Halloween Does Not Know the Meaning of Chocolate

So I did not realize how much I like Halloween. I am remembering how bummed I was to miss it my senior year of high school because I was in the hospital, but then I remembered that they felt so bad we didn't have a halloween we got to make impromptue costumes, make caramel apples, eat a ton of candy, have extended "P.E." time where we actually got to go "outside", watch a movie in "class", AND we had a magician and curfew was extended by an hour. So, that actually worked out very well. I hope a similar thing will happen where I miss a college year and getting to go to Chico with my friends, BUT I get to travel around Europe.

From tomorrow until the 14th I am going to be in: (Switzerland) Geneve, Lausanne, Zermatt, Zurich; (Germany) Karlsruhe, Frankfurt; (Luxembourg) Luxembourg City; (Belgium) Brussel, Bruges; and (The Netherlands) Amsterdam.

I am pretty sure I can go one year without dressing in a costume and ODing on candy. I mean, have you seen the things Europeans wear anyways? And I am going to the land of chocolate. Margie, do you remember that Madeline game where she went to the Alps and made chocolate or something at the chalet?

That reminds me: I want a cape. Haven't you always wanted it to be socially acceptable to wear a cape? Thank you Denmark for making all my fashion dreams come true. If only I had enough money to finance them. Shopping in Germany is going to be amazing.

I am afraid of the kind of money I will think I can spend when I get home. I spend on average $12 here for a sandwich. $5 foot-longs!?! The Danes would not be able to believe it.

Vi ses Danmark.

Jeg er nødt til at lave hyemmearbeijde, men jeg vil hellere blog.

"I need to do my homework, but I would rather blog."

I have realized a BIG difference between a semester and a year, besides the obvious 5 months. I have to take real classes. I cannot slack off because "it is only a semester". My classes actually count when I get back to Sonoma, and I am realizing a lot of peoples classes don't. This may be a reason I seem to be stressing more than the average child.

That being said, I am totally on top of my work right now and going to be amazing on my Danish Oral Exam tomorrow.

I aften skal jeg skrive opgave og sove. I morgen skal jeg i skole. På lørdag skal jeg købe ind og gøre rent og slappe af. På søndag skal jeg til Geneva!

Translation: In the evening I am going to write a paper and sleep. Tomorrow I am going to school. On Saturday I am going to run errands and clean and relax. On Sunday I am going to Geneva!

Things I needed today:

Today I needed today:
- to get more sleep
- to be happy
- to have a wonderful day with my Danish kids
- to practice for my Danish test tomorrow
- to write 2 short papers for ballet
- to take deep breaths and try to recover from yesterday

What I did NOT need:


- to not be able to open my eye because it is glued shut with apparently pink eye

Bieber Fever? Psh, Bournonville Bubonic Plague.

Get it? because when people are obsessed with Justin Bieber they call it... and and I am obsessed with August Bournonville... and a plague is more intense than a fever? GET ITTTTT? Yeah, sometimes I try really hard and am still not funny. I assume you can at least understand that.

Monday night I saw Napoli at the Royal Theatre danced by the Royal Danish Ballet. Quick explanation of who August Bournonville was: childhood bffs with H.C. Andersen, dancer, super famous choreographer, most influential ballet master the Danish Royal Ballet ever had. So Napoli was choreographed by Bournonville. The Royal Danish Ballet is trained in the Bournonville style. And I saw it performed in a theatre that Bournonville helped design before his death a few years later. I was very excited. The ballet was interesting and act 2 was completely redone (because it is usually the act that people skip), and all in all I greatly enjoyed it, although I was not really a fan of some of the people I was sitting near. The theatre was unlike anything I have ever seen a show in before. It looked royal. Everything was red velvet and gold, and even though it is a small theatre it feels very grand. There are statues and chandeliers and it really takes you back in time to when it was built (late 1800's).

Today we went to the WWII Danish Resistance Museum for my Danish class. It is SO interesting to see Nazism from the viewpoint of a country that was occupied, and I am kinda a Holocaust nerd anyways so it was great. Then I fainted. It was almost at the end of our tour and I felt very suddenly like I was going to throw up, then I felt my face drain and then explode with heat and I got very dizzy. I told my teacher I needed to sit down and the next thing I remember I was sitting on some stairs with my head on my lap and a glass of water next to me. I did not faint faint, but I was about to and it was definitely a scary moment. I have not actually fainted since my freshman year of high school, but I remember how it feels. Almost the same exact thing as today happened today happened to me on the plane over here, and it scares me that it has happened twice in a little over 2 months. My teacher took me home in a cab and I was getting better until I had to walk the million stairs up to my house, in which case I got very dizzy again. I thought it was important to eat, and then I went to lie down and slept. My teacher called to check up on me, she really is the sweetest lady in the world.

I have quite a lot of angry words and a rant prepared for another aspect of my life, but I feel that the audience of this blog is not the time or the place. Michelle and I had a nice(ish) chat about it anyways and at least she feels similarly so I know I am not alone.

My plane leaves for Geneva in 4 days and I still have virtually nothing planned.

Tonight Grace and I got sushi. The Danish man at the table next to us kept commenting on our conversation and I was highly amused.

Even the Best Fall Down Sometime

As you may notice by the time stamp it is 4:30 am in Copenhagen when I am posting this. This is not who I am, I only get insomnia caused by crazy stress, and didn't I just END midterms? Ugh.

I need a bad day outlet. I think that is what this is. I have all these bad days stockpiled up from the past three weeks, but I do not know how to fix it when I am here. At Sonoma the cure for a bad day is easy. You get Taco Bell, bake (usually cookies), watch a Disney movie, possibly hot tub, then talk to your best friend on the phone who can always make you feel better.

Well, tacos are not really part of the Danish cuisine, and I highly doubt if a Taco Bell did exist it would be close/affordable. They do not have chocolate chips in this country. Watching a movie on a laptop streaming from a sketchy website is not the same. I have not seen a pool since July. No longer on speaking terms with the best friend.

I used to make a big deal about how bad he was at comforting me, and that he never gave me "poor baby" enough when I needed it. I realize that by the end of our friendship he knew me so well he could turn even my worst mood into one that was eased enough that I could get a good nights sleep. I know not to dwell on the past, but I miss being that close to someone.

I got to talk to Michelle today, but we talk so rarely that even when we talk it only brushes the surface. I have been going on walks which eases my mind and helps to center me, but it is a bit rainy and cold lately.

Life is not bad, but this my dears is what we call a "funk". Tomorrow, after classes and a nap, I am going to break it. Just watch me. But right now... right now I am going to overanalyze the past 7 years of my life and try to figure out how I got to where I am right now.

Rise and Shine in 4 hours. Good Morning Copenhagen, Godnat California.

Becoming Less Quirky Every Day

Or just gaining new Danish quirks? I have known for quite some time that I am not a normal child. I have an unhealthy relationship with highlighters and making plans. I floss obsessively. Thinking about certain aspects of the circulatory system is enough to make me pass out. I can talk on the phone for hours. And if you had asked me 2 months ago, I hate fruit in desserts.

I knew I was going to change as a person in Denmark, but I did not think it would be in ways that I have come to just accept of myself. I am the kid who passes on berry pies and if you even try to give me some sort of dairy with over-sugared fruit in syrup I would have NONE of that. Even Strawberry Shortcake and I did not get along very well, that is, until I met this:


That is my dear new friend Rødgrød med Fløde, known in more English speaking minds as "red jello with cream". It is stewed berries (the one I had was strawberry) with a TON of sugar added and then potato flour added to that to make it turn into a weird sort of thick jelly. You serve it in a bowl with milk or cream poured over it, and it is FABULOUS. It is everything I thought I hated in a dessert. Since then I have also become obsessed with baked apples with ice cream, and apple cake is the greatest thing ever. I even ate a fruit tart the other day! I am not quite ready to move on to the big things like pastries with fruit in them, but I think that this is a step in the right direction. I am mostly proud of myself for trying something new. Speaking of which, beets are my new favorite food.

A side note about "rødgrød med fløde", is that it is the thing you can say once you have mastered the Danish language. Danish people love to laugh at people who try to say it, so they ask you to constantly if they find out you are not Danish. Here is a video of some slightly obnoxious Danish girls to illustrate.

We Are Only As Danish As Our Table Manners

So yesterday Grace and I went grocery shopping and bought 167 kr of groceries, which all still fit on my food stipend card which is a bit worrying because everyone else ran out of their food stipend like 3 weeks ago and it is only supposed to cover about 2/3 of the cost of your food. Which makes me wonder what I have been eating... I don't cook that much, but I do not eat out that much either. I think it is just because I am a fan of sandwiches and other cheap things, but still. Anyways, we made the most amazing dinner. We got frozen frikadeller (frikadeller are the traditional Danish meatball, think like the Ikea meatballs but more Danish and in your house), made baked beet and carrot sticks tossed in garlic with a spiced sour cream sauce, boiled potatoes (using only enough water to cover the potatoes so that we did not have to throw away any possible nutrients in the water so we were eating something besides starchy goodness, a la mommy) with a little pat of butter, and for dessert we made honey cinnamon baked apples with vanilla ice cream. It was delicious, and a very Danish thing to cook together, and then when we were done we tried to do the eating slowly and talking thing like the Danes, but we definitely ended up after 5 minutes watching Modern Family on my laptop while we ate. Not very Danish at all.

When I have a family of my own, we are going to eat like Danes. Food ritual is very important, and you always eat meals as a family. Everyone is the house takes turns cooking, and you have to eat whatever is made. It is amazing in my practicum class how the children seriously eat whatever we put in front of them with no complaints. If I tried to give 4 and 5 year old children in America falafel on rye bread or garden salad with tomatoes I am sure that things would not go well. Children also do not have sippy cups. You have a bottle until you have a glass. It blows my mind.

I am still sick. I felt a lot better yesterday and I think I took advantage of that a little too much. I did not go to practicum today. I am sad because not only do I miss my kids, but they went on a field trip today. However, the field trip was outside and I think avoiding 6 hours of exertion in 40º weather might have been a wise decision.

It is freezing. A polish scientist said that this is going to be the worst winter in the history of Denmark. There is already snow in Sweden, and it is supposed to snow in Jylland (the big main peninsula) this week. I am excited for snow, but then I remember that I have NO IDEA how one even deals with snow. The concept of frozen flake things falling from the sky seems fake, I always just imagine Disneyland bubble snow, but I have a good feeling it is nothing like that. It is going to be a long winter.

Let's Get Happy!

We watched this in my Danish class a while ago, and a conversation with John Patrick reminded me of it. I hope you can take 10 minutes to watch it because I think it is very interesting, but maybe that is only because I am here and see this way of thinking within the culture all day.

Oh London Trip.

It seems that I have lost all motivation to continue my stories about England. Maybe later.

Right now I am sick. Being sick in Denmark is the worst, EXCEPT free healthcare. Free healthcare is the best. Seriously, why can't America just figure it out and make it work. If I am still sick tomorrow I am going to go to the doctor. There is quite a good, okay, a VERY good-it-actually-happened-for-sure, chance that I had contact with someone with strep. However, he got strep the days after contact, and that was over a week ago, so I think if it was strep it would have been here earlier, and I am pretty sure I would know.

I love Autumn here. I do not love midterms. It is not more school work here, it just isn't spread out at all so you have weeks of nothing then BAM 40% of your grade in every class is due the same week. It is a little bit intimidating. Probably another reason that everyone is getting sick, we are all stressed and staying up late to write papers. Maybe Denmark is forced to have free health care or the student population would die out.

Stressing over travel break. But seriously, what is the worst that could happen? Okay, I guess TECHNICALLY I could be abducted and trafficked somewhere, but I checked and out of the top 5 safest cities in the world I am planning on going to 4 of them on this trip. So really, the worst that could happen is that I will get lost, spend too much money, or become frustrated. Really, that is not the end of the world. I am young and I am in Europe. One of my goals this year was to learn to be more spontaneous. When I am married in my 30's I can always carefully plan time off from work and micro schedule every moment of a trip to Europe. This time I am going to hop on a train and make the most of it.

And after more bad news...

I decided to forget it and go for a walk. Here is the story of my walk in picture form.

Today I Wasted $75

I slept through Legoland. I know that I am being stupid and childish but I am just sitting on my bed crying. I was so excited, and all my friends went and won't want to go again and it was already paid for. This is it. This is officially the worst week I have had and I am so frustrated and upset and sick of things going wrong. How coule I have one this? I set my alarm but it didn't go off. I hate this. It was supposed to redeem this week I had been having.

Today I Did Nothing

I was supposed to do everything, but I did nothing. I will regret it later, but it was glorious.

I just needed a day to relax. I enjoy everything I do, but there is all this pressure to go and see everything and to do everything all the time because EVERYTHING is a once in a lifetime opportunity. However, speaking of those, last night was Kulturnatten, aka the greatest thing of my life.

Once a year, always on the same Friday in October, Copenhagen has Culture Night. You buy a pass for 85 kr, which is about $16, and you get access to over 500 places and events. The entire city is focused on Kulturnatten from 5pm-5am, and it was maddness in the greatest sense of the word. Grace and I tried to plan what we were going to, but ended up just kinda winging it, which happened to lead us to everything we wanted to do anyways. Something you need to know about Copenhagen is that it closes at 6pm, sometimes 8pm if it is a Friday, but things close early. SO, on Kulturnatten not only is everything open, but it is night themed! For example, we went to this cool statue museum and it was dark except every room had a different color theme with colored spotlights moving around and focusing on the different statues. It was way trippy and exciting. There was also live jazz being played in the courtyard! There was live music everywhere! Then we ended up in Christiansborg Palace, then at an ice sculpture show. After that we were trying to find the canal boats and on our way stopped at the Jewish Museum, and we stumbled upon a Civil War reenactment/Mideval Market/Tolkien thing? I have no idea, but there were definitely confederate soliders with cannons and people who would write your name in Elvish. We got candy apples that were the greatest things ever made with real sugar and stuff he was throwing in the big pan over a fire and then dipping in nuts, cinnamon-sugar, or coconut, then it would create this really awesome hard coating. That is obviously what people in the Civil War ate every day. Then we accidentally found the cannon shooting demonstrations that scared us to pieces, and the awkward stained glass house modern art where the light wuld turn on from inside and a creepy girl would stare at you. We then took the boat over to Nyhavn and we walked around there. We kinda went to the Industrial Museum because there was a fashion show, but we missed the fashion show and the rest was just really weird... We went into the big church by where the queen lives that I am forgetting the name of right now, but it is just a huge dome and is gorgeous. We took the bus from around Nyhavn back to Nørreport so that we could take another bus to the cemetery, but we are not going to discuss the cemetery, because it did not happen and I was sad. BUT, some of the busses that were running last night were old city busses and the driver was all dressed up in the old uniform and it was precious. After the cemetery did not work out we went to Rundetarrn, which is Round Tower and where Kathrine took me my first week. It is neat because part of it is an observatory, but it is usually not open at night. Although, stupid Denmark's weather was too cloudy last night to see anything, but I at least got to look through the telescope! And the view from the open space was gorgeous. It was about 1am when we got home and everything good was closing anyways, although I did have a brief moment where I was obsessed with the leaves of the ivy on our building when I took my only pictures of the night:

I have not planned my 2 week travel break at all and it is in 2 weeks. I am annoyed at myself, but am also totally discouraged from England. (oh shoot, need to finish my England posts, ugh). I am going to Legoland tomorrow, as in the real actual Legoland where Legos were invented complete with Vikingland place. It is supposed to be great, and also my first adventure onto Jutland! I am having a little bit of a hard time right now and school is currently kicking my butt, but I did get an A on my first Danish test! I can tell you my name like no ones business! I was going to go for a walk around the lakes, but it is 40º outside so I may just clean my room and take a shower instead.

The stressing over my 5 page paper and my 10 page paper and where I am going for travel break and having money can continue on Monday, tomorrow I am going to have fun.

There's No Place Like London

So I have been contemplating how to do this post so that it is not a million pages long. I am going to give a short synopsis of each day and possibly write a short blurb after I have described each day saying my overall feelings of the trip?

The night before I left (so Friday the 1rst) two of my friends here turned 21. It was quite a fun night, but I am sure that I did not get as much sleep as I probably should have since I had to be at the airport at 7am on Saturday.

Saturday: Drag myself to the airport at 7am, and get to London with my class at around noon. Immediately our leaders let us loose for lunch and tell us to meet at our first academic visit in a few hours. Not the best planning on their part since we had NO idea where anything was/where we were/what we should eat/and money besides the 10 pounds they gave us for lunch. We went to a little sandwich place in Leicester Square, and managed to figure out the tube enough to make it to our station to meet up with our leaders. We went to this amazing supervised "adventure playground" which was a ton of swings and crazy things to climb on all painted different colors. It was called Glamis Adventure Playground if you feel like creeping on it on google, I also posted a million pictures of it on facebook. After that we went to an Idian restaurant called Banglore Express that was the best meal I have had in a long time. It had 3 courses, and was family style. We had these chips with different types of chutney, a plate with salmon and shrimp, and the main course had lamb and chicken and rice and this really yummy parsnip thing and coconut naan. After dinner we went to the London Eye, and that is when my camera battery died and I realized I had forgotten my charger. Luckily for the rest of the trip Bailey took pictures of the stuff I really wanted, and at the hostel a girl let me borrow her charger. I slept so well at the hotel the first night.

Sunday: Kate and I woke up to her alarm and got ready and went downstairs for breakfast, and then figured out when we didn't see anyone else that we had forgotten about the 1 hour time difference and we were an hour early. Breakfast was good, but I possibly went back to my room while everyone else finished and watched part of "The UK's Top 100 Pop Princesses" which was great. Ke$ha was in the 80's and I laughed. After breakfast we went on a bus/walking tour of London. Our tour guide was a hilarious Scottish man with a fascination with kittens. We got out to take pictures in front of the Tower Bridge and we waited to watch it go up for a boat to pass under, but it did not and our tour guide was annoyed. We all got back on the bus and were going to actually drive over the bridge when this happened (1:40-2:30 at least...):

Okay, not really. But right as we were about to cross over the bridge we get stopped and have to watch it go up in front of us. We were obviously not as cool as the Spice Girls. We had lunch on our own, and then went to the Freud Museum, aka the nerdiest thing of my life. We saw his couch, which was the highlight. It would have also been a lot cooler if the audio tour hadn't been the most boring thing I had ever heard. We ended at around 4:30 and we all went back to the hotel to regroup. A bunch of us went out to dinner on our own and I got Yorkshire Pudding and it was not nearly as good as my mother's, but it was still nice to get to eat it. Afterwards a few girls and I went out to a pub in Covent Garden and had a beer, but the pub closed at 10:30 on Sundays so I was back in the hotel watching amazing British TV by 11:30.

Monday: On Monday they told us to wear long sleeves and pants because we were going to be visiting an all boys Islamic school and a Mosque. This is also the day that the Tube was on strike, so we had to walk to Brick Lane from our hotel by the Barbican. The first school we went to was the London East Academy which was really interesting because we had to wear head scarves and the people who were talking to us were very passionate about their religion, but so far off from the stereotype it was very eye-opening. The week I was in London is when the states announced the travel warning for being in big cities in Europe and I guess besides Germany and France, London was a "high-risk zone" also? So our entire trip people were freaking out and it was all over the news and some people from my class got interviewed and such. It was weird to feel so safe in an Islamic environment while our country was telling us to be afraid. After the school we went to the East London Mosque which is the closest mosque to where the 7/7 bombings (7th of July in 2005) happened in London. The people of the mosque were personally affected by it and lost people that they knew. It was also a place of emergency refuge for people who needed assistance on that day. There are a lot of aspects of Islam that I am not sure I agree with, but it made a big impact to see how their community has to deal with the fear of terrorist attacks and how they deal with the hate. The man giving the tour of the mosque asked us what our opinion was on the Islamic Center plans near the Twin Tower cite, and we had a nice healthy dialogue about it. He also gave up each a copy of the Quran, which was nice but definitely raised tension going back through airport security at the end of the trip. It is crazy how much something like a book can freak people out, but I plan to look through mine once I get some time again. After the mosque we went to another yummy Indian buffet where I had more lamb (maybe I actually am my father's daughter? hmmm...) and a lot of other food. Then we walked to the WIlliam Davis Primary School which is in one of the most deprived areas in the entire country, but all of the students are still able to achieve the national learning standards. It was probably the most inspiring school I have ever been to, where everything seemed so nice and well rounded and the programs and atmosphere were excellent. It was hard having to remind myself that these children were not dealt the greatest cards in life, because this school was such a wonderful resource for them. Right after that we actually sprung for some taxis (because of the Tube strike we had been walking all day, and there was no way we could get to our next activity on time). Our next activity was a Bollywood workshop at a dance studio! Remember those jeans and long sleeved shirts we were wearing? Yeah, we were not told that we needed a change of workout clothes and as much fun as it was, it was so gross and sweaty in there and the mirrors were dripping with our sweat. It was hilarious and fun and made me really miss dancing. We were going to take the bus back to the hotel to shower and change before coming back to the theatre district to see Chicago, but because of the lovely Tube strike every bus was jammed full and running late. We just stayed (as stinky and lovely as we were) and got dinner at a gourmet burger place, I got a chicken breast with brie and cranberry sauce burger that I could eat every day of my life it was so good. After dinner a few of us bought cheap tickets to see Chicago, and then our cheap tickets were upgraded for free to better seats. It was interesting to hear their fake American accents, only one of the characters slipped back to English a few times. Then we went home and slept.

Whew, that is a lot of writing. I think I shall leave this to be continued later. I want to be able to remember my trip though, so this is as edited down as it is going to get. This week has not been that great. Midterms galore and I literally did the worst I have ever done on a psych test in my life. If I get a C I will be amazing, although probably still cry that it is not an A. Where did my obsession with my GPA come from? In high school I got miserable grades and didn't care at all. I just need to keep reminding myself that I am in Europe, and in the long run if I get a bad grade on a test while I am here life will go on. I talked to a woman today while we were waiting for the bus who was hospitalized where I live when she was 5 years old. She was older, but not I am wondering just when my building was converted, because I thought it stopped being a hospital 100 years ago...

EDIT: Um, Kommunehospitalet (aka the old hospital that is not the University of København aka where I LIVE, was a functioning hospital 1858-1999... I don't know if this sketches me out more or less...

Home Again

Or, Copenhagen again. This is an official rain check for the longest blogpost of my life, but I have my hardest midterm tomorrow so I think I should probably go study.

London was fabulous, Salisbury was great, Liverpool kinda sucked but had redeeming qualities. Oxford did not happen.