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!