After being gone for a week, one might assume that I would get the weekend to rest up at home and get ready for the week back to school. However, this weekend was a celebration for my “host grandparents” 50th wedding anniversary. The happy couple invited their two sons (one begin my host dad) and their families to join them on an overnight family retreat. It was kind of them to include me in these festivities as well.
On Saturday morning, I was able to sleep in because we didn’t have to leave the house until 12:30. At that time, we drove to the grandparents’ house, where Sofie and I joined them for the 1.5 hours drive to our weekend retreat. It was a nice little get away location. It was an old farm, which had been converted into a hotel and including a dining building, pool, and hiking trails on the grounds. We arrived a little before 3:00, unloaded our belongings into our rooms, and headed to the dining room for afternoon tea and coffee. Following that the girls (Sofie, Caroline, and host “cousin”) and I went to the indoor pool for a short swim. I didn’t stay in too long, but instead went back to the hotel room to shower and contemplate getting started on some of my homework, which desperately needed to get started. I wasn’t that successful at that task, but I did get a chance to check my email and did some short readings.
After a relaxing afternoon, we headed to dinner around 6:30. We had a wonderful three-course meal including a salad, beef with red wine sauce, and a pear & berry dessert with ice cream. During dinner, Klaus (host grandpa) gave a short speech – in Danish – to his wife recounting some of their adventures over the past 50 years. They were married in Nigeria & have since traveled the globe together. We then retired for after-dinner coffee and drinks for a little while. I decided to head back to my room around 11:00. I got ready and attempted to do some reading, where I subsequently dozed off (unfortunately so since I was going to try to talk to Tory who I hadn’t talked to for over a week at this point).
The next morning we woke up around 9:00 to check out of the rooms and head to breakfast, which included an array of choices. I had to limit myself with all of the bread, pastries, pancakes, fruit, etc. We then head back to Hillerod around 10:30 and got back home around noon where I finally began my homework.
Then around 5:00 we all piled back into the car to head over to my host mom’s parents house for the purpose of constructing a pine archway, which would be presented to the 50th anniversary couple the following morning. Apparently, a common tradition on the golden anniversary is to create this archway and deliver it to the couple’s house early in the morning on the actual day of their wedding and wake them up to congratulations from the family. In addition to the construction of this archway, we also had a nice dinner and watched a little television. We then headed home around 9:30, so that all of us could get to bed since we all were to be early in the morning – some of us going to school and others going to recognize a lifetime together of 50 years one more time.
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