Class on Spring Break

About last night’s concert:

Despite a few glitches, everyone seemed to feel like last night’s concert was an improvement from the night before.

“Tonight, we came in and were totally focused,” said Brenda Roberts, about the Monday concert. “We had gone through the whole concert once and we all came to a common place.”

Roberts led the meeting for the choir directly before the concert. She urged them to sit in corners of the room by themselves and focus on the order, the notes and everything in between.

About the mishap during “Singet Dem Herrn,” Roberts said the first time, the men came in on the wrong rhythm, which threw everyone off. The second time, the men came in on the wrong notes.

“We just really needed to stop and restart the whole thing,” Roberts said.

The view out my window at last night's home stay

In other news, this is our last full day in Denmark, and we spent it in class…on Spring Break.

When we got back to the school this morning, we split up into groups and went on tours of the school, led by the students. Tea and Sara took my group around and showed us the gym where they practice gymnastics (the specialty of the school) and also to their apartment.

In Tea’s apartment, there is what they call “The Drooling Wall,” which is a wall filled with really, really cuuuute American and Danish celebrities. There’s also a special wall decoration that denotes who at the school is single, who is in a relationship and what people flirt with each other. It’s so great!

Tea shows us the relationship wall

The students go to the school year-round for a year or two, whatever they prefer and they only go home on the weekends when they don’t perform gymnastic shows.

As part of the day, we also got to visit different classrooms and interact with the students. My group went to English class.

The students showed us video of their gymnastics performances and talked about how demanding doing the sport really is, which sounds similar to the demands of this tour for the choir. They said it’s difficult to remember what move comes next and doing four shows in one weekend can tire them. Sounds exactly like what the choir says are the hardest things about touring.

The four students I talked with said they would like to visit America someday and would want to see New York City, Miami and Los Angeles, in particular. They were surprised when I told them I had never seen the New York City skyline for myself.

Angie talks with Danish students

Recently, they have also had visitors from Berea College in America for several weeks, which the students said helped them with their English.

“That way, you actually have to speak English rather than ask what the word is,” said student Malene Buxbom, 16.

They also like American music, Chris Brown and Rhianna among those mentioned.

After the classes, we attended a short lecture about Nikolaj Frederick Severin Grundtvig, a pastor, teacher, writer, poet and politician, among other things. He started the sect of religion that the founders of Grand View were apart of, called the “happy Danes.” As opposed to the “Holy Danes,” who are credited with started the only other Danish college in America, Dana College in Nebraska.

From left: Steve Duffy talks with Malene, Kristian, Louise and Anne-Sofie during an English class

Louise and Anne-Sofie show us their school's Web site

Now, we’re eating lunch with the Danish students before they go to a gymnastics show and we head to a different school to sightsee and sing another concert.

Also today, Keyla Spahr got to speak on Danish radio via Henrik Jensen, the pastor of the Agaard Church. He apparently picked her out to speak Danish on the radio, gave her a hymnal she’s never seen before and had her read the words in Danish.

“As I was reading it, he said ‘oh, this was probably the hardest one I could have had you read’,” Keyla said.

But Jensen said she pulled it off, “It is difficult, but she did well.”