Bronchitis and 24

Bronchitis.......not one of my best friends as of lately. This annoying sickness managed to keep me down and out of the game for 11 full days, before the anti-biotics finally killed it. Yep...11 days. I haven’t been that sick that long since I was a little boy, so it was a very new experience to be so sick. I’m still fairly tired after many nights where I couldn’t sleep more than 3-4 hours before very seriously-sounding coughs woke me up.

24....

I did get fairly tired of our little two-room-apartment, but on the bright side I had time to watch a lot (!) of movies and tv-series on my beautiful laptop. As always the King of Queens was a true friend in times of trouble, but also Seinfeld and all three Lord of the Rings-movies were good companions. And then there was 24, the first season. I had never seen any of the 24-seasons, but that sure is an interesting and cool show!! Wow...what a rush!! Jeannette and I watched the whole season within a few days, and I’m not sure I would’ve liked having to wait a whole week between the episodes.

Danish delicacies

I continue to rejoice in the fact that we have a Danish bakery here in Kiev, where I can buy beautiful Danish breakfast products such as birkes, spanske rundstykker, franskbrød, spandauere, snegle, brunsviger and even kanelgifler. The different items are sadly not called by their true Danish names, but that doesn’t seem to annoy my taste buds:-) I went out to get some Danish delicacies for Jeannette and I, together with red roses of course, for Valentine’s Day, and I’m convinced that it wasn’t only the medicine, but also the Danishes that helped kill my sickness. “A Danish a day keeps the doctor away”.

It looks like the whole wave of demonstrations and burnings of the Danish flag is calming down some, but it remains scary to think about the things that have been done. I’m still working on my article about the differences between Christianity and other religions (my brain didn’t work during my 11 sick days), but it’s definitely interesting to be alive in 2006, where the clash between different value systems is so obvious. This is only the beginning of more and more clashes I’m afraid, but I hope that we can start debating our differences in a more civilized way than burning and threatening.

Go Dnjepr!!

The snow is still falling here in Kiev, and my wife and I still don’t really believe the rumors we’ve heard of the beautiful springs and summers in Ukraine. We have only seen snow and cold, and we long for something different. But hey...it’ll probably still be a few months before we hear the birds sing and see the green grass. I love green grass. It reminds me that the football season is about to start. I hope to go and see some games in the Ukrainian league, especially when my Ukrainian heroes, Dnjepr Dnejpropetrovsk, com to the city to play against Dinamo Kiev!! Go Dnejpr!!

Torben

Today's insight: “Nothing has power to tempt me or move me to wrong action that I have not given power by what I permit to be in me. And the most spiritually dangerous things in me are the little habits of thought, feeling, and action that I regard as ‘normal’ because ‘everyone is like that’ and it is ‘only human’” (Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy)