Do the boogy woogy

As hard as dansksproget (the Danish language) is for me, I will definitely be a bit sad when dankstimer (Danish class) is over. I’ve met some good friends there and I actually really like the class. (Although I would like it much more if it wasn’t at klokken er 9 i morgen!) Monday and Tuesday are the last days of class, and then we have a written exam Wednesday and an oral exam Thursday. Yesterday, our teacher decided we were acting too tired and sluggish, so she got us all up out of our seats and taught us the Danish version of the Hokey Pokey… except it is called the Boogy Woogy. So it’s basically the same as the Hokey Pokey, except selvfølgelig i Dansk, and a few slight lyrical differences. So it goes:

You put your right foot in
You take your right foot out
You put your right foot in
And you shake it all about
You do the boogy woogy and you turn yourself about
Heyyyyy boooooogy wooooogy, hey!
Heyyyyy boooooogy wooooogy, hey!

When you say you do the boogy woogy you put your hands up by your ears and wiggle your fingers, and then you spin once around during “turn yourself about.” For the last line, the whole group walks around in a circle as they dance the boogy woogy, and then you shout hey and pump your fist.

This was way too much fun not to get a picture of, so I ran from the circle and took a few shots. The first picture is during the “you do the boogy woogy” part, and the latter two pictures are during the “hey boogy woogy” where you go around in the circle. In the last picture, the woman in the front with the black skirt, shirt, and stockings is our teacher.

So basically, things are great here. The only two things I can complain about are the number of hours of daylight and the weather. It is rarely sunny, but I should be used to that having lived in Pittsburgh the last 2.5 years. (Out of the 50 biggest cities in the US, Pittsburgh comes in 49th for number of sunny days– behind Portland, Seattle, etc). It can also be foggier here than I have ever seen. Here’s a shot taken outside of my apartment building. The picture is of some Copenhagen universitet buildings that are only about 200 feet away. Fog is hard to capture in a picture, but just look at how unsaturated and dark the colors are.

In regards to the minuscule hours of daylight we get here, at least that will only improve. As I stated before, it gets light here around 9am and dark around 4pm. The other day, it was 3:40pm and the sky had finally turned clear and blue. I rejoiced, until I realized it would be dark in 20min. The good news is that it will only get better. The days grow longer by about 2-2.5min a day right now, so in a month we will have about an hour more of daylight. In the longest day of the year, it gets light at 4:30am and doesn’t get dark until 10pm!

And finally, a few more pictures of why I love Copenhagen. I love that is has the feel/culture of a big city, but it is so walkable and easily accessible. On Tuesday, my friends and I walked to the Royal Library from my apartment, and then afterward I walked to Nørreport. I took a few pictures along the way of some pretty buildings, but what I might love more is all the districts where you can walk around and there are all the little shops.