Merry Christmas everyone!

It's that special time of year again, and Steinunn is going home to Iceland in two days to celebrate the holidays with her family. I, however, am staying behind in Denmark.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the mouthwatering, traditional Christmas dinner in my family. Red cabbage, sugar roasted potatoes, brown gravy, cranberry jelly, risalamande and last but not least the duck. Mmmm... From what I gather, Steinunn is also looking forward to eating all the strange and exotic things that they usually eat at christmas in Iceland (turkey).

This year we've made our very own tacky christmas card. Originally, we intended to print paper versions of the card and send them out by snail mail, but suddenly we didn't have time to do that (ahem). So here's the electronic version instead, for your viewing pleasure:


Glædelig Jul, Gleðileg Jól, Merry Christmas, Frohe Weinachten, Feliz Navidad, Feliz Natal, Tchestito Rojdestvo Hristovo... (The last one is Bulgarian)

Playing tricks on Danish kids...

In Iceland we have 13 Santa Clauses. They are all brothers and they live in Mount Esja, close to Reykjavik. Their mothers name is Gríla and their fathers name is Leppalúdi. Gríla cooks naughty kids in a big pot and Leppalúdi is... well I can't really remember his role that much... Think he almost doesn't have one... Anyway, the Santa brothers come down from the montain one at a time, starting 13 nights before Christmas. The kids put a Shoe in the window and if they have been nice, the get a little treat. If not, they get a rotten potatoe.
ANYWAY. The point of the story here is that I've made the kids in my group at the kindergarden make shoes out of paper and we have put them in the window. Last night Santa came alllll the way from Iceland, to their amazement. Today it didn't come because I'm not at work, staying home with fun grammar. It is actually quite great to do this. I can so much easier keep them in line, having the whole "santa can see how you behave" hanging over their heads at all times... I haven't gone into too much detail about Gríla though... think it might scare them a bit tooo much... I might though, if they get tooo naughthy... ;)

A Great Find

These days I'm following an auction on eBay. It isn't just any old auction, though. The item being sold is a vinyl LP containing the very first studio recordings of The Velvet Underground. If you don't know The Velvet Underground, I can tell you that it was one of the most influential rock bands ever. The lead singer was Lou Reed, who later went on to make songs like "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Perfect Day" during his (ongoing) solo career.

A Canadian guy found the vinyl record in a garage sale in New York. He bought it for 75 cents. At first he didn't know what the record was, but when he found out he decided to sell it on eBay. There's only this one copy in existence, so the record collectors are going nuts.

The auction ends in 3 days, and the highest bid right now is 125,861 $ which is equivalent to 703.927 danske kroner, or 8558395 islenska kronar.

I would have liked to find that record myself.

You can follow the auction here.

- Søren

There is something so silly about realizing 15minutes before finishing an 8 hour work day that you have been wearing your shirt inside-out the whole day...
-Steinunn

We haven't been too active on this site lately. Partly because we have been super busy with work and school and partly because we haven't had that much to report. We still don't have much to report. Report. Report. Report.
It feels almost nuts that it's already December. Which means exam time, crazy shopping/spending time and for me a trip to Iceland. I'll be spending Christmas with the family up North and Søren will be spending Christmast with the family "down South". Next year we'll try to coordinate it a little better and only stay in one country. Being from two different countries takes a little planning from time to time...
Talking about Christmas shopping! I'm almost nearly done :-) And tomorrow I will only have like a gift and a half left :-) Allready gotten Mum's, Jenný's and Breki's. So, Søren, Hlynur and Dad are left... oh, and the Secret Santa gift for the Kritargirls at home too... ;-) I'm having a girls day tomorrow and meeting up with Anna in Cph to shop for some pressies and then we're meeting Maria later for an afternoon of gossip and girliestuff. It will be fun :) I haven't seen Maria for a while so it will be nice to catch up.
Anyway, Good weekend all!

PS.
Gledilegan Fullveldisdag Íslendingar :)

First we took Manhattan, now we take BERLIIIIN...

We've been to Copenhagen, Dublin, New York, Reykjavik, Malmø and Paris together. Now it is time to take on Berlin (!!!) Our January "escape" will be 4 nights in this legendary city. Hurrah! We have actually booked tickets and hotel, weeeeeeeeeee!!!
Søren and Steinunn

Kindergarden makes me sick...

So, I (Steinunn) finally dragged my ass to the doctor today. I've been sick, you see. I blame it on working with kids, because I have never been so often sick. The kids carry all sorts of germs. They never wash their hands... Then they come and give me a hug... Hmm.... will be nice to get out of the kindergarden.
But, anyway. The doctor was nice, a woman, and she told me that I had a few infections. My sinuses are infected, I have ear infection and my glands are swollen. To get rid of all this I have gotten pensilin (of course...) and some nose spray that should help as well.

Just another picture

Here's one final picture from Tivoli. We took a lot of pictures of the reflections in the pond, but this was the only one that wasn't completely shaken...

Christmas Came Early

Today Steinunn and I had a small preview of christmas. I got two tickets for the christmas fair in Tivoli from a kind person that I study together with at Journalism. The christmas fair doesn't officially open until tomorrow, so it was special privilege to get in there today.

The Old Garden (Tivoli) was covered in lights, pine branches and fake snow. It was all very beautiful, and it was nice to visit Tivoli without having to fight your way through crowds of people. We just walked slowly around the whole garden and admired all the lights and shiny objects. So it was a nice and unexpected experience. That being said, november 14th is probably a little early for any christmas related activities. Personally I'm not really feeling the christmas excitement just yet.

As always, we brought a camera - two actually - so here are some of the sights:

The old carousels look really pretty at night. Note the reflection in the puddle of water.


This is a giant plastic bubble (ca. 6 metres high) with a plastic castle inside it. It was supposed to have fake snow whirling around inside it, but it didn't seem to be working. The large building in the background is the restaurant "Nimb". The restaurant is going to close this winter, and the building will become an exclusive hotel.


A guy inside the giant bubble was trying to work some electrical fans. They were supposed to blow the fake snow around the bubble, but as soon as he left, the snow settled again.


This is Steinunn looking at pricey christmas decorations. All of Tivoli was filled with stands and shops selling all kinds of christmas items.


This thing is a 7 metre tall wooden reindeer on wheels... I guess it's the less-famous Trojan reindeer.


This picture was not taken in Tivoli. It is the sunrise as seen from our window this morning.

The latest, greatest...

Geez, all that rain! Someone is building an Ark in our garden, just in case. We are planning to buy a ticket on it. Just in case.

On Saturday, we swam through the streets of Copenhagen, and reached the National Museum where we ate brunch, in the courtesy of Anette (Søren’s sister), who had given Søren ‘brunch for two’ for his birthday. We sat there and ate delicious bacon, fruit, bread, eggs, jam, pesto… you name it, for an hour. Then we couldn’t stuff any more in our bellies and had to declare ourselves beaten by the beautiful brunch buffet. Steinunn lolled her way to Bella Center to meet up with Anna, Casper and Monika where she spent money on old cool things, while Søren lolled his way to the train and home to bed. Not feeling too good, snotty and coughing.

The weekend had been kick-started with dinner at Steinunn’s cousin Maggi (Magnús), and his fiancé (congrats again!) Steinunn (no jokes needed, there are more Steinunn’s than STEINUNN in the world…). They live next to the Carlsberg factory by Enghave, in a big and neat apartment. We had a really nice evening with good food and great company. Thanks for the invite guys! Oh, and Maggi got revenge over the “Danish” by whooping Søren in foozball. Too bad it never happens in real life… ;)

Anyways, here are some random pictures…

Panda, the model cat

Snowy bike in Århus

As requested, Anette Hellerung ;)

Iceland in October

I finally went home to the ’old country’ last week after nearly 7 months in Denmark. I had butterflies in my stomach when the plane landed at Keflavík airport, and couldn’t wait to get out side and feel the fresh air and wind in my face. My excitement diminished a little bit when the captain announced to us just after landing that it was windy and -3 C outside. Oh well! That is Iceland for you.

I spent the week admiring my little nephew and helping to prepare his baptism which was held at my parents place. I didn’t actually do much, or go very many places, but it was nice to just be able to relax and get over this annoying cold I’ve had for some weeks now.

I took around 160 pictures, mostly of Breki ;) and here are some of them.

Breki Hlynsson

Think Breki was getting tired of my camera...

Hangin out in Mosó

The proud parents

These horses hang out close to where my parents live in Mosó. They were kind enough to pose for pictures.

Breki, the charmer, hanging out with me and the Teddy bear me and Søren got him as a baptism gift. He seemed to like it...

Fluga, the candy eating cat

Weeeeee!!

Hurrrrraaaah!! I'm FINALLY going home tomorrow. I've been away from my cold island for almost 7 months and that's just toooo much. So, next time i blog, it might be from my parents cool laptop and crappy internet connection.

Another thing, feel FREE to comment, leave a note or just check in every now and then. We do enjoy seeing you comments...

A short update with nice photos

Today I (Søren) handed in five applications for my internship that begins in february. It's hard to try to sell yourself like that, and I spent most of the past week trying to make the applications as good as possible.

Tuesday next week I go to Århus, where all the internships are ditributed in one day. There are 250 journalism students and 260 internships to take from, so everyone's bound to get a spot. But of course we all hope for the best. I applied for 24Timer (a free paper), Ekstra Bladet (a paper for investigative journalism), Musikprogrammet (a TV show about music), DAGBLADET Roskilde (The local paper in Roskilde) and Nyhedsmagasinet Danske Kommuner, where I was in a miniature internship for two weeks, as you may know.

Here's something nice to look at:

Some nice, pink flowers...

...a boring, grey wall...

...and a mossy fountain.

Culture night

Last friday, Steinunn and I went to culture night (Kulturnat), in Copenhagen, and now we finally managed to transfer the pictures to the computer.

As always, there were lots of things to see. We started off by meeting up with my younger sister, Anette, for a quick meal. She was going to the National Museum to see some of her friends from the design school where she's studying. We tagged along and saw this giant glitterball at the museum:

We said goodbye to Anette, and continued into the night. We crossed "Langebro" to Christianshavn, because we were heading for a place, where they were teaching people to play old, Icelandic games. But before we got there, we thought better of it (too far to walk), and returned to the city centre. At Gammel Strand, we saw a small, but good photo exhibit in Fotografisk Center.

Passing by the famous fountain "Storkespringvandet", I took this picture:

We went to Kgs. Nytorv before finally going to the last stop of the night: Dansk Design Center, where the following picture is taken. If you look hard at the picture you can see us in the reflection.

All in all we had a good night, but we didn't have the energy to go see a lot of things, because we were both tired after a long day. We took lots of pictures during the night, but only a few of them were any good. Most of them were shaken, because we didn't bring a tripod... oh well...

And another thing: I bought a new cell phone. I've had the old one for almost four (4) years, and it has been dying slowly over the last few months. The "3" cell phone store had a special culture night offer that I couldn't resist. The new phone has a camera, internet access and an MP3-player. I can use it to go on MSN Messenger and I can have video conversations. The old one didn't even have a colour screen. I swore, I would never get a phone with all these silly and useless functions, but now I'm learning to love it.

Here's a picture to illustrate just how different the two phones are:


That's all for now. We'll be back soon!

Home Home Home

Next Tuesday I finally go home to Iceland to see this happy fella. My nephew was born on September 8th and so far I've had to let due with pictures and webcam on msn. On Saturday, Breki will then be baptised and I am going home for the event,- and to hug and kiss him for about 6 days. I also look forward seeing the other members of my family ;) And the food... really look forward to the food...

Bla di bla

Work was crazy last week, absolutely crazy. The kids were all over the place, yelling, screaming, biting, hiting, and just generally being pains in the arse. This week we have fall break in the schools so a lot of the kids will be having holidays with their older sibings. All in all 24 kids will have a day or days off this week. I hope and pray for a quiet week. I am really looking forward to starting University again and leave the kindergarden once and for all!

Sending poo to Santa

Ok, I work with kids. Small kids. Kids who still use a diaper even though they could very well have learned to use the toilet by now. Us, the "grownups" try to trick the kids into accepting the toilet as a natural part of their lives. During one of those "manipulations" this brilliant comment came up.

Me: 'Lukas, aren't you gonna stop the whole diaper thing soon?'
Lukas: 'Hmmmm maaaaaybe' Ponders a little bit and then says
'maybe if I make a poo, I can give it to Santa Claus and then I don't
have to use a diaper anymore'
Me: 'Eeehhhhh? That's an idea.....???'

I couldn't help but laughing out loud. I mean, he meant it in the most serious way. I however doubt that Santa would be too pleased with the present, or the postman for that matter. But I guess little Lukast has sent his pacifier to Santa and like that gotten rid of that habit. Guess he thinks that sending Santa things takes care of all problems....

Byline Debut

Today was a special day for me (Søren). As we may or may not have mentioned in an earlier post, I have been in an internship at the News Magazine "Danske Kommuner" for the past two weeks. And today I got to see the results of my hard work, as I received two copies of the magazine in the mail. The magazine contained two of my articles: one about a ship from Funen and one about health care in the lovely city of Fredensborg. While these subjects may not sound endlessly exhilarating, it was a very special experience to see my own name in print for the first time. Next week will bring another edition of the magazine, and that one will also have one of my articles in it. (That concludes the ego tripping for now, promise!)

This is a scan of one of the articles. That's my byline in the magnyfying glass (The magnyfying glass was inserted afterwards in Photoshop, just to be clear).

Birth Days, Sick Days and Normal Days

Well well well well well.... Søren turned 24 on thursday, got heaps of gifts, was taken to dinner twice and is still eating the chocolate he got from both his aunt and the family in Iceland. I can't eat chocolate much so I mostly watch him eat it. I get coke instead. And bread. It's great.

On Sunday, we got Søren's Mum, Aunt and Grandmum over to celebrate Søren's big day so most of Saturday we spent cleaning the place, which was, btw, needed. We're not slobs, but we've had and insane schedule lately so things have kinda been left undone. Geez we sound like slobs now! Forget what you have just read!! Anyway, we had visitors, so naturally we had to make a birthday cake. We bought one of those super easy ones from a box and mixed it and put in the oven. When Søren was taking it out, he however dropped it in the oven so the baking paper caught fire and we had a small fire on our hand. I proved to be useless in a situation like this and kinda just went "what should I do?!!! WHAT SHOULD I DO?!!!!!!!!!" and not giving Søren a change to say anything. Great help that is. We managed to kill the fire, and I managed to burn myself on the hot plate (I have a mark on my arm to prove it) and luckily, the cake was still edible. Lucky us. Or something.

I work in a village that is so small that there are only buses every hour and I am often the only person on it. This means, that when I have to open the kindergarden at 6.30 I have no choice but to bike from the station in Høje Taastrup, as no buses go out there that early. I hate to bike, really, really, really HATE to bike. What I hate even more is rain when I bike. What I hate even more than rain when biking, is doing it at 6 in the morning. That was pretty much my friday morning. Got up at 5.02 and at 6 I sat on my super crappy bike without rainclothes (forgot them in the kindergarden) and started my 25 minute hellride to Sengeløse. I got there, completely soaked and spent the first 2 hours of my work day wearing rainpants as my normal pants were drying. The kids kept asking why I was wearing rainpants and gave me a dirty look whenever I told them I had been out in the rain without rainclothes. I kinda get their point as I tell them a million times a day that they MUST WEAR rainclothes when raining. I am a Bad Bad Bad kindergarden teacher...

Obviously, now I have a cold and have spent the day at home. Which is not too bad.

The following is a picture of the splendid birthday cake decorated with M&M's.

back in business

Okay, the net situation has been incredibly annoying, and even more annoying to find out today when I (Steinunn) called our super, that the problem could be fixed by a simple click of the mouse. I simply don’t get why the super didn’t share this information with me last time I called to complain about the internet. But, all complaints aside, things are going good.

Work is good most of the time. I have however realized that I am not cut out to work with spoiled and whiny children. I simply do not have the patience or interest. Getting back to school will therefore be fantastic, and I feel more enthusiastic about school than I have been for a very long time.

Søren is doing a miniature internship for 2 weeks and gets to play a real journalist. He seems to be enjoying it a lot, and will even get his name on print. So, right now we are both working and feeling a little bit like adults. But don’t worry, it won’t last long :)

Technical Difficulties

Our internet connection has been quite unstable lately, so we haven't been able to update the blog. We hope that conditions will return to normal soon.

Copenhagen in August

Yesterday I (Søren) went to Copenhagen and wandered around aimlessly, taking pictures. Here are a few of the shots I ended up with:

...and the heat goes on.

Here are a few more pics from the summer house; we haven't been photographing a lot since then.Homemade pizza in the orange light of the late evening.

A beautiful sunset over Evetofte.

Steinunn's first encounter with the mind-boggling game of "Klodsmajor".

Unsurprisingly, Steinunn lost the first round ;-)

In other news...
Steinunn started her new job this week, and so far it seems to be a pleasant albeit exhausting experience. If you are dying to hear more about it, you probably won't have to wait much longer. I suspect that a few anecdotes from the kindergarten will make their way to the blog in the months to come.

Today, we went to Copenhagen to shop (In case you're interested: Steinunn bought a nice shirt and I finally found "This is Spinal Tap" on DVD). We also went to the cinema to see the catastrophe movie "Poseidon". It was a decent movie in its genre. I would rate it 6.7 out of 10 overall. That's all for now.

Wish it would rain a little to cool the place down. The heat is getting a little bit too much. A cold wind in your face would be nice about now.

From the beach in Liseleje

This summer will not be remembered for it's great adventures and travels to exotic places. This summer will be remembered as the summer we didn't go anywhere. This summer will be different from the summers to come, because in the summers to come, we will go somewhere fun and exotic. Or just fun. Or just not Denmark. Or just something different...
We have however, just come home from a 5 day stay in the summerhouse in Melby. So, tecnically, we have done something. Kind of. But it was really nice to have the entire house to ourselves. You really feel the difference when you live in a rather small apartment, and the garden :) we looove the garden. We took Panda with us, and she got to run around the house, and even go outside a bit, eventhough she was a little bit affraid of it. She was also a good little bug eater :) Really funny to see her run around, chasing a fly we couldn't see, he he he.

Notice Notice Notice Notice Notice

We have changed the settings on the comment system so now everyone can comment :) So, feel free to use the system!

Cat in the Box

Just a quick update. Here are two pictures of Panda trying to fit into a shoe box... and finally succeeding.

Tre smala korvar med bröd, takk!

This thursday, Steinunn, me and our friends Anna and Casper went on a one-day trip to Malmö, Sweden. There were only two thing on our "to-do" list for the day: shopping in the city centre and bathing in a water park called "Aq-Va-Kul". After a good three hours of browsing stores for clothes, shoes and beauty products, in the warm, Swedish summer weather, it turned out to be a brilliant idea to go and cool off at Aq-Va-Kul. Although the water park was a little run down, we had a really good time there. We stayed for three hours and tried the water slide at least 10 times each (between the four of us, I hold the record time for the water slide at Aq-Va-Kul: 9,45 seconds!).
The surprise element of the day came when we found an American store. We all stocked up on our favourite American products (Oreos, Big Red, Hershey's, etc.), at outrageuous prices (e.g. 85 Swedish kroner for a pack of Oreos cereal... we didn't buy it).

This reminded us of New York...

Casper being a Casper

We all wondered why on earth the hot dog bun was so small, it didn't really fit the hot dog.

After very little search, we found the waterpark, and because we were playing super tourists, we had to take a picture.

Anna and Casper shopping for fruit, this was before we found the "healthy snacks" in the American store.

Steinunn being a Steinunn

The Icelandic Invasion

Steinunn writes…

Hjálmar, the Icelandic Reggae band, (which holds 3 Swedes as well) came and played a concert in Loppen, Christiania earlier this month and we went, accompanied by Pálína, a friend of mine from way way way back Iceland. Being there, in Christiania, surrounded by all those Icelanders, felt like being at a family party, but being a newcomer to the family and not knowing anybody but the persons you came with. Since I moved down here I have been well aware that there are “more of us” in Denmark, but kind of ignored everything that has had anything to do with Iceland or Icelandic culture. However, as Søren has been singing along with the Hjálmar CD’s in my collection, and the fact that I hugely like the band, we decided to go to this unofficial Family Party. The concert was in one word, fantastic and my little Icelandic heart beat a little faster when they played an old song, that I didn’t even know I knew the lyric to. Søren is still singing the Hjálmar songs…

This picture was taken when Hjálmar played four songs in the recently opened 12 Tonár in Copenhagen. The two last pics are from the incredibly hot gig at Loppen (literally hot; 35 to 40 degrees, I guess).