Dinner at the Home of a Traditional Danish Family

We were invited to dinner at the home of Claus and JoAnn. Claus is the "Supreme Leader" of services for people with disabilities in the county around Aalborg, Denmark. Claus came to Minnesota on a study trip in September of 2008. We began our visit by enjoying some homemade elderberry tea.

We had a delicious dinner with unique Danish dishes including tomato and onion salad, sweet and sour turkey with veggies, rice, and homemade bread. They were proud to make us homemade spice cupcakes for dessert with home grown grapes from their greenhouse.

After dinner we went out to play the Viking Game. It was so fun that we decided that we are going to make the game in Minnesota and call it the "Dane Game". Peter was the King of the game because he was supreme winner. We all had fun.

Photo hightlights so far!

Julia signing an autograph for one of our new Danish friends!

Adam, Anne and Jennifer watching the bands at the Harvest Festival.

Jennifer and Julia contemplating a candy purchase.

We made the paper!

We made the Aalborg paper which had a nice article about the Harvest Festival and the Lifeworks All Star Band who played at it! It is in Danish, but there is one photo of some of the band members. The article highlighted that Lifeworks traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to attend and play at the Harvest Festival. They played numbers by Bob Dylan, John Denver, and their own song about the current events in America. The song talked about the wars in Irac and Afghanistan and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. One line in the song was, "BP oil is gonna have to pay." The band played in the rock style with a steady rhythm.

http://nordjyske.dk/aalborg/forside.aspx?ctrl=10&data=28%2c3650227%2c5%2c3

New Friends and Good Music

Today we visited Sofie Bo, a temporary residential facility for up to 17 adults between the ages of 18 and 30. We had a tour of the home and learned about some of the differences (each resident has their own bedroom with an attached private bathroom) and similiarities (the residents are evaluated on their abilities and needs while they are living there in order to determine their future residential living situation)between their residential facility and those in Minneosta. Following the tour, we were treated to a delicious torte and enjoyed conversations with some new friends as well as those we have already had the opportunity to meet during our stay in Aalborg. To make our visit complete, the residents performed a couple songs that they had been working on and asked our band members to perform "That's The Way It Is Today" so they would be able to sing along with the "Lifeworks All Star Band".

U2 Outdoor Concert

We went to a concert at Karolinelund park. It was a tribute band to U2. The members even looked like the U2 members. They played all of their songs. Aron, Evan, Anne, Mary and several Danish friends enjoyed the concert from the front. We danced and sang. Aron asked Mary, "When do you think we will leave?" Mary asked if he wanted to stay to the end and he just grinned and said "Yeah!" We danced all night and stayed to the very end!

A Trip to the Aalborg Zoo

Nick was on a mission to go to the Aalborg Zoo to see some animals and purchase some souviners. We found time to squeeze it in on Saturday morning. Aron, Evan, and Nick took the city bus to the zoo. Nick says, "It was a really cool zoo and I would really like to go back there again someday! All the animals were neat. My favorite animals at the zoo were the seals."

A picture of the loop de loops on the rollercoaster.

Tammy when she got off the coaster. She had sea legs afterwards from the gravity defying ride.

This picture shows the top of the roller coaster. We started by traveling up the track on the right and riding to the track on the left and back.

A post from Adam, Nick, Jennifer, and Peter

Some of us went on a roller coaster at Karolinelund amusement park that was wilder than the Wild Thing . (Peter, Adam, Tammy, Aron, Jane, and Mary were the brave ones)! This was an unusal roller coaster because it was not a loop of track. We started by going up a hill backwards and then it dropped fast and went on a couple of loop de loops and upside down. We stopped at the top of a different hill and then we traveled the same track backwards. It was quite the rush going backwards and upside down at the same time. We all loved it! When we got off we were all off balance.