We've Arrived

Where to begin…..? We are here in Denmark. Our flight here was uneventful. We had a somewhat turbulent flight to Newark, which by the way, is just across the river from New York City. I didn’t realize we would be so close. It was pretty cool being able to see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building in the skyline. After our layover there, we headed to Denmark. The kids were pretty good, a little antsy, but not too bad. Noah did manage to spill water all over both him and me in the first 30 minutes of the flight, so we both spent the rest of the trip somewhat damp. Our arrival in Denmark was a little hectic. Because we don’t read Danish, it was a bit of struggle to figure out where to go to get our bags and then our ride wasn’t there waiting for us, like we’d expected. But, he finally found us and took us to our apartment. Our landlord was waiting for us and we were able to get in and check out our new home. The past few days have been a bit of a blur. We are still struggling a little with jetlag, but overall that hasn’t been too bad. That first day, our landlord was extremely helpful. He left us with some bedding and towels and took us to the local market to get a little food. Then he took us all down to the local Commune, kind of like a city hall. We had to go there to register for our CPR cards. I don’t know what that stands for, but it’s something we need to be able to live here. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things we can’t do until we get our cards, like open a bank account, get access to health care, etc. Hopefully they will be here within the next couple of days. Then Chad went around shopping that afternoon with Per (our landlord.) While he was gone, the kids and I all fell asleep on the same bed. The nap really helped us get through the rest of the day. That night we cooked our first Danish meal, spaghetti. Food has been a bit of a challenge so far, mostly because I can’t read/understand the packaging and things are just so different. I’m starting to get a few things figured out though and we should be having a decent meal tonight. Anyway, on Friday, a woman from our ward, Annetta, brought us a few things that ward members had brought for us and took me shopping. We mostly looked around at things, while she explained pricing and good deals. It was very helpful. While I was with her, the bishop came over to meet us and he took Chad and the kids back to his house for lunch. That evening, we decided to take the trek into Copenhagen to go to Chad’s lab. It took quite a while to get there. We had a 30 minute walk to the train station, then the train trip into town and then a hop on the Metro and another short walk to Chad’s work. It was quite an adventure. It made us realize that Chad really needs to get a bike, or it’ll take him a really long time to commute every day. We’ve also realized that if we are going anywhere with the kids, we need to plan for a lot of extra time. Saturday was a very frustrating day. We decided to try out the buses for the first time, so we got online and planned out our route, to a local store, but the weather turned bad not too long after we left, so it was raining and cold. Then, once we got on the bus, we didn’t know where to get off at. It was kind of frustrating, there were no obvious signs of what stop we were at, they didn’t announce it on the speaker and we have yet to find a really good bus route map. Needless to stay, we missed our stop, ended up at some shopping center where we wandered around for a few minutes, but then hopped back on the same bus again to head back home since the kids were freezing. It was a very frustrating and cold experience. Chad ended up going out later on to get a few things from the store, without dragging all of us along. That night, we were invited to Annetta’s house for dinner. They cooked us a typical Danish meal with pork, potatoes, cucumbers and red cabbage. It was pretty good and surprising, the kids ate pretty well also. The dessert after was also very good, I can’t remember what it was called, but she said it was basically a mixture of sugar, milk, eggs and flavoring. Not cooked. We all liked it though. So, that kind of sums things up until today. We have been fretting the past couple of days about attending church this morning. Some things we didn’t realize before moving to this apartment is that church is really far away, it’s inconvenient to take public transportation to and on Sunday’s, there isn’t a lot of public transportation available. All strikes against us. Oh, and I didn’t mention that taking the buses would take about 1 ½ hours to get us to church. And we have 9am church. So, this morning, we got up at 6:30, hurried to get ready and took off. It’s about a 25 minute walk to the bus stop and of course, we underestimated the time it would take our children to walk there. So, we just barely missed the bus. And the next one wouldn’t come for another 40 minutes, so we ended up finding a taxi and taking that to church. Church was really great. Most people had heard we were coming and were very eager to come up and talk to us and offer us more things. It was strange listening to all the Danish, but several people were so kind to sit behind us and translate the meetings for us. The kids absolutely loved their classes and came home with big smiles on their faces and talked about all their new friend, that they can’t talk to, but just had a great time with. And then to top it all off, a sister in our ward offered to drive us home today. I can’t tell you what a relief that was. And several ward members have talked about ways they can pick us up and take us to church each Sunday! What a blessing. So, Denmark has been a challenge so far. I’m sure our challenges are far from over, but I hope that soon, many happy memories will be made.