Last post

I'm pretty sure this blog currently has zero readers, but I thought it would be nice to do a final post. I've been back in the US for 4 months now. It's been great to see my family and friends and I love being back at Northwestern. Even so, I still miss Copenhagen every day. I've exchanged a few e-mails from my host family since I've been back, they have two new grandchildren who I hope to meet someday.

I feel really lucky to have had the chance to experience a new culture. I also like knowing that I can pack up two suitcases and move somewhere unfamiliar and end up being ok.

Thanks to the people who kept up with this blog over those 4 months in Copenhagen! I'm happy I could share my experiences with you.

Hej Hej!

Also, if for whatever reason you read this post, can you comment? Mostly to satisfy my own curiosity.

Chocolate

I bought my family a special box of Danish chocolates. I bought them at Copenhagen's airport, and they were kind of a pain to take home because I had to have them in my carry-on bag and resist eating them during my 7 hour stay in the Seattle airport.

When I took them out yesterday to give to my parents, my dad starting laughing. Then he went to our pantry and took out a GIANT box of the SAME chocolates. "I bought them out Costco!"

oh, costco

Home again

I'm back in Oregon, after what was possibly my worst travel experience ever.

Abbreviated version:
-My flight to Seattle from Copenhagen was delayed so I spent about 5 1/2 hours in the Copenhagen airport. Although the airport there is really nice, so this wasn't so bad.
-After the 10 hour flight and the 1 hour getting through customs, I had missed my flight to Portland. I then spent the next 7 hours (6 pm-1 am) in the Seattle airport waiting for a new flight to Eugene that kept on getting delayed. To my body, this was from 3 am- 10 am, when I'm normally sleeping.
-I made it home at about 3:30 am.

So, that was not a fun day at all. It feels good to be home, but I'll admit that I was not ready at all to leave Copenhagen.

Last final

I had my last final today from 3-5 pm. My finals felt like more of annoyance than the all consuming thing they usually are. On Wednesday I went ice skating and had dinner at a thai restaurant down in Nyhavn (the harbor and the picture of Copenhagen that is on a lot of postcards). On Thursday after my Cancer final I went to Rosenborg Castle which was pretty cool. I barely studied all week, it was really nice.

I'll miss that aspect of my classes here. I like just being able to show up for class and know enough to do fine on the exams. I decided very early on that school was not going to be my emphasis here and I've stuck by that. My classes are for the most part interesting, and I've learned a lot, but I'll admit that I barely did outside reading or work. Sure, I studied the morning of exams and a bit the night before but that was it. It does not make sense to travel to Copenhagen and spend my time studying. And I have no regrets, I've really enjoyed myself here and a big part of that was not being worried about school.

Walking back from my final I couldn't help but think "this is the last time I'll be at my school here. This is the last time I'll walk on this road. This is the last time I'll wait for the 300S bus to come at Glostrup station..." I've been here for 4 months and I have a whole routine established. It's strange to think that I'll never go through those motions again. Of course I'll come to Copenhagen again. Hopefully many more times. But it will never be in the same way, not living with my host family, not having my group of friend, not having a purpose of going to school and living my life. When I come back I'll just be a visitor. And I'm not ok with that, this is my has become my home.

But what can you do? Time moves on. Tomorrow I'm going to Paris.

Finals week schedule

Tuesday: history essay due, Danish oral final exam, History final quiz
Wednesday: no class or finals! Hopefully smorrebrød at Ida Davidsen's and ice skating. And maybe some studying.
Thursday: Cancer Final
Friday: Human Health and Disease final
Saturday: Political Rhetoric final


Then I'm going to Paris from the 14-17 (Karen and I just booked this, pretty last minute but exciting), then home (Oregon) on the 18.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-danish7-2008dec07,0,3956278.story



This story is great. Read it!

It gets dark here at around 4 pm. Meaning that at 4 pm, it is just as dark as midnight. It is strange to live in darkness, but it makes it easier to go out at night. My second half of my time here I have been more into dancing at clubs. It's an interesting life, you leave late and get back really early (like 5 am). I've never experienced anything like a european club. Techno music, everyone doing their own thing. In Denmark your average club goer isn't out looking for a boy (or girl) but is just out to dance and have fun. I love it. I only go with a group of friends, but it is pretty common to have people there by themselves, not looking to socialize with anyone but just to dance.

Last night I saw the Crazy Christmas Cabaret at Tivoli. I was happy to finally go to Tivoli. The Christmas decorations were amazing. Maria and I decided to go on the ride that swings you around from really high up. (you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YKd-6fkmhg) For pictures of Tivoli click on this: http://images.google.com/images?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=tivoli%20
The show was hilarious, it was in English performed by a British acting group. It was interesting, some of the jokes we (the small group of Americans) did not understand, and other jokes we were the only ones who were laughing.

Today I'm going to a Christmas lunch and then maybe starting to study for my finals that start on Tuesday

Also: on the Danish television they are showing the CEO of a Danish company that ran off with 100 million kroner of the company's money. He turned himself in in California, of all places.

Happy (almost) New Year!

The theme of tonight's party was so cute, I have to share it.

It was a New Year's party, celebrating the almost last hour of the almost last day of the almost last month of 2008. Cute, right? (so we counted down when the clock almost hit 11). Lots of dancing, lots of fun.

My almost new year resolution? Keep my room clean. Boring but oh so necessary. My room is a disaster.

My host dad told me that tonight there would be "really a lot of trouble". I asked him why and he said because it's almost Christmas, which means that the Danes start doing Christmas lunches. Which means that people get really drunk (or at least drunker than Danes normally get...which already is very drunk), and then cause trouble. ha.

I have a Christmas lunch of my own tomorrow. The doctor that teaches Human Health and Disease invited us all over to eat lunch and make Christmas decorations. I'm excited.

Cultural experience of the day:

Eating raw salted herring on rugbrød and drinking snaps (akvavit) for lunch.

Happy Thanksgiving

Yesterday was my first Thanksgiving out of the United States. It was pretty great. I woke up early in the morning to make stuffing. Making it was kind of an ordeal, between taking a bus to the grocery store and searching desperately for chicken stock (it doesn't exist here actually, I had to use a bouillon cube thingy). But it turned out great! I was impressed with myself.

For the actual dinner I went to DIK Kollegium, where some friends were hosting a pot luck thankgiving. My stuffing was a hit, and there was tons of delicious food. There were about 30 of us there, and it was a good mix of Danes, Americans and others (someone from Sweden, one from Finland, two from Poland...) At one point we had everyone raise their hand who was attending their first Thanksgiving, and about half did.

It wasn't anything like my usual Thanksgiving, but it was a good one. Of the many many things I'm thankful for, the newest one is Denmark. I'm so happy to be here and I'm sad that I only have a couple of weeks left!

Photos from Budapest

(some of these pictures are my friend Karen's... she graciously agreed to let me post them!)

Turkey photos

Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been very busy. Here are some photos from my trip to Turkey. Enjoy!

Back from the travel break!

I'm back in Copenhagen. It feels good to be sitting here in my bed. These past 3 weeks have been great, a perfect way to end my 20th year (turning 21 tomorrow!) It's weird to think that this time last year I wasn't even planning on studying abroad. I'm excited to see what my 21st year will bring...

Expect Turkey updates in the next couple of days, especially because one of my assignments for my Turkey at the Crossroads course is to write three blog entries. Also, Copenhagen is cold. I miss this morning when I wore a swimsuit and hung out on a boat off the coast in the Aegean Sea.

Budapest, Venice, Florence

I'm hanging around at my host family's, waiting to leave for the airport to head to Turkey (unfortunately my flight doesn't leave until 1:30 am). More travel break updates:

End of Berlin: The DIS part of the trip ended in Berlin after a visit to a concentration camp, but instead of going back to Denmark, my friend Karen (from the program) and I stayed in Berlin for an extra night. DIS was supposed to drop us off at the train station, but instead dumped us off at an abandoned train station. In the middle of nowhere. I think (hope) that was a mistake. Luckily we found a police officer who spoke English and had her call a cab for us. Oh adventures in public transportation...

I was really happy that we stayed in Berlin an extra night as there was still so much to do and see. (Topography of terror exhibit, National Gallery art museum, etc.)

Budapest, Hungary: Jillian (my friend from NU) is studying math in Budapest for the semester and offered to let Karen and I stay in her lovely apartment. It was great to see Jillian and Budapest was a beautiful city to spend a couple of days in. While Jillian went to her classes during the day, Karen and I explored the city. We climbed St. Peter's Basilica, went to castle hill, visited a museum of medical history, ate honey nut cookies and pastries, and relaxed in thermal baths. I was expecting it to look and feel similarly to Poznan, mostly because of their shared communist history, but was pleasantly surprised that they were very different.

There are about 180 forints in one dollar, meaning that I spent most of my time in Budapest having no idea how much I was spending. If a price was in the thousands, I could come up with a rough estimate, give or take several dollars. We had some really nice dinners out, I ate pumpkin pasta with goat cheese and chicken paprikash.

We went out dancing one night and I was suprised to bump into someone from DIS that I know from one of my classes. The world is small. Also, the guys in the club would sketchily dance by themselves really close to girls, hoping the girls would turn around and start dancing with them.

Venice, Italy: Went here from Budapest with Karen, Jillian, and Jillian's friend Amelia. Lots of canals, very pretty. We walked everywhere and were hopelessly lost, which was the whole point. It also had a lot of tourists, for obvious reasons. We opted out of the $80 an hour Gondola ride, but rode the water bus down the Grand Canal at night to enjoy the light reflecting off the water.

I encountered my first ever "cover charge" that restaurants had added to their menu, just to sit down. For one of our dinners, we tried to not order any drinks and our waitress went "no. that is against the rules. The rules are you must order drinks." This made me miss eating in the US where the waiters are mostly kind, tap water is free, and no one makes you order anything. Luckily my gnocchi al ragu was delicious, so I didn't mind the forced water consumption so much.

Florence, Italy: Amelia, Jillian and I took the train here from Venice. Our hotel was really great, so that was a good surprise. We spent our days wandering the city. We climbed all 438 steps of the Duomo, saw the famous art work at the Uffizi, and ate far too much (or not enough?) gelato. I also had roasted chestnuts for the first time and they were amazing! Our dinners here were also really great. One night I managed to meet up with my friend Katie from DIS, and we all went to a bar with a live cover band. We also experienced the stereotypical Italian men who followed us around wanting to know our names and where we were from.

My second week of travelling was successful. I'm amazed that nothing went wrong. This was my first time making travel plans all on my own and it was a lot of work. We had to book the plane tickets, find the hotels and make reservations, figure out how to get from the airport to the hotels, etc. I used the internet for all my directions and reservations and everything ended up working out.

This week was a good break from the structure of the first travel break. I liked getting to make my own plans and being free to do exactly what I wanted to. However, I am looking forward to being part of a tour group for Turkey again. It is nice to not have to worry about transportation, getting lost, etc.

I also feel lucky that I had such great people to travel with. Karen, Jillian, and Amelia were all really fun be with and I think everyone got along well.

on to Turkey (Istanbul, Izmir, Bodrum)...

Back in Copenhagen... for 24 more hours

After 2 weeks of travelling, I am back in Copenhagen! I'm here until tomorrow night, when I leave to spend a week in Turkey. Here's a brief recap of the beginning of my trip, when I was travelling with my Human Health and Disease class through DIS (my study abroad program)

Poznan, Poland: It took about 12 hours to get here by bus, but the ride wasn't bad at all because I sat in the back with my friends and ended up having a good time. Poznan itself was... sad. Really really sad. There were all these buildings that looked like at one point they had been glamorous, but instead they were abandoned or in desperate need of repair. The city was gloomy and the people walking around matched their surroundings a little too well. You could tell that the city had not yet recovered from communism. Public transportation involved really old trams that everyone jammed themselves into, making sure to validate tickets every 15 minutes or risk getting an on the spot fine (or jail, if you don't have enough money on you).

Admittedly, my views about Poznan were tainted by what happened my first day there. I woke up feeling a little bit off, and ended up dramatically running out of our pathology lecture to go throw up in the bathroom. I spent the rest of the day either throwing up or sleeping, and alternating between being feeling feverish or freezing cold. Not good. Any time I tried to sit up in bed, I had to lie back down. I've never experienced anything like it before and I hope to never again. Luckily I woke up the next day feeling mostly better. I thought it was from the water (I found out too late that in Poznan the tap water is only fit for consumption after boiling), but now that I'm back in Copenhagen I found out that my host mom had the same thing happen to her on the same day so I'm guessing I actually got whatever that was in Copenhagen.

In Poznan we spent a morning shadowing a pediatrician around a hospital. This was eye opening. And sad. The hospital was very outdated, and one of the first things the pediatrician mentioned was that all of their equipment was really old and the government doesn't give them nearly enough money. We looked at hospitalized babies, like a premature baby that was really small and had jaundice and had an extremely puffy abdomen. Or a baby with fetal alcohol syndrome who was blind and has lived in the hospital for 1.5 years since it was born. I was still feeling kind of weak and dizzy from my day of illness and these children were hard to look at. At one point we were talking with a resident, and she was at the end of her call and so tired she could barely concentrate on talking to us.

Of course Poznan wasn't all bad. When I was feeling a little better I managed to go shopping in the largest mall I have ever seen. The exchange rate with the polish zloty was really good so everything was cheap. A welcome change from Copenhagen. I spent about $16 the whole time I was in Poland. The best was soft gingerbread from a small shop- a whole bag was only about $1. I bought some chocolate covered gingerbread for my host family. I also saw an opera, which was beautiful and I enjoyed it even if the subtitles were in polish.

Berlin, Germany: My new favorite city ever. I could write pages and pages about how much I loved Berlin. So much history! Such a great mosaic of old and new buildings! I saw the wall, checkpoint charlie, the Berliner Dom, went in the parliament building, ate dinner at a blind restaurant, went dancing until very late at night, went on a pub crawl with my entire group, bought perfume and marzipan, and got lost in the largest department store in Europe. That's only the beginning! Such a gorgeous place, I'm determined to go back there.

The bests "academic" part of the trip was our visit to Charité hospital. We went to a cadaver room and were shown dissected cadavers. We put on lab coats and gloves and were allowed to poke around. I held a brain in my hands. I picked up a heart, and lungs, my hands were inside of someone else feeling the small intestine or lifting up the liver. It's hard to wrap my brain around that.

I'll update more later (there's still Budapest, Venice and Florence)

Night before the 3 week break

Last night was Kultur Natten (Culture Night) a big celebration that Copenhagen has once a year. Things were open all over the city that are normally closed to the public. The city was packed with people. My friends and I toured Nytorg prison, climbed 7 flights of stairs in an attempt to find reindeer soup, went inside Christiansborg castle and made pancakes in a campfire outside. So it was a good night.

I've done a lot things in the past couple of weeks. I went to Legoland, went fishing on the Baltic, and toured Carlsberg Brewery. Last week was "midterm week", but like most weeks here I still had a good time and found myself completely free of stress. I like that I can take an exam here everyday for a week, write two papers and have two presentations and not be worried about them.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for 3 weeks. I'm spending a week in Poznan and Berlin with my Human Health and Disease class, then it's on to Budapest, Venice, Florence, brief 1 day back in Copenhagen and then Turkey! I'm ridiculously excited. I'd like to say that I'll blog about it in depth when I return but to be honest I probably won't.

Bye for now...

Bank of America

Bank of America put a hold on my card for suspicious purchases. When I called the operator he goes: "let's see... we have a purchase for 1 am at a 7-11 in...uhhh...kobe..koben..kobinvn...? Where is that? Is that in the US?"

Copenhagen is spelled København in Danish so he must have seen that. I thought it was pretty funny. Also 7-11's are open 24 hours in Denmark and they are everywhere and amazing. Not at all like the 7-11's at home. These ones are fancy (and expensive!!!) and sell baked goods and hot dogs in addition to candy bars and magazines, etc.

I'll update more later, right now I'm busy packing and organizing. Or I should be packing and organizing for my big trip tomorrow, I'm actually watching Danish television. I have no idea what's going on (wrestling and dating show combined is my best guess) but I still think it's pretty hilarious.

Summer house

I am typing this from my host family's "summer house" in northern Zealand. We are watching a movie and in true Danish fashion there are candles lit everywhere. Earlier we went for a walk along the beach and I spent the morning sitting by the fireplace, drinking coffee and eating fresh bread with blue cheese.

I pretty much got no sleep last night and last week was really busy (more on that later), so I'm appreciating a relaxing weekend. Plus dinner: shrimp with lemon over avocado for starters and roasted lamb for the main course. mmmm

General update

My host family returned a week ago from their 3 week long vacation. I'm really happy they are back. While there were some nice things about having an entire house to myself, it's also good to have company. Plus dinner is always delicious. Tonight we ate mussels cooked in broth with vegetables and last night we had pork chops with roasted apples. I really lucked out and got such a nice family. I have no complaints.

My host parents have two children, both in their early thirties. They don't live in the house, but I always like it when they stop by. My favorite is when Alexander (one year old grandchild) is around. I like it when the house is full and everyone is running around.

But I'm actually not home all that often. I leave for school in the morning (takes me about 45 minutes to get there) and spend the day going to classes or exploring Copenhagen with friends. I've been going on trips almost every weekend. The weather is only just starting to get colder, so I'm trying to cram all the outdoor activities I want to do before it gets too cold. I'm saving museums, etc for November.

I'm also in the middle of planning my travel break. I booked tickets for Budapest and Venice, and will most likely go to Paris. I'm leaving for Poland on October 12, which is coming up quickly. I have a bunch of midterms and papers next week, but I'm really only worried about my Danish oral.

Today I had needles stuck in my hand during Human Health and Disease, where we learned how to draw blood. And yesterday for my class about cancer we met at a hospital and went to the radiation department to look at the machines.

I would write more, but I need to get ready to go. Tonight I'm going to my host sister's house to watch the soccer (football) match on tv. Manchester United in Jutland and it's apparently a big deal. I'm in it for the cake my host mom is baking. Tomorrow we don't have class so I'm going to try to go shopping with friends and hopefully visit the Carlsberg Brewery.

Bornholm part 2

Bornholm continued:

At the hostel we were basically handed a bike and a map and told to have a good time. We decided to attempt to visit one of Bornholm's beaches. Bornholm is famous for having the finest sand in the world. It is exported from bornholm and used in hour glasses.

The bike ride down was really nice. We had a view of the ocean the entire time, and we stopped at an outdoor market in a town. There was a choir singing and I ate a fresh mini donut that was fried in front of me.

Bornholm looks small on the map, but it is definitely not. It took us about 6 hours to get to the beach. We dumped our bikes a little ways away from the beach, bought some soft serve ice cream rolled in cocoa powder and sugar and walked down to the beach. The sand was about the same consistency as flour and was really great to walk in and touch. It squeaked when we ran in it.

The idea of biking all the way back was pretty exhausting, and we were hungry at that point, so decided to find food and then head back. Instead of following the coast, we thought we would trek inland, as it looked shorter and we wanted to see something new. Probably not the greatest idea, inland ended up being mostly farms. It's pretty depressing to be biking forever and seeing nothing but farmland. We finally ended up at a small town where over pasta we decided we were not biking the rest of the way back.

This is where it gets interesting: we ask for directions and find out which bus stops we need to use to get back to the hostel on the other side of the island. When the bus pulls up the bus driver looks very grouchy about having to put our 5 bikes on the bus and only speaks a mixture of German and Danish. We pay (a lot! $10 each) and sit on the bus.
(all our bikes+ the worst bus driver ever)

A woman sitting next to us with her two daughters leans over and asks where we are heading and then she talks to the driver for a bit in Danish. She tells us that the bus driver made us pay way too much because he purposefully sold us tickets that were only good for 1 hour, when the next bus doesn't come for 3 hours. Then she tells us that we obviously cannot wait at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere for 3 hours so that we should come back with her to her house.

With some hesitation we finally agree, and that is how I spent 3 hours in a stranger's house in Bornholm, drinking tea and eating pizza. It's a good feeling to meet nice and caring people. (my biking friends Maria, Shawn and Elizabeth with the nice Bornholm family)

We ended up not getting back to the hostel until 9:30 pm, with our bikes left on the other side of the island because the driver would not allow them on the next bus. We spent the rest of the night hanging out at a crepe restaurant/café/bar.

DAY 2:

We decided to travel up the coast instead of down it. My bike got a flat tire along the way, but the hostel delivered a new one. Everything was so pretty! But it was also cold and windy and it rained on and off.

We stopped for lunch at a smokehouse, to eat traditional smoked herring that Bornholm is known for. It was a whole smoked herring (minus the guts, but with the skin and bone and eyes and everything) and it came with two pieces of rye bread (not the American kind but the dark danish one with seeds), onions and a raw egg yolk. It was really delicious!

We made it all the way north of the island to the ruins, the remains of a giant castle. We wandered around and admired the view of the water and the bright green grass growing everywhere.

On the bike back I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it, with my poor tired muscles and the intense wind smacking me in the face combined with the rain. But I made it! We took the overnight ferry back and made it back to Copenhagen the next morning, just in time for classes. Actually other people made it to DIS for their classes- I went home and slept. oops.