Thursday Thursday Thursday

Hi! Happy "itsalmosttheendoftheweekbutnotreally" day!
Its been a busy week so far, so bare with me as I try to remember what has happened the past two days......ok, I remember.

Tuesday
After I began my usual habit of meandering (or as my cousin Audrey would say: bojangling) I found a tea house called Sing Tehus just a few blocks from campus. So I stopped, thought about my excessive latte abuse for a second, then decided some tea would probably do me some good. I was so right! This place is by far the luckiest find I have had during the past three weeks. You buy your own pot of tea and the worker guy makes it for you. The water has to be the perfect temperature and the tea stuff has to steep for an exact time. Plus its not expensive at all.

This place also has great atmosphere, perfect for a self date, a lady date, or a man date!

Ok moving on. After a few meetings and the rest of my classes, I went home and made another weird vegetable pasta dinner (boiled carrots heated in tomato sauce over tortellini). If you guys thought I was kidding about the recipe advice. I totally wasn't. I need help.

Wednesday
Wednesdays are the wonderful days when DIS students don't have class. Instead, they are reserved for class trips and such. Yesterday I took a trip to the Danish National Museum with my Nordic Mythology class! It's a good thing that Morton is ginormously tall or else we would all have gotten lost in that building. Here are some things we learned:

-The concept of the Stone age, Iron age, and Bronze age were all refined in Denmark's National Museum.
-Amber is a big part of Denmark's ancient civilizations (and it is still very important to Danish culture today). The website below is a really nice jewelry store here in Copenhagen.
http://www.houseofamber.com

Amber jewelry from the iron age.

Slate axes used as weapons (handles sold separately).

Woman's outfit from the bronze age (dancers would also wear skirts like these).

**Scandalous fact: People didn't wear underwear back then...

-The vikings loved weapons....shocker. They were also really big into societal sacrifices of the animal and human variety. There used to be mass human sacrifices during certain seasons or festivals to please the Gods. Many of the dead would then be thrown into ponds, swamps, or bogs, only to be found years later nicely preserved. 

After the museum trip I grabbed a fruit cup (which seem pretty hard to come by here) and headed home. Everything was fine until I got to the apple layer of the fruit cup...I started to eat the apples and kept thinking "man, these are gross apples. Why do they taste so funny?" So I stopped eating them, then realized later that night that they weren't apples....they were definitely pears. haha. 

Visiting Family

As part of the study abroad experience, students have the opportunity to sign up for a visiting Danish family. Throughout the semester you can hang out with your family as much as you want, and you can even go on vacation with them if they like you enough. Last night I visited my visiting family for the first time! A girl named Abigail from Boston is sharing them with me, so we picked up some stuff for them on the way at Torvehallerne (a giant market in the heart of Copenhagen). Legend has it that Coffee Collective in Torvehallerne sells the best coffee in Copenhagen: 

Coffee Collective

It was pretty good! However, i'm not sold yet. There are still a few cafe's I need to test. 

Then we caught the S train to Ishøj (pronounced: EEs-hoy).

Abigail and I were picked up by Linda and her daughter Mira (who is 13). Back at their home we met Morton (Linda's husband) and their son Max (10). Both Linda and Morten knew english extremely well, but the kids were still learning so they didn't talk much. Here they start teaching children english in 4th or 5th grade. Some intensive schools even start teaching english in Kindergarten. 

They were so fun to talk to that we ended up staying through 11pm. Oops. They made us their christmas dinner and dessert (SO NICE!) and gave us some traditional Danish candy (so yes, there was licorice).

Dinner: Pork (cooked according to Danish tradition), gravy, peeled-boiled-white potatoes, more potatoes cooked in brown sugar and butter, and a red cabbage salad with oranges and apples in it. 

http://www.etsy.com/listing/103974406/pork-roast-danish-christmas-dinner-112

(^this link is almost exactly what we had, except in real food form. I just noticed that the link is for a miniature food set hahahahaha)

Dessert: A rice pudding with chopped almonds. There is one whole almond put into the mix, and whoever finds it gets a present (so kind of like the pickle at Christmas! Except we don't eat Christmas trees.... The desert is usually topped with a cherry syrup type deal, however we put some fruity grape sauce stuff on ours which was still really good).

http://adventurefoodie.blogspot.dk/2011/12/risalamande-danish-rice-pudding.html

(^picture)

The Adamsen's have a dog named Lappi (SO CUTE) and a cat named Murphy.

The kids didn't really talk because they don't know english very well...so that was kind of awkward. BUT my solution is that ill just learn danish in a week. Easy Peasy.

They were so wonderful, and I think we really lucked out with having them as our visiting family. Hopefully there is a lot of Danish exploring to come!

For my Milwaukee friends: Linda also lived in Texas for a year during high school....her favorite country singer is Reba McEntire.

Have a good day!

Monday Monday Monday

Happy Monday!
Ok, this will just be a catch up post.
Here are the waffle pancake snacks I told you about (they're the ones on a stick down there).

On Monday/Thursdays I have a lovely 5 hour break between my 8:30 am and my two other classes that end at 5:45. So usually I mosey around and find a cafe or go shopping. Today was a shopping day, and I made a wonderful discovery. I found a 6 floor high-end shopping mall called Illum. YES. Oh and it also has a super-sephora in the first floor. !!!!!!!!!!!!! After I stopped drooling all over the place I started walking around and found that not only is there Burberry, there is a Paul Smith, and a etc etc etc.

Soooo pretty. Anyway. I'm not allowing myself to go back in there. Ever. Because my money would be all gone. Ok, maybe i'll go back once or twice.

After that a friend showed me a famous dessert shop called La Glace. This place is super fancy shmancy. So, naturally, i'm gonna take my parents when they come visit! (They are so fancy they will fit right in). http://laglace.dk/en/

I only bought a macaroon today, but I hear that their hot chocolate is amazing.

Chocolate Licorice Macaroon with Raspberry filling

(It sounds weird but was actually tasty.)

(this place is so fancy that somebody got a talking to from a worker for putting her cup down on the table and not the saucer..."you mustn't put your cup on the table. This isn't a cafeteria!")

Dinner: I attempted to make a stir fry out of soy sauce, bell peppers, tomatoes, carrots, and raw potatoes. I learned rather quickly that raw potatoes don't cook as fast a vegetables. It was still good though! I put that on top of some spaghetti and viola, dinner! I have a feeling ill be eating weird vegetable dinners for awhile here before I get the hang of things....if anybody has any good stove top/microwave dinner recipes for me I would be ever so grateful.

That's all for now! love you all!

bb

Freakin' Weekend

Hello everyone! I am trying to keep my promise to take more pictures and I think I am starting to get the hang of it. Here is what happened last night:
step one. find camera
step two. charge battery
step three. forget camera and battery
step four. discover lack of camera
step five. miss the perfect photo opportunity when 3 drunk girls try to dance on a tiny table and end up all falling off within 2 minutes of each other. (I think the dub step in the background made this funnier...but I can't be sure).
step six. steal someone else's camera.
Just kidding, but I wanted to so badly!

I will make up for the lack of bar pictures with a description of Danish drunkards! Yaaaaay!

Now, let me tell you. I know many Europeans are notorious for being crazy partiers, but the Danes take the cake. They go out late, drink, socialize, dance, and come back no earlier than 6am. Most importantly they are all extremely comfortable in their own skin. They don't care what other people think. If a danish person wants to do a funky robot chicken dance, they're totally gonna do it. And they'll do it in the middle of a Rastafarian dance club.

The best way to get to know a Danish person is to go to a bar.
In the past two weeks I have seen:
1. A girl pee in the middle of the street. No pants. No cares. Just peeing.
2. Multiple failed attempts at table dancing (as mentioned above)
3. A 16 year old successfully puke into a bag while on a moving bus. WITHOUT GETTING IT ON ANYONE. < a small miracle
4. One night, a random girl grabbed my face and sang Justin Bieber to me. Which was very flattering, but also a tad disturbing.

Those are the craziest things I have now that are blog appropriate. But if thats all i've seen in two weekends, you know there is definitely more to come.

It snowed yesterday!
here is a picture one of our friends took Saturday night (I'm on the right and my friend Jonathan is on the left).

On a completely unrelated note, I met some icelanders! They were really fun and I got to try fermented shark. YUM! Just kidding but it was interesting. Not all icelandic folk like it but some absolutely love it. Icelandic candy is also unexpectedly excellent. If you can, you all should look it up and ship some to yourselves! I promise its worth it.

Today a lot of people went ice skating at a local rink. AND I TOOK MY CAMERA!

The best part of today was watching the kids because they were just so ridiculous and awesome! You could tell that most of them were still learning to skate; and I probably saw about 50 face plants, 20 full on wipe-outs, and 4 kids get nailed in the head with snowballs. And they would all pop right back up! Run into the side railing? Pop back up. Face plant and knock three other kids over? Pop back up. I think some of them were trying to fall. All in all, it was really fun to see what the people are like here in a family setting (aka really great - tons of family bonding - so cute).

I think he's just resting....

Tonight we had another family potluck for our kollegium, we might have to start organizing these because 75% of everyone brought some form of potatoes (including Kira and I) haha.

I hope you all had an awesome weekend!!! I'm sending love to all of you.
Now I'm off to Skype my wonderful boyfriend who asked me out two years ago today :)
Live long and prosper! Miss you all!
Becca boo

Hey everyone! It's been awhile! Sorry for the delay, I took a little time off to settle in to classes and everything....not to mention I kept forgetting to take my camera places with me. SO I am making it my goal next week to fix that problem. Ok cool. Anyway, this past week has been great. Classes are officially going and I am taking:
European Memory and Identity - France (We are studying everything France......history, culture, the people's identity, famous frenchies, etc. I wonder if my teacher will tell us why the French hate americans...jk jk My teachers name is Ditte (pronounced Dit-uh) and here we all call our teachers by their first names! Crazy danish. In March we take a week long trip to France and our teacher Ditte and her assistant Karen get to come too! I think we are going to Paris and northern France so that should be really great.)
International Reporting - Our teacher (whose name escapes me) is really awesome! Last class he brought in traditional Danish groceries and we had to guess what they were. My group was lucky and got the Cod Roe (which is basically Cod caviar) YUM. It looked like spam. Danish people really like fish I guess because 5/5 of the items he brought were fishy......(one was half decomposed herring.....) It should be a pretty good class I think!
Religion and Politics - This class is exactly what the name implies. Our teacher is named Bo (but there is no way any non-dane can pronounce it correctly). Bo is a super cool calm collected hipster who reminds me of a small Stanley Tucci. (Pretty awesome right?!)
20th Century European History - Apparently history isn't important in America, because none of the people taking this class know what is going on. I mean, it's history right? So it should be pretty straight forward. War here, war there, maybe a revolution. However, it isn't, because our teacher thinks of things differently (dang it I can't remember his name either.....I think I have a problem). It is a good different, when I can explain it fully I will let you all know! I really like his teaching style and I think we will learn a lot from him in the coming months. He is a teacher at the University of Copenhagen and likes to say "hmm?" a lot.
Nordic Mythology - MY TEACHER'S NAME IS MORTON AND HE IS SO GREAT! But seriously...the first day of class he gave us a lecture on scandinavian humor (aka very dry humor). Apparently Californians don't get it hahahaha. Morton also is a teacher at the University of Copenhagen. We have already read about Thor! Also, he said we get to watch The Lord of The Rings. Best. Class. Ever.

So those were all my classes!

This whole week has been just getting into the routine of living here, which has been really nice. I'm starting to feel more like a resident and less like a visitor every day.

Things I learned this week:
1) Danish men wear their wedding rings on their right hands
2) I found soy sauce! (that's not something I learned, just something exciting).
3) Cling wrap and Ziplock bags do not exist here. Please excuse me while I go cry.
4) The Danish view of Americans: Semi-superficial
American: "hello, how are you?"
Dane: "what? You don't know me, why do you care how I am?"
^direct quote from a teacher
5) Danes don't like small talk.
6) I really don't think road rage exists here....at least the audible kind.
7) Dating doesn't exist either. Danes simply "hang out" to get to know one another better....and I don't really know anything else about the subject.
8) Danish people love emoticons. :) ;) :o

YESTERDAY
I went to a Danish cooking class!!! We had rosemary/oregano chicken that had olive oil on it, homemade bread, this weird rhubarb stuff that looked exactly like salsa (I totally thought it was weird salsa until someone told me it was rhubarb), small yellow potatoes, and cucumbers in vinegar! Dessert was Lemon moon cake with marshmallow creme frosting. Everything was sooooooo delicious and we all got to help make the food. I even got to help make the cake! Except what the other people in the cooking class don't know is that the head chef had us mix the batter actually with our hands. So I thought,  "well, when in Denmark." So essentially I paid to learn how to cook food, eat tons of food, and play in food.

TODAY
After waking up, I went on a bike ride with a few other people. In the end there were just two of us because it was too cold (wimps pshhh just kidding she had a good reason!). And we biked around the west and central areas of Copenhagen! It was a really grey day out there but definitely still worth it. We visited the Business School of Copenhagen and somehow snuck into the Royal Academy of Music near the city center. It was an insanely old building with floors of music rooms full of pianos. The main concert hall is the best part, simply because everything is covered in polished wood. The room was designed around the time the radio took off, and was built to acoustically enhance any sound within its walls. http://dk01.jsmediatools.com/15307749613/mailview/pagedata/19781_3.swf

So here it is...at long last.....a picture of me...in Copenhagen. So if you wonder what I am doing over here, just use this photo as a reference; because odds are, this is probably what I am doing.

Food.

Hello everyone! Since my last post many things have happened, therefore I will put them in list form for you:
1). I got a bike! There have been no casualties yet seeing as I rode five blocks, then stopped because I couldn't move my hands.
2). All of the DIS students in my building came to a potluck-type-thing in our common room on Sunday night. I have never before seen so many guys who can cook.....ever.

Do you see those delicious store bought cookies over there in the upper right corner? Those are from me!

This is (almost) everyone from DIS in our kollegium.

3). I WENT SHOPPING. Copenhagen has insane sales during January, so during a break in the school day I shopped around. It doesn't hurt that DIS's campus is conveniently located it one of the best shopping areas in the city. Curse you shopping gods! Now i'm going to be broke....but very fashionable.

Purchase of the day: Green Pants. They. Are. So. Beautiful. and for $20 (ZARA)

4). Tried a pancake on a stick (it's totally a waffle though....you just can't put pancakes on a stick and get away with it). I then proceeded to walk down the street with my face covered in chocolate and sprinkles. mmmm.

(I will get you a picture soon because you need to see what these things look like).

5). If you weren't hungry enough after that, here is a pastry shop!

6). I made dinner on my own tonight! (Mom this is for you). I boiled yellow potatoes and put butter on them (mom style), and made a stir fry out of broccoli and cherry tomatoes with olive oil. 

7). Danish fact: even though Shawarma is not Danish, Copenhagen is known for having really good Shawarma joints all over town. For those of you who haven't seen The Avengers, Shawarma is a delicious snack from the Middle East that usually consists of grilled lamb, chicken, turkey, and or beef. The meat comes wrapped in pita bread with shredded vegetables etc. One very popular Shawarma place here is called: Kabobistan (makes me laugh every time).

Ok enough food! Sorry about that, I think i'm going to go eat a second dinner now. Love you all!

Look! I just discovered how to use a post title!

Hello! It'll be a short post today simply because it is Saturday and I accidentally took a 2 hour nap...oops. Last night it was one of the Kollegium girls' 21st birthday! So like the strapping young Americans we are, we tried to help her make it through 21 shots. I can't exactly remember how far she got.....it all goes fuzzy. Just kidding! She is ok and well today so that's all that matters.

Denmark also gets the Biggest Bouncers Award! Seriously, these guys were huge, and probably direct descendants of the Vikings themselves. Jeez they were ginormous.

Today most of the DIS students went to sign up for their residence permits. Therefore nobody is illegal now. Woooo! (They took all of our finger prints too, so now we really can't do anything illegal.)

I discovered our room had a balcony..........surprise!

Aunt Libby: I just ate the last one of your Hershey's Hugs! They have definitely helped these past six days :)

I FINALLY HAVE PICTURES!!!

Good morning/afternoon! Today I finally took my camera with me out into the world, resulting in the decision that I would take you through Copenhagen (or København as the Danes say) on my ride home from classes this afternoon.

We'll start in DIS's main building!

This is the back student lounge in Vestergade 7 (where the main office is located). If you can see the windows all the way back there you will be able to see the street as well. DIS's campus in completely integrated into the city and consists of 7 main buildings. These buildings include classrooms, offices, a library, computer rooms, AD studios (whatever those are), and even a cinema. I have also decided that the architects of Copenhagen engineered these buildings with the sole purpose to confuse and trap innocent people. (Ill get you a picture of their stairs later, just wait, if I don't see someone fall down those before the end of the semester I owe you all 100 dkk)

Next as we leave for the bus we will pass a square near campus (although it's more of a rectangle really).

Bikes on bikes on bikes. Have I mentioned Danish people love bikes? Because they do.

Here we have the STUDENTERHUSET! (pronounce exactly as you think it should be pronounced. Isn't it fun!?) This is my Denmark replacement for Starbucks. *crying* The Studenterhuset is also the student meeting place for the University of Copenhagen.

 Many of the streets near DIS (like this one) are reserved only for pedestrians and bikers. Here, everyone can walk freely about and meander all around without any motor vehicles to bother them.

 This is a bigger square a few more blocks away from DIS. Here you will see a lot more people and shoppers because it is just outside Nørreport Station (part of the S train line). I can also catch a bus home from near here. yay!

Home Street Home. My kollegium is located accross the street where that creepy hole is!

I hope you all are having a wonderful day!

P.S. ANNA PERIS I FOUND A ZARA

Here we go...

Hello my fellow americans! Hope you are all doing well. This post will be a two-fer i guess (because I missed a day! HA HA get it?) Ali and Anna, do you like my snowda joke? (Because it was for you!)

Yesterday morning I had a bit of a dark period, I was sitting in a morning orientation meeting when I realized that I was not happy, actually I was kinda pissed. After that realization my mood went down hill pretty quickly. The reason for this is that I miss you all. Terribly. LIKE A TON. I don't care how much I say it on facebook or wherever, it does not do justice to how much I miss all you wonderful people back home. Small things here remind me of everybody (for example I saw a "La Perla" restaurant today! <for all my milwackers). So I'm gonna continue on, one day at a time, breath by breath; and hopefully it'll get easier (although I promise I won't miss you any less.

Anyway! Sorry, back to business. I got out of that funk a little later by drinking coffee,  naturally. WOO DRUGS. (Just kidding grandma.) Yesterday was day 2 of orientation! We learned lots about danes, healthcare, visas, etc. I picked up my books (my nordic mythology class had 9. HAIL ODIN), then went to lunch.

OK heres a little lesson on Danish Kroner (skip if you hate money)
-100 Kroner is about 20 bucks back in the states. 
-the cheapest deli sandwiches for lunch are usually 50 Kroner. SUPER EXPENSIVE
-Danishes, however, are 10 Kroner usually. 
-there are 5 coins. I think....a 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20 k coins. Some even have holes in them! ooh!

After I had gotten books and such, we toured around some other parts of Copenhagen. Let me tell you, Copenhagen has got itself a top-notch public transportation system. There are buses, trains, taxis, etc, not to mention a third of the city population rides their bikes to work/school. Also, you don't even have to scan a card or anything to get on the subway trains, you can just walk in! The officials of Copenhagen are just that trusting. (They do occasionally send officials down to check some passes, but I have yet to see one.) Also, if you get lost any Dane will be more than willing to help you figure out where you need to be. 

P.S. Danish grocery stores are teeny tiny. I bet you could give any danish person a heart attack by simply taking them into a Costco. 

I met a guy today who chewed gum like this: 

We went to a bar as a group last night too! I had a shot of something that tasted like straight up mouth wash....europeans are weird

Today was our last day of orientation! yaaaaay! The administrators split us into groups and they sent us around the city to different spots on a scavenger hunt like thing. It sounds childish I know, but it was really interesting! plus we got to see some pretty great things!
here is what we learned:
-Denmark has a Queen, but no King. She gets paid about 55 million kroner a year. which is about 10 mil in US dollars
-The guards at the Queens palace (which actually consists of 4 small palaces) wear these really awesome fluffy hats. Plus they are allowed to talk, unlike those dum briish gaads who cayn't talk to nobody.
-Copenhagen is a center for Architectural design. However, the Danes also rarely destroy buildings, instead they have the mind set of: "what else can we do with this?" 
-They call danishes wienerbrød and get very confused when americans call the treat a "danish" because the pastry originated in Vienna (hence the name vienna bread in english).

I'll put up actual pictures soon!
Love, bb

Hi again! Day two is officially almost over! This morning we were all supposed to meet our apartment group to go to orientation at 8am, however my roommate and I decided to accidentally sleep in until 8am. Don't worry, we made it! Everyone started off the day with having the "DIS strings" play us some songs: one of which is a famous song called the Champagne Gallup which is the "theme song of Tivoli Gardens." (The famous gardens that inspired Walt Disney to create Disney World). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgdiDAS-JF0
^here is a link! that popping cannon shot sound was my personal favorite.

After I made it to orientation (on time) the day continued with more orientation-like-things. AND I HAVENT GOTTEN LOST YET! I also found a coffee shop (hallelujah) that had authentic Danish danishes. There were 3 options: cream, jelly, or chocolate. They barista man said cream was the best so cream it was. It was really good too!! I don't have a picture of it today but ill get another one sometime if anyone wants to see them.

Later I found the Danish version of Target, called Fotex. Ignorant noobie moment #1 happened here when I didn't know how to get a shopping cart (somebody eventually took pity on me and helped me after watching me tug at the cart for a few minutes). Apparently, you have to put a 20 kk coin in part of the cart to unlatch it from the line. Then when you leave, return the cart to the cart area and when you plug it in you get your coin back! So magical! They have this in France too I think...maybe we should get them in America.....nah better not...too lazy.

I forget what else happened.....

For dinner (first dinner on our own and with danish food) my roommate (Kira) and I made yellow potatoes, jasmin rice, and had the danish version of cheddar cheese << it does NOT taste like american chedder at all. At. All.

Also, today I got an itty bitty cell phone! Sadly in this selfie I am not eating a cookie

Miss you all! 

The kitchenette area plus my desk (pardon the mess).

 This is my bed! (door is to the right)

 Rest of the room.

 Bathroom: notice there is just a shower curtain...and the floor.

Me eating a danish cookie. HELLO!!!

Hello world! And everyone that I have sent this link to. I hope you are all doing well. Today was officially my first day in Copenhagen, Denmark. And I've gotta say....when I stepped through the security scanner at O'hare today (or yesterday) I realized that I do not have one single clue as to what I am doing. I don't know how to act, what to say, where to go, and most importantly I don't know what to do with my hands. (apparently some innocent hand gestures are very offensive in other cultures, I kid you not). For example: in Denmark it is apparently rude to put ones hands in ones pockets whilst talking to another person. Anyway, mostly I just wished I could take my parents with me haha. I know, I know I am 21 years old, but they are very smart people! And they pay for everything! (just kidding mom) As the day wore on my helpless feeling slowly decreased, and I eventually realized that it was ok that I didn't know everything, because I would learn. Here are a few of the things I have learned thus far on my trip:
1. the danes don't believe in warm water or having a separate area for the shower and the sink/loo
2. You only need coffee cups and wine glasses to drink out of in Denmark! (but seriously)
3. "Cheers" in danish is  skål (and it is pronounced skuull)
4. Everyone I've meet so far is perfectly wonderful and lovely
5. Here is a new Sunday night drink if anyone is willing to try it: whisky, coffee, brown sugar. One of the bartenders at the local tavern recommends it. (also you may put whipped cream on top and you must drink it out of a straw)

My roommates name is Kira, she is very nice, has been a vegetarian since birth, and likes horror films.

The jet lag is getting to me but I'm holding strong! Plus, tomorrow is the first day of orientation! Oh, also danish grocery stores are great fun! they have a whole section of different Haribo gummies (you know like the gummy bears) and really cheap danishes. 

Here are some pictures of the apartment too! (ill put up more after we've decorated some.)
Love, Rebecca/Reba/Becca