What about the other two?

One of our “non-residential” children has hinted a complaint about this blog being rather limited in its mentioning of all our children. We won’t say who it is, but she pointed out that this blog is supposed to be about the Andersen family, not just the part of it living in Stockport.

Partly because she is right, partly because we do not have a lot of other stuff to write about (unless you want to hear about painting doors (yes, Dace, it was Lisbeth doing it) or sitting in the office all day trying to look busy) we will try and update you with how Maria and Andreas are doing.

Part of the reason we have not mentioned them too much is that because of our lack of access to Skype, we have not been communicating with them as often as we would like to (that is the parents, we are not quite sure about them!) Andreas did call last night to say thank you for our call in the morning. Turned out that I apparently had called him on my mobile without knowing it, and all he heard was a conversation between Lisbeth, Lukas and me in the car. He really appreciated the call at 8.30 in the morning – especially as he did not have any lectures before in the afternoon!

Maria is keeping herself busy in Copenhagen. She is in her final year of the IB Diploma programme and the final exams are not that far of. Just now she is busy writing her extended essay. She had chosen History as her subject and is writing about William Booth and The Darkest England scheme. Her research question is something like: “Was William Booth’s Darkest England Scheme solely created for the purpose of reforming the social conditions in English society? Or did it have a greater religious motive?”. She has finished her first draft and the final version is due in the middle of December. If anyone has any good sources, quotes or likewise, which is relevant to the question, then we are sure Maria would love to hear from you. I am trying to get hold of a copy of the book (In Darkest England…) so I can read it – must confess I have never done it before.

Apart from school she is also raising her own pocket money partly with a cleaning job in one of the corps, partly by babysitting. She is active in the Army and somehow also gets time for a bit of fun and relaxing. She is coming over to Stockport to celebrate Christmas and the New Year, which we of course are looking forward to.

After having spent the summer delivering mail in Copenhagen, Andreas has settled in at Oxford Brookes and is “enjoying” studying basic accounting principles and stuff like that! He is actually studying Marketing Management, but any kind of business studies requires a basic knowledge of the more trivial and boring stuff. He lives in a small room at the campus. The only real positive thing about the room is probably the internet connection. Apart from the studies he has got himself a job as a waiter (sounds better than bartender!) at a local pub (of the kind where you go to eat). When the Stockport part of the family went to visit him just after we arrived in the UK we went there for a meal, and it was very nice. It was also the first time Andreas actually tasted the food there.

Andreas is also coming to Stockport for Christmas (maybe a day earlier than Maria, if we can get tickets for a game between Liverpool and Arsenal), but the thought of spending a whole month with his parents was to daunting, so in the new year he is of to Canada for 2 week.

Well, we are not quite sure whether “the two old ones” will be pleased or upset now, but at least they cannot complain about not being mentioned. Otherwise there is not, as mentioned in the beginning, a lot to write about. Life just now evolves around finishing the last things in the house and going to the office – if we are not careful this blog will slowly die because of endless repetitions about the same things, so we will end here.