Biekes Dansk blog

Dear blog fans,

Lately, there weren`t many messages on this blog. But now I will tell you a bit more about the last days here in Haderslev. (Haderslev is pronounced like hadsloe. )

Erasmus group

This week we’ve met our new fellow students and teachers. The Erasmus group counts 32 students. They’re from all over the world: Hungary, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Czech Republic, Japan and Belgium (12 Belgian students!).

We all can speak English and we’re all here to achieve the same goals; learning, getting to know other people, getting to know yourself (better) and having a good time.

Last Friday there was a house warming party in the house of Kimoko, Satsuki, Lisa and Veronika. All the Erasmus students were there and we all brought some drinks and food. It was so nice! After a few drinks we went all together to the Fredagscafé. We had a great party there!

a picture with the Belgian students

(Lien and Tana missing)

house warming party

Danhostel

We´re staying at the Danhostel with the five of us for another five days. We´re all from Belgium. We have one kitchen where we make our own healthy meals. We share a bedroom (I have one roommate), bathroom and living room. Behind the Danhostel there´s a beautiful lawn with view on the lake. Going to school is a 15 minutes bike ride.

Yesterday we went to take a look at our next house. We were a little bit lost but after a long search by bike we arrived at our mansion where Dominik, our future flatmate, was waiting for us. The house has laundry facilities (washing machine and dryer), a lovely kitchen with a living room and nice rooms with cable internet. We´re all very looking forward to moving there, because now we still have to wait to unpack our bags because of the little bedrooms in the hostel. I will be happy to have my own room too.

School

We’ve had some interesting lessons. In the session ‘Language and identity’ we made our own language portrait, we wrote poems and an ‘Elfchen’. The teacher, Karen, was very glad to meet us and she made this a very interesting session.

LANGUAGE PORTRAIT

We’ve learned more about the Danish citizens. “The Danish society is not an easy one to penetrate. On the surface it appears to function well, the infrastructure is all in place, the people usually speak English and are easy to approach … But integrating deeper into society and establishing yourself with a network of local friends is a lot harder… People in Denmark appear to already have all the friends they need.” (Strange, Morlen (1998): Culture Shock, side 9) I’ve already experienced that the Danish people, well some of them, aren’t very eager to meet people from other countries. In Fredagscafé, some Danish students didn’t want us to join them in their game where you have to put a nail in a block of wood with a hammer. There was a Danish student who yelled “I hate German people!” to a German student, … . Lars, a teacher from the university told us that it’s a possible expression from the Danish people because of the changes in Denmark in 1920. Before 1920, Denmark was much bigger. Germany took many parts of Denmark. Now it’s such a small community and that is why most of the Danes are really conservative.

Half the population work for the Government... so they trust the Government, the municipality, the schools, the teachers... The state makes the Danes very equal. Men pay 52% taxes and women pay 46% (!).

On Friday we visited the town school, `folkeskole´. We joined a class of the 6^th group (12-13 years old). In mathematics they had a short test. We were a quite shocked. There was no silence during the test, everybody was chatting and walking around in the classroom. Then they corrected the test with help from the teacher. They approach their teacher with his first name. He is accepted into the group as an equal. After mathematics there was a little break. One after the other took a mobile phone or an Ipad from the bookbag (!). Everyone has one of those! After the break they got English. The only instructions were: “Now you can work on your presentations.” And “Write the deadline for the presentation in your diary on your cell phone. The two trainees told the pupils where they could go to work in groups and that was it.

Then we went to the teachers room where we got coffee, thee, coffee cakes and little breads. While we were enjoying all the goodies, we listened to the principal. He gave a presentation about the Danish school system and the folkeskole. This is what I remember about the presentation:

There are 10 groups (7-17 years old) (class zero is for children who aren`t ready yet for the first class, the 10^th class is optional).
The parents are an important actor in the school system.(~ ouderraad in Belgium)
Before and after school, children from class 0 to class 3 can go to the day care.
There are about 80 kids in day care every day.
The groups count around 20 pupils.
They don`t work with grades until the age of 15 (the pupils are responsible for their own learning process, grades aren´t a motivation factor like we know it in Belgium).
The pupils are required to bring a computer (or an Ipad) from the 9^th class.
The cell phones, computers and Ipads can only be used if needed for the lesson content (actually the pupils where playing games on their Ipads during our observation...).
The school library is a cosy place where everybody´s welcome to read, to work on the computers, to play parlor games, to rent books, games, computers, …
Group work is a common organization form.