Short study tour recap

It's been awhile so I have lots to update on. But I also have a new gossip girl episode to watch. So: mini update!

• Went out for drinks with Karen and her boyfriend's best friend Simon who goes to Copenhagen's business school. He is from Finland and has been in Copenhagen for awhile. The three of us stayed at the café talking for over 3 hours.
  
• Last Thursday was the short study tour. I toured around western Denmark with my Medical Practice and Policy group. We visited ribe, an old well preserved medieval city, went to a viking museum, a castle, an art museum. We ate delicious food and stayed at a folk high school.
• Folk high school's are crazy. It's a Danish thing that some people do for 6 months between the ages of 18-25. It's a school that emphasizes "learning for life" and "how to be a democratic citizen" (whatever that means). They take classes in art, etc and they dont' have exams. They all live at the school and eat all their meals together with the teachers too. It was very interesting, but not something that I would be interested in doing myself. We ate dinner with the students, most of whom were actually not Danish (I talked to people from Lithuania, Hungary, and Germany). We played soccer with them, except modified with paper cones that covered your entire face so you couldn't see anything.
• That night at the folk high school we drank hot chocolate and ate almond cake. Then we all sang songs.
• Medical related portion of the trip involved going to see a General Practitioner and visiting a hospital to listen to a lecture about how the Danish medical system is being restructure. The GP was really interesting to listen to. In Denmark your GP is the "gatekeeper" and you have to see them first for any medical problem. The GP pretty much does everything: they'll give you a cast for broken bones, perform gynecological exams.. anything generalized and they do it. They deal with 99% of people and refer 1% on to specialists. Very different from the US where most people go to a specialist right away. The Danish government foots the bill, and this helps them to keep costs down.
• On Wednesday my Danish class went to a cemetary and general mini walking tour. We were in this clean neighborhood outside of an apartment building when my teacher stops. "This" (pause for emphasis) "This is what the Danish refer to as the slums" Some kids in the group laughed a little bit. The building looked nicer than the one I lived in this summer in Evanston. There was no trash anywhere. So the Danish slums> Ridge and simpson in Evanston.
• This week was the start of midterms. They kind of snapped me out of my "I'm still on vacation" mode. Maybe now I'll actually do work.
  
• So strange that I've almost been here for a month and Northwestern hasn't even started yet.
  

Ok, that wasn't so short. Tomorrow I'm taking an overnight ferry to Bornholm (a Danish island!) to spend the weekend biking and sightseeing.