This morning dawned grey and homesick. I still don’t have internet at the house, so I can’t email, Skype, or IM any one. The boy still has not dropped us a single line of email. And in the past few days I’ve managed to:

-hold up an entire line of after-work shoppers at the grocery store while the cashier walked all the way across the store to weigh my produce. Apparently the process is weigh, sticker, then check out.

-step up to the bakery counter to be served without realizing that people were milling around in there because they were on a take-a-number system, which I had completely circumvented.

-spend thirty minutes in front of the self check-out machine at the library while I looked up every word on every function key in my Danish-English pocket dictionary. (Eden then came to my rescue and figured it out in about ten seconds.)

-get stopped by a young man wearing camo and carrying a rifle because I tried to tour the Rosenberg Slot (palace) by entering the “military only” gate.

I know these are small infractions, and that one is expected to make many silly mistakes when moving across cultures. Still, it wore me down a bit, and the kids and I were ready for one day when we didn’t have to feel like Mr. Bean.

So, I called Jen, who immediately made me feel better by telling me how she once bought a lovely green table cloth in Japan, only to get home and find out that she was the proud owner of a very large piece of nori. Then I holed up and spent the day listening to This American Life (here’s the most hilarious opening story ever); making one of our precious boxes of Annie’s macaroni and cheese; and watching the kids make crafts out of all our empty produce cartons. (I’m only buying the pre-packaged produce because I still can’t figure out the weighing-and-sticker machine!) Here’s to a little slice of home….