Helen and I are going on our hon­ey­moon! Yes, we’ve been mar­ried near­ly four years and are just two months away from wel­com­ing our first baby into the world, but we final­ly have the time and mon­ey so we fig­ured, “Why not!?” It’s long overdue.

Where are we head­ed? Den­mark, naturligvis! I spent a year in love­ly Skan­der­borg, Den­mark from 1995 to 1996 as a Rotary exchange stu­dent. It was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence that I’ve cher­ished since I returned from my exchange. I’ve nev­er total­ly for­got­ten Dan­ish, but I haven’t been back since a quick jaunt to vis­it my sec­ond host fam­i­ly in 1999 after row­ing at Hen­ley Roy­al Regat­ta with the Saint Joseph’s Uni­ver­si­ty light­weight crew. I can’t believe ten years have passed already!

We’ll be on the ground in Copen­hagen at 7 a.m. local time tomor­row, vis­it­ing old friends and my sec­ond host fam­i­ly, whom I’ve man­aged to stay in touch with­out every real­ly writ­ing as often as I ought. Now my host sib­lings are all on Face­book, which is hilar­i­ous when you con­sid­er that the Inter­net was just a baby when I was on exchange. Heck, my eldest host sis­ter just got married!

Helen and I will be post­ing pic­tures and videos in case you’re inter­est­ed in fol­low­ing our com­ings and goings while we’re over­seas. What’s on tap? Every­thing from a canal tour of Copen­hagen — some­thing I’ve nev­er done — to a trip back to my old stomp­ing ground in Skan­der­borg, which I may not rec­og­nize, to all the stan­dard tourist des­ti­na­tions like Den Lille Halvfrue, Fred­eriks­borg Slot, Amalien­borg, and oth­ers. I can’t wait to share this won­der­ful coun­try with Helen!