first trip downtown

Sunday was our first trip to downtown Copenhagen. Of course, we want to share our pictures! We walked to the National Museum, which is free to visit.


Looking down Sankt Jorgens So towards the Tycho Brahe Planetarium (the chopped off building at the end). Several bridges cross small lakes ("so" = lake) into the true downtown.











Christiansborg Palace -- the bridge in front of. We didn't visit the palace, but it was a convenient picture, because it was across the street from the National Museum.









Bruce thought he was being silly with his picture taking. (insert eye roll) He was taking a picture of me looking at the map while under the "national museum this way" sign, trying to be funny. I was really trying to identify all of the neighboring buildings... I knew how to get to the national museum!!














Niels Juel = Danish war hero. Perhaps a long-lost relative of mine? Defeated the Swedish navy, and my father has always claimed that we are Swedish... no wonder I've always been so self-defeating. It's in my blood, I guess.
















I don't remember a thing about this building, other than -- it's a cool looking building with a cool looking gate. :)








And that's it for now! 'Til later...

goddag

Finally... yes... made it here via a four-legged flight with many layovers and nearly 30 hours of travel. Goddag fra danmark!

As promised, a first round of pictures, though we have been trying to settle ourselves into a dorm room/studio apartment clearly formerly occupied by students who previously up and left without cleaning anything... dirty dishes left everywhere. I am working through soaking piles of silverware/dishes/plates/etc in hot water, then scrubbing... meanwhile, balancing that with walks, and a bit of sightseeing, and meeting folks.

On to the pictures! We live in the community of Frederiksberg, fairly far out from downtown Copenhagen, so you will not see any of the traditional pastel houses and boats in the first batch. Presumably that will come later as we have more time.


During our layover in Munich, we had a "traditional" German breakfast -- veal sausage, a pretzel, and a beer. No, Bruce didn't have both of the beers... one is mine. But it looked funnier with him having both, eh? ;)











I asked for a diet Coke flying from DC to Munich... and got one with Arabic on the side. I had to keep the can. :)
















Flying into Copenhagen... windmills off the coast! :)






Our room for 6 weeks. All I care to do is collapse on the bed (but we did manage to rearrange the whole room and eat).










The view east from the room down Finsensvej (we're on the fourth floor)
















And, here is the view to the west. Note the cloudy, gray skies. Yes, makes us feel quite at home. Actually, weather is a lot worse here than Seattle for now... lots lots lots of rain in the AM... I tried to wear shorts this morning. It lasted about 20 minutes.









We went on a couple hours' walk today. I've seen this parking sign all over. I have no idea what it means, but I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the recent declarations that the Danes are the happiest people on earth.






Dave and Jen, we found this place just for you. But they spelled your last name wrong. We decided that when we're hungry at the right time, we'll try the Cafe Phister. Misspelled.








That's all we got, for now. Plans are to go downtown to one of the museums tomorrow, and we'll see what the coming week brings. One of the other guys around here found a dirt-cheap airare to Krakow next weekend, so that sounds like a plan. For now... hej hej.

early birthday gift

A little over three days to prep for the trip overseas...

And, as if I weren't already nervous about not having everything all together. Got a note in the mail today from the Washington Department of Licensing (DMV equivalent in other states) -- did I know that my drivers' license will expire on my birthday this year, which will pass while we're in Denmark?

No, I did not. Yes, indeed, my license expires 8-5-2008. Thank you for reminding me.

Yet another thing to take care of... and I'm glad the DOL celebrated with me 6 weeks early, so that I can still be legal when I arrive back here.

NB: Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Edamame were highly recommended to me. I like dark chocolate. I like edamame. In combination, I think they're just OK.

Photo Practice

Since I'm going to be using this site to post photos, I should figure out how in the heck it works, eh? So, I figure, why not practice by posting a few shots from last summer's visit to the in-laws'.

To the left is Xena. She belongs to my brother-in-law and his wife, who live in a little town on the border of NY and NJ. Cats have a tough life. All the sleeping and eating... but someone's gotta do it, y'know.









An Asian restaurant also not too far from Gavin and Eileen (and Xena!). However, the choice of name leaves much to be desired, don'tcha think? "Hey, you guys want to go eat at Yukhi tonight?" "Sure, let's have some Yukhi food!"









Since NYC is in Bruce's hometown backyard, we don't take too many shots anymore. However, we strolled Roosevelt Island (I had never been), and here is a picture of a bridge connecting the island to Queens, across the East River.










In this picture, we've just gotten on the overhead cable car to
take us over to Roosevelt Island. It runs parallel to the Queensboro Bridge. There is the temptation to spit into open sunroofs as you cross. (No, I would never do that. But someone with less tact might.) Sways back and forth a bit -- a real E-ticket ride.













And my next set of posted pictures will be from the other side of the pond!!!

could this be the end?

Warning: rant to follow. (what else is new...)

An hour ago, I just finished giving my last spring quarter final. I'm obviously taking summer quarter off of teaching, but I'm also using the time to decide if I want to continue teaching college at all.

Once upon a time, I dealt with the craptastic pay, the needing to balance multiple schools to make a reasonable living, the notion of schedule changes at the last minute to accommodate those lucky enough to be full time -- just for the excitement of sharing science with the new generation of sponges who soaked up the information. Not every day was rainbows and unicorns, but the good always outweighed the bad.

Nowadays, the growing number of needy and demanding students is driving me out of something I used to love to do.

Exhibit A: a recent group of students (for all I know, they may be reading this) from winter '08 squeezed every last drop of blood out of me. I gave and gave and gave. The rapport I feel with every class -- it just wasn't there. (I'd had several of these same students in the previous quarter, too, and I felt the rapport with that group -- what happened?) In any case, as this was majors chemistry, I gave them 6+ pages of practice problems posted on the web each week. I had a one-day turnaround on exam grading. These were also topics I hadn't taught in four years, so I studied a lot at home. For 8 hours of contact time per week, I was putting in 40+ hours per week for these students. Still, in the classroom, things felt icy.

What else could I do? I jump high, the students said to jump higher. I could never meet their demands, as they were infinite. In fact, I seem to recall after the one day I took off for illness (viral bronchitis, sinus infection, and a fever -- otherwise, I never cancel class), a student told me that she wished class hadn't been cancelled, because since the book sucked so much, she needed lecture. (Uh, missy, neither did you have a 100% attendance record.)

I was very glad to be done with the ultra-critical group, but little did I know how much they ruined me until the 10th week of spring quarter, when I read my evaluations. I'm thinking they talked with each other. Me, formerly getting teaching awards (recent, too), got SEVERAL evaluations from that class saying that I was their worst teacher ever, that I obviously didn't care about them, that I obviously never put any time into them...

Yeah, right.

Meanwhile... At the beginning of that quarter, a good friend, recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, took a turn for the worse. Now, any ordinary person would say, "I should spend more time with my friend while he's still alive", but I felt pressured to work for my needy students. I visited Erik, but nowhere near enough -- one of my BIGGEST regrets, for sure. And you know what? All the extra time that I put in for your sorry asses clearly meant NOTHING. And it's too late to visit now...

So, what has teaching done for me? It's caused me a great deal of regret these days. And I do need a break from it all. But I will thank my groups this quarter for being so easy-going in spite of my shortcomings. Best of luck.

ETA: if you are a student at a college anywhere, think twice about your part-time faculty community. Many of us scrape along with multiple jobs for the love of teaching, to evangelize our favorite subject matter -- and our schedules may change at the last minute, often to a class we haven't taught in years. This quarter, I have held five part-time jobs -- seamlessly so, for the most part! Just some food for thought before you think "teachers must have it easy".

reduce/reuse/recycle

This post has everything to do with blogging and nothing to do with this blog.

In the coming weeks, Bruce and I are going to Copenhagen, Denmark, for the summer and finishing things off with a few major cities, likely in eastern Europe. I'd thought of creating a blog to keep friends on this side of the pond apprised of goings-on and photo-postings.

But then I thought... there's too much crap out there in internet-land already. Why not keep on using this blog, the URL of which has nothing to do with travel or Denmark, but it recycles webspace? (Incidentally, I created this during my last desk job, when I was bored out of my mind and had little to do.)

So... as they say, watch this space. We'll be taking off the last week of June. I'll be letting you know.