mo-see-own!

so yesterday was "motionsdag" (mo-see-owns-day) at my school.

motion means exercise.

dag is day.

"exercise day."

apparently motionsdag is a national tradition in danish schools (so that meant us), typically held the friday before efterårsferie...

efterår (meaning literally "after year" and translating to autumn... spring being 'forår'... and of course, sommer and vinter, summer and winter.)

ferie means holiday.

next week-- week 42 (for those of you living anywhere but denmark) is the fall holiday. (this is a potentially completely uniquely danish practice-- to refer to the passage of time by the week number. are there any other countries that do this?)

motionsdag is a day to promote movement and exercise.  not a bad idea.  we had our motionsdag on tuesday because that is the one day in common for each class.  friday may have yielded low turnout.

some of my classmates, questionably dressed for a day of exercise...

my teacher standing up at the front, about to lead the warmup...

op varm!

then we split into two large groups.  one stayed at the school to play either volleyball or do a field day of sorts-- walk in a figure eight balancing an egg on a spoon type of things.  the other-- my group-- went to a nearby park for either fodbold (soccer), rundbold (sort of like baseball), or kongespil/vikingespil, which is what i opted for.  i realized after i started playing, that i'd actually played it before in the u.s. (with some friends of scandinavian origin), so maybe you have too.

there are two teams of six players who stand on opposite 'endzones' if you will.  in each endzone are six wooden blocks (see below).  in the middle of the field stands a wooden castle.  each person has a cylindrical wooden throwing stick, which they toss in order to try to knock down the other team's wooden blocks....

if you knock a block down, the other team has to throw that block past the castle, to the other team's side of the field, on their turn.  then they have to knock that block down before they can try to knock down any of the other side's blocks.  if they knock it down, it's out of play and they can continue trying to knock down the other side's blocks.  if the don't knock it down during the six attempts which constitute their turn, the other side can move up to that block's location and throw from there.  once you've knocked down all the other team's blocks, you have to knock down the castle to win the game. (we lost.)

after the game, we went back to the school for lunch.  then the two groups swapped.  we stayed at the school and i opted to play volleyball... (and we won!)

rescuing the ball from a tree...

then a semi-organized salsa dance, which i did not get a picture of (because i was dancing).

and finally, a raffle, where i won... nothing...

soon after that last picture was taken it began to drizzle, and by the time i was halfway home it was pouring down rain and hailing, which i was able to confirm when a piece of ice landed on my lower lip.

so that was yesterday, at least the part about school.

and here, for the w&h fans, a couple of shots from today at the park...

before the helmet came off...

"balance beam"

and probably needing a helmet...

"little gorilla"

goodnight!