Darker Days are Here.

Check this out:
I took this picture at 3:45 PM on Tuesday. Thats the sun behind those trees in the distance... I zoomed in for this shot to show how low the sun was.


I think about when I was younger and how wierd it would be as a kid getting out of school at 3:30 and having the sunset 15 minutes later. The sunset seems to be lasting about an hour. It's quite lovely to have the beautiful colors in the sky for so long. I've said this before, but I have to say it again. I honestly do not remember the sunsets being pretty here the first time we lived here, but my eyes are amazed at how many BEAUTIFUL sunsets we have seen. Perhaps its the position of our flat and that we are on the top floor?? Ya, I bet thats it. :)

It is cold. The air is quite frigid feeling. It's makes it hard for me to want to go outside! But the good news is, I have only had a few days where the darker days were effecting me, by giving me a lack of energy. I realize there is still 1 month to get darker but I think I can handle it just fine. Especially since the Christmas season is about to be in FULL swing!

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.

Around the World in 80 Minutes

You may or may not remember that last year for our anniversary we went to Tivoli to see the annual "Crazy Christmas Caberet". It is an audience participation play. (You get to cheer at the good guys, boo at the bad guys and more) Last years show was called, "Bored of the Rings" and this year it is "Around the World in 80 Minutes". We had talked about going on our anniversary again but the seats left for that day weren't so good The first show is tonight and and everything up till Christmas was almost sold out with only bad seats left. We did find some good seats on Saturday, so we will be doing that this Saturday and I'm quite excited about it. The show is always in English, and last year was HYSTERICAL! I'm sure this year will be no different. Tivoli does not open for Christmas until next weekend so that will take away from the experience, but since we have that wonderful year card, we will just wonder back once it opens for Christmas. :)

http://www.londontoast.dk/

But I don't wanna NOT go to the Gym!

Michael fired me from the gym yesterday for a week. :o( We usually take 1 week off every 3 months to let our bodies rest but I haven't taken my week off in probably more like 6 months. oops. Michael had a week off when he went to Japan in September but I just pushed through. The past 6 work outs I've only completely finished 2 of them without having to break in the middle or I start to not feel so great. That's generally the sign to take a break. :) The great thing is that usually after our week breaks we really kick butt in the gym when we start back. YEA! So here is the start to my lazy week!! (Though I'll still do my Tai Chi...I can't be COMPLETELY lazy)

Here are couple pictures from the pretty Danish trees this past Sunday. Already just a few days after these pictures were taken almost all the leaves have fallen off all the trees around here. I guess that means its about winter time! The weather forecast says it is suppose to snow on Sunday, but if it does, I don't think it will be anything more then some flurries. I'm thinking regardless if it does snow or not, it seems like it will be cold enough for a big pot of stew and mulled wine... YUM!

Halloween - The Party

There is a 100% chance that if I don't explain this news story from last winter you will not understand Michaels costume. I didn't bring much attention to this when it happened because we had just gotten here and I didn't want to freak out our families too much. We had only been here a couple weeks when the a big riot in Copenhagen broke out. We were living at the SAS Radisson in central Copenhagen at the time and the very few people who had heard about it emailed us to ask us if we were in any danger. It wasn't far from us, but we were not in harms way.

A few months later, another HUGE riot broke out. This time there was major destruction, including several cars being set on fire and bricks thrown at the police. In short the rioters were a bunch of punk kids trying to save their Youth House, aka Ungdomshuset. The Government had given them this house years ago and then decided to sell the house off. The kids were less then trilled about this and protested.

If you want to know the whys and exactly what the riots were about here is a link with information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungdomshuset
If you scroll down it talks about the protests and riots.


Pictures
You don't have to watch the whole video... Just a little bit.

So, for Halloween Michael was an "Undomshuset Rioter".
Brick, Flag, Pierced Ears and All.

And I was a Danish Soccer Fan

The Pates

We were excited to see what our guests would come as. Several of them told us this was their very first Halloween Party! HOW FUN! They started arriving at 5:30PM and it was about 2:00AM by the time the last people left. I hope that means they were having fun. The time change happened that night so it was nice to have that extra hour to sleep in and not feel like we slept the day away. We spent the evening eating, drinking and talking. The American candy seemed to go over quite well with most of our guests. I was surprised as I thought most of them wouldn't like it, because Danes always tell us how sweet they think American Candy is.

At the end of the night, I realized I didn't take that many pictures at all. Apparently I was either busy getting this or that ready, or talking and having fun. Those of you who know me, know that at events and visits I can't make myself put up the camera so I was shocked that I didn't take that many pictures. Jason, where were you when I needed a backup camera man huh? Here are the few pictures I did take.

Jens the Ghoul

Dorte the Witch and Karl Kristian as Dracula

Klaus - Matchstick Man

Jens the Scary guy from Scream and Hella as Shrek

Flemming the Ugly Woman and Maja the Mummy
We had a costume contest and "The Mummy" won.
She got a bottle of Casillero del Diablo Wine.
(Translation....Cellar of the Devil)

Helena the little prisoner.
She was adorable and belongs to the cross dresser and the Mummy.
The number on her outfit is Michaels TI employee number!! I asked Flemming if the number meant anything and read it out loud and Michael said, thats my a.i.d. number!

Scary characters on our couch

I forgot to post him with the decorations!
This is our Scarecrow guarding the bucket of candy. :)

Chatting
These two were brave enough to take the train in their costumes!!
They said they had many people looking at them.

Siblings

More Chatting

We are already talking about next year...and so were our guests when they were leaving!!!
So, just call us: "The Pates: Bringing Halloween to Denmark one Dane at a time" :o)

Halloween - The Preperations

Halloween in Denmark is a pretty new holiday. Halloween stuff is starting to pop up in stores, but in teeny tiny quantities, but it has a long way to go to get to the US of A. We have been having an annual Halloween party for the past few years with Mary and Jason and decided this year, even if they weren't here, we would still have a party....so we did! Most of our decorations came from stuff we already had and we made a couple trips to IKEA to get lots of black and orange decorations (candles, circular rugs, blanket and even a new orange shower curtain) to help set the Halloween mood. We had some American candy that you can't find here shipped to us along with some spider webs and other fun Halloween stuff. These pictures are all mostly taken during the day, but our flat looked so cool at night with all the candles lit. We had the AIM Halloween station playing all night long as well.

These are just some of our decorations, we had stuff all over the place.

Michael Carving a Pumpkin
Notice his earing's are back in his ears...its part of the Halloween costume.

Entrance
Window Sill
Candles You can see in the background our pumpkin and ghost candle holders glowing
Book case

And then there was our bathroom...AKA the Witch Kitchen
This took the longest because we had to make all the jars.

This is how we had it set up.

If any of our guests got curious and wanted to open the door to see what else was in there we stuck some more stuff in the other side. One of our guest told us she even checked in the shower to see if we had anything behind the shower curtain!
Our Witch Jars

Witch Warts

More Jars

I figured out what's wrong with the washer/dryer...apparently a ghost is living in it ;)

Drink/Dessert Table

The food all got to live in the sun room.
The plate and utensils table

And the food table
For dinner we had Chili, Crackers, Bread, Salad, Banana Nut Bread, and a Cheese Plate.
We had some vegetarians at our party so I attempted Veggie Chili. I just substituted my ground beef with lentils and actually turned out pretty good....(though not as good as the beef) :)

I had found these to make for desert about a month before the party. Then about 4 days before our party I saw that my "Cooking Light" magazine had put this recipe in their magazine as well. They turned out to be pretty sweet, but still managed to have a nice taste to them despite the sweetness.

Next post.....Halloween Costumes...

Stupid 'Ol Internet

I've been sans internet since Sunday morning. I say "I" because Michael gets all the internet he can handle at work. Finally, its back up and running, we needed a new router, which had to get shipped to the head TI Denmark office in Aalborg (other side of the country) and then shipped over here to the Lyngby office. I went and picked it up this afternoon.

So, I have a ton to say but It'll have to wait. We are going over to a friends house tonight for dinner and I have a lot I need to get done around here first. Since my "arrogant" self is thinking everyone must be worried about me since I haven't been around for a whole 6 days, I felt I needed to explain where I have been. :)

I'll catch up on all my emails, blogs, and missed Skype calls just as quick as I can. :)

"Planet in Peril"

Last night I coincidentally turned on the TV to CNN just as "Planet in Peril" was starting. I was so glad to see it was being broadcast over here already. (Our CNN is a British CNN station). I thought for sure it would be months till we got to see it over here.

Here is a link to a preview of the show that I got from AnnMarie, along with a really cool REM song :)
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/10/rem.cooper/index.html

Unfortunately it was part 2 we were watching and we are hoping to see part 1 sometime in the near future. It was really interesting and intriguing. Along with seeing some beautiful places in this world (which is what I thrive on), I was surprised at some of the stuff going on in places that I would never have imagined. I think I was most shocked to hear that Lake Chad in Africa, once the 6th largest lake in the world has shrunk 90% in the past 45 years! THAT'S HUGE! Everyone has heard, "Save the Rainforests", "Global Warming", "Pollution", "Animal Extinction" and while these are pretty touchy subjects for a lot of people on both sides of the issues, this show presented it in an educated way that was very well done. (at least in my opinion) I was impressed that they even interviewed a few people that take other sides of the issues then the shows.

The best part of the show was when they were showing some clips in Africa of women doing laundry in the lake and sweet Michael, just as cool and collected as he could be turns to me and says in his most serious voice... "At least you get a sink to do the laundry in!" Of course we missed the next 2 minutes of the show because we were laughing hysterically. :)

A Balancing Act

I often get these two questions.

1) What is it you two like so much about Denmark?
2) Is there anything you don't like about Denmark?

And I am sure you all are curious too :)

1) What is it you two like so much about Denmark?
sigh, so much. It's very broad but the way of life here.
Life seems so much more laid back and easy going. I like that on weekends you see families out and about enjoying each others company. This doesn't mean shopping together, because just about every store is closed after 2-4pm on Saturday for the rest of the weekend, but genuinely spending time together.

I love the freedom of not having a car. We don't have to worry about maintenance, car washes, registration/inspection stickers, lack of car payment, insurance payment and filling up with gas.

We have always had a healthy wine budget and it's a nice change that we can get excellent French wines for so much cheaper then we can in the states. (YES, something IS cheaper here then in the states)

I love that we are a hop skip and a jump away from places like Germany, Sweden, France, Italy, Estonia, England, Russia...etc.

I love that we have more friends in Denmark that we see on a regular basis then in Dallas.

I like summertime here much better then in hot Texas.

Michael loves his small office here. The difference between 15,000 people and 25 people is incredible


Of course, there are two sides to everything!

2) Is there anything you don't like about Denmark?
It gets tiring sometimes to not have shops open on the weekend. Especially if Michael needs something, for example, a new shirt, we can't go on weekdays because he works and we hit the gym immediately after that. And on Saturdays, since the gym is always #1 we have to get up early to go to the gym so we can come back home and shower to go out and get whatever it is he needs. Kinda gets to be a pain....because the gym also closes early on Saturdays! (Thankfully our gym is open on Sundays)

I miss the freedom of having a car. Sometimes it would be nice not to have to wait for the train/bus and not worrying about having to leave somewhere in time so we don't miss the last train.

I miss good Australian, Chilean and California wines. Even the labels we have always enjoyed, seem to really suck here.

It can get hard to not be a hop skip and a jump away from El Paso, Lubbock, St. Louis, and Austin. In less then 1 year, we have missed 3weddings, 2 bar mitzvahs, 1 store opening of our best friend's own Starbucks store, 1 baby and are about to miss 4 more, and and 1 funeral.

I miss having our few very close very special best friends close by.

I don't like the dark cold winter. (But Christmas time is LOVELY and my favorite time of the year in Denmark....so really, I don't like dark/cold November and January)

Michael misses being in the middle of excitement of the main TI branch.

But the two bigggest hugest things that neither of us enjoy here are:
1. The taxes! BLEH!!!! I will never in a million years miss Danish Taxes.
2. How expensive everything is. Michael gets paid in Danish Kroner so we don't have to do the exchange rate in our heads but sometimes its hard not too, and then, we become very depressed when we realize we just spent $50 dollars for two sandwhiches and 2 cups of coffee.

I think I am posting this because these two questions came up recently and while answering I realized that a lot of the things I (and we) love most about being here, seem to also be the things we like least. Funny how that works huh?

Seriously...NOTHING!

Oh man. Here we are again, with nothing going on. I feel like everyone expects me to always have these fun and exciting stories since you know...we are living in Europe and all, but really, we are still the same boring Pate's we have always been, just in a cool destination! ;) The most exciting thing I can come up with is I just finished a good book. whoo hoo. haha.

Last week was Fall Holiday here in Denmark so we didn't have Danish class, we go back tomorrow and I already feel like we forgot a lot in just that one week.

I was flipping our blog and noticed that in 2 days it will be 1 year since we took our Relocation Trip to Denmark to search for our flat. It is really hard to believe a year has passed since then. We still feel we picked the right place between the two we loved the most. Though this one wasn't in as good of condition of the other, the sunroom and balcony and top floor make this place completely worth the inconveniences (more then just the washer/dryer and crappy landlord) we have had here.

Yup, thats all I've got for today!! :)