From Denmark with Love - We Bring You Snow

OH NEJ!!!!

Stupid stupid weather.

Before leaving Denmark we checked the temps and we weren't seeing anything below about 65 degrees. AWESOME! That's like summertime in Denmark!

So, we were suprised when yesterday Dallas was dark, gloomy, rainy and hail-y. As the day went on it got colder and the rain got more solid. Last night we went out with Kelly and James. When we arrived at the bar, it was already snowing a little bit, but when we left, we came out to this:



Now, I know you must be thinking, come on...you live in Denmark. Aren't you use to the cold? Yes, we are. It IS cold outside, but not any colder than it has been in Denmark all winter long. The problem is, we didn't bring ANY warm clothes!! I have 1 long sleeve shirt and lots of little cute t-shirts and skirts. Neither of us have a jacket/coat worthy of keeping any kind of heat on our bodies. Hopefully this will pass by the end of the day or tomorrow :)

We have gotten a ton of emails and people have asked us in talking if we brought this weather with us. I suppose we did! :)

First Snow

We had a blast on Saturday night. We went to the city and picked up our tickets and yup, you guessed it, went for a Guinness. Seriously we are addicted to the stuff. We spent as long as we could in the pub to stay warm. It was fun in there, lots of Irish tunes and singing going on. We left there and went to one of our favorite cafes for a bite to eat. I had a veggie/mozzarella sandwich and Michael had a chicken club sandwich. From there it was time to head to the front gates of Tivoli to wait to be let into the park to get to the theater. It was kinda cool to get a preview of Christmas in Tivoli because it was already decorated. Though this will be the third time we have been to Tivoli at Christmas time, there is something really exciting about seeing it again...and again...and again. "Around the World in 80 Minutes" was HILARIOUS!!!!! Just as good as last years...if not better. This years show lasted 3 hours. Last year, we were in there 3.5 hours! But it goes so fast! When we got there we got a couple beers for the show and were able to pre-order our drinks for the intermission! I thought that was a good idea. Michael just went out to a tent and found our drink number and just picked up our drinks and came back. Cool idea since the line at the bar was outrageous at intermission.The woman that writes the play is incredible. This year there were 3 scenes where the characters where in the US (California, the Great Plains and New York to be exact) So it was funny to hear them making fun of the US. Especially the part where everyone has a gun, because it is a topic of conversation that always comes up with our Danish friends. Then there is a character every year called, "Dr. van Helsingør from Elsinore" who is basically in the play to make fun of the Danes. This character is too funny for words. I know it is a year away, but I'm already excited for next years "Crazy Christmas Cabaret".

Michael at the Lyngby Train Station pretending not to be freezing

Mmmmm Both mine!

It was quite cold all weekend. Last night it started to hail a little bit...or so it appeared. I looked carefully at the hail falling but it wasn't really bouncing off the ground when it hit...so I opened the door and picked up some and it was the strangest stuff! It was clearly hail, perfectly round but it was so fluffy to the touch... soft hail perhaps? I went to see what Wikipedia had to say about it and I think it was Graupel more commonly know as snow pellets! If this is what it was, it only lasted about 3 minutes before it clearly turned into thick snowflakes. It only snowed for about 45 minutes to an hour and didn't leave more then a pretty dusting of white. Our balcony is still covered in ice.

Snow Pellets
If you enlarge the picture you can see that everything falling is in perfect little circles. As is the stuff on the ground.

We got brave and made feet prints in the snow. I really don't know why.

Dusting of Snow

I love the way the roof look out in the distance with a little white on them.

More Snow!!!

We got some more snow today! Nothing big, nothing stuck, but it was still falling from the sky. The days are quickly getting longer and longer. The sun is rising at about 6am, and setting it seems about 6:30ish. It is kinda funny to see it bright outside at 6:00. Actually we don't see it until about 6:30 when Michael starts hitting the snooze button for the next 45 minutes! We haven't set our clocks back yet. That will happen this weekend for us. At which time, it is going to stay bright even longer! I can hardly wait!! Now if we could just get some spring weather. I'm not expecting it though till mid-late April. You know, about the time we leave for Dallas.

Michael has 3 of his bosses in town right now. One of them had never been to Denmark before and within the being here not long at all, he was already in love with the country and kept telling Michael, "I can see why you wanted to move here" He had only seen the airport, the highway , the walk from the hotel to TI (which is the same walk Michael does every morning) and TI. Its nice to know we aren't crazy and other people find it as charming as we do as quickly as we do. It was almost a nice reassurance for us as that it really is as nice here, as we say it is :)

We STILL have absolutely nothing going on. Saturday Jens and Sarah are having us over for dinner. Jens is the latest student to return to Denmark from Lubbock/Dallas that participated in the TTU/DTU program, and Sarah is his girlfriend. We hung out with them in Dallas a couple times, and they have been over here. It should be fun, and we are looking forward to that, but other then that... we have NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING of interest going on here. I need to find something fun to write about... Keep watching. Ill find something. :)

I'm FREE!!!!

After the gym I dug out Michael's old ski pants, put them on, cracked the door open far enough for my little body to squeeze out of grabbed the shovel and dug and dug till the door could open up all the way.. then.. I MADE A FRIEND!! :) I've named him "Michael 2.0" ... I kid I kid. He has no name... and no mouth because the chocolate chips didn't want to stick well like his eyes did.
It started snowing again and already his nose is building up snow and his eyes are slowly disappearing. :( He will be blind by morning.

Holy Moly!!

Forget the little sideshow I posted here last night, check out what I woke up to!!!

This is as far open as the door would go!! I'm stuck!! But if I can get that door open, I'm totally making a snow man on our balcony.

To get an idea how tall our wall usually isI really wanna get one of our two doors open to get out there and measure that pile of snow on that table.

Man digging out his car

There is still snow falling from the sky. It's not heavy snow right now, but its tiny flakes that are falling fast. I am not sure I have ever seen this much snow at once. The most snow I had ever seen was the winter we lived here the fist time, but I don't recall it falling this much at once. Wish my brother was here to play in the snow with me! I'd take Michael too, but he takes some convincing to do so. I also wish Michael were here to see it all! Pictures just don't do justice!

Two Different Worlds

First, Michael made it safe and sound. About 5 minutes after I woke up at 7:30 this morning my phone rang and it was Michael telling me he just got to the hotel and was exhausted and was going to bed. It was just after midnight in Dallas. This morning I checked the weather in Dallas and was jealous to see that it said:

"79 and Sunny"

That is BASICALLY 80 degrees...we haven't seen weather above about 45 since we arrived on November 30th!

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what it looked like here today

This is directly behind the other side of our building. SHOPPING!!! :)

This is the most snow we have gotten since we got here. It is about 10:00 at night and last time I measured (with my trusty ruler with a picture of Einstein on it) I had almost 6 inches piled up on our table outside and 11 inches on the ground of the balcony, and it is still coming down hard and fast. I wonder what it will look like in the morning. I took a bunch of pictures to make a slide show for Michael to see what he was missing, so I am posting it here as well.

EDITED: It is now the next day and I came back and looked at the slideshow I posted and the picture quality was just really really bad and you couldn't see much, so I re-did it, took out the music and just uploaded some pictures. So go check them out! These are pictures of Lyngby and stuff we see daily....

Lyngby Sne

Lyngby Sunsets

“Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk.”
~Jack Handy

That always makes me laugh...

I'm a firm believer that the best sunsets in the world are seen in the desert. Never seen more beautiful sunsets then in El Paso and New Mexico. That being said, recently Lyngby has been trying to prove me wrong. I don't remember the sunsets here being particularly memorable last time we were here. The past few unclouded days though, its been lovely!

This is one of many reasons I love our sun room! I love that we can sit there and watch nature paint us a picture in the sky.

I'm looking out the window and it is starting to snow ever so gently with big giant fluffy flakes. They are so fat it is easy to see them dancing around in the wind on their way down. It's always odd to see seagulls flying around as the snow falls. We are just a few kilometers from the beach so quite often seagulls come and pay us a visit. I suppose while it is still calm outside and before the clouds might dump massive amounts of snow/rain I should go ahead and head on out to the grocery store!

Oh, before I go though, I had my Tai Chi lesson yesterday and it went very well. This guy seems like he is going to compliment and build on everything Chris has already enlightened me with and rather then really teaching me a completely new style and form, he will go in to a lot of depth on the principles that are Tai Chi allowing me to incorporate his teaching into my current style but with new perspectives, as his main style of Tai Chi is not the same as the one I currently practice. Don't know if that really makes much sense to anyone but, it was the easiest way I could explain it and well it makes sense to me!

The World is Right Again

IT SNOWED!!!

Finally, after a few months of snow storm after snow storm in Texas including in the desert of El Paso this Nordic country finally got some of the white stuff. Granted, apparently it is snowing in El Paso AGAIN today... Amarillo and Lubbock snow doesn't ever surprise me at all, but El Paso snow is rare.

I only left to hop across the street to a store to by some new fuses. Last night, "Dr. Michael" blew one of the fuses right after he asked me to come stand next to him in case I had to knock him away from the electricity when he plugged something in...He was pretty sure I wouldn't have to knock him over, but he wanted a backup in case.. or something. I'm not sure what he was thinking, and looking back on it, he isn't either. Thankfully, I didn't have to but he did blow a fuse.

Anyways, here's some Danish snow.. :)