Catching up on 2010: Preparing for the holiday in Denmark - Part 1

Happy New Year everyone!
We hope you all had an enjoyable holiday season and transitioned smoothly into 2011.

After some travels in Europe and a challenging beginning of the year (tragic passing of a dear friend among other things) we are back to normal (or so) which of course includes much-awaited blog updates! So let's start first with what happened on our end here since late November, beginning with a Thanksgiving celebration at our place.

With all the snow we got since mid-November, we kinda got sidetracked into wondering whether it would disappear or not. Well, we are getting closer to the anniversary of our arrival here and snow is still on the ground... There's more or less of it as we go, but it's always there. Alright, let's try to not focus too much on snow again here...

Back to late November... On the Saturday following Thanksgiving, we organized a Thanksgiving dinner at our place with friends from work, including two American expatriates that we know here: Lee (who works with C) and Maureen (the wife of Claus, who also works with C). C was happy that we found a turkey in a downtown store. She then tried an unconventional recipe to bake it, piece by piece. The result was indeed as proclaimed: both dark and white meats ended up moist and tender. Even the cat enjoyed the recipe very much, because it meant C had to spend some time in the kitchen to spread the beast apart. Our cutie did not miss any of the action, oh no...

Of course this very nice meal was accompanied by some fine wines and ended with home-made pecan and pumpkin pies... Definitely a success! And altogether a feeling of being "just like home"...

The next Sunday we went to the inauguration of the 25 meter-tall Christmas tree all decorated with lights in front of the city hall. It was cold so we had some of the local glogg (warm red wine with some spices and almonds). We listened to a choir of kids dressed as mini Santas who were singing from a balcony. Then seven or eight kids joined the mayor on some stage and they all turned on the lights on the tree, further marking the beginning of Advent. The bronze pigs from the famous fountain were all wearing a red ribbon around their neck for the celebration...