Denmark - Here We Come

We are moving to Denmark at the end of the month, which is - ohhhh - just around the corner. Ultimately, we want to be in Copenhagen, but it looks like we will have to be patient and let that happen in a few steps/moves. We found a fantastic apartment in Copenhagen (Nørrebro), but as it turns out, there are a few conditions attached to Keith's DK visa. One is that you cannot live in a sublet. Unless you are ready to buy, it is practically impossible to find an apartment in Copenhagen, which is NOT a sublet (unless you have been on one of the apartment 'lists' for 10 years). Besides, the couple subletting the apartment wanted us to buy many of their furniture before we could take a look at the lease, so we bailed. Instead we are headed to Odense for the time being. The important thing for us right now, is to get to Denmark and be in a situation, where we meet the requirements on Keith's visa, - one less thing to stress out about. Everything else we can work towards as we go. We are very excited to go to Denmark and it will be nice to be (back for me) in Odense while we settle, learn danish, find jobs and otherwise get situated. Mormor & Morfar and Torben & Anette have been on the look out for an apartment in the center of Odense. Even-though it was a true battle competing with all the freshman university students for a place to live, they/we were in luck. We are renting a nice 3 bedroom (that is 2 bedroom for you Americans) apartment about 10-15 minutes walk behind the train station. We will only just make it to Denmark for Maya's 1st year birthday. We are flying out on September 30 and arriving in Copenhagen on October 1st.

Here in Charleston, we are in a state of moderate stress. We had two garage/moving sales, in the effort of getting rid of our furniture and all the stuff not worth shipping. Shipping is ridiculously expensive, so we have spent the last 3 weeks or more examining every thing we own to figure out whether it is worth the trip across the atlantic. We were lucky that grandma and grandpa Lopez had time to help out on those days, - it gets a little tricky with a baby as I'm sure you can imagine. The Lopez's also brought over a ton of their garage sale items, and there was quite a bunch of happy shoppers the first time around... Not so much the second time around, but we still sold enough to make it worth while. Packing is an entirely different issue. We are all going a little nutty here. We are so exhausted and just want it to end. On the first picture you can see we have been packing up shop, in the meantime we have packed a whole lot more, but we are still not quite there yet. Keith and granpa Lopez built many more crates for a hopeful safe journey of our artwork. The drag about all this packing is that everything has to be itemized and valued in $$. Maya is of course sensing something is up - maybe it was when we sold her crib (fortunately, there was no drama adapting to the porta-crib) or as her toys slowly disappear one by one. She is a tough little cookie though, and even though she might be a little more attached to the hip than usual, she keeps her smile on and continues investigating. It has been a little tricky getting all the packing done, especially because Maya shouts/barks/hmm whatever at you when you use tape. Odd how everything else can be fine, but the sound of the tape leaving that tape-roll makes her extremely upset. So we save that for nap-time and when she has gone to bed. We sold our TV so we might as well continue packing all night. If you are sensing a little - self pity - well you are spot on!