Hello! The last few days have been full of things going wrong all over the place but the fact that I'm not ready to board a plane home has made me feel like I'm a lot more situated and comfortable here than I thought! I'm exagerating a little, things could be much worse, but I'm definitely handling myself better than I expected. Between my bike being stolen and the kollegium's internet company going bankrupt meaning we had no internet for a few days, as well as me losing all kinds of important things, times have been a little hectic.

Saturday was a pretty great day. I got a bike! Yay! More about that bike later. I rode it around a lot and then organized my room and went grocery shopping and was such a productive human being! The freedom of being able to ride my bike felt GREAT it was so much fun! Here are some pics:

Now, don't get too attached to this bike. On Sunday, I woke up and went to church with Cyndi, an awesome woman that my dad knows from the Wesley Foundation. She was a student when he was on the board and she lives here now with her husband and they are both Ga Tech grads! Her husband went to grad school here and now has a job here and they are in it for the long haul here! I was really glad I went to church--there were 2 other girls from my program there and one is in a class with me! It was an international church so there were many Americans there.  

Later Sunday we visited Christiania, the free squatter's town that isn't under any legal jurisdiction and they only have three laws: 1. Have fun 2. Don't run (it causes panic) and 3. No Pictures.  I wish i could show you pictures it was nothing like I've ever seen before! We sent to see a free concert but it started pouring and we didn't get to see anything. It's basically just a town full of old hippies but some of the art and creative architecture there was interesting. I'm going back with my Danish class on a guided tour by someone who lives there, so I'm excited to get to know it better in a non-touristy way. 

But then...I come home...and want to show all my new friends my brand new bike....but...dun dun dun....it was not there! My bike got stolen! But I can't complain too much because it was all my fault. I hadn't bought a lock yet. Silly, naive me assumed that in a sea of bikes that were locked with little wheel locks, that anyone trying to steal one wouldn't look hard enough to notice that mine was lacking one. Well, I was wrong. I'm still going through the process of filing police reports and insurance reports and stuff but I'm over it now. But I should be reimbursed for all of it though so I'm not too upset about it.

Yesterday (Monday) was a super long I have class from 11-1 and then again from 3-6. It was really weird walking home...all the shops close at 6 so everything was compleeetly empty! So weird! 

Today I went to Tivoli!  It was beautiful! here are picturess! it was SO COLD though which you can see!  One of my friends was there to see a ballet so thats what all these pictures are of! The first was an Italian one and the second was Thumbilina! 

Just some typical Danish names.....

Mom & Dad--this is a hotel. This is the only option for you to stay when you visit. pretty pleaseee?

This peacock was on the stage and when the show starts the feathers split in the middle!

This was the first Italian balllet

Brrrrrrr how am I this bundled up in AUGUST?

Thumbilina!

I'll post more pictures later I have a bunch from the last few days! miss & love everyone!

Here are some random pics that I've taken over the last few days!

They had an "elephant parade" like they did in Atlanta with the cows so these are pictures of the shop they had where you could buy miniature ones. They took all of the elephants down Thursday though :(

Aboriginal Elephant!

Poster of all the elephants....

Typical super-Danish sidewalk crammed with bikes

Some friends and I walked to the graveyard on Wednesday where Hans Christian Anderson is buried as well as some other notable Danes. They seem to do graveyards differently there. Some parts were rows and rows like our traditional graveyards, but in other parts people seemed to buy a little plot of land and instead of only having a grave marker they turned their plot into little gardens! I think it's such a good idea.!And it was clear that people took care of them regularly, too. 

Here is Hans Christian Anderson....

And me! This was the tree-lined walkway that went through the whole place.  It really seemed like more of a park than a graveyard...not creepy at all! I might come back here to practice riding my bike if I end up getting one today!

Thursday I ventured to Ikea with a girl to get brightly colored things for our rooms!  As y'all saw earlier they were a little bit grey and boring. I figure if I'm going to be here for 4 months I should love the space I'm in and make it as home-like as possible. So we got meatballs and they were delicious! 

I have a feeling there are a lot of these awkward solo shots in my future....

I started classes today and they all seem pretty interesting. I learned the way that Danish ( and apparently most European people?) take tests! Usually their whole grade for a class is based on one final oral exam. The teacher puts a few or a bunch of different questions on a table that the student may or may not have seen before and they are all face-side down. Then for the exam the student picks their own question and then has to answer it. I think that's so cool! The idea behind it is that the teacher shouldn't be able to decide your fate for the class--the student should. Definitely an interesting perspective and that is what my class is going to be like at the University of Copenhagen where I'm taking my philosophy class. 

Yesterday (Friday) was a pretty good day. I just had two more of my classes --Urban History of Copenhagen and Developmental Disorders-- and wandered around in the city with a girl I met. This trip has been a lot of wandering so far and just getting myself lost. I can't wait to be able to do it with a bike! Except it's been raining on and off here since I woke up (which was way too early). Hopefully the rain stops so I can wander some more! 

I miss everyone at home so much and please everyone be safe this weekend with the hurricane! 

Almost Finished Orienting

Well it's finally the last day of orientation. These past few days have been so much like the first few days of freshman year, it's so weird! There are 900 American college students wandering around the same few streets in Copenhagen wearing the token DIS black backpack we were given and the little booklet with the map of the area and our building locations in front of their face. It's a little bit embarrassing. And hilarious. The streets here are a little harder to navigate because they are kind of windy and the names change a lot at the intersections. So you might be trying to get to Bispetorvet 1-3 (yes that is a real address) but that's not always  the name of the road where you are trying to turn quite yet. You might need to look for Alexandersalen which will turn into Bispetorvet in a few km.  Needless to say, I've walked in lots of circles.
The part I do like that is very orientation-esque is that everyone just wants to make friends and talk to everyone. It's still at the point where it doesn't feel weird or awkward to just tag along with some randoms you just met or anything like that, most of the kids in my program are super friendly. I like that everyone is so open...it hasn't gotten cliquey yet and I really hope it doesn't ever!

Monday was probably my favorite day so far. We were divided into teams and sent out on kind of a scavenger hunt, which was really more throwing us into the city with a map and telling us to visit 5 locations that were important to the city. The big ones we stopped at were the Royal Palace, The Royal Playhouse/Opera House, and the Parliament. We learned a lot at all three of the locations and they all have interesting stories about why they are in a certain spot in the city etc. I hope to learn a lot more about that in my History of Copenhagen class as well. The Parliament building was really interesting because it basically stole the location that the former Royal Palace used to occupy before it burned down a long long time ago, basically as a symbol that with the new constitutional monarchy including the parliament was replacing the immense power of the king. The Royal Palace didn't really look much like a typical palace for this reason. Apparently they moved in to these Parisian fancy apartments as a temporary place to live while their palace was being re-built, but instead it became their permanent home. It is still beautiful and there are some awesome gardens near the water.

Tuesday we didn't have as much to do except for an etiquette seminar for an hour talking about social norms in the Danish culture. Apparently Danes are very honest and hard working. They only work on average 37 hours a week but when they are at work they are extremely productive and don't really do the whole social chit chat thing. So they still do a lot of work, but they are actually working for all the hours they are at work, which I think is definitely different than in the US. It seems overall that Danes come off as being cold and anti-social but apparently they just usually don't go out of their way to try to talk to people, and have a pretty established set of friends and family that they highly value. But, if they are approached, they are usually extremely helpful and kind, which we have experienced multiple times when asking for directions.

Today we applied for our Danish residence permits. I, of course, am THAT girl who somehow messed up following the directions that they sent to us at least 5 times before we left, though. I knew a long time ago that I was going to need 2 passport sized photos to apply for the permit, and I thought I had successfully gone to CVS, printed out the awkward self-shot that I had taken against a white wall, and made 2 great passport pictures. I found out this morning that I was wrong. Something must have gone wrong and of course, one of my "pictures" that I failed to inspect before leaving was blank. I only had one picture. Great. Luckily, once I got there the rest of the process was pretty painless. The interesting part was navigating my way to a bus station about 20 min away quickly before the immigration people left, where there are photo booths that take your picture specifically for passports. It was exactly what I needed, but alas, 100dkk (about $20) down the drain for these pictures.

Up next today will be my psychology orientation just for my class, and then hopefully getting some homework done (eww I can't believe I already have assignments for my first day) and getting a good night's rest before my first day of classes tomorrow! I can't believe I'm starting classes again already I feel like just yesterday I was listening to Emig bark about debits and credits and Grover turning her ss into zz's like "azzume." Good times. I have some pictures that I'll put up hopefully later tonight.

First Day!

I can't even contain myself about how awesome I think Copenhagen is. It was totally worth the 9 hour sleepless flight filled with crying babies and arctic air conditioning. I finally made it here and I could not have expected anything better.  It's just so beautiful! All of the buildings are painted different colors and the architecture is so interesting. When I got to the airport I found other people in my program and we breezed through customs (they literally just looked at me and stamped my passport) and found our luggage. Luckily all of my luggage arrived with me. We took a bus sponsored by the program to our kollegium, but we got a little tour of the city because we had to drop of some people at their kollegiums first. The way the dorms work here is that buildings of student housing exist, but they are not designated to one specific university like dorms are in the US. So in my building there are 250 other people, but only 60 are with my program and the other people staying there go to other schools in the area, so I am really excited to meet other Danes and learn about life as a student over here!

Mine is in an awesome location and is basically perfect! I am right at a train and a bus stop that go straight into the city's center. I am also within a 5 minute walk of 3 grocery stores AND an H&M connected to a small shopping mall (sorry mom and dad). My room has a baby kitchen with 2 stove plates, a sink, and a fridge. Whoever lived here before me is an absolute saint and left all kinds of essentials like toilet paper, spices, pots, pans, silverware, plates, and even hangers and an ethernet cord! I am also lucky enough to have a giant window which basically takes up my wall and a mini-porch that I can take about one step onto.  Here are some pictures:

sorry for the room being so messy I'm still in the process of trying to organize it!

After unpacking and getting settled in and having some dinner, I hopped on the bus explored some of the city with some other girls in my building. We passed a lot of cute shops and restaurants with sprawling outdoor seating, as well as many extremely well-dressed Danes. It started to rain so we ducked into a pub and had our first pint of Danish beer and waited for the rain to pass. The place looks beautiful even when it's raining. We were so proud of ourselves for making it back and figuring out the busses on the first day! Hopefully that's a good sign for the rest of the trip, although I will definitely remember to keep an umbrella with me at all times from now on!

Tomorrow will be the first day of orientation so I've got to get some sleep! I can't believe I made it this long without napping. Hopefully that means tomorrow will be easier in terms of jet lag!

Farvel!

It's Today It's Today!

It's finally the day that I leave! After many days of packing struggles and tearful goodbyes, I am actually leaving today. That sounds so weird. So far I've spent my day doing super eventful things like watching the Food Network, making sure all my friends with iPhones have Kik so I can text them, and then running around doing all the things I forgot to do. The one terrible thing I forgot to do, to my mother's despair, was watch the movie Taken, so that I could "see how they do it" just in case anyone feels like kidnapping me. Thanks, Mom.

 My flight is in a few hours so I should probably go finish doing all of those things I forgot to do in the past two weeks, but hopefully I will be good about updating with stories and pictures of my adventures! See ya on the other side of the pond!