Multi-lingual?

While in London I bought a Vietnamese phrasebook. It seems like a really difficult language to pronounce and even though I don't consider myself a quitter I already feel like learing Vietnamse most be nearly impossible to a westerner.

I think of myself as multi-lingual as I'm fluent in Danish (of course) and English, speak German, can mangage in Swedish, tourist wise in French and understand Norwegian and a wee bit Spanish, but these languages descent from similar lines. Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, German and English are Germanic languages (though English and German are West Germanic and the Scandinavian languages are North Germanic) and they are related to the latin descenting languages French and Spanish. So even though they're distant relatives they are still relatives.
Vietnamese however is from the Mon-Kmher language family which is no way near familiar to the languages I know...

I'm not sure what my ambition is. Maybe to be able to order food at a street stall and making myself a understandable at a market. I know I can't possibly learn Vietnamese in half a year and since I'll be living with other Danes and the embassy's working languages are Danish and English I don't have to be able to communicate in Vietnamse, but I'd like to be able to anyways.
Anyhooo - it'll def be a challenge!

A dentist appointment

Preparing for the internship we were advised to visit a dentist before going to Hanoi. So today I went. I'm embarrassad to say I haven't been to the dentist since I moved from my parents after finishing "high school/upper secondary school" 4 years ago. I don't really know why I haven't gone - I guess I was just to lazy to make an appointment.

So I was in the chair with the dentist fumbling in my mouth and somehow it reminded me of my childhood. I remember my father taking me and my little sister to the school detentist - in the ceiling there was a colurful (80's) poster of children playing with food. One half of the children were cherry and played with vegetables and healthy food, the other could hardly move - they were playing with candy. Of course it was suppose to send the signal that eating healthy would make you strong and happy - eating candy was bad for you and your teeth.
When I was about 14 I had a minor accident while doing gymnastics. Trying to do a "trick" with my coach I somehow fell with my head first and knocked out 2 of my front teeth. The following year I went to the dentist each month to check if the teeth were a live (weird that teeth are a live right?). Each time I looked at the poster with the healthy and unhealthy children wondering if they'd change the poster before my next visit. In the 10 years I went to the school dentist - they never changed the poster.

There's no real point to the story - just funny how some things will tricker a memory.
Btw the was no dental decay and the whole thing including x-rays took 20 mins. and cost me a whopping 400 kr = $67. Preparing for Hanoi is expensive!

Holiday pics

A pic says more than a thousand words - so here are some holiday pics from London.

Mozilla Firefox or IE?

I noticed that the blog doens't show properly in IE - somehow the sidebar is pushed to the buttom of the page and doesn't display at the side as it's supposed to.
I don't know why this occurs so I recommend using Mozilla instead.

Swinging London

The summer holidays have finally started! I've spent the first few days bbq'ing with friends, drinking drinks and sleeping in.
Tomorrow I'll be going to London for a short 4-day holiday. I think this is my 6th or 7th time in London - it's one of my favorite European cities. Remember my first time in London - it was 10 years ago - it was only my second time travelling without my parents. I thought to myself that I'd one day love to live in such a vibrant and hectic city. Since then my travels have extended beyond Europe and I did have the chance of an internship at the embassy in London, but South East Asia is more attracting to me a the moment.
Because of my internship my summer holidays this year is actually kinda crazy. Within 5 weeks I'll be going to London, Prague, Bangkok, Singapore and Hanoi! Singapore being the only city I haven't been to before. It'll be 2 years since my last visit to London so I guess not much has changed. I was in Prague in 1995 with my parents and I do expect a lot to have changed during the last 11 years - and much will probably change with the Czech membership of the European Union.

Well, first things first. Off to Swinging London tomorrow to do some shopping : )

Change of plans

So I got an e-mail from Tiger Airways saying that due to demands on other routes they've cancelled my flight from Singapore to Hanoi.
So now I've booked a flight back to Bangkok and from there to Hanoi. I'll have a good few hours to kill at the airport in Bangkok and it's going to be a longer journey than I'd planned, but hopefully they won't cancel the two flights I've booked yesterday.

I hand in my bachelor's thesis tomorrow - the grade will be posted the notice board (also known as the the Wailing Wall) at uni the day I start my internship in Hanoi...

This is what I'm leaving

Thought I'd post some pics so you can get an impression of what I'm leaving. Denmark at is best (or worst).

This picture is from my campus. The university is build around a little lake. My faculty is on top of the lake on the right hand (but you can't see it in the picture)
It was taking this winter, it was actually March. Spring had a really hard time pushing winter away this year.
I reckon it was about -5 degrees c that day. The winter in Denmark is long and cold and some times it can be rather depressing, but somehow you make it through to spring each year.
Though far up north Denmark has 4 seasons: freezing winter where it gets dark before you've eaten dinner. Spring with lots of showers and green colours everywhere. Hot summers where the smoke from bbq's start in every back yard around 6 pm and stormy autumn with leaves in every red, brown yellowish nuance you can imagine. Denmark has it all.

This is the view down the street from my flat. I took this picture last week. The buildings in my street are around 100-120 years old. It's a rather quiet one way street in the city centre. It takes me 5 minutes to bike up the hill to uni - and 2 minutes down hill to the city centre. Perfect location!
Housing prices have increased by 200% during the last 2 years. It's rather fucked up to be honest. You'll get 1 one bedroom flat (50m2 if you're lucky) for 1,8 million Danish Kroner - that's $300.000. The sky high prices have made as good as impossible for first time buyers to enter the market.

This pic is from my parents back yard taken a few days ago. The dog with the ball in its mouth is mine : )
I tried to make her pose, but she didn't really want to and ran away to play with the ball seconds after this pic was taken.
Summer has finally come to Denmark and temperatures are around 25 degrees c. In a few weeks the sea will reach a high enough temperature for a wee dip and the beaches will be stuffed with people enjoying their summer holidays trying to get a tan.
Mine starts next week and I can't wait!
And since my bach-thesis won't write itself I best get back to it : )

A call from Ghana

3 days ago I recieved a phonecall from the embassy in Accra, Ghana - they needed another intern since the Muhammed-crisis forced the Galathea 3 expedition to change its route. The first plan was to sail through the Suez-canal, but plans were changed cause they were afraid Danes might not be welcome in the Arab countries. So now they're sailing all the way around Africa.
The embassy wanted to know if I'd be interested in an internship mainly dealing with Galathea's visit, doing administrative tasks. But of course I wasn't.
I originally applied for internships at the embassies in Washington D.C - USA, New Dehli -India, Accra - Ghana, London - UK, Dublin - Ireland, Hanoi - Vietnam, Bangkok - Thailand + the Danish chamber of commerce in Bangkok, Thailand.

Status is rejection from D.C, New Dehli, Dublin (was runner up though) and the embassy in Bangkok.
I was offered an internship in Hanoi, London, the chamber of commerce in Bangkok and now Accra. My wish was all along to return to Southeastasia, partly because of good experiences during my backpacking trip in 2003, but mostly because of the rapid economic development the entire region has been going through especially during the last 10 years.
So I'm quite content with how things turned out : )

Two blogs, two languages

Been trying to figure out whether to do an all English version of my blog or not. It would be easier just to mix Danish and English posts, or even do all the posts in English. After all most of the Danish readers understand English perfectly. However I originally created a blog for friends and family to be able to follow my preparations (and of course keep in touch after I leave), and I know my mum prints the blog for my non-internet-accessed-grannies and even though they'd probably understand the best part of the English post, I do think that an all Danish blog is better for their sake. In the end the purpose of the blog is for them (especially the very worried grannies) to follow my life while I live on the other side of the world and the little things that might be expressed using colourful adjectives might go lost trying to spell your way through an English post (+ I suppose my I write better in Danish as it is my native language)

So, I think my final conclusion is two blogs might be better.
To read the first English post in the Danish blog click here.