Nicorios´ Trip

E-mail

A mediados de Abril recibí un e-mail bastante corto que me decía si había recibido una carta. Yo quedé completamente anonadado puesto que no había recibido nada en papel ni virtualmente. Como no decía nada más revisé bien el correo electrónico y me di cuenta de que el remitente tenía la llamada "firma virtual". De qué se trata se dirán ustedes, firma virtual se la llama al mensaje que dejas abajo de cada mensaje generalmente con tu nombre, profesión y/o RUT. Esa firma virtual en este caso tenía su nombre, profesión y empleo, copié y pegué el nombre de la empresa en el tan bien ponderado GOOGLE y pude observar que era danesa por lo que deduje que el e-mail era de mi familia de por allá.
De inmediato les envié un e-mail diciendo que no había recibido nada y presentando mis excusas por no haber respondido antes, al otro dia me llega un e-mail diciendo que era mi mamá de Dinamarca y que me enviava un archivo adjunto con la información acerca de mi familia y otros menesteres.
Y como este blog está dedicado a que compartan íntegramente mi experiencia, aquí está el e-mail :

Dear Nicolas (Nico)

We are writing to you because we are the first family you are going to a part of during your year in Denmark. We are looking very much forward to have you here as a part of our family.

My name is Ann. I am 46 years old. I am a pharmacist and is the head of a Formulation Development Department in a pharmaceutical company called LEO Pharma. My husband is Jesper. He is also 46 years old and he works as an educationist advisor within the National Union of Teachers. We have four children Maria, Tobias, Jonatan and Benjamin.

Maria is 21 years old. She is not staying at home anymore but has a small apartment in the city centre of Copenhagen where she lives with her boyfriend Ronnie. Maria is studying Pharmacy at the University of Pharmacy in Copenhagen. Ronnie is studying physiotherapist at the Physiotherapy School in Copenhagen. He is also playing floorball and is also a floorball trainer for boys.

Our son Tobias is 19 years old. He is still living at home. He is currently at the in the third grade in upper secondary school called Nørre G. It is the same school that you will join. He is finishing the upper secondary schol this summer. Tobias has a girlfriend. Her name is Sofie.

Our son Jonatan is 16 years old. He is born on the 7^th of March 1990 just like you. He practices percussion every Monday. He likes playing music together with his friend. However, you will probably not meet him while you are here as he is also becoming a Rotary Youth Exchange student. He is going to the Northern of Argentina for one year. You are going to have his room while you are here. Our youngest son is Benjamin. He is 10 years old. He’s going in Hyltebjerg School in the fourth class. Hyltebjerg Scholl is only 5 minutes away from our house. He likes swimming and to play with his friends and he is also playing percussion like Jonatan. They have their own set of drums and a marimba they use to practice at home. Jonatan has made a music room in our basement. In our basement we also have a room where we can play table tennis and airjet hockey.

We can see that you like playing volleyball. If you would like it we will try to find a volleyball club in Denmark that you can join while you are here.

We live in Vanløse which is a small outer city in the near of Copenhagen with about 50,000 inhabitants. We live in our own house. The house lies in a residential neighbourhood, near a little lake and a bigger park. The park is filled with soccer goals and a few playgrounds. The park is also a great place to take a run.

To bike is a very normal way to get around locally in Denmark and if you bike for 10 min you will come to the train station and from there of it only takes about 10 minutes by the Metro train to go to the city centre of Copenhagen. Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark. It is a very nice city. There live about 1 million people within Copenhagen. Denmark is a small country. In the whole of Denmark there only live about 5 million people. There are three parts of Denmark called Jutland, Funen and Sealand. Copenhagen is positioned at Sealand.

When the children were small we went every year for our holidays to a little house placed in forest in Sweden. However, the house was sold two years ago. During the last 5-6 years we have travelled a lot in Europe during our summer and winter holidays. We have visited Italy several times, been to France, Greece, Czech Republic, Sweden and Norway. Previous autumn we went to New York for a week and this autumn we went to London. This summer we are going to Italy and to Croatia for 3 weeks. Especially Italy we like very much and we have been there several times. In the winter we usually go skiing downhill. This year we went to Austria for one week.

A school year is 200 days. The longest vacation is the summer holidays whish is six to seven weeks long. The other vacations are in October (autumn holiday), at Christmas, February (winter holiday) and then the Easter. All holidays are of about one week. In the municipal primary and lower-secondary school the children learn English. They shall also choose a second foreign language, Here they can choose between French and German. When you start at upper secondary school it is possible to choose other foreign languages like Spanish and Italian.

This winter has been cold with temperatures below 0 ˚C for several months and with snow until the middle of March. It is Easter now and even though it is spring it is still quite cold only about 5-10 ˚C. However, during the next couple of months the weather will get warmer and sunny. When you arrive in August the weather is normally very nice and warm with temperatures around 30 ˚C.

posted by Nicolás Ríos @ 2:37 PM