4 more days left!

Well, I've reached the end of the road! My finals are all finished as of Friday, and the rest of the time is going to be spent just hanging out with my friends.  Then in four days, I'll be HOME! I've been thinking about some of the things I'm really going to miss here and have compiled a list

-some of the best friends I have ever made

-the amazing nightlife

-being constantly surrounded by the most beautiful population in the world

-Sankt Peder's Bageri: the little bakery around the corner from my school...it has the most amazing pastries and coffee for a cheap price ($4.oo...haha)

-the very efficient public transportation system

-going to classes with students from universities all over the US

-the field studies that accompanied our classes

-hearing fluent Danish (the hardest language EVER)

-Kulor bar: the dance club my friends and I love that plays amazing music and gives free beer from 11-1

-walking down the busy Stroget street and seeing all the beautiful Christmas decorations

-the friendliness and safeness of the city

-the "hygge" concept in which everyone is made to feel comfortable and welcome

and much, much more.

However, there are some things I can't wait to see at home, such as:

-my car! (not very many people, and especially not teenagers, have cars here because they're so incredibly expensive)

-understanding what everyone is saying

-Chinese food, Indian food, Thai food...etc.

-Starbucks

-prices that are not exorbitantly high

-my wider array of clothing to choose from

-my own more comfortable and decorated room

-the quarter system...I've decided I absolutely despise the semester system

-my family and friends, of course!

Overall, though, I have the most amazing experience, but I can't wait to get home and fall back into familiarity.  

En Hyggelig Thanksgiving Mad

...that translates into "A 'Cozy' Thanksgiving Meal", which is exactly what I enjoyed last night!  I was feeling sad that I wasn't going to be able to indulge myself as we do in the States for the day, but I ended up having a great Thanksgiving anyway.  Some of my friends organized a big potluck party that started at about 7:30 and lasted until midnight!  Although I was too lazy to make something (I bought some cookies and brownies to bring along), some of the partygoers brought some amazing dishes, including a wonderful turkey, stuffing, lots of potatoes, garlic bread, creamed spinach, and cooked vegetables just to name a few.  Best of all were all the desserts, especially the pumpkin pie!!  I was so happy to have some homemade food.

It was especially fun because a good amount of Danish (and Polish) people came to try out the American tradition.  They even made some great desserts and brought along lots of gravy, as well as tons of beer and wine.  They told us that they had decided they love American holidays after celebrating both Halloween and Thanksgiving with us.  Plus, I got to get a little first-hand insight into the Poles' opinions on the climate package for the EU, a topic which I will be debating next Wednesday for my political science class and that they were very passionate and knowledgeable about.  

The best part of the night was definitely after dinner, though, when one of the Poles grabbed his guitar and played us a bunch of American songs to sing along to, which probably sounds very cheesy but was actually so much fun!!  During that time, I also got to meet a lot of new people since there were so many people there!  One of my friends and me even stuck around after the party to talk with some of the Danes and Poles since they were so funny and nice.  They invited us to a party called the "Almost New Year's Party" which will take place on "almost the last day of almost the last month instead of the last day of the last month" (ie this Saturday).  I am definitely considering going, but I have a very busy weekend ahead of me, as my friends and me are trying out the Absolut Ice Bar tonight (a bar completely made out of ice!), then going dancing at our favorite club; and then I am probably heading out to my friend's host family's house to celebrate her birthday with them on Sunday.  However, since I had enough food last night to fuel me for the rest of the weekend, hopefully I'll have time for it all!

A Whirlwind of Events...

These last few weeks in Denmark have gone by incredibly fast!  It's hard to believe that there's less than a month until I'm back in Washington!! However, there's lots to update on, starting with the election on November 4th.  We were all pretty excited about it here, but it was cool to see how politically aware the Danes were as well.  They seemed even more passionate about the election than some of the Americans I know!  On the night of the election, I headed over to my friend's kollegium where they were having a party all night.  The Dane who was in charge of setting everything up had posted pictures of Obama and McCain all over the walls and set up a big projector so everyone could watch every step of the election.  He had even set up a bar called the "oBARma" where you could buy refreshments and some much-needed coffee!  All in all, it was a very exciting night, and it felt great to have been able to contribute a vote!

Since then, I've just been focusing on having a great time with my wonderful friends and trying to study, especially for my more interesting subjects (Danish Language & Culture and Hans Christian Andersen).  Even though Denmark, obviously, does not celebrate Thanksgiving, it has been getting ready for Christmas for quite a while!  The other weekend, my friends and me went out for "J-Dag", which is a day when the big beer company hands out free Holiday Tuborg beers at all the bars.  All the employees are dressed like elves and dance around all night while carrying in loads of beer.  We chased the truck around the city and got free holiday hats, too, which was a lot of fun.  They had even put fake snow all over Copenhagen!

Even better than fake snow, though, is REAL snow, which is currently all over the ground outside!  I'm not really a big fan of the freezing cold weather, but it was very exciting to see such huge snowflakes starting at about noon yesterday and lasting all through the night.  To really set the holiday tone, we went to Tivoli, the famous amusement park near our study center, as soon as it got dark (about 4:00 pm!) and wandered around in the snow to see all the pretty Christmas lights, Santa decorations, drink hot chocolate, and dance around in the snow.  By the time we left, the snow was starting to get pretty heavy, and when I woke up this morning, there was a lot all over the ground here at my kollegium in Albertslund!  I'm hoping that it lasts all weekend so that school will get cancelled on Monday, but somehow I don't think it will last that long.  For now, I'm just staying nice and warm inside, debating on whether or not to try my luck out at the new ice-skating rink they just set up outside in the middle of the city!  

Italia: Roma & Firenze!

Sorry that I'm so ridiculously behind on my posting!  I knew my post about Italy would take a while, though, so I've been waiting for some solid free time, which is now!  In short, Italy was so much fun!  I flew to Rome by myself because I didn't really want to fly home to Copenhagen from Spain and then back to Italy right away.  Luckily, one of my friends from abroad was going to be in Rome that same day, so we stayed in the same hostel, which was a lot of fun! Unfortunately, one of my roommates was puking all night, which wasn't very pleasant. 

The next day, I got up early to meet the group at my hotel, which was convinently located right next to the Spanish Steps.  The first day was already eventful: we walked around the city and got to see cool things like the Piazza del Popolo, Largo Argentino, The Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona, and much more!  After that, we got our first amazing dinner!  I

don't know how the Italians can eat so well, and still stay so thin!!

The next day, we got to see The Colosseum, as well as many other classical monuments.  The Colosseum was absolutely amazing and so crowded!  It was so weird being inside after seeing so many pictures of it!  The Forum Romanum was almost even more amazing, though, because it was so enormous!  From the outside, it looked like we could walk through it in a half hour, but it took us a couple of hours at least.

While in Rome, we also got to some places that are not-so touristy, which was very nice.  Probably two of my favorite places to visit was a cemetary where famous authors, like von Goethe, Keats and Shelley are buried, and also the Baths of Caracalla, which was an ENORMOUS bathhouse.  In contrast, another very cool place which was VERY touristy was Vatican City.  There was so much beautiful art, it was almost overwhelming.  The Sistine Chapel, in particular, was very impressive because of Michelangelo's artwork on the ceiling.

After four days in Rome, we headed off to Florence, which I liked a bit more because it wasn't so crowded everywhere.  Most of the artwork that we had been learning about class was all in Florence, such as The Birth of Venus (my personal favorite) by Botticelli and Michelangelo's David.  I have to admit, though, that probably my favorite part of Florence was the fun clubs we went to. 

We all went out as a group twice, which was fun, and we really got to know each other really well.  By the end of the trip, I had made some really cool new friends, which was the best part

 of the whole trip!!

I have to say that after visiting all of these places, I am still 100% glad that I chose to study in Denmark, though.  I have adjusted very well to life in Copenhagen and think it was a perfect pick for me!

Seville!

I'm a little bit behind on my blog, but I've been pretty busy!  Even so, I figured I couldn't skip posting about my trip to Spain!  After leaving London, I headed over to Seville, Spain to visit my friend Elizabeth who is studying abroad there for a semester.  I was very excited to go there since I have never been to Spain and don't know much about the culture.  After I met Elizabeth at the airport, we walked for 45 minutes to my hostel, which was absolutely gorgeous.  It was pretty much like a luxury hostel, with marble floors, a rooftop garden and a comfy lounge with computers and Internet.  The employees even did my laundry for me!

I discovered how wonderful the tapas were right away...We headed to a little cafe that evening where I ordered some croquetas and a dish of chicken curry, which were absolutely delicious.  I definitely had my fill of croquetas over the next few days.  Elizabeth had to translate all the menus and order for me at every meal since I don't speak any Spanish except for "si" and "uno".  English was definitely not as commonplace there as it in Copenhagen, which was a bit of a challenge for me but also really cool since I love listening to other languages.

My favorite part of the whole trip was probably going to a museum, which I know is very hard to believe.  However, this was the most fun and interactive museum I've ever encountered...so much so that I would gladly go many more times!  There were different exhibits where you could make your own music, watch your shadow play with bubbles, or mold shapes with some goopy material that looked like Play-Doh.  We weren't supposed to take pictures, but I snuck in lots because it is so hard to explain what exactly we did there!!

The day before I left, we went to some Arab baths with Elizabeth's friends, which was just what I needed!  It was absolutely amazing: there were different floors which each contained different types of baths to relax in, including a peppermint bath, a saltwater bath, a steaming hot bath, a freezing cold bath, and more!  My favorite thing was actually probably the steam room, which also smelled like peppermint.  It was almost hard to breathe because the steam was so thick, but it felt so good that I had to make myself leave after twenty minutes of lying in there.

After checking out a huge festival where we shopped amongst hundreds of vendors and bought delicious Greek food and crepes for dessert, I decided I better call it an early night since Elizabeth had to get up in the morning for her trip to Granada and I had to wake up at 4:00 AM to catch the bus to the airport!  Besides that ridiculously early morning, though, I would have to say that my first visit to Spain definitely lived up to my high expectations!

London!

After visiting London from the 17th-21st of October, I've decided that I absolutely want to live there someday!  I got into the airport at about 9:45 and after being hassled for about ten minutes by the customs department, met up with my friend Courtney in the airport!  Since she hasn't found a permanent place yet, we booked a hostel that night, which was really gross.  It ended up being 80 dollars though, despite being the grossest accomodations I've ever experienced in my life! However, since we were just sleeping there (I was sooo tired from traveling) it was perfectly fine.  

The next morning, we booked a much nicer hostel and started all of the sightseeing!  The first thing we did was go to the London Dungeon, which is basically a huge haunted house that takes about an hour and a half to walk through.  A bunch of actors were dressed up and walked around scaring people as you looked at the exhibits, which kept maki

ng me really nervous, so they definitely did their job well.  The best part about the whole thing was probably the ride at the end, where you are buckled in and you do a little free fall.  The picture of us on the ride is pretty funny.

My favorite visit of the trip, though, was probably Madame Toussaud's, which is the wax museum!  Each of the respective rooms were set up to accommodate the different wax characters.  For example, in the first room there were tons of celebrities that you could take pictures with while walking around on a red carpet.  There were other rooms that contained different sports figures or political leaders.  We took so many pictures with all of the wax people because they were so realistic.

Besides these two museums, we also did lots of other fun things everyday, such as meet up with some of Courtney's friends from culinary school for a big Chinese brunch; visit places such as Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and the London Bridge; and even rode the London Eye!  The various meals we had, though expensive, were absolutely amazing and totally worth the price.  I would like to personally discredit the stereotype that all food in England is bad!  I was especially excited to try out the Indian food, which was very impressive.

I was sad to leave London on the 21st since I was getting used to where everything was in London and taking the metro all over the place.  However, I know I'll be back someday soon since I loved everything about the city, especially the British accents!!

Brussels/The Hague/Amsterdam

Last week I went on my study tour to Brussels, The Hague and Amsterdam, which was so much fun!  The majority of our time was spent in Brussels since the EU has most of its dealings there.  It was very cool getting to meet with representative from te Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Danish ambassador to the EU, the European Commission, NATO and the European Parliament just to name a few.  We really got a first-hand look of the meetings and got to hear the perspectives of the people working there.  After intently listening and taking notes about what they had to say, we were always happy to have some delicious dinners and snacks: Belgian waffles, fries and beer...all the famous foods of Belgium!

At nighttime, Brussels has a lot of fun things to do.  There are so many restaurants to try, but whenever we walked down certain alleys, some of the men who tried to pull us into their respective restaurants were very sleazy.  One of them, who was about 35 years old, even bought my friend Becca a rose and made her kiss him.  Besides eating though, there are tons of bars and clubs open all night, and two of the nights in Brussels we went dancing at the Irish Pub, and I met lots of other Americans from a study abroad group that my friend from school (Shanthi) is studying at!  Unfortunately, she wasn't there but I talked to lots of people who knew her, which was exciting.

After Brussels, we headed to The Hague, where we had the most delicious dinner ever.  Our group leaders bought us tons of pitchers of wine, too, so we were all pretty happy by the time we left.  After dinner, we all went out to the bars together and had a good bonding experience with the whole group.  The next morning we went to the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) and learned about some of the terrible crimes that had been committed in the former Yugoslavia and what they were doing to bring justice to the victims.  We were supposed to attend a case hearing, but unfortunately, it was cancelled for the day so we were all a little disappointed about that.

However, we got to head to Amsterdam a little bit early because of the cancellation.  There were definitely a lot of cool sights to see there, but I didn't have much time to do anything but eat dinner and go on the canal tour with my group because I had to catch my plane to London.  I had been planning to hang out with my friends for a while longer, but I'm extremely glad I played it on the safe side, since I ended up getting pretty confused in the Amsterdam airport.

Overall, though, my experience in Brussels and The Hague was so much fun and academic at the same time.  The only bad thing about it was how fast it all went by: we were shocked to wake up on the 17th and realize it was our last day!

Kultur Natten + Halloween i Tivoli!

So this past week was amazingly stressful...but as soon as midterms were over, it was time to have fun!!! On Friday, some friends and I attended a city-wide festival called "Kultur Natten" or "Culture Night", which I loved! Basically, for 75 kroner, we had access to every museum, the city hall, the prisons, the churches, the towers, the zoo, etc. and we could listen to free concerts or taste traditional Danish beer or food...all with free transportation from the bus system!  The first thing we did was check out the Round Tower, which you could climb to the top of and look out at all of Copenhagen.  It was fun climbing to the top because it was a gradual ramp instead of stairs.  There was also an observatory room with a huge telescope where you could do some stargazing and a gorgeous church at the bottom of the tower.

After that, we caught a bus to the other side of town and headed to an old bath house, which was of course very exciting!  The whole place smelled of amazing aromatherapy oils, but we didn't end up getting the spa body treatment since they suggested we have bathing suits. However, we did get to soak our feet with a warm sea salt scrub in a candlelit room while enjoying a calming Danish concert.  We had to be shushed by all the Danes in the room though because we were the typical noisy Americans when they were trying to enjoy the music.  

On the way out, I saw lots of people getting acupuncture done, which is something I have always wanted to do!  I was a little sad I missed out on trying that, but at least my feet felt great...we walk all the time here so they needed that.

On the way back to the city, we had to stop and grab some filafel at the nearest cafe! Surprisingly, Copenhagen seems to be overrun by filafel; I guess they really enjoy it here, which is not a food I would have expected. In any case, I'm so glad since it's delicious and one of the relatively moderately priced dishes here.  

In the city, we met up with lots more friends and just kind of strolled around Copenhagen with the huge crowds of people.  Eventually, we decided to head into the Museum Erotica, which was a very interesting experience.  There were some very graphic pictures and statues, as well as a stripper pole for the visitors to use!  We had to try out the pole, but luckily for you Mom and Dad, I don't think I was really cut out for that.  

While we were visiting some animals later, I had the brilliant idea to climb on top of a big white statue of a cow.  The first problem was that the random man who boosted me up helped me up so I was sitting on it backwards.  So, even more brilliantly, I decided I would be able

 to turn around while still ON the cow, which is the point when I slipped off the cow and landed hard on my back on the concrete.  It's kind of a miracle that I'm not severely hurt, but I really wanted to sit on the cow so I was more careful when climbing up the second time.  After that, we went to pet the real cows, which were very cute.  

However, I think that when I fell I lost my wallet, which was a huge dilemma.  Instead of going to the karaoke bar, as we had planned, we spent the night running around looking for my wallet in a panic.  I eventually found it this morning at the police station, and I'm so thankful someone was honest enough to turn it in, although there was some money missing.

Then, this afternoon, we headed to Tivoli Gardens, which is a famous amusement park, since it was all dressed up for Halloween!  We mostly walked around and took random pictures of ourselves, but we also got to do a hay maze, eat some delicious food, watch a performance or two, and shop in the cute little stores.  Unfortunately, we didn't end up going on any rides because they are SO expensive...I'm talking at least 20 bucks per ride.  We were happy enough eating and experiencing the culture, though, so it was a lot of fun!!

Now, it's time to go to Brussels, The Hague, Amsterdam, London, Seville, Rome and Florence!!!  Even though Copenhagen is so much fun, I'm glad to see new countries in Europe!!

Meeting my Visiting Family

Today was the day I got to meet my visiting family!!! I was sooo nervous to meet them and was afraid to get off the train in Hundige (the station where I was meeting them), but as soon as we pulled into the driveway and sat down for brunch, they were so friendly!  They were very curious about America and my studies, and they have an 18-year-old son who is very easy to talk to.  He is planning to visit America when he turns 21 and he definitely wants to go to Seattle, which I of course encouraged.

I was expecting us to enjoy a nice brunch and then to take the train home to Albertslund, but they suggested that we do something fun in Copenhagen.  They gave me a little tour of the city, telling me about its history, showing me where they worked, etc.  We ended up going to the Rosenborg Castle, where we got to see the crown jewelry and tour the castle where the royalty used to live.  Unfortunately, I again forgot to bring my camera, but I'm sure a lot of the beautiful architecture, paintings and jewelry are pictured online.  The most amazing part of the castle was the ball room on the third floor, where they keep the king and queen's thrones guarded by big gold lions.  I don't remember the last time I saw so much wealth in one place; it was overwhelming.  

Afterwards, they asked if they could drive me home, which was so nice since I didn't have to take the train back!  I was a little worried that they would not want to see me again, but when they dropped me off at my kollegium, they invited me over again and made sure I had their number.  I'm not going to be able to see them for a while since I'm going to be traveling soon, but I'm so excited I finally got to meet them and that they were such a great family!

A Thousand Lbs. of Stress Relieved!!!

I just finalized my tickets for the long travel break that's already coming up in TWO weeks!!! I've been scrambling around, trying to make plans with friends from high school, college and abroad these last couple of days and it has not been fun!  Thankfully, I am booked for all my flights now and just have a few minor details to work out!  My itinerary looks like this:

October 11-17:

-Brussels, Belgium

-The Hague, The Netherlands

-Amsterdam, The Netherlands

with my EPS class

October 17-21:

-London, England

visiting my friend Courtney

October 21-25: 

-Seville, Spain

visiting my friend Elizabeth

October 25-Nov 1

-Rome, Italy

-Florence, Italy

with my Italian Renaissance class!

It's going to be a full 3 weeks away from my new home, but I'm so excited to see some familiar faces and visit new sites! Expect some great pictures!

Quarterly Overview

As of now, I feel extremely comfortable in Copenhagen.  I've even started using my very minimal Danish with the storekeepers, such as "Hej" (Hi), "Tak" (Thank you) and "Ja" (Yes)...pretty impressive, isn't it?? Haha, actually my Danish class is going pretty well and I feel that I'm learning to recognize words very quickly now and can even read random billboards around town.  I'm just a little embarrassed about my pronunciation of the words since Danish words are pronounced nothing like they are spelled.

Other than the language, though, which is not a very significant barrier considering EVERYONE speaks English and is happy to switch into the language as soon as they see the blank look on your face, school is going very smoothly.  I've been meeting some really great friends, especially in my European Union class, which is great because that's the group I'm going to be traveling to Brussels and The Hague with in a few weeks!  My teacher just announced that we're even going to be able to stop in Amsterdam for the last day, which we are all VERY excited about!  However, this class still can't compare with my Hans Christian Andersen class, which I absolutely love!  Not only do we get to read tons of fairy tales, but we get to do such fun study tours.  For example, the other day our class went to Tivoli, which is a famous amusement park, and watched a pantomime of "The Tinderbox".

My kollegium, which I was having some trouble adjusting to in the first couple of weeks, now feels like home, and I know most of the people living in my sub-unit.  However, since DIK (Danmarks Internationale Kollegiet) is mostly a kollegium for international students (hence the name), I haven't had the chance to meet as many Danish people as I would like.  This is why I signed up for the Danish Visiting Family Program, which is set up for people who do not have direct interaction with the Danes (such as the Americans living in host families, with Danish roommates or in the Folkehojskole).

In this program, people living in a kollegium or DIS shared housing are assigned a Danish family with whom they can meet as often as they would like to do whatever they would like, such as have dinner together, travel around Denmark, etc. Since I signed up relatively late, I didn't have especially high hopes, but just the other day I received an email telling me I was matched with a family with two children of the ages 18 and 22!  We have been emailing to set up a time for me to go over to their house and have dinner, which I am very excited about!  Hopefully this way, I will get to experience Danish culture even more first-handedly!

Biking on Heavenly Bornholm

I am completely exhausted after a weekend of non-stop bike riding and very little sleep!  However, the weekend trip to the island of Bornholm, Denmark was amazing: it is famous for its round churches, salted herring, finest sand in the world, sea glass and all-around beautiful scenery.  I think there was about 100 of us from DIS that boarded the bus at 10:30 on Friday night and drove over to this huge overnight ferry that took us to Bornholm.  The boat ride was fun because we got to hang out with friends, play cards and drink wine, but none of us got very much sleep and before we knew it we were there (at 6:00 am...ugh).

I think we all woke up once we got to our hostel and realized how pretty everything was.  Some friends and I took off around 8:30 am and biked to seethe oldest round church on the island as well as the amazing Hemmerhjus castle ruins.  I have to say that these were the most amazing castle ruins I have ever seen, even bypassing those in Scotland and Ireland.  It's a good thing those ruins were so breathtaking and well worth it, though, since the bike ride was ridiculously hard.  I was so tired that after we went out for some dessert at a pancake house, I passed out at 9:30!

The next day we visited the sea glass museum, which was fairly small but had beautiful wine glasses, olive oil holders, vases, jewelry and anything else you could imagine.  All 4 of us bought these beautiful glass eggs with cool swirly designs inside.  After that, we explored around the coast for a while before deciding to bike through the forest to the largest round church on the island and a lookout tower.  The ride was a little bit easier than the first day but it was freezing and started to rain on the way back, which made it hard to ride.  I was still pretty wet when we boarded the ferry but I snuggled up on the floor

 and fell fast asleep for the whole ride home.  Overall, the trip was extremely tiring but well worth it to see the peaceful, cozy little island.

My First Visit to Germany!!!

Well, I just got back to my kollegium after three days traveling in Germany and western Denmark with my European Union Political Science class, which was both informative and fun!  Our first stop was in Lubeck, Germany, which was a quieter city on the peninsula.  The highlight of this city was definitely our historical tour: the guide was ridiculous and hilarious with his shocking comments.  He had a huge moustache that curled at the tips and the funniest, deepest voice.  I took a picture of him introducing us to a statue of a devil outside of a beautiful church, attempting to convince us that this devil was real.  We also had our first DIS-provided meal, which was absolutely amazing! Since I haven't been eating as much in Denmark, I pretty much went crazy when I saw the meal and had seconds and thirds, taking advantage of the free food.

After that, we headed over to Kiel, where we stayed in a very ... basic ... hostel, which provided me with one of the coldest showers ever the next morning. There, we had a big lecture from some representatives of the Schleswig-Holstein European Union Office, which was a much more interesting presentation than the one we had heard in Lubeck.  However, although we had fun, we were not too sad to leave the hostel and head to Sonderborg, Denmark, where the nightlife was much more impressive.  However, I ended up spen

ding about 80 dollars that night, counting the huge pizza which I completely devoured, and the very overpriced alcohol.

Today, we had our last lecture (on the Danish-German borders) at the University of Southern Denmark, which was very interesting; however, I was so exhausted that I kept falling asleep the whole time so I hope the professor didn't notice! We also got to tour the Dybbol Banke, a battlefield where Denmark suf

fered a huge defeat against the German Confederation during the 2nd war of Schleswig, as well as a castle in Koldinghus.  On the way back, we watched a German movie called "The Lives of Others", which was extremely intense and definitely recommended to anyone looking for something to watch, as all 30 of us were fascinated by it despite being so tired.  

I'd have to say the worst part of the weekend so far was riding my train back to my kollegium after being dropped off by the tour bus: some boy puked all over MY train compartment (ALL OVER...it was a LOT of puke) and we had to evacuate it so they could sanitize

 it.  Thankfully, though, I am finally safe and sound at home and excited to be sleeping in for a very uneventful Sunday!

Andersen's Little World

So today we had our first field study for the HC Andersen class, which was so much fun!! Unfortunately, I did not bring my camera and missed out on documenting a bunch of really awesome things...I'll try to steal some off of someone's facebook when they load them. We broke off into groups and did a scavenger hunt around Copenhagen to various places that had to do with HC Andersen in some little way, like the cutest little tea store ever, some beautiful churches, historical roads and more! When we were all finished, the professor even bought us all a cup of coffee!  Since we were one of the first groups to finish, we had a bunch of leisure time to sit around and take in the atmosphere of a Danish cafe.  Despite having to wake up around 8:00 to arrive at school in time for the trip, I was pleased with the first of my many field studies and am now looking forward to the rest of them! 

Wonderful Copenhagen

Well, I survived my first week abroad! My classes (Danish Language & Culture, Hans Christian Andersen and the Danish Golden Age, The European Union, Nordic Mythology and The Italian Renaissance) seem pretty interesting so far. I had a LOT of trouble finding spiral notebooks for my classes though since evidently any sort of paper product here in Copenhagen is ridiculously expensive and therefore much less accessible.  I finally found some ugly ones with hot pink skulls across the front, but beggars can't really be choosers so I have five not-so fashionable notebooks.

I'm slowly but surely beginning to settle into life here.  I've been meeting more of the students living in my kollegium as they move in.  There is only one other American in my sub-unit which is a little bit intimidating but I guess it forces me to really get to know the other cultures living here.  I've also mastered the train to and from class, as well as the walk to school, which cuts down my stress level immensely.  

This Friday, DIS held a big party for us at a really fancy club called Luux where we got free entrance and two free drinks.  It was pretty cool to see all the other 600 or so students partying in one club.  After we had had our two free drinks though, we decided we didn't feel like spending 10+ bucks (or 50 kroner) on one drink so we headed out to some local bars.  Some friends and I eventually found a bar called "The Happy Pig" where we met lots of other Americans.

That night, we also had to experience the night bus, which was not very fun. Taking the regular train home to Albertslund generally takes about 25 minutes, but the night bus took at least an hour.  Unfortunately, every night we stay out past 12:00 (or 24:00), we are going to have to take that night bus home.  Luckily, the Danish people were very helpful to us in figuring it out, as they have been with the numerous other confusions we experience daily!

I'm very excited because I just found out that there was some extra space on the Italy study tour that will take place from October 26-November 1.  We're going to go to Rome and Florence and visit places like the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica.  My teachers also announced that I'm going to be traveling to Brussels and The Hague from October 12-18 as required for my political science class, so I have not only lots of time to look forward to in "Wonderful Copenhagen" as they refer to it here but also some other places in Europe that I haven't yet visited!

...And so it begins!

After getting off to somewhat of a rough start (being delayed a few hours, which entailed missing some critical parts of orientation), the crew from the Seattle flight finally made it to Copenhagen!  I was only a little bit jet-lagged and very excited to run into three of my friends, two from Santa Clara and one from high school.  We were all split into various groups depending on where we were living and I headed off to my kollegium in Albertslund (about 25 minutes out of Copenhagen), which was a lot prettier than the pictures I had found of it on the Internet.  We were thrown a pizza party (with free beer!), but that is where our free food ended.  Today I decided that I'm pretty much going to buy the cheapest food possible in order to sustain myself as my money is already seeming to dwindle away on the most basic things.

Today was also the first day we had to ride the metro to Copenagen, which was really confusing to me.  Luckily, a big group of us headed over to the DIS school building together, so I couldn't get too lost.  However, the walk to DIS seemed to have about 50 turns down various streets so I'm going to have to pay better attention to how to get there tomorrow.  The good part about all this was that during this time I got to know a lot of different people and made some new friends who all seemed really friendly and fun!!

We also got a tour of the city today, which was nice.  We got to see things like the statue of the Little Mermaid, the Copenhagen Opera House and the Amalienborg Palace.  Just through simple observation, we have also been amused to learn that Mercedes Benzes and BMWs are the only cars used as taxis.  The most amusing part of the tour was probably when the tour bus left one of my friends and me behind and we had to run down the street yelling after it. 

Tomorrow we're going to take Survival Danish classes and "Coping in Copenhagen" classes starting at 9:00 in the morning, which will be the first classes we ever take at DIS!!