Kamelåså

To start with, I have a job. Yes, I am still an English teacher, which I combine with dish washing. Teaching English is a whole new dynamic here, compared with Japan, the similarities in the languages mean that the most common answer I get is "it's the same in Danish", and they just ramble on, completely unlike in Japan, where everyone sits and stares at me. I've only done 2 days of teaching so far, with the same group, so I'm pretty new to this, but it was interesting. I feel a bit weird telling them what to do, like they just wanna sit there and chat for the whole time. Also I'm not very familiar with the material here, so I'm trying to comprehend it while teaching it to these guys. But I think it went ok. Also the very exciting dish washing job, for the past week I've been working in a canteen out in the middle of nowhere, on Friday at lunch I saw a herd of deer run past, then a second later a rabbit came running by. I guess deer are the kangaroos of Europe, for me it's interesting, but seeing kangaroos is a bit ordinary. A good thing about working there is practice in Danish, after a day there a come away speaking more Danish sounding Norwegian, Nonsk. And I can't believe how much food is wasted, I guess it's the whole canteen model, the food is cooked before the customers come, so you can only guess how much they'll want, it breaks my heart when they tell my I have to throw out huge tubs of food, and I do my best to try to eat as much as I can, but even I have my limits. I even brought about a million chicken pieces home, I put them in the freezer and have been slowly working on them for the last week. I also worked a day in a hotel, I was told that there was the possibility of it leading to a full time job, which sounded good, as it was about 1 minutes walk from my house, but maybe they were just saying that so they could trick me into coming in for extra instruction. I think it was too much of a mission anyway, I had my 3 hours training, trying to figure out the whole computer system, as well as the phone, which wasn't too hard, but you need some practice when you are doing it all on your own. Then I had to stand and answer the phone for 3 hours alone, that was the mad bit. The hotel was a week from being finished, so there were hundreds of people running around there, I had no idea who they were, or what they did. So when the phone rang, in Danish, I struggled to understand, then I had no idea who they wanted to talk to, let alone how to transfer the call, and I think I managed to hang up on a few of them. Then the construction work meant there were a lot of surprised and disillusioned guests who wanted refunds or upgrades, and I had no idea what to do, so I was standing there alone feeling like an idiot. In the end I don't think they were overly impressed by me....but it's ok, I think they'll give the job to the cybernetic octopus with the masters degree in terror negotiation.
Enough talk about work, but what else is there? I have a bicycle now, but I haven't got it going yet, it needs a new tube, which I bought today, the old one is ok, but the valve is that annoying kind that is so common here, not like the one you have on a car, but the pointy one. So when I try to inflate the tyre the air goes everywhere but in, I hate them. So I just bought a new one with the car style valve. I don't get why these haven't taken over, they are so much easier. Bikes here are serious business, everyone obeys the lights, they have their own special traffic lights, and people hold their hands up in a mini "heil Hitler" when stopping. Which will take some time getting used to, in Sydney I was the only person on a bike, so I just rode anywhere, trying to avoid the wankers who went out of their way to run me over. In Norway it was pretty anarchistic, battling against tram tracks and glaciers, and Japan had rules which no one seemed to care for. But here you get your own lane and a huge crowd to ride with, it's kind of cool to see so many people on bikes, but I am scared of doing something wrong and getting the evil stare from folks.