Julefrokost

Last night, my Communications Across Cultures class had a julefrokost (Christmas lunch, usually served at dinnertime)! It was so much fun. First of all, we ate a lot of food.

The first courses were herring - marinated, curried and ...well, some other way. To my credit, I did try the herring, but as per my suspicions, fish is still disgusting. Next up was egg and prawns and salmon. I didn't try the salmon, thinking it would just be a waste, but I did like the prawns. Or shrimp or whatever. In Denmark, they're really tiny, so you don't have to bite in to a disgusting giant pink finger-looking thing with a head and fins and stuff. So don't think this means I'll love shrimp at home. While we were eating the herring and the other seafood, we had snaps. Snaps is like schnapps, and you take shots of it. Our teachers only brought three small bottles for 30 people, so we didn't do it the real Danish way.Daryl gets adventurous with food

Anyway, next was a roast beef course, with pickles and roasted onions and stuff, the Danish way. We put all of these courses on bread, by the way. Rye bread, although it's acceptable to use white bread for the salmon and shrimps. This is what smørrebrød is - stuff on bread. After the roast beef, it was time for another tradition, nu det jul igen. This is a song you sing, and you all get in a chain and follow the leader around all the rooms and you sing and you run. So we did this in a lot of the classrooms in one of our buildings. Up stairs, down stairs, singing "nu det jul igen, nu det jul igen, og julen være li'g til påske, nu det jul igen, nu det jul igen, og julen være li'g til påske. Nej - det ikke sandt, nej - det ikke sandt, for ind imellem kommer faste..."and, well, you repeat that a lot. It means, "Now it's Christmas again and Christmas will last until Easter. No it isn't true, because in between comes the fast (Lent)." A little odd, but hey, it's the Danish way.Geoff and Jamie translate and prepare us for Nu Det Jul Igen

They served a dish that was basically mushed up apples and potatoes with ham mixed in, then ham with spinach and pork roast with a yummy prune and apple(?) sauce thing. Also, they tried to serve us liverpostej. Seriously? I mean, look at it. Would YOU eat this?Liver paste. MMMMM.

You shouldn't. It tastes like regurgitated cat food. Or in a nicer way, creamy meat. I shudder just thinking about it.

Finally, we had dessert - a rice pudding with a cherry sauce. It doesn't look good, but it's really yummy. And there's a game involved - in each bowl of the pudding is one whole almond. When you get the almond you're not supposed to eat it, but you can hide it in your mouth and be sneaky so other people keep eating and then you let everyone know and you get a special gift. Sadly, I was not so lucky.Rice puddin'

After dessert, we played a Danish game. We each brought two small gifts and the game went you roll a dice and if you get a 6, you get to steal a gift. You can steal as many as you want, and people can steal from you, if they get sixes. In theory, one person can have all the gifts and everyone else can have none. I actually ended up with five, but I gave two of them away because I'm just so darn nice. I got some really awesome stuff, though! Su Yi, from China, brought a silk scarf embroidered with blue flowers - he says that Hunan embroidery is really famous in China. And I got also some Chinese paper cuttings - you have to see them to believe them, they are gorgeous! I don't know what I'm going to do with them, though. I also got a Denmark shot glass and a little viking magnet.

Anyway, I just took my Danish oral final - 15 minutes of speaking only in Danish - and I got an A!

I aftens, havde min kommunikation time en julefrokost. Det var meget spændende og meget hyggeligt. Vi spiste meget - roastbøf, sild, laks, svinekam, skinke med spinat og risbudding (?sp). Vi spillede og snakkede. Jeg vil savner mine lærer. Det er tynd og sød.

As you can see, an A in intro Danish doesn't really translate to proficiency.

Vi ses i to uger!