Monday, November 10, 2008

School trip to Denmark* November 5

Last week I accompanied the Grade 4 class to meet their penpals at a Danish school in Helsingør. This isn't a dangerous or difficult task...it's only a 20 minute ferry ride and a 10 minute walk to the school. The teachers are trying to teach a little Swedish and Danish to the students through this cultural interaction. After reading a typical story from each country, the Danish students took the Swedish students on a tour of their school. It is a MUCH bigger school than ours with 700 pupils Kinder to 9th, whereas our school is only 110 students, Kinder to 5th. This school was built in 1908 and ours was established in 1995. Below you can see the two classes "mixing" before we all went on a short outing to a local park. The local park turned out to be a PALACE garden! Now, for Danish and Swedish kids...this is nothing...oh sure, just another palace to play in the garden. No big deal, really. I, on the other hand, kept saying to myself (yet again because this has happened before)..."here we are playing in a palace garden, a P-A-L-A-C-E garden!" So, how often does that happen in the USA? This particular palace was having some facelifting done on it.
Isn't it lovely how the kids are making due with this makeshift football (soccer) field?
View from the palace hill, you can see Sweden on the other side of the öresund water. "Hejsan Sverige!"
Back at the school, we invited the students to eat a Spettkaka, a typical Skåne cake made out of a LOT of eggs! I'm not so fond of it myself as I find the texture a bit like styrofoam but it is very sweet! And if you are in southern Sweden it is a "must" to try at least once.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Håller med dig, spettekakorna är fina att titta på, men smakar inte något annat än sött. Jag minns att jag var väldigt imponerad av dem när jag var barn...