Thursday, August 16, 2012

School Begins


On my last day before school, I went for a walk into town again.  I took my neighbor and her grandmother to see Haderslev.  There is a huge sports center on the way down the hill and this is one of the signs.  For some reason this just cracks me up.  The imagery that comes to my head when I see it is a bunch of ponies getting down on the dance floor with colored lights flashing all around them.

Then we start noticing messages chalked onto the sidewalk heading towards the sports center.  some of them were simply the distance to go written down but then one was a skull sketched out.  I took a photo of this one to see what they were saying.

You are about to make a huge mistake.
Hmmm.

Other than picking up my key from the university, I really hadn't gone onto the campus and explored but my neighbor's grandma wanted to see where her granddaughter would be going to school so I took them down the street where the main administration building was.  It was interesting to see it again.  There were quite a few more cars there.  I guess the staff was gearing up for orientation for us.  The building right after the administration building had a curious sign up on the wall.


?????
Why?

I took them through a short cut into town under the train tracks.  And as we were coming down the tiny street back to the main drag, I found my second house in bad condition.  The first was the burnt out one that I saw the other day.  This one had broken windows, boarded up doors, and a disheveled yard.

I don't think this is really in Haderslev.  It's the Twilight Zone.

The other day, I saw a bit of a physical dispute.  I was kind of shocked to see it.  And it was only a very short distance from the police station.  I am sure that if the police looked out their windows they would have seen it.  A couple of men came flying out the main door and were in each others faces.  They started to shove, then split apart, then came back together again to continue shoving.  I stopped to watch.  Of course, I did.  After the third time coming together they parted for good without taking an actually punch at each other.

This is where it happened.  An arcade of some sort.

Inside of the old church in the middle of town.

Oh yeah.  On the way down the hill to town, I saw the little red girl sign had been knocked over into the grass so i picked it up and shoved it back into the ground.  I thought that this was a good thing.  then when we were going home, we again passed the sign.  My neighbor said that it looked funny, like the little girl was giving the finger.  I looked more closely.  Sure enough it was.  Someone had broken off the fingers other than the middle one.  Sheesh.


Today was our first day of school.  It is mostly and orientation week and also a chance to start to get to know each other.  We arranged last night to all get together and take the walk to school together.  I was apparently the 3D GPS for the group.  Haha.  I got everyone to stop here at the corner where we turn off to school and got their picture under the Danish flag!


We had a great morning of getting to know what was going to happen for the next little while.  We played some communication games to get to know each other and break the ice a little bit.  It was actually kind of fun.  I had to hide my face a few times because I was actually getting tears in my eyes.  I think that I am feeling like this is the totally right thing for me to be doing and that I will find myself in the right job in the right place.  My gut was telling me so.

Not too long after we got to school, it began to rain.  I had looked at the weather report in the morning to see how I should dress and it had said that it might spit a bit but nothing to worry about.  Well, that was my interpretation. 


You might have seen this one my blog.  Torsdag was today and it indicates one drop and 2mm of rain.  Oh how it lied.  It rained and rained and rained.

We had our lunch break and I went to the canteen to see how their food was.  You have to try everything once anyway.  I plan on taking my lunch most of the time just like always.  



This was the service!  It was in actually dishes and beautifully presented.  There were a number of choices including salmon.  I was in heaven.  This was a wonderful looking meal.  We had real dishes to eat off of too.  You can see my plate, real cutlery and glass.  The food was beyond excellent.  I had been worried for awhile about what kind of food might be typical here.  My closest and only reference was the smorgesbord at Ikea.  Not so stellar.  I may actually have to treat myself here every so often.  

I was given a buddy to help me get comfortable with the system and life in Denmark.  I finally got to meet her face to face today and she gave me permission to post her picture on my blog.  Meet the lovely Miss Mona.  She is great!


Tomorrow, I will see what the language lab will be like this year.  I am excited.

2 comments:

  1. I'm using the group for my own blog. Oh and yes, I do respect your intellectual property, it is just that this time, I don't have anything myself.

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  2. It's okay. I don't mind. I know that anything that you put on the web is accessible by those who know how anyway. But thanks for letting me know anyway. :)

    ReplyDelete