, baby).

Hopefully we’ll still have quite a few writing assignments between now and the 22nd of May (which is the date of my written exam), and I can continue to get better.

In other news, I’m obviously pregnant.  As in, obvious to anyone who sees me.  I’ve been told I’m really big, I’ve been told I’m small, I’ve been told I’m having a boy, and that I’m having a girl.  I have yet to be offered a seat on the bus, but I don’t mind, since I’d usually turn one down, anyway.  Also, if it’s a short busride, I try to avoid sitting down, because I tend to forget to get off.  I’m not even going to pretend that’s due to what people call “pregnancy brain” because that’s just the fault of “Zeta’s brain.”

And in miscellaneous news, I made a chocolate-spotted cheesecake yesterday, and I am super duper looking forward to eating it, but I think I’m going to make myself wait until Andreas comes home today.  Just because.  I’ve also gotten a second (or, you know, seventeenth) wind with regards to the whole mealplanning/cooking thing.  I think it actually has something to do with the fact that when I have daytime classes, it’s super easy for me to stop at the grocery store on the way home.  This makes meal planning a bit less of a have-to-do-it-all-on-the-weekend-and-then-do-a-huge-shop sort of thing, and makes it a bit more flexible and fun, so I’m happy about that!  If I do the shopping by myself, it also gives Andreas and I a bit more time together in the evenings/weekends, and we’ve been using that time wisely.  By reading Mistborn out loud to each other…and the baby, as I realized today.

So now you’re mostly caught up, and I can maybe fit some of the more themed posts I had planned in the next few weeks.  We’ll see.  I’m trying to be easy on myself until my exams are over, since I’m super stressed out about them.

At risk of sounding emo…

I’ve been sad kind of a lot recently.  It’s a mixture of a lot of things: having a lot to do, being stressed about any one of the hundred things I have to be stressed about, and facing huge life changes (and little mini ones, too).  Part of what’s really hit me within the last week, though, is loneliness.

Not loneliness in that I never see anyone, or I have no one to talk to or care about.  But Andreas has been sick for a week straight now.  I’ve been on nursing duty, which I actually generally really like, but I’ve also felt a bit like I needed taking care of recently.  When Andreas is sick, he just can’t be there for me in the way that he normally is.  That isn’t to say that he doesn’t want to be, or try to be.  But when you’re trying to pour out your woes to someone who’s cutting you off with their coughing every other word, it just doesn’t seem worth it.

I guess it just made me realize (again) that when Andreas can’t be there for me, I don’t really have anyone else.  Sure, I have my family and my friends, but they’re all really far away and have their own lives with their own stuff going on.  And I don’t want a proverbial shoulder to cry on.  I want a real shoulder to cry on.  I wouldn’t say that I have a super hard time making friends, even though I do get really anxious, nervous, and shy.  But I’m well aware that it takes a long time to really create the kind of friendship that I’m yearning for, and amidst all my other worries and life changes, it just seems like it’s not going to happen.

I worry that of the friends I have left from my “old life,” having a baby is going to distance most of them even more than they already are.  I’ve also heard that having a new baby in the house can be extremely isolating, and I’m worried that since I’m having mine before I’ve made any real, strong, solid social ties here, I’m just further dooming myself.

I don’t mean to sound like a super-downer, and these feelings will pass at some point (and show up again at some point later, I’m sure), but I do want to keep this blog as a sort of real portrayal of what my life has been like after the move across the water and before/during the starting-a-family thing, and a big part of my reality is loneliness, or rather worrying about loneliness.

More positive post coming up soon, hopefully!

 

Warm Fuzzies

So, since my last post, there’s something I’ve been doing a lot.  Unfortunately, it isn’t yoga, working on my puzzle, or eating much other than cookies, but it is going through old chat/message archives.

It started with homesickness, which always leads to some level of nostalgia.  This time, I fed the Nostalgia Monster, and went back to the very first messages that Andreas and I sent back and forth.  I’ve read it time, and time again, but for some reason, this time I suddenly very vividly felt like I did the first time I read it.  He’d probably take away my internet access if I posted that message here for the world to see, but it started with “Zeta, please read this when you are alone.”

I got the message when I was visiting my parents for the weekend.  I was sitting on the futon in my little sister’s room, and when I read the first line, I looked up to make sure I was, in fact, alone.  It wasn’t a love letter by any means, but it was the first acknowledgement that there was something there that was strong enough to keep going and to get stronger despite the fact that we wouldn’t see eachother again for nearly a whole year.

Once I ran through all the Facebook messages we sent to each other during that first year apart, I decided to go back and look through our MSN chat logs.  Hey, I might as well take advantage of having as much time to myself as I have at the moment, right?  Anyway, besides reliving the warm fuzzies and the thrills of many of our “firsts,”  I’ve also been getting the thrill of reading something we wished, and realizing that it’s totally coming true.  Like, right now.

We talked so often about how much we looked forward to getting married, how we both wanted to be married young, how we so often thought to ourselves throughout the day “if only _______ were here, this would be at least twice as good.”  Andreas even said at one point, that he was struck with the random thought that he would like to have kids at around the same time as one of his sisters, so they would be around the same age.  It’s like each one of our little thoughts and hopes was actually a mini prophecy.  Getting married was the best thing that’s happened to us so far.  We did get married young.  Grocery shopping, doing puzzles, watching TV, and even cleaning up after dinner is at least twice as good when we’re together.  And why yes, your mom does love me.

But it wasn’t all warm fuzzies.  Rereading our conversations and messages reminded me how tough of a time I had sometimes in school. Being sleep-deprived, overworked, overhomeworked, and dealing with drama between friends was really tough.  I was often depressed, and sadder than I remember being when I think back on my college days in general.  It reminded me that nostalgia is all well and good, but that what I have now is so much better.  Moving to Denmark, dealing with visa issues, language barriers, frustrations, and homesickness has not been easy.  At all.  But sometimes I forget how hard things used to be, when Andreas didn’t come home to me every night.  Things have changed so much in the last few years, and even though I haven’t really made fast friends here yet, or feel very at home, or feel like I’ll ever get over my homesickness, things, on average, are a lot better than they ever were before.

I’m nervous for the next step in our lives.  I’m nervous for my Danish tests, and sometimes sad that I don’t have friends to hang out with, get coffee with, or sit around and do a puzzle with.  But I am so, so thankful to have gone through everything I have, and to be done with it and to have reached where we are now.

I also realized the other day that there is one respect in which this whole moving-overseas thing has been easy for me.  I never, ever think about not having done it.  Maybe it’s just because it was sort of my plan for so long, or because we worked so hard for it, but I never have considered the fact that maybe it was a mistake.  It wasn’t.  This was the best thing we could have done, for Andreas, for me, for us, and for Baby ZA (Zeta+Andreas…also, that’s not actually its name.  Don’t freak out.)  Knowing this helps me get through the hard times, because I can’t really think of anything that, without some sort of magic wand, could be better.

This was longer, and sort of lovey-dovier than I expected, but sometimes you just need a little confirmation, and sometimes you have to type out that confirmation to make sure that you remember it.  Things are actually going really well at the moment, but I’ve been  busy with plans Andreas and I have with others, and starting my new Danish class this week that it’s been a lot overwhelming.

But the sun has started to shine, and one of the high temperatures for the week is 10! (celcius!)!   Also, after a really long 3-4 days of facing my spine and kicking my intestines, the baby has turned around again, and I get to see  and feel it kicking my belly again, which cheers me up considerably.  Also, also, I made really, really delicious peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chip cookies the other the day, and although I’ve been eating way too many (seriously.  I’m not even going to write how many I eat each day because it’s embarrassing.  No, I should.  I’ve eaten like 10 each day.)

I hope everyone else’s spring is springing and they have as much to be thankful for as I do!

Well, this is kind of embarrassing…

So I promise that I have another mouth-watering cake post coming up (I know that it’s mouth-watering, because I just finished taking the photos and I almost drooled on the camera).  But before that, I have to write this post, which is less fun, and a lot more embarrassing.

For the past few weeks, Andreas and I have debated whether or not we should find out if the baby I’m growing is a boy or a girl.  At first, I was all for having a surprise, but as the ultrasound got closer, and I realized more and more how much easier it would be to gather all our baby-things if we knew the sex, it was pretty tempting to find out.  We were at a standstill, but the lovely woman from MontgomeryFest acted as a tie-breaker, and we decided we’d find out!  We wanted our friends and family who are far away, and excited about the coming baby, to be able to feel more “a part” of what’s happening.

So, the scan was scheduled for Friday, and after a late night on Thursday, I woke up at 4am.  And couldn’t go back to sleep.  I spent the morning baking cake in a half-stupor, only staving off a severe case of the grumpies because I was excited about our afternoon appointment.  Andreas came home early, and we set off for the hospital.  When we got there, the waiting room was rather full, and we waited a bit longer than usual.  When they called our name, we went into a sort of strange room, where a student was going to do the first part of the scan, and her teacher, the second half.

Now, I had planned to tell Andreas ahead of time that if they don’t offer to tell us the sex, or ask if we want to know, that he would need to ask.  I know myself well enough to know that I would have a hard time speaking up, especially when I’m on a table with goo on my belly and a stranger prodding around.  But in my sleepy stupor, I’d forgotten to tell him.  Now, when I get overtired, I don’t just get grumpy (although goodness, do I get grumpy), but I also get anxious.  While they were doing the scan, showing us all the heart chambers, and the halves of the brain, I was taking it all in, and filing it under “things to be grateful for” in my brain, but I was also desperately trying to get up the courage to ask about the sex.  I couldn’t seem to find the right Danish words, and I sent Andreas some pleading looks, but he mistook them for beaming joy or something, because he didn’t say a word.  I was so anxious, I was practically paralyzed, my mouth just wouldn’t move.  I couldn’t ask.

The woman tried to get some good photos (although the baby had its head buried somewhere around my hipbone) and then wiped off the ultrasound wand, and told me I could dry off my belly.  Andreas and I were left alone for a few minutes, while they filled out some paperwork, and I could finally spill what I’d been dying to tell him the whole time.  Turns out, Andreas forgot to ask.  He just completely forgot that we could probably find out the sex today.  He asked when they came back, but they said that they don’t look unless we ask, which we hadn’t, so we thanked them, and went on our way.

When I get tired, I’m also prone to overreacting, which I promptly did, as I tried in vain to hold back my tears on the way back to the bus stop.  I knew that I was being ridiculous.  We had a healthy, perfect-looking baby, and I hadn’t even been that set on finding out the sex until a few days before the scan.  But I knew, at the same time, that I wasn’t crying because we didn’t know if Baby Us is a boy or a girl.

I was crying because I felt helpless.  I felt vulnerable and cowardly and really out of my depth.  I felt like “how am I going to be a mother here?  I can’t even speak to people here.”  I was mad at myself, and so frustrated about my anxiety.  Even now, when I’m not overtired, and I’ve had plenty of time to get over the disappointment of not knowing, it brings tears to my eyes.  I know that I’m incredibly lucky.  I have a perfect-for-me, loving husband (who totally understood why I was crying), who I get to live with and see every day.  I get to live in the Magical Land of Denmark that enchanted me from the moment my plane touched down three years ago, and we have a baby on the way–something I’ve dreamed about since I was small.  I know that my life is wonderful, and I’m incredibly grateful.  But that doesn’t mean it’s been very easy, or that it will get a lot easier anytime soon.

It’s just discouraging when I feel like I can’t get over my anxiety enough to do a “normal people” thing, like asking a simple question.  Some days are better than others, but the bad days are still just as discouraging as they ever were.

The good news is, that even though my anxiety doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, my writing skills are improving a lot with the class in Danish grammar that I’m taking these days!  Hopefully in a few weeks, I’ll continue with this class, and also start the one to help me prepare for my big Danish test that’s coming up in May!  Crossing my fingers to get into a daytime class!

Spring Carrot Cake!

So, apparently spring “officially” begins in Denmark on March 1st.  This year, it is forecasted that the temperatures will not drift above freezing until sometime in April.  So it doesn’t feel like spring.  We did have a couple of glorious sunny almost-warm days at the very beginning of March, but since then it’s been nothing but a big bummer.

However, we have to get into the spring mindset somehow, and baking is obviously the way to do this.  So even though I’m fasting from cakes/candies/yummy things during daylight hours, I was able to volunteer to bring a cake to our Ruhi study circle last week, and therefore had an excuse to bake one!

I’m pretty sure I chose carrot cake because I wanted something to go well with the cream cheese frosting I had been daydreaming about, but any reason to make a carrot cake is a good one, and I can tell you I didn’t regret this at all!

Of course, I had to decorate accordingly.  It was pretty cute, if I may say so myself.  I didn’t want the plastic wrap to ruin my sweet little carrots while it was in transport, so I finally, FINALLY bought some toothpicks.  I have been wanting toothpicks since last August when we moved from the last sublet that had toothpicks in the cupboards.  I don’t use them on my teeth, but for testing done-ness, cleaning odd things, and, of course, holding plastic wrap away from nicely decorated cakes!  The problem wasn’t finding them.  Toothpicks are probably just as common in Denmark as they are in the US, the problem was remembering to buy them.  Ever.  But finally, I had a good enough reason to scoot out to the store just for the sake of buying toothpicks because I couldn’t stand not remembering again.

And it was a good thing I did, because they came in handy with the cake-baking I did yesterday, as well!  That’s right.  Two cakes in one week.  Luckily they were both to share, or I think I would have added substantially to my minimal weight gain.  The other cake post will be coming up shortly, I promise, but for now, here’s one more picture of the carrot cake.  (By the way, it was super delicious.)  Also, I may have overdone it with all the little carrots around the edge, but they were so fun that I couldn’t help myself!

 

Catching Up (and a plea for your opinions at the end)

Life here seems to be settling into some sort of a routine.  On Mondays, we go to a Ruhi study circle.

*Sidenote* I started this blog post thinking I could get it done real quick before I went to sleep, but upon searching for a link for the Ruhi institute, I came across a Baha’i joke blog where I consequently spent more time than I had assumed writing this whole blog would take.  Oops.

Anyway, like I said we’re getting into a bit of a routine.  Wednesdays, I have my Danish class, so we have some sort of a salad for supper (lately it’s been Tuna Macaroni Slaw because it always reminds me of home).  Fridays, Andreas usually has badminton after work (how cute is that?!), and weekends have becoming less stressful, too!

We even managed to buy a TV last weekend, and although we live in a dead zone, so we can’t get any real channels, it came with Netflix and wi-fi, so it’s been really great to have a nice big screen to watch our movies on (as compared to my little laptop with the worst speakers ever).

My Danish class is still going well.  It’s still challenging, and even though my first assignment came back with a discouraging amount of red ink on it, I managed to not be too discouraged after all.  I have to keep reminding myself that I’ve never, ever learned this stuff (it’s review for most of the people in my class) and all I need is practice, practice, practice.  I’m already starting to get nervous for the Big Test coming up in May/June (the one I’m postponing my visit to the US for) but I’m trying to forget about it as much as possible.  I wouldn’t be nervous, but I have to get a B-equivalent to be able to move on to the next class which is preparation for the other Big Danish Test that I have to pass to get into university here.  I was told that if I pass, but don’t get a high enough score, I can retake it, but that I won’t be offered any more classes to prepare for the re-take and that I’ll have to pay for it myself (around $200-250) so I’m feeling a bit of pressure.  However, I’m trying to remind myself that I still have time to get better before May, and if my teacher at that point really doesn’t think I can do it, I can always back out and wait until November.  When I have a baby.  That sounds like a better time to take a Very Important Test, right?

Things have just been being good in general lately, and I’m trying to remember to be really grateful.  The Baha’i Fast is in full swing now, and although I obviously can’t fast because of my “delicate condition,”  I’m still getting up pre-dawn every day to make Andreas and myself a bowl of oatmeal and to say some prayers.  While I can’t physically fast, I’m trying to pay extra special attention to things I want to work on, and one of those is gratitude.  I actually think that I do very well with this normally.  All the work and waiting and stress that we had to go through to get to this point (married, settled (in Denmark), with a nice apartment and a baby on the way) makes a person really appreciate what they have.  But, I want to get better at remembering to be grateful when I go through my periodic bouts of the blues, when I get homesick, when I suddenly feel lonely and like I have no friends left, or when I run out of ice cream.

I’m also happy about being able to meet some of the Baha’is in Copenhagen.  This is becoming a little bit of a Baha’i-(and link-)heavy post, but bear with me!  It has been quite lonely here, and as probably most foreigners who have moved to Denmark can tell you, it’s not easy to make friends here.  Well, in my opinion, it’s not particularly easy to make friends anywhere, but especially when you don’t go to school or have a full-time job, the meeting-people thing is hard to do.  I’m really glad that the community has been so welcoming and I’ve met people that I feel genuinely connected to right away!  It’s exciting, and since a lot of the Baha’i community tends to be a bit international, I think there are a lot of sympathetic souls ready and waiting to lend an understanding ear.

So things aren’t particularly easy at the moment.  We’re still stressed about some things, I’m still a bit lonely, but I’m doing really well and I’m really happy about where we are.

Oh!  But one last thing…

We have our second (and probably last) ultrasound coming up next Friday.  The thing is, this is the one where one can normally tell if the baby is of the boy or girl persuasion.  We’re having the hardest time deciding whether or not to find out now, or to wait until it actually makes its entrance into the world.

I originally thought I would never find out, that it’s more exciting, and makes it easier to buy gender-neutral clothing, etc.  But the closer we get to the ultrasound, the more tempting it is to find out.  We’re also having a lot of trouble finding any boy-name possibilities we love, so we’d kind of like to be spared the trouble if it’s not even a boy after all (although I have a pretty good feeling that it is), and we’re going to mostly be using hand-me-downs as far as clothing goes, so we would be able to know ahead of time from whom we should borrow.

Thoughts?  Pros?  Cons?

I think we might end up flipping a coin…

A Year (and a little bit)

Woah.  Hold on, guys.

I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in the past couple of months, and the “anniversary” of this little blog, and my adventures here in Scandinavia has completely slipped past me without warning!

Last night, as I was on my way home from Danish, I was just sitting there on the bus, and suddenly, my entire life just…hit me.  I’ve had several moments of this as I’ve passed through various life stages and changes.  When I was very little, I used to look at my sisters’ schoolbooks with awe, thinking that I couldn’t wait until I had a textbook three inches thick.  Then suddenly, it was ten years later, and I was flipping with purpose through my three-inch-thick literature textbook, scanning for quotes when I realized just how perfect my life was.

For me, at least, my life hardly ever seems “perfect.”  Day-to-day worries and stressors cloud my long-term vision, but every once in a while I have to take a step back and realize how completely ideal my current life is, and how wonderfully in line it is with how I imagined my life to be when I was 3 or 8 or 19.

I remembered back to three years ago (almost to the day!), when I was visiting Denmark for the first time.  Andreas and I were spending a weekend in Copenhagen, staying with his sister and her then-boyfriend (now husband).  We took the train there, and she herded us onto the metro, then later onto a bus or two and I clutched my backpack and thought to myself, “Wow.  She actually lives here, and she knows everything.”

I flashed forward to the present, and here I was, catching subsequent buses, just walking down the street like someone who belongs in Copenhagen, doing my Copenhagen stuff, and just living.  Here I am, married to Andreas (which I know for a fact was the thing that I wanted most back then during that first visit to Denmark because that’s when I started wishing it on all of my lost eyelashes), living together, seeing each other every single day.  Here I am, living in Denmark, with a real visa, speaking Danish, and getting mail from the hospital, for goodness’ sake!

I know I’ve been being a bit of a negative nancy recently, but it really helped me yesterday to realize that my life is, indeed, headed exactly in the direction I’ve wanted and imagined it to be.

Nothing like a little life-assessment on the bus ride home.

 

Language Woes

So, I never thought that I would even think this, but it ran through my head during Danish class the other day.  ”Maybe it would’ve been better if I just hadn’t learned a word of Danish yet.”

Now, I know I’ve been posting about my language class a lot, but bear with me a little longer!  There’ll be some variety on the horizon, I promise.  But for now, you’ll hear a bit more about my Danish courses.

Because I’ve learned so much Danish already, I got to start at a higher level in my Danish classes.  The problem is that I’ve learned Danish pretty much like a child would learn it.  So, while I can speak fairly well and with little accent, I’ve never bothered to learn what the imperative verb form is or what the specific plural form of various nouns look like.

I was really looking forward to being “back in school” and learning things in a classroom setting.  I’ve always been good at and liked school.  But not only is the class a bit too easy and slow for me, it’s just really frustrating.  I’m behind on all this technical grammar stuff, and way ahead on vocabulary, listening and speaking skills, and reading.  Now that I’ve experienced learning a language the “natural” way, I can’t fathom how people can actually learn it in a classroom.  I speak Danish inexplicably better than I ever spoke Spanish, which I studied for seven years. I don’t know how I had so much patience for it when I was in school.

Now, the classes I’m in are leading up to the Danish Test 3 which is the “big test” for Danish.  Passing it basically means you officially speak Danish, and I’m definitely looking forward to the day I pass so that I have some sort of official papers stating that I can, indeed, speak Danish.  The test is only offered twice a year, in May and in November.  I talked with my teacher after class the other day and she said I might be on track to take it in May (although it’s a bit early according to how many weeks of classes I’m supposed to have left before I’m “ready”).  The problem is that I’m going to the US in May.  We would go earlier, but Andreas doesn’t get any vacation time until May, and we can’t go later for various reasons.  And the test is on my birthday.  Great.

I was really looking forward to Danish classes also just as a way to connect with other people, and have some sort of social contact.  It is that for me, and I’ve really enjoyed talking with the people in my class during the break, before and after class, and even during our little Danish “conversation” times, but I don’t even know if that’s worth it.  The class is two nights a week, and since Andreas and I have been so busy, and are hosting an unusual amount of visitors, those two evenings a week that I lose with him are actually a lot of our time together.

It’s only my fourth class this evening, and I’m already not looking forward to going.

At least I’m not nervous…

Danish Classes!

So today is a big day for me!  I’m starting Danish classes tonight!

I wanted to get into a daytime class, but the one at my level was full, so I have to leave soon after Andreas gets home from work, and don’t come back until after 10.  After I get used to it, it probably won’t be a big deal, but especially today, I wish I could just “get it over with.”  Fortunately my anxiety is surprisingly less than I expected, so I’m hoping it holds out through the day, and I’ll try to start my next knitting project to distract myself further.

I, of course, have the standard anxieties about being in the wrong level, not knowing as much as the other students, and sounding ridiculous when I speak Danish, but luckily, I’ve had lots of practice with that last one!  I also expected to feel really anxious about meeting new people, and the prospect of probably having to work and speak in groups (my least favorite thing about any type of class ever) but I am surprisingly calm.  Maybe because I’ve been feeling sick, and I’m more anxious about feeling like I’m going to throw up in the middle of class than I am about talking to people, but also possibly because I’m really ready.  I got used to having a certain amount of social contact in Sweden.  We knew our neighbors and would say hello and chat when we ran into them.  I had my weekly knitting group to go to (which I miss desperately) and I would occasionally see these people around town.  There’s something really comforting about running into people you know “around town.”   Something that makes you feel like you belong.

Since moving to Copenhagen, I’ve met just about no one.  Lately, it’s started to take a toll on me, and I’ve been feeling really lonely.  Usually, I treasure alone time (and I still do) but I think I may have “filled my tank” and maybe I’m actually ready to meet and speak to people who aren’t Andreas or…..Andreas.

Wish me luck!

Christmas!

Christmas is around the corner, guys, and I’m excited.  I honestly don’t think I’ve been this excited for Christmas since I had the Christmas Concert to look forward to in elementary school.  This probably has something to do with the way that the Danes approach Christmas.

Now, we don’t have a TV (haha, I like saying that in a hoity-toity voice in my head, but really, we don’t have a TV because we didn’t buy one yet.) so I haven’t seen any of the Christmas commercials, and we haven’t really been to any mall or shopping area, so I haven’t really noticed that aspect of Christmas (the buying lots of things aspect).  But as far as I’ve noticed during previous Christmases in Denmark, it’s not all-consuming like it can be in the states.  They don’t have crazy ridiculous sales (which is a slight bummer for a couple trying to furnish and decorate their apartment at Copenhagen prices), or anything akin to Black Friday.

There’s also not a big religious debate about neutralizing Christmas and calling it The Holidays or calling it Christmas and leaving out a bunch of other traditions.  Basically, Christmas here is a time for the famous Danish “hygge.”  A time to put candles in the windows, decorate with white, sparkly, and red things, and huddle up with warm drinks and people you love as you watch the sun set at 2 pm.  I like that.  I have always been drawn towards Christmas, but felt like I couldn’t really celebrate because we weren’t even Christian.  Here, it doesn’t matter.  Most people don’t follow a religion, but Christmas is still a big deal.  It’s very much a cultural holiday now, and one I am definitely willing to participate in.  Once I get me some candlesticks and red yarn…