Red Pudding with Organic Cream

11/10/06

Life is excellent. Do you ever have a period of several days when everything just seems to be going your way, and you have to stop and think in order to find something to complain about? Such is my lot at present. The Lord has blessed my life in so many ways recently, that I can't help but praise Him for being such a wonderful God. It is days like these that we need to store in our memory banks, so that when difficult times come, we can look back and remind ourselves that the Lord has proved faithful in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

Last week my Student Missionary duties included acting as a chaperone for the tenth grade class trip to Berlin. We bussed down from the school on Monday, stayed in a cheap hotel for a few nights, and returned early in the morning on Friday. The sight-seeing agenda was designed to please a crowd of hyperactive kids, so it didn't include as many museums as I would've liked to have visited. However, the teacher let myself and another SM (Student Missionary) have an afternoon free so that we could visit the acclaimed Pergamon Museum. This museum houses one of the world's most impresive collections of Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and Islamic artifacts. The school funded our entrance fee (halelujah!) and there were even audio headsets available in English to guide you through the displays. I wove my way in and out of the archeological treasures, soaking it all in. A blue-tiled entrance from the times of King Nebuchadnezzer. A freize of Greek sculpture from the city of Pergamon. Fragments of early Sanskrit writing. Woven rugs, Arabic calligraphy, bearded statues, and brass coins. Maria, my Slovakian accomplice, was not quite as jazzed about all the "old stuff" as I was. But she was a good sport and let me take my time.

And now, we are back in good old Danmark. It's nice to be surrounded by the soft, smeared tones of Danish once again, instead of the gutural, choppy noise of German. I've been doing my best to learn as much of the language as I can during my time here. We have Danish lessons twice a week provided for us by the school, although most of what we learn is from the kids prompting us with new phrases. Each night that I'm on duty, I sit out in the lobby with my various language books and have the kids help me with my pronunciation. They're always more than happy to oblige. Last night we worked on how to say "I'm wild about bananas," "These are my own knees," "I can't stand horror films," and "what do you think of badminton?" among other things. As usual, I found myself having to say: "roud groud med oukologisk floude" several times for their entertainment. This is not the correct Danish spelling, but it's the closest that I can come to it without having a special Danish keyboard. It's a kind of dessert that's very hard for foreigners to pronounce, and is the ultimate test for how well your Danish skills are progressing. The direct translation is "red pudding with organic cream."

I've been working many extra hours this week in order to have more free time at Christmas, when I'll be going home to my American loved ones. For now however, I'm perfectly ready for autumn break! I found a reasonable plane ticket between Billund and Oslo, so I'll be visiting Martina at her school in Norway for an entire ten days. It seems almost too good to be true. We've always been "best buds" and we've missed eachother a lot. But, even more exciting than seeing Martina, is the fact that Paul, my boyfriend, will be meeting us there! The Lord blessed him with the discovery of a reasonable flight to Oslo as well! We won't have lots of flexibility as far as traveling, since Martina still has classes in session, but she assures us that there's all sorts of gorgeous hiking to be done in the surrounding area. The three of us should have a good time exploring the nordic wilds.

Well, I ought to try and pack some things before "pligt" time rolls around: the hour of the day where we supervise the students' daily cleaning chores. Everyone's favorite part of the day, I assure you! :-)
God bless to one and all, Petra