Bech-Svalgaard Family Home Page

Updated July 21, 2004; by Mikael

Dear everybody!

It has been a long time since we last updated our homepage. Since then we've enjoyed the last part of our time in Boulder, been on a RV vacation in the mid-west, moved back to Denmark and re-started our Danish lives. Until we move back out into the world again our homepage will only be in English, serving mainly family and friends abroad. However, since several Danish friends have stated that they have gotten used to viewing our lives through the window of a HTML browser, we'll keep the Danes posted on updates!

For the sake of completeness, let's start with Ingrid's 8-year birthday in April. It was on a saturday and a few friends from school came over to celebrate. Ingrid wanted to do the arrangement in the Danish way, which includes staying at home and going on a treasure hunt. Here she is getting ready to blow out the candles. She's always a bit nervous about this since once when she was four she couldn't blow out the candles no matter how many times she tried and everybody laughed. (it went well, this time)

Here are all the birthday participants (Rose, Ingrid, Chandler, Cassidy, Karen, Peter, Cailyn, Esme, Signe). They gave Ingrid a really great birthday. We miss you so much and we talk of you often!

Eventually, all time runs out - including ours in Boulder. Here's Peter working on cleaning up our house on 28th Street. The Danes will take note of the American-type vaccum cleaner; VERY different from what we use in our European mirror-world:

Time for Ingrid's last day at Creekside Elementary School. The last hour of that day was devoted to saying good-bye and her teacher, Miss Shiela, and classmates did a fine job at that. Here is the cake Miss Shiela brought and Danish cookies made for the occasion by Elliot's mom, Kelly:

Here's Ingrid and her ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher Mrs. Legg. Ingrid doesn't look entirely happy, it was hard for her and her parents to say good-bye.

The ESL-program and the teachers on it that worked with Ingrid did an outstanding job. While I am writing this update Ingrid is sitting at the other table and writing by herself - in English, and with great joy - a story about our family going to the moon. I think that is the best indication of what Creekside, Miss Shiela and her class and the ESL proram have meant for us and Ingrid. Thanks to Creekside; you are all missed dearly and daily, remembered with affection.

In addition to Creekside, the singular most memorable and enjoyable event of our trip to the US was our friendship with our neighbors on 28th Street: the girls Karen and Sarah plus their mother Ireen. Here we are at Tom's Tavern for a last dinner together:

FINALLY! The goodbyes have been said, house cleaned, boxes shipped. We have now picked up our 28' Recreational Vehicle (RV) containing all possible amenities for pleasant survival in the wilderness.

Inside, the kids thought that it was pretty cool that they were going to sleep 'upstairs':

Dinner in New Mexico. It could often be quite windy at dinner-time; on those occasions we'd grill outside and eat indoors. We camped (or rather: parked!) away from conventional RV campgrounds, preferring small side-roads where the view was grand.

We drove south, down through the Rockies, into New Mexcico where we stayed at Chaco Natl. Monument which is a site of an ancient Indian civilasation. After that we drove into Utah via Navaho Nation. Here, I am doing dental hygiene at 'Goosenecks' on the edge of the San Juan river.

Just south of Gooseneck we entered Monument Valley and drove a bit around in Arizona. Most of the places we went were old aquintances from earlier trips. Both Signe and I are in love with this part of America.

After Arizona we drove back up into Utah. Here we are at a place called the Pink Coral Reef Sand Dunes.

In our tourist book it said that here you could be lucky and see Mormon families with multiple wives and lots of kids, which we didn't. Instead, we saw lots of youngsters in home-built buggy cars racing up and down the slopes.

Camping in Utah. Signe and Peter are working on getting the fire up and running while I'm doing the same with the telescope. The tripod is standing next to Signe:

Full of joy and anticipation I am standing here next to the little telescope I had hauled all the way from Denmark. My family (=>Signe) was very understanding and patient with my in this endeavour, even when strange machines were beeping in the middle of the night.

Here are one of the pictures I took on this trip: dark clouds of cold gas hanging weightless, siluetted against thousands of stars. Our solar system evolved from a dark cloud like one of these:

Back down on the Earth, the lives of mortals include acts like the one shown below. I will comment no further upon this, except to say that it wasn't as bad as you'd think!

After Utah we drove back into our native Colorado. In Grand Junction they had a very fine dinasour museum, which especially Peter enjoyed very much. Their specialty was to built small motors into the beasts, thus facilitating lifelike movement. Keep your distance!

After Grand Junction we drove north, saw Dinasour Natl. Monument and Flaming Gorge and then finally drove back to Boulder. We had a plane to catch!! The last night was spent at Betsy's house, Signe's boss, and our very good friend. Betsy borrowed the nice pickup truck shown below from her neighbor to transport us and our huge amount of lugguage to DIA. Knowing Betsy was a blessing during our stay.

Last minute panic at the check-in counter (one suitcase was overweight: extra price 700 USD!!! I thought I could slip a contra-weight for my telescope into that suitcase, ahem. Moved it into another suitcase and we were OK. Got through security and finally, totally exhausted we could sit down in the plane and be almost home. Thumbs-up to that.

After one plane change and an uncounted number of hours we are suddenly back in Denmark. Time for a double thumbs-up!

At Copenhagen airport both Signe's and my family were there to greet us. It was great to get hugs (and to have someone to haul our lugguage).

Sun is shining even though we're on Boulder nighttime, everything as we left it. Nice to be back, after all! Here we are in the garden of Signe's parents enjoying breakfast.

We have now been in Denmark for nearly two months; it feels like less to me. It has been a bit harder getting used to than we'd expected, but fortunately we only have three weeks of everyday life (school, work, etc.) until the Danish summer vacation stars. Phew! We miss our friends in Boulder, we miss our family in Texas and California! I've already told my boss at NIST that I'll come back and solve whatever problems they might have in three years time...

Love - Signe, Mikael, Ingrid and Peter

Mikael (svlgrd@com.dtu.dk)

Signe (sba@dmi.dk)