April 26, 2012

Today I didn't have my public health class because we had just turned in our projects so I was able to sleep in. My first class wasn't until 10:20. I then went to school and had my Holocaust and Genocide class, where we talked about the war in Yugoslavia. This was very interesting because there was a girl in my class whose family was from Bosnia so we were able to hear her story first hand as she lived in Bosnia until she was 6. After Holocaust and Genocide I had my Danish Test...EWWWWW. I don't think it was terrible, but I wouldn't call it a masterpiece. The test involved a section that we had where our Danish teacher read something in Danish and we had to answer questions about it, then a section where we had to read a long text in Danish and answer questions about it in English, and then we had to translate certain phrases, and the last part of the test was the culture portion where we had to answer certain questions about Danish Culture. After my Danish test I went home, and did more work. We then had dinner which consisted of meatballs, potatoes and vegetables. I helped my host dad cook dinner. I was peeling potatoes, but clearly I wasn't peeling them fast enough because he asked me if I wanted to switch jobs. I didn't really want to make the meatballs, so I said I would rather not, so once he got the meatballs started in the frying pan, he helped me finish the potatoes and they were done in no time. After dinner we had flødeboller. This is pretty much the best Danish dessert ever!! It is a wafer-type thing with lots of marshmallow on top, covered in chocolate. This is one of the types of food I will miss the most I think when I am back in the states this summer. They are so delicious but very rich because I ate two (because my host mom wasn't home) and I started to feel sick from consuming all that deliciously goodness so quickly. It was definitely worth it though. I only have 3.5 weeks left of flødeboller so I have to make the most of the time I have left.

April 25, 2012

Today was Wednesday which meant it was field trip day. I actually had a field trip today. I went to the Danish Pharmaceutical Industry Association today with my Public Health Class. We learned about how the pharmaceuticals are sold in Denmark. I then went to a place called St. Peter's Bakery and bought a cinnamon snail. This place is famous for their cinnamon snails, but I never got a chance to try them until this week because by the time I found out about it Lent had started, and then last week I didn't come to the city at all.

We then came back to DIS and worked on our public health project as that is due tomorrow. We had quite a bit of work left to do with it. It took us longer than we thought to finish it. It had to be good though because this was a large portion of our grade. We finally managed to get it almost done, and then it was time for me to head back to my host family's house. By the time I got back it was almost bed time, so I basically just finished my homework and went to sleep.

April 24, 2012

Today I met up with my group for my Danish project. We are doing a presentation about the Danish education system. This meeting basically just allowed us to figure out where we are going with our project and what needed to be done. I then had Public Health Ethics and we talked about immunizations and whether the state should be allowed to mandate immunizations or not. My teacher asked me if there were certain rules in New Hampshire, because after I mentioned about the seat belts, she has been particularly intrigued by my response to these issues. After public health ethics I had my Human Trafficking class, and we talked about forced labor. We heard stories of how gangs are taking homeless people off the streets in Britain and are using them as modern day slaves, where they aren't being compensated, and are being forced to work, and are being sold from one person to another. It was hard to imagine that this type of stuff is happening right under our noses. It isn't the thing that you just hear about happening in the poor underprivileged countries, but happens all over the world. After class I came home and slept for 2.5 hours. I probably would have slept longer, but my cell phone rang because my host parents were wondering where I was. They weren't home when I got home so I just came upstairs to take a nap, and since I had said I would be home for dinner tonight I think they were concerned.

April 23, 2012

Today my public health class was cancelled. This meant that I got to sleep in. I ended up going to school earlier than I had to so that I could finish proofreading my Holocaust paper. I finally got that to a point where I was happy with it, and I turned it in. In Holocaust and Genocide class our teacher knew it was pointless to have us do any reading considering we all had to finish our papers so instead of lecture we watched a movie. This movie was about a mass grave excavation in Vukovar, Yugoslavia. This movie was also very graphic. It involved people digging up the dead bodies from the war, and putting them into body bags, and sending them to the lab to be identified. Some of these bodies were still in a recognizable state, as the soil acted as type of preservative. This movie was very informative, but very hard to watch. I then had my Danish Class. In Danish class we talked more about our test on Thursday, which might be kind of difficult. In Danish we heard some popular Danish music. The types of songs that we heard in Danish class were not ones that I would have expected my Danish teacher to choose. I didn't really like them either, but it was to give us a taste of the type of music that is currently popular. After Danish I went to the computer lab as I had a skype meeting for Radiance since I am co-president next year. That seemed to go pretty well. All I can say is I am glad I am not in Rochester right now because it was snowing when I was skyping with them yesterday. I then went to Torvehallen (the glass market) to get dinner. I was hoping to get falafel because when I went there before I got this really good falafel and french fries, and it was pretty cheap, but I got there and the falafel place was closed. I don't know why. I ended up with Shawarma (a meat sandwich) instead. It was really yummy. I then went to this place called Agnes Cupcakes, and got a Caramel cupcake, which was a vanilla sponge cake with chocolate chips and caramel on the top. I then had to meet up with my group for my public health project. That meeting seemed to be pretty productive. We managed to get a lot accomplished, and I think we are almost done with that project. We worked on it for about 2 hours. I then went to catch my train home, and that didn't work out so well. I guess they changed the schedule of the trains on April 10th, but I didn't know that because I hadn't stayed late at all since travel break. This meant that I had to take another train to one station and then switch, which would have been fine, but I didn't know that so I managed to miss the last bus back to my host family's house, which is at 9:49. I ended up having to call my host dad to have him come pick me up because I arrived at the station at 9:55.

April 22, 2012

Today I slept in until about 11. I was just too tired I suppose from last week. Today was also a work day as my Holocaust and Genocide paper is due tomorrow. Since we all woke up at different times we decided we wouldn't have breakfast together like we normally do on the weekends. We then had lunch together, and it was later time for more work. Later in the afternoon we decided we would have some cake (muffins) and tea, and play a game. We played Cranium. I thought cranium was hard enough in English, but when you throw in Danish things I've never heard of it makes it much harder. We also kind of made up the rules as we went along, for example if we didn't know what the song was that we were supposed to sing for the humdingers then we would just come up with a new song. Considering we were making up the rules as we went along, and my host family was trying to translate all of the cards into English the game took awhile. Sadly we didn't end up finishing so we don't know who won. Either way it was fun though and we laughed a lot.

April 21, 2012

Today my host mom, Laura, and I went to Sweden. We woke up and left around 10:30 or so. We got to Helsingør and bought tickets for the ferry. When we got to the ticket booth for the ferry they told us that they were having some promotion and the ferry was free. We weren't totally sure how or why, but we didn't argue and we just took the free tickets and got in line for the ferry. When we got to Helsingborg it started to rain. We didn't end up doing too much in Sweden. We wandered around a few shops, and eventually we ended up at this "hyggligt" diner for lunch. I got a sandwich with Brie and Salami on a Baguette and it was delicious. This place also had really good looking cakes (in Danish a cake is basically anything sweet that has been baked). I ended up with a mint chocolate frosted brownie and it was superlækert (super delicious). We then walked around a little more and came to a park. By this time the weather was much nicer so we walked around the park a little bit, then we got back on the ferry, and headed home. We were home by about 5 or so. We really weren't in Sweden very long, but long enough for me to say that I have been to Sweden. It was a fun day out, but unfortunately the weather wasn't nicer. When we got to Sweden though, the foggy rain was kind of how I had imagined it. Thats typical Swedish weather, so I don't think I would have gotten a true Swedish experience if it had been a really nice day.

April 20, 2012

Today I got up and went to school. My first class was public health ethics. In that class we talked about whether the state has the right to raise taxes on cigarettes or if that is infringing on a person's freedom. Our teacher told us we were playing a "game", but it was basically like a debate with three sides. One side had to argue from the tabacco industry saying it wasn't okay. My side had to argue for the WHO and say that it was okay to raise taxes, and then the third team were the Danish Lawmakers and had to decide what they were going to do. In the end we all ended up winning a prize which was a bag of candy for each team. Normally when you present a group of college students with a bag of candy they devour it like a pack of wolves. This is not the case with Danish candy. Pretty much every type of Danish candy contains either black licorice or black licorice flavoring, and no one really likes it. All of the Danes it by the handful, but I don't think you could pay most American students to eat black licorice. After public health ethics I had my human trafficking class. During this class we watched a movie called "kidneys on ice". It was about these people in poor Eastern European countries who sold a kidney for $3,000 because they needed the money. These people were also not informed about any of the risks that were associated with donating a kidney. It was a very graphic movie. It was very informative, but it made me very uneasy as I was watching it. This afternoon I bought an ice cream from one of the really good ice cream shops in town. I was sitting outside enjoying my ice cream for a little while, then I decided I should head home. It was almost 3:30, and I needed to keep working on my paper. I got to the train station and there were a TON of people there. Apparently there was a problem with the trains. The longer I've been here the less I am liking the Danish public transportation system, but I've learned to live with it. I knew if I waited for the train there would be no way I would fit on the train because so many people were trying to get on. I decided I would walk to the train station before Nørreport because that way I would already be on the train when everyone else was trying to get on it. This theory worked, but the walk between Nørreport and Vesterport was much longer than I had imagined. It wasn't that long, but in my mind I thought it was much closer. I then got on the train, but we were squished for about 5 stops. It wasn't until I was 1/2 way home when I was actually able to find a seat on the train. This has never been an issue before, there are usually plenty of seats for everyone. I got home eventually and I worked on my paper some more. We then had dinner, and my host mom and Laura wanted to watch a movie so we watched "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". I don't know how many times I've seen that movie, but I still think its a very funny movie. We had a feast while we watched the movie which included pineapple, grapes, pistachios, and best of all flødeboller (thats a Danish dessert that is marshmallow creme covered with chocolate) I don't know how they are so good, but that is definitely one thing I will miss when I get back home. No more flødeboller.

April 19, 2012

Today was a typical school day. I woke up, went to Public Health class where we worked on our group projects due next week. I then went to Holocaust class where we were basically just given time to work on our papers in class. This meant that my only real class today was Danish. We talked about the test that we have next Thursday which I am not too excited for. After school I just came home and worked more on my papers because they needed some work. Today was not an exciting day, as I basically did homework all day. Due to the lack of excitement I am going to end this post here.

April 18, 2012

Today is Wednesday which means FIELD TRIP DAY!!! Whooo!! Minor detail....I didn't have any field trips scheduled for today. That's okay because it basically just meant a day off of school. Considering I had so much work to do I ended up spending the whole day (or at least most of it) doing homework. It was a pretty productive day, I managed to complete my book report (I just need to proofread it), finish my research for my Public Health project on the STEC outbreak in Germany, and complete my research for my holocaust and genocide paper on the Irish Potato Famine.

Last night was the elections for Radiance, the dance group that I am a part of at school, and when I was asked what positions I would be interested in running for I said, "Anything but president because I don't know that I will really have the time." I checked my e-mail this morning and guess what? I was elected as co-president of Radiance. I suppose it isn't quite as much responsibility as President. I think Erin and I will be able to do a good job as co-presidents. I am looking forward to next year.

That was pretty much the excitement of my day, as I didn't end up going to school or into Copenhagen at all.

Now I am treating myself to some American TV shows that I have missed while I was on Spring Break.

Considering I have some extra time tonight I will tell you what I am doing this summer: I have been offered a job with the United Church of Christ Summer Communities of Service. I will be working with Central St. Matthew UCC in New Orleans. This job will entail a combination of pastoral visits, and an internship with an external organization. I am not sure exactly which organization. This means that I will be in New Orleans all summer. I will be leaving NH/VT I think May 28th and returning August 15 or so (depending on how long it takes me to drive back from New Orleans.

April 17, 2012

Today in Public Health Ethics we were talking about paternalism, and whether the requirement of wearing a seatbelt was infringing on people's rights to make their own decisions. I later brought up the fact that New Hampshire doesn't have a law for wearing seat belts if the person is over the age of 18. I said "Our state motto is Live Free or Die". Everyone was very surprised after I said that. This statement changed the direction of the argument entirely because instead of saying that people don't have the right to choose this, we agreed that if they were very much against this law, then they could go to a place such as NH and wouldn't have to worry about this. After class my teacher asked me, what else do you mean by "Live Free or Die" and I mentioned well motorcycle helmets, but I wasn't sure what else exactly. If you have any other ideas let me know.

This afternoon in my Human Trafficking class we had a guest lecturer who had done some work in Cambodia, because we are currently reading a book named the Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam, about a woman who was trafficked in Cambodia.

Tonight we had meatballs and rice in a curry sauce for dinner. After dinner my host sister Laura, asked "What's for dessert?" and no one had anything planned so I suggested baked apples. I remembered the days we were at Grammie's house when I was growing up and when we wanted dessert we just stuffed an apple with some brown sugar and stuck it in the microwave, and I loved it! I taught Laura how to make them last night and they were definitely a big hit. I had forgotten how much I liked them! I am not sure if the reason why I loved them so much was because they were absolutely delicious, or because of the memories it brought back from the days of easy and delicious desserts at Grammie's house.

One Month Left....

I know I haven't been updating my blog, but I am going to try to do it for the one month that I have left. I just returned from spring break yesterday, and I have a lot left to do in the one month that I am here. I still have:
3 papers
3 presentations
1 book report
2 projects
4 exams.

I will be surprised if I survive all of it but this semester has been so much fun, and definitely worth it!

Over the past 2 weeks, I have travelled to Amsterdam, Southern France, Paris, Belgium, and Edinburgh. I happened to be in Amsterdam on Ben and Jerry's free cone day, and when I first saw the line at Ben & Jerry's I decided it wasn't worth waiting, but when I saw it was free cone day I knew I had to because I would be a terrible New Englander if I didn't have free Ben and Jerry's.

While I was in Amsterdam I went to the photography museum named "FOAM" and that was really interesting as they had an exhibit about the New York Times Magazine. The best part of it was that the entire exhibit was in English so I felt like I could really understand it. The following day I spent quite a bit of time just exploring Amsterdam, and I ended up walking around Amsterdam for most of 2.5 hours.

After Amsterdam I went to Southern France. Southern France was gorgeous! Spring had sprung! I got to the train station and I was basically sweating because it was 20 degrees Celsius outside, which was very different from the 8 degrees in Amsterdam. The first night I arrived in Southern France we had horse for dinner. I was a little worried about trying it, but I decided since everyone else was eating it I would try it too. This is when I decided that horse meat is delicious. The next day we slept in and we went to go see a Good Friday Procession in the town. That was very interesting, as I had never seen one before. Apparently the one that I saw in Perpignan is the most famous one in France. Sadly I didn't stay for all of it but we watched it for about 40 minutes or so. The following day we went to a place called Les Orgues. This place is a geological site, and the rocks are made out of fine sand and they become eroded by the rain. For dinner that night we ate fish with the heads still on them, I was kind of surprised by that and not totally sure how to go about eating them. One of my favorite things that I ate in Southern France was definitely the strawberries. We ate strawberries with chantilly (whipped cream) after every meal! They were SOOOOO delicious.

I left Perpignan on Easter Sunday and I went to Paris for a night. While I was in Paris I went to dinner and drinks with Cerise, one of my really good friends from The Grammar School. We had a hyggligt (there is no definition of this Danish word) time. I then left Paris the next morning and travelled to Bruges. I was a little disappointed not to spend time more time in Paris, but I really enjoyed all of the other places I travelled.

Bruges was a lot of fun. I went with 2 friends that I have met since I've been in Denmark. It was kind of rainy when we got to the train station and we didn't know where exactly our hostel was, and none of us had a map, so we ended up walking down the street about 10 minutes from the train station, and then realized we didn't know where we were and we had taken a wrong turn from the directions we had, so we turned around and went all the way back to the train station. We then tried again following the directions a bit more closely and walked for another 10 minutes. It turned out that we were literally right around the corner from our hostel the first time, but we didn't know that because we didn't have a map. Needless to say that by the time we got to the hostel we were very cold and very wet. When we checked in the people at the front desk told us that there would be a walking tour in about 10 minutes so we dropped our stuff and went outside and prepared to get more cold and wet. After the walking tour we were getting pretty hungry, but it was only about 4:00 in the afternoon so we didn't want to get dinner. We ended up walking around for a while, and then succumbing to hunger around 5:00. After dinner we were all so exhausted, and wet, and cold that we ended up going back to the hostel and doing nothing. We didn't want to go to bed too early so around 10pm I remembered I had Skip-Bo cards (for those of you who have never played its pretty much the best game in the world!), so we went to the lobby and played Skip-Bo for an hour, until they kicked us out. The hostel was undergoing major construction so the facilities weren't the nicest. It will be a nice place to go back once the construction is finished but right now there is currently one small toilet, and a separate room with a shower and a sink, for the whole floor to use.

Bruges Day 2 was jam packed with things going on. We started the day with a Belgian Waffle, au naturel. We then climbed the Belfry tower, which is the highest tower in Belgium it was 366 steps to the top. Let's just say it wasn't the easiest climb, but definitely rewarding in the end. After the tower we got Frites (French Fries) with curry tomato ketchup. We then went to a church to go see one of Michael Angelo's Famous statues, and then we went to the Hospital Museum. After the Hospital Museum it was time for lunch, and then we went to the Russian Orthodox church because that is where they have the blood of Jesus Christ, and we found the frog in one of the squares and had to kiss the frog. Sadly it didn't turn into a prince like it was supposed to. Oh well. We then decided to go back to the hotel because we were cold and wet, and it was Nap Time. Our Nap time managed to last about 2 hours or so. During this time I had to register for classes which was no fun because the server crashed and that took about 30 minutes to actually work, sadly it cut into my nap time so I only napped for about 1 hour. It was definitely a well deserved nap. After naps we had a light dinner, and then after dinner I realized that the mini carnival that was in town had Olliebollens (Dutch Donuts). They were delicious and I managed to get Powdered sugar ALL over me and my nice black jacket.

Day 3 in Belgium we weren't sure if we wanted to go to Brussels for the day or just stay in Bruges, because we were all leaving from Brussels anyways. We just decided we would stay in Bruges because we had heard about this amazing market where you could buy really cheap cooked meat, so we did that and bought an order of French fries and had that for lunch. Of course we started the day off with Waffles, mine was chocolate and banana. The market also had really cheap chocolate truffles that I had to buy as a snack for later. We ended up taking our lunch back to the hostel, eating lunch and playing more skip-bo because it was still cold and rainy outside, and not a nice day to be walking around too much. I then started my adventure to Edinburgh which included a Train--> a Taxi (It was supposed to be a bus, but I could take the taxi for the same price and get there faster) --> a plane, and eventually I was in Edinburgh. For once I was glad I was American because there were two lines at customs and one was UK/EU passports, and the other was all other passports so I was literally the only person in the all other passports line. Even though I was one of the last ones off the plane. I was pretty much the first one out. I then met Rachel at the airport and we ventured back to her apartment.

Thursday, we both slept in and then we decided we would go into the city and have a picnic lunch and do some shopping, and the picnic was probably the highlight of our day, we didn't do too much else. We did buy a steak pie from M & S and had our hearty Scottish dinner which included Steak Pie, mashed potatoes, and peas.

Friday, sadly Rachel had to work so I attempted to work on my paper for most of the day. I did get quite a bit of work accomplished but not quite as much as I should have. Oh well. We then met up with Sarah and Kathy Christie (Cassie's friend from St. Andrews and her mom) for dinner. We went to an Indian restaurant and had Tapas. When we told the waiter that we didn't want anything too spicy he said that they don't typically eat what was on the menu because it wasn't spicy enough for them, so nothing on the menu was going to be too spicy. After dinner Rachel and I went back to her flat and watched Cars!

Saturday we slept in again, and then we made Swedish Pancakes, essentially crepes, and we put some Nutella and strawberries in them. We then went to the Botanical Gardens. Sadly there weren't too many flowers in bloom, but I guess that is to be expected in April in Edinburgh. We then went to the center of Edinburgh and walked around for a while on Princes Street, and through the Princes Street Park and had dinner at Pizza Express! I LOVE Pizza Express. After Pizza Express we walked up the Royal Mile to the Castle. We later ended the night with Cars 2! We weren't sure what else to watch and decided since we watched Cars the night before we should watch Cars 2.

Sadly that was pretty much the end of my spring break. Now its back to reality. Today was the Queen's Birthday and I honestly contemplated skipping class to go to see the queen at the palace, but I realized that probably wasn't a good idea since it was my first day back from break, but how many other opportunities am I going to have?