Merry Christmas 2003

Christmas 2003

Dear Friends

A Christmas email to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, although perhaps a little bit late – I hope most of you are still able to get it before Christmas. I am sorry that I have been so slack at keeping in touch this year. Instead, I have now updated my website which took many long evenings, so I hope the new web pages and this email letter will make up for it.

Now, news about me. Well, I am awfully embarrassed to tell you that I haven’t finished my MA degree yet. I am still working on my thesis about foreign language learning, which is exciting at times, but it seems to drag on forever. There a many reasons for this (oh, yeah, excuses, excuses…), probably the biggest reason was me moving to Cambridge for good in April and not being in direct touch with my university, my fellow students or classes anymore. It took a while for me to settle in, buy a computer, carry out my research. Luckily, my Kiwi scientist boyfriend, AJ has been a great support and given me lots of advice - very helpful indeed, as my own supervisor in Denmark went on maternity leave this summer.

I got quite involved with a language school in Cambridge where I also carried out my empirical research for my thesis. Last year before Christmas, I did a bit of substituting there, but this year I have been working there quite a lot as an EFL teacher, and I have also had my own classes and courses to run. It has been great, exciting, challenging and exhausting at times. I love the job because it brings you so close to people from all over the world. The more effort you put in, the more rewarding it is. The groups are very small, maximum 12 students in each class, but in the lower level classes often only 5 or 6 students, so it is very intensive. An extra bonus is the fact that they are all adults (I have no skills with children!). You usually teach the same group for one or two months, and it is amazing to experience the change in the students in that time.

Cambridge is an extraordinary place with its majestic university buildings, small lanes and cosy pubs. Probably the thing I miss the most is some good, accessible outdoors (we don’t have a car), but other things are quite accessible to us in a way it has never been before: Europe is basically on our doorstep because we live so close to Stansted Airport (30 minutes) which has cheap airlines operating to anywhere in Europe you want to go. Apart from going back to Denmark quite frequently, we this year went to France, Russia and Germany for short breaks.

Our big, adventurous, unbeatable, once-in-a-lifetime holiday was a three-week trip to Greenland in July. I have always been obsessed with Greenland, and the arctic experience this year was really a dream come true for me. Instead of taking a connecting flight, we walked from the main airport Kangarlussuaq (there is nothing else there) near the ice cap out to the coast. It was 9 days of absolute wilderness, lots of wildlife (musk ox, arctic hare, reindeer, polar fox and not least, millions of mosquitoes) and not another single human being than the two of us in all of this great, exciting, intimidating wilderness. I have never experienced anything like it. It was overwhelming and scary.

After the tramp, we went sea-kayaking for 2 days with a Greenlandic hunter, Hans. He was full of polar bear stories (his own) and Greenlandic history and myths. We paddled around amongst icebergs and pulled up sea monsters (strange, big fish) from the deep (and I say VERY deep) sea in our kayaks. We tasted great food: musk ox, halibut, seal, and whale – all an essential part of the traditional Greenlandic diet which consists of 90-95 % meat! You simply cannot grow any vegetables there because of the climate.

Then, finally, we spent a number of amazing days camping and tramping along Ilulissat Icefiord. We could not get enough of that place: A 40-kilometre long fiord pushed out by the Inland Ice, running 1.5 kilometres deep and packed with massive icebergs, as tall as multi-story buildings. At the end of the fiord, the icebergs get trapped on a sand bank until the tide, wind and weather breaks them down enough to drift out to sea. Several times we heard the thundering, moaning, creaking and cracking of icebergs moving and breaking down, and one time we witnessed a massive iceberg break off and fall. My legs were shaking, and I panicked for a moment as I saw how it basically exploded and sent off a huge wave which stirred all the other icebergs (including the one just in front of us) and the whole icefiord. Ilulissat Icefiord is truly the most amazaing natural scenery I have ever seen. Where ever we camped, we had a full view of the spectacular ice in 24 hour daylight (and of the million mosquitoes on the tent door).

Christmas will be spent with my family here in Denmark, and New Years with my best friend Tanja in Copenhagen. AJ is coming over on the 24th and staying here with me till January 3rd. It will give us lots of time to catch up with family and friends which is what Christmas is all about for me. In January it is back to Cambridge for more work on my thesis, which I hope to finish by March 1st – keep your fingers crossed!

I hope all is well out there in the world, that everyone is healthy and happy, and I wish you all a MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Lots of love to all of you from this part of the world (Sønderjylland!)

Tina

---