Pictures!

This morning I went to church in a small, very simple Catholic church in the town over.  Mass was nice and almost exactly the same at home.  Ida and I went to an amusement park close to our house afterwards.  We had a great time going on roller coasters and sitting in a cafe eating, talking and people-watching.  It was funny to see that there are wild wild west themed rides and other things that imitate the US.  Also, we sat and split a plate of fries.  They don't eat french fries with ketchup, they eat them with mayonnaise! It sounds gross but it was actually pretty good. However, I felt like my arteries are clogging while I was eating it.  This was one of the first unhealthy foods I've had since I arrived, though.  As a whole, it seems like Danish people eat a lot healthier than Americans generally do.

So I will post a few of my pictures from Copenhagen so far and hopefully they can compliment my words.  I hope you enjoy them!  The first picture is the train station I use to get to and from DIS in the center of Copenhagen.  I have about a 20 minute commute on the train and then a 5 minute walk to class.  The second picture is of New Harbor, a very nice section of town where there are lots of cafes and bars right along a string of canals.  Next is the changing of the guards at the Queen's Palace.  They were very official, however, while they were doing their ritual, they were trying not to laugh!  Next is a beautiful section of the King's Gardens.  The plants are so green here because of all the rain!  Last is just a normal street in the city.  I love all the colored houses - they are so cute.

Kronborg Castle

Today I went on a DIS trip to the Krongborg Castle in Helsingor.  This is the castle where Shakespeare set the play Hamlet! It was a very impressive castle from the outside and the grounds were absolutely gorgeous.  The coolest part of the trip, though, were the tunnels beneath the castle where they kept criminals and military prisoners.  There were statues of old Nordic gods in the tunnels and the whole thing was lit only by (fake) candles so our tour guide had a flashlight to show us where to go! It was very creepy - it would be the perfect place to have a haunted house during Halloween.  Also, the town of Helsingor was absolutely adorable.  There were many shops and restaurants lining the streets and hanging above the streets were strings and strings of Danish flags.  Two of the girls I was traveling with and I had a traditional Danish lunch of smorrebrod (that is not how you spell it, the os need to have slashes through them and make the low "u" sound) which is an open sandwich.  I had roast pork with red cabbage on rye bread.   It was delicious.  Surprise, surprise, I haven't found a food I don't like here yet.  Tonight I even tried liver pate with my host family and I really enjoyed it!  Anyways, while we were walking around Helsingor, one restaurant had a quartet playing in front of it, so we just stood and listened for a while and to our surprise, the restaurant started serving us white wine and bruschetta.  So we sat in this little alleyway, listening to this quartet, drinking wine and looking at this amazing castle.  We had gorgeous weather, too.  I felt like I was in a fairy tale! 

I promise I will post pictures soon - I just need to figure out how to put them in the blog.  My words don't do the beauty of this place any justice at all.  I can't believe I've only been here a week - I feel like I've experienced so many new things already.  I am excited to see how the rest of the semester unfolds!

First day of classes!

I had three classes this morning and all of my professors were very cool.  My photojournalism teacher is a freelance photographer and has a very cool way of seeing the world. He is very stereotypical European looking, too.  My teacher for Turkey in the Crossroads is an older man who loves telling stories, which works out perfect for him as such a history buff.  He spent class facilitating discussion and adding in stories of his own when appropriate.  My Nordic mythology teachers were hilarious and they taught today's lesson in a tag-team style where they played off of one another very well.  Normally they will split the class but sometimes they will put our sections together and teach as they did today.  We will have both teachers at different times throughout the course, too, which should keep things interesting.  All in all I am very excited about all the academics that I will have this semester.

This afternoon I went back to a dorm/apartment type building with a new friend named Angela.  She was in my Surviving Danish scavenger hunt group and we have hung out a few times since then.  We went back to the apartment to get ready for a bunch of fun things we did tonight.  After we got ready, we went back into the city with her friends from her Kollegium (I'm sure I messed up the spelling).  First, we went on a canal boat tour where we took a ride through some of the canals of Copenhagen with a tour guide.  We saw a lot of the same buildings we walk past every day, but it was interesting learning about their histories.  We also saw the Little Mermaid statue! However, it is much smaller than you would expect... Then we grabbed a quick dinner at a small cart in the center of a square and ate near the canal.  Finally, we went to the DIS welcome party that our program threw for us tonight at a club.

DIS rented out a club in Copenhagen for a few hours a little earlier in the night.  Probably around half of the program came out to the club (about 300 people), so we had quite a crowd.  It was so much fun - we danced almost the whole night.  They played all American music from around when I was in middle school, so everyone knew the words and were singing along.  It was also great to be able just walk up to the bar and order any drink that I wanted :).  One last embarrassing story before I go to bed:  So at the club tonight, DIS announced the winners of the scavenger hunt that I told you about over the speakers.  Of course, my team won out of about 150 teams.  I have no idea how we won, but we did.  When the lady announced my name, she called me "Jennifer Lasagna" and everyone went crazy.. "THAT IS SUCH A COOL LAST NAME! I THINK THAT'S AWESOME! CAN YOU BELIEVE HER LAST NAME IS LASAGNA?" I was laughing so hard I couldn't come up with a response.  It was very funny.  But on the bright side, I won 150 kroners (about $30) to the movies in Copenhagen, so that's pretty great.

Swimming and Shopping

Today was a busy day in Copenhagen for me.  I took the train to class where we talked about our Practicum sites for my core class, Children with Special Needs.  The Practicum site is the classroom that I will be working in throughout the semester.  I am very excited because I was placed in  a special school that is basically a therapy house for disabled people aged 16-25.  The house has all different sensory rooms that are focused on helping various physical and mental disabilities.  I am in the school for 50 hours this semester so it should be an amazing learning experience.  Today we were told all about what to expect when we get to our sites and also some of the major differences in Danish child care.  The class was very interesting!

After class I roamed around the city with a few friends from my program and then I went home to meet Ida to run some errands.  We got my Danish health care card which means that now that I'm here, I get free health care, too!  Then we bought school supplies, etc.  Later, we went to the mall and I bought a pair of high (maybe too high?) heels that I never would have picked out in my entire life.  Ida can shop, though, and she had fun picking shoes out for me to try on.  I have to say, these now top my Tier One steel-toed shoes for my most expensive pair.  But I guess how often do you get to pick up a pair of heels in Copenhagen?  After we went shopping, Ida and I went to their community pool so we could swim.  It is this whole complex with a diving well, play area in warmer water for small children, hot tubs and a rock climbing wall up the side built so that if you fall off, it will be into the water.  The lap pool, however, was different than anything I'd ever seen before - it was shaped in a circle like an indoor track!  If you followed the line in the middle, it was 100m around.  The whole thing was very cool, but kind of hard to swim in. Alright, I'm tired and I have my first real day of classes tomorrow (I already had reading to do...).  More another day!

Survival Danish

Today I started off in a class on "survival Danish" which is basically words and phrases that are important to function in Copenhagen.  We learned how to ask a person's name, what they are studying and where they live.  Then we took a field trip to the local supermarket and spent an hour learning different types of foods... I was thrilled, haha.  Any of you who have taken Spanish with me in the past know how horrible my pronunciation and accent are, so you can only imagine how terrible it is in Danish.  I'm awful, but I'm trying.  My host family had me practice with them tonight and I think that helped.  

            Next, we had a break and I walked around with a few girls from my class. We ate lunch on a fountain in a square and then walked around an international festival where there were all sorts of tents each celebrating a different country.  There were plenty of samples of all sorts of good food and different types of ethnic clothing and music.  

            After our break, we went on a scavenger hunt of Copenhagen.  We were given a map and a series of questions to answer about six different sites including the Queen's Palace, the King's Garden, a beautiful old church with an observatory on the top, and the Danish Parliament building.  We saw their opera house and their ballet and the castle where the crown jewels are held and learned a lot about the city's history and culture.  It was great - I feel like I know more not only about the city but also about where I am going when I wander around.  I had some fun partners and we enjoyed going around the city together.

            Finally, we had an activities fair where we could sign up for clubs and things.  I found a club swim team I want to join and I also signed up to hopefully tutor students in English at the International School of Copenhagen.  I am really excited about both of these and hopefully they will work out! When the fair was over, I was standing around talking with two friends of mine and one of the DIS staff began talking to us.  In the middle of the conversation, he turns and says something to another DIS staff who was leaving.  We asked him what he said and he explained, "Thank you for coming."  With a slight smile he added, "Learn the phrase, it's what we say in bed, too!"  There is just a little taste of Danish humor... I know some of you would really really enjoy it, haha. 

Dag II

Today was a great first full day in Copenhagen!  It started off with a shower, which was interesting because there are 2 knobs in the shower.. one to set the power and amount of water and another to set the temperature in degrees Celsius.  You can make your shower exactly how you like from the very beginning, which is cool.  For breakfast, I had a typical breakfast of a whole grain roll split in half with cheese on one side and jam on the other side.  The jam was homemade from blackberries picked in the backyard! Delicious.  

We had our first day of orientation today and it started with an opening ceremony.  It was at the Royal Library in Denmark, which is about the equivalent of the Library of Congress. The part we were in is called the Black Diamond and is a very modern addition they just put on to this building that stood there for hundreds of years.  It started out with a Wind Quintet and before they started playing, the walls of the hall changed so that there would be better acoustics! Bars that covered the walls slid back into other parts of the wall in order to change the surface.  

The day was mostly speeches and informational seminars about this that and the other thing. It made me very excited for the rest of the semester!

Last night, I ate with my host mom and my older sister Rikki came home from her apartment to have dinner with us.  Ida was still sick and Jesper had to work at night.  We sat around the table for almost three hours just talking!  Rikki is a great storyteller and she and her mom told me a lot about the culture and the history of Denmark.  Tonight I had dinner with my host dad and my younger host sister Ida.  Tonight's dinner was even over an hour and a half.  Ida makes me feel like I am still at Tufts because since I have been sitting watching TV with her, we have watched parts of the Hills, Australia's Next Top Model and House.  She knows all the American celebrity gossip better than I do.. maybe I will learn some, haha.  She is really wonderful to talk to about all sorts of things.  She explained her school to me and she was telling me about some of her friends, etc.  I feel like I am really starting to know the family and they are really great.  Tonight, my host mom was out playing golf for her club.  Her team won the semi-finals in the Copenhagen tournament! If they win their next match, which is regional, they will go to the final tournament for the whole country! 

The weather has been beautiful, believe it or not.  I have joked with my host family that all the rain went to my country last weekend with the hurricane and there is none left! I hope better weather finds you across the "big water!"  And happy 22nd birthday, Dave!!!

Velkommen hen til København

Goddag!

I arrived in Denmark this morning and have moved into my room at my host family's house.  I am living in a suburb or subdivision of Copenhagen called Nærum.  It is still connected by the public transportation system but my host family has an awesome backyard and a sick 3-story house in a nice neighborhood.  It is the middle of the woods in a place called Deer Park, so I feel right at home.  My host parents are really really really nice and seem like they would do anything to make me feel comfortable and at ease.  They are very neat and proper people and are very put together.  As my host mother is an IT consultant, all the technology in the house is new.  Also, they just completed a renovation to the layout of the downstairs making it more open and more "Scandinavian" by keeping a black white and silver color scheme.  The whole house very modern looking and well put together.  My room is probably about the same size of the one in the apartment I will live in at Tufts when I come back home.  It is all neutral colors, so I am glad I brought some picture frames to warm it up a little.  Both my host parents speak good English so it has been very easy to talk to them.  If we hit any difficulties, it's like playing taboo where you say all the words related to what you want to say.  It was especially fun to hear about their recent trip to New York City and what is like from foreigners' eyes.   One of my host sisters, Rikki, lives in the city close to where she is taking class at the University of Copenhagen.  My host parents keep calling her the "largest" sister instead of the oldest and then laugh when they realize they sound like they are calling her fat. I have not met her.  My other host sister, Ida, is, of course, tall, blonde and very pretty.  She is going into what seems like the equivalent of our senior year of high school.  I have hardly gotten a chance to meet her because she is feeling under the weather, so she just came down to say hello.  

Copenhagen itself is a very cool city.  It is small like Boston and very rarely are buildings taller than 5 stories.  It is also like Boston in the way that there are a lot of sailboats and rowing around because Copenhagen in towards the tip of an island called Zealand and a section of the city is actually a separate island cut off by canals.  There are cute squares with outdoor cafes and community markets that I am excited to explore!  Also, there are tons of people on bike everywhere.  While taking me on a driving tour of the city, my host parents pointed out good places to eat, shop and go out and taught me important words like "beer" and "sale".  I guess both of their girls and big shoppers and big bar and club goers.  

So far, so good! Farvel!