Stumbling upon a python, a photo by viralbus on Flickr.

As always, it was a great experience, so much better than Eden.

If you don’t know the place, the idea is to take a zoo and a greenhouse, and then take the animals out of the zoo and put them and the visitors into the greenhouse together. This means that monkeys, parrots, leaf-cutter ants, pythons and bats might suddenly be sitting on your shoulder (the really dangerous animals, such as rattle snakes and Komodo dragons, are still locked up).

Furthermore, you can help feed the animals at specific times, and Léon loved feeding the bats just as much as Anna enjoyed feeding the manatees.

Apart from the winter months, you can fly directly from Edinburgh to Billund (home to Legoland and the Lion Park), which is about 80 miles south-west of Randers, so it’s really quite easy to get to.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about the photo — it really is a live python next to Léon!

When I travelled to Denmark ten days ago with Amaia, Anna and Léon, nobody asked us any questions (Amaia, Anna and I were using our Danish passports and Léon his British one).

However, when we returned last Wednesday, Léon and I were interviewed for a couple of minutes by the border police in Stansted (our relationship, his date of birth, and who I was). They also told me it would have helped if I had brought his birth certificate.

It’s great they’re trying to do something about child abductions, but wouldn’t it be more appropriate to ask the questions when you leave the country where the child is a citizen rather than when you bring them back?

I also fail to understand what difference a birth certificate would have made. If it had been combined with our marriage certificate, I guess it would have shown a link between us, but surely unmarried stepdads and grandparents and the like are allowed to take kids on holiday, too?

The border police need to state clearly which documents they want to see to allow for smooth passage if the passports aren’t enough any more. Otherwise it becomes completely unpredictable whether you’ll be allowed to travel or not, which isn’t very satisfactory.

People in Denmark (and, I believe, Norway) celebrate carnival like Catholic countries in spite of Denmark being a country with a Lutheran state church.

However, Fastelavn is very different from the Brazilian carnival. It’s much closer to Hallowe’en: The kids dress us and they go guising from door to door. They also “knock the cat out of the barrel” (although no cat is involved any more) — you can see Anna taking part on the photo on the right — and eat special sweet rolls.

It’s a very sweet tradition, and I think Léon, Anna and Amaia really enjoyed celebrating it together with Danish kids in Denmark this year — although Anna was a wee bit surprised that all the other kids in the school group were much bigger than her (Danish kids start school two years later than here).

Da Léon var lille, skrev jeg her på bloggen flg. om hans udtale:

[H]an har problemer med stødte konsonanter, så her udvider han stødet med et homorganisk lukke: and, blomst, seng, ild og nej udtaler han ['ænʔd], ['lʌmʔb], ['hɛŋʔɡ], ['ilʔd] og ['najʔd].

Da jeg tilfældigt faldt over dette gamle indlæg, gik det op for mig, at jeg havde glemt at blogge, at Amaia gør præcist det samme (eller rettere gjorde, da hun stort set er holdt op med det nu, men hun fylder også tre i januar).

Fx udtaler/udtalte hun vand som ['vænʔt] (helt forskelligt fra Annas ['wænʔ]), nej som ['najʔt] og hund som ['hunʔt].

Jeg ville ønske, jeg kunne huske flere eksempler, men disse tre ord er vist de eneste, hvor homorganiske lukke ikke er forsvundet igen.

I dag var det første skoledag i East Renfrewshire Kommune, og da Anna blev født i december 2007, skulle hun begynde i P1 (1. klasse).

Hun har glædet sig meget, og det var en meget stolt og glad pige, der pilede ind i skolegården. Vi måtte ikke komme med ind og måtte vinke farvel til hende fra lågen.

I dag mødte hun kl. 9.30, men fra i morgen skal hun i skole hver dag fra 9 til 15, ligesom Léon, der nu er begyndt i 3. klasse.

Anna skal nu gå i “primary school” i de næste syv år, og så i gymnasiet (“high school”) i seks år, så hun bliver efter planen student, når hun er 17½.

Aldersmæssigt er P1-eleverne ca. to år yngre end danske 1. klasses-elever, så naturligvis er P1 ikke en kopi af en dansk førsteklasse, men inddrager elementer af en dansk børnehavneklasse (0. klasse). Eleverne har lært alfabetet og tallene i børnehaven (“preschool”), så de skal nu lære at læse, skrive og regne ordentligt, men naturligvis skal de også tegne og spille skuespil og den slags.

I’ve often wondered why tuition fees and bursaries in England are determined by parental income when the students in question are adults and therefore aren’t the parents’ responsibility any more.

However, today I happened to read this article which explains that parents are expected to help their children with their education costs until they turn 25:

What most parents (whether separated, divorced or still together) are probably not aware of however, is that if their child embarks upon higher education, then as the child’s parents, they have a legal obligation to continue to support that child financially from age 18 until the child turns 25. [...] This is known as aliment.

If the parents refuse to do so, the kid can take them to court:

What this means in practice, is that a student child who perhaps feels that they are not receiving as much, if any, financial support from their parents as they require, has the option to instruct a solicitor of their own to take either or both parents to court and to seek a formal award of aliment in their favour.

If this is also the case in England, at least I now understand how they can take the parental income into consideration.

As far as I can see, children of many divorced couples can milk the system, however. University fees and bursaries are decided solely by the income of the custodial parent (normally the mother) in the case of divorced couples, but the child can take both parents to court to refusing to help financially. So in theory, if the main custodial is poor and the other parent is rich, the student can get reduced fees and a big bursary, and in addition they can sue their rich parent for extra money.

It’s not an ideal system. I’d prefer everybody to be treated as full adults from their 18th birthday, and looking at parental income for adult children should be abolished.

Amaia fyldte to år i dag.

Vi fejrede hende på sædvanlig manér med fælles morgenmad for os alle syv, fødselsdagslagkage om eftermiddagen, og aftensmad bestående af suppe, pizza og is.

Det er altså lidt underligt, når ens yngste fylder år. Mine to døtre er nu to og fire, og selvom jeg husker deres fødsler, som var det i går, så er de jo altså ikke små spædbørn længere, og om blot elve år er de begge teenagere!

Men sådan er det vel. Når man selv er barn, snegler tiden sig afsted, og blot de fireogtyve dage op til jul virker som en evighed. Når man så er voksen, føles det som om, ens børn har fødselsdag en gang om måneden, og de bliver store meget hurtigere, end man kan følge med.

Men stort tillykke til min store lille Amaia!

Amaia har nu i nogle måneder haft et ret udtryksfuldt sprog. Det er tydeligt baseret på engelsk (i meget højere grad end Annas), selvom hun naturligvis forstår dansk aldeles fremragende).

Her er hendes mest almindelige ord:

Typiske sætninger er fx Beibi weˈaːu? “Hvor er min dukke?” og Nai tai! “Læg dig i min seng!”

Anna (der fylder 4 den 19.) sagde i dag spontant “I drook it all”.

Jeg er ikke helt sikker på, hvordan hun dannede “drook”. Hvis det blot er påvirkning fra dansk “drak”, skulle hun vel have sagt “I drack it all”, men hun ser ud til at rodet bøjningen af take/took ind i det.

Tosprogede børn er sjove!

I joined the Danish-Scottish Society shortly after moving to Scotland, but I was not a very active member due to the fact that almost all events took place in Edinburgh (which seems to have a much bigger Danish community than Glasgow). For a couple of years, some people tried to arrange events in Glasgow, but they didn’t typically attract more than ten participants, so eventually I let my membership lapse.

However, these days I’m living with three bilingual children who really could use an opportunity to hear other people speak Danish and learn more about Danish culture, so we recently joined again as a family.

The first event we went to was their Christmas party (in Edinburgh). It was really good fun for the kids. There were at least a hundred people there, including lots of kids, and they were selling glögg, æbleskiver and pebernødder. Towards the end, we all danced around the Christmas tree, singing Danish and English Christmas songs, and afterwards somebody read the kids a Christmas story, and then Santa arrived, bringing presents for all the children.

We then had to leave, but on our way out, each kid got a large bag of sweet, so they were well chuffed!

It’s just a shame it takes an hour and a half to get to Edinburgh – the kids really thought it was a long trip, If only there were enough people in the Glasgow area to arrange similar events for Danish-Scottish families here…