a common dessert.

greg and i both went to bed feeling like we were getting colds.  he woke up feeling great.  i woke up with a cold.  at times i am that person in the cold commercials-- looking pitiful, sneezing uncontrollably.  in the afternoon i sat on the couch with a blanket getting my requisite number of words out.  i did it, though today it felt much more like a homework assignment than it did yesterday.  which has me wondering, if i feel like this on day two, am i going to make it past day three?  well, i will be a better judge of that tomorrow.

this morning our class took a field trip, to munksøgård, our dream place to live in these parts.  my teacher lived there for 10 years or so, one of the original members, and the other day, as i was riding to school, we were stopped at the same light.  we ended up talking about it as we rode to class and she suggested the whole class take a field trip to see it.  she also said she would keep an ear out for any openings for us.  greg and i ran into her in the grocery store on wednesday and she said something to the effect that it was obvious we should live there (this was, fortunately, prior to us loading up our basket with a bunch of candy).  if only the waiting list were not miles long (though in denmark, it is often said, it is more about who you know).

the inside of one of the group's common houses... built by the members...

the insulation...

small guest room... "in case your mother comes to town" our teacher told us.

the industrial kitchen...

this, the owner's group (there is also a "young" people's group, a senior group, a renter's group, and a family group), share common dinners three times a week.  a few households are responsible for cooking the meal and doing the clean-up afterwards for about 65 people, which amounts to about a once per month commitment.

outside of the common house...

close-up...

and the roof...

the owner's group units...

i love the little porches...

they are adding more solar panels to the roofs...

after, we went to my teacher's new place, where we had coffee and tea and rolls with butter, peanut butter (!), jam, and honey.

and tonight, our american neighbors, two doors down (did you know we had american neighbors two doors down?) threw a halloween party for their son and his classmates (about twenty-five 9 year olds). we got a note in the mail (in danish) with a balloon attached to it, sent out to all the neighbors, telling them about this party and asking them if they would like to participate in handing out candy to the kids who were planning on trick-or-treating.  if you were in, you'd put the balloon on your mailbox. a good  tactic, i thought.  but we'd been telling william that kids in denmark don't trick-or-treat-- which is true, for the most part, though we did get about two middle-schoolers at our door on halloween night.  so, we went over to their house and introduced ourselves for the first time and asked if william could tag along, which of course was alright with them.  so tonight at eight o'clock, he was back in his ninja outfit, trick-or-treating.  for real this time.  and the danish candy he brought back was pretty cute.

do you see the egg, over-easy?  and all of the black licorice?  can you guess which household handed out the snickers bars?  william was very sweet, sharing his candy with greg and i, but told me, 'mama, you're sick, you shouldn't giving your body so much sugar.  i'm going to get you some good-buggie milk.' he went into the kitchen, but we were out of "good-buggie milk" which is like a fermented milk i haven't ever seen in the u.s., so greg helped him get me a vitamin instead.

i was the one who stayed back passing out candy to the kids.  you could feel that they were as excited about trick-or-treating as their counterparts back in the u.s. which just goes to show that halloween is really a kid's holiday.  if it is going to make it in denmark, it is going to be because the kids love it so much.  that they remember the excitement of going door-to-door accumulating as much candy as possible.  as a parent, i am sort of horrified that this practice ever got off the ground-- what were those first parents thinking?  we tried to keep trick-or-treating from william as long as possible-- which is basically only possible for years one and two, and have now given into it.  not because we like it, but because we remember liking it.

later, our party hosting neighbors brought us over some treats from the party.  witch's fingers and cake and some kind of traditional danish dessert...

it's good to have neighbors, who share a common dessert.