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!