Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

 I really love a good museum.  Especially when they contain "old" things.  Luckily, Denmark is filled with museums, stuffed full of "old" things.  I love living so close to all these places, that I can go back to them over and over again, and see what I missed the time before.  Anyway, we made it to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.  Which literally means the New Carlsberg Carving Storage place.  The glyptotek was built to house the collections of Carl Jacobsen, the son of the founder of Carlsberg breweries.  I love going inside these massive buildings and being overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.  Pictures can't even show how large and grand some of these places are.  Wings upon wings of exhibits, huge staircases leading up to even more exhibits, so much to see!  The glyptotek, as it's name implies (carving storage place), houses mainly sculptures.  Although I believe they do have a nice collection of paintings, but we didn't make it there this time.  It's hard to really examine these museums with 3 kids.  They are good sports and enjoy looking at some of the stuff, but really, their favorite thing was to watch the fish in the fountain and to see how loud they could get their voices to echo in some of the huge rooms.  Overall, it was a fun outing and I look forward to going back again.

This is a 17th century Mummy.  We thought the painting bore a bit of a resemblance to Sylvester Stallone.

 Kind of a cool story, 100+ years ago, when they would put statues on display, they would make replacement noses, ears, hands, etc, for the pieces on the statues that were missing.  Then, it was decided that it was better to display them in the form that they were found, so they went through and removed all the extra noses, ears, etc.  This display, above is of noses and ears that were removed off of statues. 

Lexi taking a chapstick break.

I thought this guy's head looked like an Alien!

The middle of the museum houses a Winter Garden, complete with blooming flowers and we even saw a lemon tree!

The Thinker, a small version.  Outside of the building, there is a full-size version.

 This statue is titled the Burghers of Calais.  It's a french sculpture and only 14 versions exist in the entire world!  I recognized it because we have this picture:

 - Chad sitting in front of The Burghers of Calais statue that sits in a park next to the Parliament building in London England, that we took 4 years ago.  Kind of cool!

Myra arguing with a statue.

One of 2 Medusa statues.  The kids stood and stared at it forever.  They were quite captivated!

If you haven't noticed, from previous blog posts, the kids love imitating different statues that we come across.  Why they picked this one to imitate, I do not know.

Lexi imitating another statue.  Pretty good, eh?

I would like to buy a Hamburger.

This is how I feel when I'm at my language class.

Børnefestuge

To begin, let me explain a little bit about the kid's Education system here in Denmark.  Most children, starting at around 6mo to 1 year start going to Kindergarten.  In the US, we would call it DayCare. I would say probably 95% of mom's work here and if they don't they still send their kid to Kindergarten.  It's inexpensive and it's really good day care.  The kids will stay in Kindergarten until they are 6, then they will start Grade 0.  Which is what Myra is in.  Myra's class only goes from 8:20-11:40, so after that she goes to what they call SFO.  It's basically an afterschool Kindergarten, club, day care, whatever you want to call it.  Although I am home, we decided to have her attend SFO so that she could further her language skills and make some friends.  The Dane's believe strongly that children learn by doing and experiencing, so they have a ton of field trips and other activities.  I don't think a week has gone by the past 2 months that at least one of the girls has gone on some kind of outing.  For three days this week, the girls have gotten to participate in Børnefestuge or Children's Festival here in Albertslund.   Most of the Kindergarten's and SFO's in Albertslund are participating.  They've all set up tents, canopies and cooking stations. I take the girls there in the morning where they meet up with their classes and for the next 5-6 hours, they get to just go crazy!  A lot of the younger groups, like Lexi's class, seem to have structured days, but the many of the older kids get to do whatever they want.  They have a hill they get to climb, not very tall, but pretty steep.  And an Alpine Slide type thing they can go down.  There is face painting, bow and arrow shooting, fencing, Viking stories, goats to pet, rope bridges to cross and so much more.  They both seemed to have a wonderful time and were sad once it was over.  On the first morning there, as we walked up to the festival area, Noah excitedly exclaimed, "This is the best day ever."  He was so sad when he didn't get to stay and sang the words, "I hate home, I hate home," over and over again all the way home.  Maybe he'll be able to attend next year, who knows.  Myra and Lexi spent the majority of the time together.  I'm glad they are such good friends.  And on the last morning, we all climbed the "big" hill together.  Fun times!

The Pancake Shop, the kids could collect trash and turn it in for Pancakes to eat.  Here, pancakes are Crepes.

Myra loved hanging out with her Viking friends.

Sand Pile for the kids to play in and behind it, the wooden platform was filled with water and sand, for the kids to make a mess in.

Lexi with one of her leaders, Signe.

I thought this was so funny.  A tent, full of sleeping babies in strollers.  No moms.

Traveling accordion player.

Can you see all the Seagulls in the sky?

Carrot station.  These were all over the place, baskets filled with carrots with peeler's attached.  If the kids were hungry, they could just peel themselves a carrot.

Going up the hill, it's much steeper than it appears.  But not taller!

This is only about 1/4 of the camp.

Myra at "Shrekland."

Cute kids!

Learning Danish

Today I started Danish lessons. They are offered for free through the communes, so I decided to take them up on the offer.  It would be very easy to live here for 3 years and not learn Danish, since so many people speak English.  But, it would be so nice to be able to go to church and not have to have a translator or to know what the little neighborhood kids are saying to us.  So, we'll see how the lessons go.  I was a little discouraged with my first lesson tonight.  Not by the lesson, but the fact that I was the only girl in a class of 10 guys.  And I have to admit that going off of first looks/impressions, there are a few questionable guys in that class.  I was the only American as well.  The others were from Romania, Poland, Iraq, Cameroon and Switzerland, to name a few that I remember.  It was just kind of uncomfortable.  I hope that it ends up being a good experience though. So, I'll keep going for now and see how it goes.  Wish me luck!