Comfort Zones & Quiet Zones...

Living in a foreign country can mean that sometimes you feel isolated and lonely. It can mean missing home very much and wishing that you spoke the lingo of your temporary homeland perfectly just to understand, and perhaps please those around you,(and to sometimes shut them up). It can mean many things that might not seem that positive... But, it also forces you to do, try and say things that you wouldn't have in a previous life, which could be seen as a positive thing right? Things like food for example... not understanding written or spoken Danish can mean that you often end up with something you weren't quite expecting. This can make for an interesting experience, or if you are lucky, an interesting and pleasant experience! The children love our weekly visit to the bakers on a Sunday morning, you just never know what we are going to end up with! Likewise with smorrebrod, it's mostly fabulous, but honestly who thought of some of those combinations? Today because I apparently asked for everything (when I infact wanted the opposite) on a (very rare) lunchtime hotdog, I ended up with something that looked like my two year old had invented and put together, and surprisingly nice (and very bad for me) it was too!

That wasn't the highlight of the day however... the library took that position! Most (obviously I haven't been to all of them) libraries in the UK try to be child friendly. They may try to cater to younger children with a jigsaw or two, or weekly storytimes etc. They are usually places where children have a small area of books to sit quietly to look at and choose to take home. Recently my daughter had a playdate after school with a classmate. The classmate's mother informed me that as her husband was ill, she would be taking the girls to the library after school. Not that exciting I thought, thinking of our local library at home, but a nice experience none-the-less. On picking her up I was surprised to see the girls having the best time in the most amazing children's library I have ever seen. Huge beanbags littered the floor for them to lounge about or even (shock-horror) jump about on, beautiful wooden toys and row upon row upon row of fantastic games and puzzles to play with, not to mention of course the most amazing selection of books. This can only be a good thing. If children associate a place where books "live" as being fun, surely they are going to see books as fun aren't they? Anyway, we had two hours there today and I even tried to read a Danish (child's) book whilst my son fought various battles between knights, pirates and a giant octopus, just because I wanted to.