Traditional Tall Ship Sailing

I just spent this weekend sailing in the sound between Denmark and Sweden on a traditional tall ship.  About 25 of us from my program went aboard the Maja and sailed where the wind took us.  Luckily, we had a ton of wind (not too much sun, though..) and actually sailed further than where we hoped to end up.  We docked in a small town in Sweden for the night and hung out and slept on the ship.  The way the trip worked is that we broke up into 4 groups that were each responsible for different sections of the ship.  My group was in charge of the back of the boat, where the steering wheel is.  We had one sail to keep track of and also had to watch the compass and flags to make sure we were headed in the right direction.  We got to work under the Captain of the ship, who was hilarious, and he just really made the trip fun.  The groups also rotated through meal duty, and we cooked a lot of food and ate family style on the ship, so that was great, too.  I really enjoyed the people who were on the trip with me, too, and it was nice to spend some quality time just hanging out with the other Americans on my program.  

We learned how to tie knots and "clean the rope" and keep the ship nice and clean.  We had to make sure the deck was up to the Captain's standards and we had to redo anything that wasn't how he wanted it. 
That's me in the middle!!! I got to climb up to the top of the mast and hang out up there for a while.  It was amazing just rocking back and forth with the ship standing on nothing but a chord.  I went up with my friend Taren and we saw the greatest views from up there.  Once we got comfortable and our legs stopped shaking, it was really relaxing. 
This is my group for the weekend! We got along well and had a lot of fun. The girl next to me in the yellow, Kendall, is one of my closest friends here. 

This is our ship! How cool, right?

Mormor

I just had a great weekend. On Friday night, I went out to a club to celebrate one of my friends who had his birthday last week. It was a big club with a lot of music and an open bar once you paid the cover. On each of the different floors was a different types of music, so we danced all night. We met a few Danes that we spent the night talking to and dancing with. They couldn't understand why we would ever come to little Copenhagen after living in the US, hah. They bought us champaign and were very good storytellers despite somewhat broken English and we had a really great time.
On Saturday, we made a family trip to Grandma's house. Going to Mormor's house in this family meant getting dressed up and driving across the island to her apartment that overlooks the water between Zealand and Fyn. It also meant eating 4 or 5 courses and looking at old pictures of Ida from when she was a little girl. Some things about Grandmas seem to be universal... even in Denmark each table was covered in a knit tablecloth and plates and figurines covered the walls and after you finished what was on your plate, Grandma wanted you to eat more. But the food we had was very different than anything I had had before and you kept track of the course you were on by the alcohol that you drank. We started off with snacks of chips and peanuts.. and champaign. Next, we had tunafish salad on pineapple with tomatoes and bacon (so so good)... with Rose wine. After the fish comes the main course of steak, salad and scallopped potatoes... with red wine. Next was candied figs with homemade whipped cream... with alcoholic pear cider. And just when you thought you were finished, you moved to applecake, these really delicious chocolate marshmellow things and cookies... with coffee and cognac. Then, as we were sitting around the table looking at old photo albums, Grandma pulls out the gin and tonic, rum and coke and Carlsburg just in case anyone wants to round off their night with a last drink. Let me tell you, though, Mormor drank like a champ and I could not keep up. After course number 2 I had glasses starting to line up because she was serving me faster than I could drink, haha. She is a sweet old woman and I'm glad we got to spend a nice night with the family.
On Sunday we celebrated the gorgeous weather and hung out outside. I did homework and my host parents worked around the yard. The blackberries in the backyard just got ripe, so Ida and I have been picking them daily and we picked a huge bowl on Sunday. Inspired by the Danish girl's success in the US Open, Ida and I have been playing tennis on their community courts and Sunday, the whole family played doubles in the afternoon. After dinner and more homework, Ida and I went and saw a chick flick at the theater because I won a gift certificate. It's a good thing, too, because I probably would not have gone if I knew we would spend almost $60 on the outing for both of us-- 160 krone on the movie tickets ($32) and 120 krone on snacks ($24). And we thought it was bad in the US! You also have to pick your seats as if you were going to a concert, which is kinda cool, too. Anyways, the movie was cute and Ida and I had fun and it was a great end to a great weekend.

Parliament

So today one of my classes went to the Danish Parliament to listen to one of the members speak about Turkey's admittance into the EU.  However, the train was running late and, in true Jen fashion, I got lost when I got out of the metro.  I was about 15 minutes late arriving, which is really really terrible to Danish people, never mind when you are supposed to be meeting a member of Parliament.  I was mortified.  When I finally got to the Parliament building, I circled around a few times looking for a way in and couldn't figure out where my class had gone.  Without knowing what to do, I walked right up to the big front door of the Parliament building and rang the doorbell.  It just seemed to make sense at the time! After a few rings, a tall, well dressed, very official looking guy came out of the door, gave me a very confused look and said hello.  He very nicely showed me to security and helped get me cleared and then they brought me to my class.  It would be like if some student went up to the Capitol building on the Hill and rang the doorbell trying to get in.. I can't believe I actually did that. Oh well.. whatever worked.  I also thought my professor was going to be angry, but he ended up telling me he was proud that I showed initiative and figured out how to get in by myself, hah. 

The speaker was really cool.. she was young and beautiful and had a nose piercing.  She was of Turkish decent and wore this really cute dress with leggings and flats just like she was a university student.  It was really interesting to hear her speak about a topic she was so passionate about.  After she spoke, she brought us on a tour of the building.  We saw the reception hall, which was set up for a luncheon with the Vietnamese president, and a lot of art.  We also saw the Danish Constitution, where the members of Parliament are sworn in, and the Floor, where they debate.  It was a really cool trip, and I'm glad I found my way into the building :)

Alternative Living

There was one other thing I wanted to tell you about. Last Wednesday, the day before the short study tour, a few of my friends and I ventured to Christiania, the hippie section of Copenhagen, sort of. If you were to ask any of the people who live there, they would say they were not part of Copenhagen at all, not even a part of the EU. Originally, the town was created by squatters who took over state owned property. Now, they have their own flag and consider themselves an island in the middle of the city. The people who live here are really chill and the whole place is laid back and really artsy. There are musicians and artists and peddlers lining the streets and people just hanging out. Every wall is covered in graffiti promoting peace and love and nature. The main street of Christiania is called Pusher Street, and you are not allowed to take pictures of Pusher Street because people are just openly selling weed and other related equipment. It was cool to walk around and meet some of the people in this alternative community. They loved to just sit and chat and were really open to tourist visitors. One guy told me that he loved America, everything about it, except that if you having a bad day, you just couldn't smoke a good blunt, "... and sometimes you just need a good blunt to brighten the day."

Westward Bound

This past Thursday through Saturday we had our short study tour to Western Denmark. A study tour is when all of DIS goes traveling with their core class groups.  My core class is my special needs class and we went to Odense (on an island called Fyn) and then some cities in Jutland, the part of Denmark that is connected to Germany.  As the study trips are supposed to be academically driven, we visited a few schools along the way.  One of the schools was a main stream public school with a section for children with special needs.  This school had one of the best playgrounds in the world and had been given a few prestigious awards for their facilities.  The playgrounds are high tech, connected to the internet, have learning games involved and also can be used for team building activities.  On top of that, they are handicap accessible.  Another school we went to was a school for the deaf in Jutland.  The school was also totally high tech and all the rooms were wired so that when teachers or other students spoke into microphones, the sounds were sent directly to the student's cochlear implants so that they could hear.  It was very interesting because cochlear implants were extremely popular for the students in the school, but in the American deaf community, they are a hot topic of discussion.  We also visited a Culture House for adults with disabilities.  There was a cafe that was run by people with disabilities that hosted other people with disabilities and social events, etc. There was also an art studio, music studio and weaving room where the craftspeople (people with special needs) could create works that would then be sold.  The music group has been together for 8 years and has even been on tour! We got their CD and heard them play.. they weren't bad at all.  The last part of our academic trip was to meet some social workers who work to train faculty so that they could better work with students who have special needs. They had a very interesting message that worked very well into something that one of my professors at home focuses on.  It is really cool to see things that I am learning across the world connect!

The non study parts of our trip included visiting the Hans Christian Andersen House, which is a play space where we could get dressed up as characters from his stories (complete w face paint if we wanted) and play around in sets with props like we were actually in his stories.  It reminded me a little of the place I worked in high school, Playtime Village.  20 year old girls had fun... it would have been the coolest thing if I were 9.  We also went bowling as a group, which was fun, and out to some really good dinners.  We saw a castle in Kolding and also the Jellingstones, which is where the word "Denmark" is first written.  We had absolutely gorgeous weather the whole time and the whole trip was really fun.  My core class is all girls (surprise surprise, child development), so it was neat coming together as a group.  Also, our teacher is hilarious and wonderful and kept us laughing the whole time.

These are my roommates, from left, Jamie, Leah and Julia, who I got to know really well over this trip.  They are really great and we had a lot of fun together.  This is after a long day when we moved into our first hostel.  The hostels in Denmark are really nice! 
hahah a failed jumping picture with some of my friends from my program.. but notice how beautiful the sky is! Also, the flag.. there are Danish flags everywhere here.
Julia and I are dressed up as princesses at the Hans Christian Andersen house.. we stayed like this for a good hour.
Traditional Danish meal.. a hamburger type thick patty of ground beef with beats, onions, capers and horseradish ontop.. as well as a raw egg yolk.  It may sound gross but it was really delicious.  Obviously, finished off with a Carlsberg.

This is the band that we saw at the culture house! They played us a few songs... they even sing in English.  They are called Bali III.

Vikings

On Saturday I went with my Nordic Mythology class on a tour of western Zeland, which is the island that Copenhagen is on. We went here because there is a lot of viking history around. Our first stop was at a viking museum right next to a fjord. The museum featured five viking ships that were pulled out of the bottom of the fjord and preserved. There was a battle ship, a cargo ship and a few exploration ships. Each were different and it was really cool to see the actual size of them. There was also a few set up as if they would be if they were sailing. You could dress up in viking clothes and my friend Angela and I took advantage of the opportunity to take some funny pictures dressed in furs and tunics. Our next stop was to an ancient burial mound (my professor says that it dates back to the pyramids!) where they buried dead kings. We had to crawl into this mound because the opening was so small and then it opened up into a sort of cave. The mound was what my female professor called "the womb of the earth" and the tunnel into it she called the birthcanal. She said this because it was so old that Danish bloodlines could be traced back to here, so in essence, this is the birthplace of the people. It was an interesting way of looking at it. Our next stop was at the place where Beowolf was supposed to have taken place, specifically where the great hall should be. My other professor, the male, read us some exerpts of the poem while we were there, pointing out where different aspects of it should be. I feel like I must read the rest now when I get back. Our final stop on our trip was to the grounds of an old viking fortress. It was sort of like the Roman ruins where nothing is really still standing but you can still see where things should have been. My professors brought mead with them (a liquor made from honey that was very popular during the viking age) and we stood where a living room or gathering room in a house should be, toasted to the class (SKOL!) and drank. It was cool because, as my professors pointed out, this same ritual had probably been done in the same spot hundreds of years previously. All in all, it was a great day and I saw a lot of things I would not have seen otherwise by myself and things that you definitely cannot do in the US.

Last night my family and I went to Tivoli, the big amusement park/botanical gardens I told you about previously. Although the park is much smaller than a typical amusement park in the US is, we still had a very good time. There are some really fun rides and rollercoasters with cool names such as the Odin Expressway. We ate at a very nice restaurant and enjoyed carnival snacks like their soft ice (or their version of soft serve icecream that is much thicker than ours) that they dip in powdered chocolate. It was a really fun night with my whole host family, including Rikke and her boyfriend. Now, I have to go back during the fall season, as the park reopens (it closes in a week because summer is over) and is decorated for Halloween (which they do not really celebrate here?) and then once again for Christmas. I am looking forward to seeing the differences in the park!

Yes, the black line still looks the same

It's nice to know that some things will never change: the line on the bottom of the pool, the feel of the water and of course, the smell of the chlorine.  I had my first swim practice with a club team out of the University of Copenhagen today.  We did 3500 today, and it was challenging for the first day.  When we first started going on intervals, I couldn't believe how slow I was going... and then I remembered it was meters instead of yards.  I actually did pretty well for having been out of the water for so long and it really just felt great to be back in the pool.  The sport is addicting.. if you had told me that I would be swimming here in Copenhagen, I would have laughed at you.  Now I'm so glad I joined the team.  It is a really cool experience because I am with other Danish college students.  They were really nice and translated for me.  Freestyle is "crawl," backstroke is "ryg," and kick is "bin."  We hung out and talked afterwards, too.  And the final perk: very very good looking European swimming boys :) 

The Natinoal Museum and Practicum

Haj! This is our first full week of classes and it has been pretty busy. So far, I have a good amount of work but my classes are interesting so I don't mind. On Wednesday, I did not have class or a scheduled field study so I did homework in the morning and then met my friend Kendal in the city to go to the national museum. We figured it was something we needed to go see and it was free, so why not. It turned out to be very intresting. They had a whole exhibit on pre-Danish history, about Vikings and other civilizations that lived here before the country was founded. It is amazing just how far back their history goes.. it puts in perspective just how young the US really is. There was also a really cute exhibit on different children's toys through the years and also a really cool few room just of all different coins. Some of the early coins used were works of art while others were not as detailed. When money was first used, a rod of iron was considered a denomination. The whole thing was very cool. While Kendal and I were walking around, we ended up seeing some other DIS students and wandering around with them. It was a fun day. That night, I met my host family in the city for my first non-Danish meal since I arrived. We went to a delicious Italian restaurant in the middle of the city's most famous theme park, Tivoli. We are going back next week so that I can try the rides. However, the park is also a botanical garden and is absolutely beautiful, especially when everything is highlighted in lights after dark.
Thursday (yesterday) was my first day working at my practicum site. The school that I am working at is nothing short of amazing. The facilities look like they are state of the art and they have a lot of equipment to work with the students in many ways. I was placed in one of the highest functioning classrooms at the school and when I got there, they had a breakfast set up to welcome me. They had practiced introducing themselves in English, too, which was so sweet. The students in the class are around my age, some are even older, which is a really different experience for me. When they found out I was from near New York, they showed me a project they had done about the city and asked about the Statue of Liberty. A handful of them took me around the school to give me a tour with the teacher as a translator and they were so proud of their art projects and photos hanging on the wall and their elective classrooms where they explained what they did in each class. It was kind of like an elementary school/middle school feel but with 18-24 year old students. It was wonderful. I ate lunch in the teacher's lounge (so weird, haha) and got to know some of the other staff. Most are younger than I would expect, not much older than I am. Everyone was very nice. During lunch, one of the students burst through the door with a pink sequinned cap on his head, did a bit of a moonwalk and a slide, then 2 Michael Jackson pelvic thrusts and threw his hat at the teachers before dissappearing back through the door. The teachers all laughed and explained that the death of Michael Jackson hit everyone at the school hard. After lunch I was placed in a music classroom for the elective hours. The music teachers are wonderful. There is a main teacher playing guitar, a pedagog, which is a Danish profession we don't have in the US (the pedagog is more focused on the social development of the students and makes sure that the students are happy and making friends. This is common in the kindergardens and in schools like this) who played the keyboard and another teacher that came in to play the base. There were also probably 6 or 7 aids in the classroom to be with their students. The students came alive with the music - those in wheelchairs started kicking their feet and everyone was singing along. Some students were dancing and everyone had a great time. They sang a lot of Danish folk songs but then in the middle they sang their version of "Puff the Magic Dragon," which was the only song I recognized. They even dedicated a song to me and sang my name in it, but I have no idea what it was about.. they could've been making fun of me for all I know. I wouldn't even mind though, because the students laughed and smiled when they sang my name and it made it totally worth it. During the break after this class, I saw a student standing alone at one of the foosball tables they have in the building. Using some sherades, I asked if he wanted to play. It was really cool that we could have fun even though we really couldn't talk because of his disability and because of the language barrier. The last section of the day was spent in a smaller music class with just the pedagog and I and five students. We just sat around listening to CDs and hanging out. Some of the students rapped along with the contemporary music and others danced. I sang along when they played American music, too. I also learned that Aqua is a Danish band - who knew? They were so surprised when I knew their songs. All in all, it was an amazing day and I can't wait to go back next week! My two advisors are really cool and are very experienced- I will learn a lot from them. It was cool also because they use Boardmaker to make visuals just like we did at my camp this summer and there were other therapy tools that we used, too. There are a lot of similaries in strategies but also a lot of differences that I will definitely learn from. I will hopefully do more physiotherapy and sensory stuff next week, too! I hope all is well back home!