Also I got a new bike! It has a wicker basket and is red and has butterfly stickers. Not quite my style but I might paint it! I'm so excited! And it is still in my possession! Yay! I'll post pictures later I haven't taken any yet!
Wednesday Sept 1
Relaxing day with no classes! This day is reserved for field trips basically, but I haven't had one yet! I woke up at my usual 7:15am without an alarm, and had absolutely nothing to do! So I cleaned and did laundry etc. Later I met Cyndi for tea & cake at her apartment. It was so cute! Also I learned that cake is a word used here for dessert. So someone could invite you over for tea and cake, but they could be serving brownies, or cookies, or in Cyndi's case, a delicious currant cheese cake! It was so nice to eat home baked goods again! I may or may not have devoured two slices. (Thanks Cyndi!) Then we ventured into the city because I have an assignment in my History of Copenhagen class where I have to visit 15 important spots in the city and answer questions about each place. It's a bit like a scavenger hunt, but graded. Our teacher is amazing though. He went all out and created this huge booklet and each destination has a two-page guide including pictures of what the location looked like in each century and what was built when and why...I love it! Cyndi was especially helpful because of her architecture background and her knowledge of the city already! We went to Rosenborg Castle & Royal Gardens (Kongens Have), The Kings New Square (Kongens Nytorv) and the famous harbor that is the background of this blog. It's called Nyhavn, or New Harbor.Such creative names! Here are some pictures--It was raining at Rosenborg and the gardens so I didn't take many there!
One side of Rosenborg Castle
King's New Square
The Harbor!
Yay!
Thursday Sept 2
Just a regular day of classes and me failing at life. The usual....haha I went to Ikea because my room desperately needed brightening up. All the grey was just way too sad combined with they grey and white sky and the grey bus stop outside. I know that most of y'all probably didn't think it was possible for me to complain about this much grey considering the fact that most of my clothes are grey and navy, but there is a limit and I have definitely reached it. So I thought I would be all independent and smart and just go to Ikea on my own since most of my friends are in classes all day. I decided to take the bus instead of riding my bike because it looked like it was going to rain. I got to Ikea and i was SO excited because I found a new duvet cover and pillows and candles and fake flowers and all kinds of bright, happy things! As I'm waiting in line I reach for my phone to text a friend about how excited I am about my new room. Oh wait. Where is my phone? Better question--where is my PURSE?! I'd realized already that my skill of losing things had risen to a whole new level in Denmark, but this was absolutely crazy. As I searched through Ikea at every single place I'd been (which of course was the whole store) I was basically telling myself that this was a sign that it was time to go home. Inside my bag was my wallet, American phone, Danish phone, keys to my room, my bus pass...basically everything I needed to survive in Denmark. Or to survive in general. Close to tears, I asked an employee if they had a lost and found, and she pointed me in the right direction. As I approached the desk the man behind it sees me and asks, "Sarah Ann Thomas??" THANK GOODNESS. I almost hugged him! They had my bag with every single thing still inside it behind the desk and had already checked the ID to see whos it was so they could recognize me! THANK YOU AWESOME DANISH PEOPLE.
Now comes the weird part (as if the rest of this story is just totally normal..). I asked them where they'd found the bag. The response: outside. Outside?! I didn't even make it inside Ikea with my purse. I have a long cross-body bag that doesn't exactly just fall off. I have absolutely no idea how my bag left my body, outside, of all places where all I had to manage was putting one foot in front of the other to make sure I got inside the door. So apparently I am even worse at losing things than I thought, and I do not know what I would do if it were not for all the wonderful people who have recovered the ridiculous number of things that I have lost.
Oh, and because of my purse debacle, I missed my once-an-hour bus home, so I missed my free dinner with my Danish class. That was cool too. Yay for Thursday!
Friday September 3
Friday I switched out of my Developmental Disorders class into a class I've been wanting to take since I new about DIS. It's called The Enemy Within: Espionage in the Cold War. I'm SO glad I switched! I realized I can take Abnormal Psych & Developmental at school so it's not like I'm going to be missing out on learning anything and I already love my new class! The teacher is great and as soon as I walked into the class and started talking to people, I found out there is a guy who lives in Wayne, a girl who goes to Bryn Mawr and a boy from Fairfield in the class! So many kind of familiar things! It was funny talking to the people around Nova about the necessity of Minella's Diner and other things in the area! Friday afternoon Sammie and I walked around and found an adorable cafe to hang out, eat, and do some work in. If you know me, you know that I like to occasionally eat goat cheese. hehe. LOOK WHAT SAMMIE AND I FOUND. it is a goat cheese toast. Heaven on a piece of bread!
The internet was really unreliable the last few days. No, there wan't a storm, or a power outage anything....the internet service provider went bankrupt! No big deal or anything...it was off and on for a few days and they told us that we had already been surveyed to put new wires in (apparently WiFi isnt happening?) but then we got another email saying that we made some kind of deal and we will have interenet for 14 more days but then we're not really sure what we're going to do. So that's a big part of why I haven't been able to update here for a while!
Friday night we went to bar with one of our RAs. Apparently playing foosball is a big deal here and every single bar has a foosball table or two, so I decided to play! I loveee foosball...brings me back to the senior cellar in high school! Anyways, I totally beat my RA 1 on 1 and he was not happy. YAY for American girls playing foosball and kicking some Danish butt. I was pretty excited.
Saturday September 4
Saturday I did more exploring with some friends from my History of Copenhagen class. It was GORGEOUS outside and I'm dumb and left my Camera SD card in my computer (surprise...) so I didn't get any pictures but it was really fun to bike around with them while also learning a lot about where we are!
Apparently this day was also the founder of Carlsberg beer's 200th birthday. He created a huge foundation that makes donations from beer sales to music and arts and funding things like that in Copenhagen, so everybody loves him! There was a huge free festival at the Carlsberg factory that went on all day. All of us were busy during the day though so we went in the evening for a free concert! It ended up being this really intense angry band with scary pyrotechnics and a giant cow skull on the stage but the place was packed and the Danes were really into it and everyone knew every word! Here are some pictures from that--
Awkward solo shot in front of the factory entrance
Look everyone I have friends! haha
Giant crowd watching the band
Sunday September 5
Went to church again even though Cyndi couldn't make it and I'm glad I did because I got to talk more with the other DIS girls who are there. I had a lot of work to do for Monday so I mostly just did that and hung out a little bit with the girls from my dorm and cleaned and things like that. I love lazy Sundays :)
Monday September 6
Another kind of lazy day. I have class from 10-6pm so it's nice just to come home and relax. I love my positive psych class on Mondays though. It's 3 hours long but my teacher is basically an executive coach who goes into workplaces and helps them increase the positivity in their workplace in order to increase productivity and improve business. It's really cool and I like that he's using psych in a whole new way. We are going on a field study for it in Western Denmark this Thursday-Saturday and have some pretty exciting things planned that I will tell you about when I get home!
Tuesday September 7
Long day. I had to be at a meeting at 830am to fill out my Russian Visa for my trip in November! I'm so excited and it looks like there is a pretty big group going. The leader of my trip couldn't be there because he was casually in Russia already as the Queen of Denmark's translator. No big deal or anything (!!) Then I had one class and then my Cold War class went to the Danish Worker's Museum. This was really interesting. They had a Cold War exhibit and it was crazy to see the way that American culture influenced the Danes. Apparently in the Cold War Denmark and the US were pretty friendly so a lot of Russia's propaganda was to attempt to drive a wedge between Denmark and the US, more than it was to be pro-Russian. A lot of it was centered around who was the "aggressor" and who was the "reactor," so Russia would make pictures of American kids hiding under desks just in case there was a nuclear bomb, and would spin it as "American children practicing for the war they are about to create" instead of "American children trying to save themselves from our bombs" and that kind of thing. Like hiding under a desk is going to help you if there is a nuclear explosion nearby....but that's beside the point. I had lunch with Becca, Lauren's friend from home and had some delicious gelato!
Then I joined Sammie & Lindsay back at the dorm and we went exploring for the Little Mermaid statue! But we didn't quite make it there. Tuesday was the Norway vs. Denmark qualifying match for the 2012 Eurocup! The place was CRAZY! We went down to Nyhavn and it was full of Norwegians there to support their team. Everyone was all painted and wearing viking hats and drunk and singing and it was so funny! There were Danish people there too running around in flags and people at tables were selling things so we all got Denmark football team gear! Tshirts and scarfs all around! It was SO much fun being in the middle of everything. We got some delicious ice cream/waffle combo and headed back home to find a sports bar to watch the game. Later we found a good place and watched the second half and Denmark won 2-0! YAYY!!
I know there is a lot more I wanted to say but hopefully I'll think of it later! Sorry this is so long I'll try to update more frequently so nobody has to endure this length of post. I'm seriously impressed with those of you who made it this far! I'm learning a lot of cool things about the culture and the way society works and it's really different but really cool! OH and I booked my flights and I will be spending Thanksgiving in Nice, France with Erica and her family! Im SO excited!! Im still working on my other travel plans but I can't wait to nail down everywhere I'm going.
Kisses from Copenhagen!
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