Catching up!

Well, I am way behind in my blogging… it has been a very busy couple of weeks. I will give you the rundown:

In my last blog we were in Denver celebrating the wedding of my friends Jason and Amber. From Denver, Joel and I flew to Austin for two very busy days of packing, last minute errands, and late night/early morning phone calls to Denmark (because of the time difference we had to call after 2am). We were still waiting for our visas to arrive so every night we stayed up until about 4 or 5 trying to track down our paperwork. In the end, it worked out – they sent an email to the Danish Consulate in New York City and had them finish the paperwork. Fortuitously, we were stopping in New York City to say good-bye to my sister, brother, and cousin before we left the country. Our time in Austin was hurried, and we left, of course, with a few loose ends, but my parents have been nice enough to take care of them for us – including selling our car! It was very hard to say good-bye to my parents, and yes, our dogs. It was very sad and stressful – we had a few last minute “weight” issues with the luggage and an unexpected flight schedule change, but we made it to New York City.

We had a great time in New York City. We stayed with my brother and my sister drove in from New Jersey as well. It was great to be together – just the kids in the City! Several of my brother’s friends live in his building – including Ronnie’s girlfriend Lori -- and we had a great time meeting them. They are all actors/dancers/musicians and they are a riot! As a big sister it was really nice to see my brother and sister doing so well. My brother and Lori’s apartment is beautiful – they have done a lot of work and it shows. The apartment is very comfortable and feels like home. Ronnie is very busy auditioning and he has had numerous callbacks. He also built a recording studio in his bedroom and does recordings for others; his new Apple computer will allow him to do even more sophisticated recordings. Lori is busy performing in Hair Spray. I am sorry we didn’t get to see Rochelle’s apartment again – I know she’s added several new pieces of furniture and done a lot to decorate the place.

We arrived in New York City late Thursday night and we out running our errands early Friday morning. Our first errand: the Danish Consulate to pick up our visas. Everything went very smoothly (it was almost too easy!) and after a few more errands (to the bank etc.) we were able to enjoy Friday afternoon. We stopped by my cousin Michelle’s apartment and played with her dog Pip. She has a great place just off Times Square. Joel and I also got haircuts – FINALLY! I got one of the best haircuts in my life and Joel got one of the worst! Everyone agreed – it was pretty bad. Ronnie worked on it a bit later that night, which helped. Thankfully it has grown out a bit and actually now looks really nice. Joel looked great for his first day of work!

After a weekend of fun we left NYC for England. I was to present at the Gender, Work, and Organization Conference at Keele University. We arrived with very little hassle and even found a place to store our extra luggage at the Manchester Airport (no hauling all our heavy luggage on the trains!). Thankfully I packed everything we would need for England in one small carryon bag -- I didn’t want to take any chances with our luggage being lost. And, it was good I did – one of our bags went to Paris instead of England. It took them so long to find it they just kept it at the airport for us to pick up when we left for Copenhagen. It actually worked out quite well for us!

So, England was beautiful – wonderful countryside and very friendly people. We were tired and went to bed early the first night (in separate rooms for the first night – than ran out of double rooms!). The next morning I noticed that my stomach hurt a bit, but I figured I was just tired and nervous about my presentation coming up later that day. Well, long story short, the nervous stomach turned out to be the stomach flu. I didn’t even make it to my presentation. I missed the entire conference. Joel moved us into our double room and that was where I stayed until we left for Copenhagen. Joel was able to track down some sprite and oatmeal cookies for me to eat at the very small and limited campus shop. He also managed to get us both back to the airport and on to Copenhagen. It wasn’t a fun flight – I don’t recommend traveling internationally with the stomach flu, but what could we do?

We FINALLY arrived in Copenhagen on Friday, June 29th. It was a cloudy and chilly afternoon, but we were here and that was the important thing. Our Copenhagen experience will be in the next blog…