Good-bye, Danes!

For the past two falls we hosted Danish exchange students - Simon and Jon - but this year - thanks to Vincent's grades - we passed on Tim. However, for the first time this year I stopped by part of the closing, good-bye program - this year, on Thursday afternoon - the day before the Danes were to leave. (For the first time, they were to miss Halloween.) I got to watch a PowerPoint slide show and videos shot in Denmark, before the Danes left (see above) - showing lots of scenes of Roskilde school and the surrounding town - where Vincent spent a month this past summer (and - since I've only seen a minority of the pictures Vincent in Denmark - and most of those are of people - this was my first solid look of his commuity in Denmark. I also watched Tim and other Danes sing several songs - including (see video below) "Hotel California" and a song in Danish.

But I left before the program was over - and, unfortunately, missed short speeches by three people - including by program sponsor carrie, Vincent's favorite teacher, and by Tim, Vincent's host this past summer in Denmark. (To see the Web site Tim helped construct for his Roskilde Little School, see: http://www.rls.skoleintra.dk/Infoweb/Designskabelon10/Rammeside.asp?Action=&Side=&Klasse=&Id=&Startside=&ForumID )

We implicitly complained about the program to the principal weeks later - though I tried to clarify myself the next day - not so much the action of the Danes while they were here - though we learned not to loeave teenage boys - Danish or U.S. - in their own room with a computer - but the permissive, no-homework, no-parental supervision, and secular culture our kids imbibed and tried to bring back with them while over there. Without talking with Carrie, it seemed clear from talking with the principal that this in principle neat exchange program partnership between Vincent's Brown School and Tim's (private) Roskilde Little School may or may not survive.

-- Perry