Friday, June 27, 2014
Hi readers!
This will be my last post until I return from Sweden and Finland next Sunday! I will talk about my last 3 days here and what my big assignment is while I am studying here (I know everyone is dying from the anticipation).
Well--I wrote on Tuesday night I believe, so shortly after I posted that blog, I went to the club for the first time with my friends. It is called the Kulor Bar, which I have now learned later on from my Danish friends and from a bulletin board (in an advice section, a student wrote "You can do better than Kulor Bar") in the DIS main office that Kulor Bar is seen as pretty trashy but on Tuesday nights they offer free unlimited beer from 10-1 with a 60 kroner cover fee (that equals about 10 American dollars) so naturally all of us college kids were amazed at this awesome deal (I don't even like beer so I just went for the experience). It was pretty much the equivalent of partying at a fraternity, except everyone there was wearing sailor caps. Instead of wearing the ugly square hats on our heads like we do in America, Danes wear sailor caps for their graduation week, so the bar was just a large sea of white sailor caps. However, at fraternities, because I live in Indiana, we play country music along with mixture of popular rap music, top 40 or old classics (like Hot in Here by Nelly... yes that is considered an old classic now) but at Kulor Bar, its pretty consistently a mix of hits from like 2010 which was sort of entertaining. But it was dark, sticky and sweaty which is pretty comparable to a majority of large fraternity parties. However, there were no roofies which a lot of my friends here from other schools seem to strongly associate with fraternities. I am glad I go to a school with good Greek life where I am not scared of getting drugged. Anyways.. I digress.
Wednesday, we were assigned our big project for the summer! We are doing design work for a new restaurant being built here in Copenhagen. It has yet to have a name, but the concept of the restaurant is pretty neat and a very new idea. To start from the beginning of where the idea of this restaurant came from, I guess I should explain the water situation in Copenhagen. So, Copenhagen is a canal city (the Danish translation is Kobenhavn--which means "merchants haven") and therefore obviously there are a lot of canals and big boats and shipping and what not. The water was pretty polluted from all of this and not very safe to swim in, up until a few years ago (somewhere between 5-10 years) when the city of Copenhagen decided they were going to clean up all their water and become a green city. I am pretty sure they were named the world's Greenest City of 2014 or something along those lines, actually. So, now the water is all cleaned up and they now have these things called baths here in the harbor which are basically enclosed areas in the harbor sort of like swimming pools but with ocean water in them and things to jump off of and stuff. I have not been to one yet but I am hoping to make my way to one soon after the study tour if Copenhagen weather ever stops hating me. So, long story short--the water here is pretty clean although you still can't swim within like 24 hours of a large rain because the rain stirs up the pollution that still sits on the bottom of the canal. SO--here is the restaurant idea. I don't remember the nitty gritty details but basically these two guys were eating oysters or something fresh out of the harbor as some sort of publicity stunt on Copenhagen's clean water (something along those lines) and this inspired an architecture firm called Effekt to turn this concept of eating fresh out of the harbor into a restaurant.
Effekt is a urban planning, environmentally aware architecture firm in Copenhagen but they do work all over the world. They have done some pretty cool projects which they showed us all in their presentation leading up to their concept for the restaurant. Basically, they want this restaurant that sits on the water (they call it a pontoon) that has a big dock with removable square lids all over the dock in which they can lift up and retrieve the oysters that they want to farm below the dock. They have these stackable bins that are about 60x60cm that they will farm the oysters in which take about 2-3 years to grow and I think each bin contains about 100 oysters. They'll obviously have a lot of oysters from this and they have already made deals with restaurant around the city of Copenhagen to share their oysters with them (including Noma- the world's number one restaurant for about 10 years running--its about 200 bucks a plate). They want to be able to take the oysters from these bins and minimize their time from the water to your dinner plate... which is a pretty new concept. On this dock, they also want to have a small pool for educational viewing to watch how the oysters are farmed as well as space for a small farmers market where others can bring their local produce. They also mentioned something about catching fish and what not under this dock too but I am not quite sure. The concept for this restaurant has been heard of in coastal cities around the world, with many of them asking if they could be the lucky city to pilot the idea. I know two of the cities were New York City and Sydney. More information about the logistics of it can be found here (http://www.effekt.dk/#/oyster/). Anyways, our big project for the summer is to come up with a logo, name, poster, menu design, advertisement, brochure AND web design (no coding...thank the Lord). I am not sure if they will actually be using our stuff since they're still a few years out from the finished product (that'd be pretty cool if they did though). I am very excited as I thrive on having a lot to do and we will begin as soon as we get back from Sweden.
After we were assigned the project, we visited that Effekt studio where they gave us a presentation and it was definitely very interesting. Being from a small town, I have never put much thought into urban planning and all the cool things you can do with it. The city of Copenhagen prioritizes making their city a city for the people and not a city for cars, which is definitely not a concept you see a lot in America. A lot of urban planning firms get a lot of government funding to create really cool public spaces that allow people to interact and live, as well as projects that are helpful to the environment. While I don't necessarily think Copenhagen is the mot beautiful city, it is definitely one of the smartest and most creative from anything I have ever seen.
After the presentation at Effekt, we went to go visit the site where they plan on putting the restaurant where it of course started randomly pouring rain on us while the sun was still shining bright (never again will I ever complain about Indiana weather being sporadic...it has nothing on the weather here). The rest of the day while I was in class was beautiful, so I decided to go to the beach after class. However, as soon as I got to the beach, the sun hid away in the clouds and the temperature dropped about 5 degrees and got very windy. It's pretty much been like that everyday. Sunny and beautiful while I am in class, then chilly and gray as soon as I am done for the day.
Last night (Thursday), I went to Frederik's graduation party. I took my friends Rachel and Morgan and we rode the train out to his house. It was very fun and the party was beautiful. It was much fancier than American graduation parties, however. While we are used to pulled pork, snack foods and cakes, they had multiple courses of very delicious food such as steak, shrimp, potatoes, and vegetables. It was very nice to eat a nice meal that wasn't peanut butter and jelly, since that's basically all I eat here.
Frederik's friends were quite impressed with Morgan and Rachel's beer pong skills (they think that's all we do in American colleges), but my "celeb shots" were less than stellar. I did learn though, that the first things that often come to mind for Dane kids meeting American kids are kegs, selfies and Justin Bieber. When my friend Morgan said she didn't like soccer, one of Frederik's friends said "Oh so you are not a sports girl...you are more like a Miley Cyrus", which I found very entertaining. We were also asked a few times throughout the night how often we do kegs (never), if we took a lot of selfies (nope) and if we were beliebers (We are 20-22, not 12). Seeing the perception of Americans from the outside is definitely interesting, and quite funny. Actually, since they do Nutella instead of peanut butter here (oh yeah, apparently a lot of Danes find the concept of PB&J absolutely repulsive), the most common jar of peanut butter is plastered with little cartoon pictures including the Golden Gate bridge, a football player, a pink convertible (LOL), the Chrysler building and the Capitol building. That's America for ya, folks.
On that note, it is time for me to begin packing for Sweden & Finland which I will write about when I get back. Until then, I hope you all have a great week celebrating Independence Day in the land of the pink convertibles, selfies and kegs.
XOXO,
Not Gossip Girl (Bean)
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Oooh, I forgot to mention that Friday (I think it was Friday), my class went to this lady who does Illustration's studio which was cool but afterwards she walked us to this place her family owns that's like a wakeboarding course and it's this cool little set up with black buildings that resemble shipping containers and a little skating ramp and she gave us all free drinks (like coffee or lemonade) and we hung out there for awhile and my teacher played foosball against some of the kids in my class where she was picking up the table and tipping it over to cheat which was pretty hilarious. Also, we walked by the entrance to Christiana which is this little hippie area in the suburbs of Copenhagen where drugs are legal and the entrance is plastered with "no photography" signs. Sooo yeah.
Ok that's all!
Ta-ta for now!
Ok that's all!
Ta-ta for now!
Well, I just wrote up a long blog post and then it got deleted on accident so now I am sad. :(
Anyways, hi mom and dad (pretty sure you're the only ones who read this). Sorry for not writing for a week but they keep me very busy here. I am very much looking forward to when things calm down after the study tour. The only pro to my first blog post of today deleting itself is that now I actually can remember what I did last week without having to go through my syllabus and email so that's good.
I'll start with Wednesday since that's where I left off. We started Wednesday morning with a studio class where we were supposed to visit museums that were assigned to us for a presentation. However, my group decided to go pick up our bikes instead (priorities! woohoo!). After we picked up our bikes, we had our first Visual Journal lecture which is my 1 credit hour class where we basically practice sketching techniques and learning how to document and save design inspiration stuff. The first lecture of it, while the professor is interesting, was horrible because I could barely keep my eyes open. After class, me and my friends who live in my hall rode our bikes home for the first time which was quite an experience. I am actually picking up on directions and areas pretty well here which is nice, so I was the leader, but the Danes are very skilled and quick bikers and driving in the bike lanes is much like driving a car only surrounded by many other bikers in close proximity so the first time riding on the bike lanes on the highways was pretty terrifying. Later that night, I took the metro to a soccer game at the canal with my friends Morgan and Rachel and we ended up a little further from the canal than we thought but we got to have a nice walk through the smaller canals and a cute little park. I also had a wine cooler drink from a gas station called Dirty Passion and Rachel had one that was apparently "Wild Cactus" flavored so that was interesting.
Thursday was the day I decided to wear shorts for the first time in Copenhagen. It was also the day that happened to be the coldest its been since I have been here. Apparently iPhone weather apps do not function very well here. Not only did I have to ride my bike to class the day after being .03 seconds too late for the bus, but it was also the day we had our first Visual Journal class where we sketched outside for 3 hours. Luckily though, it is very common to have blankets at the outdoor seating areas of restaurants here and a waitress lady was kind enough to bring me not one but two blankets. I am still undecided whether or not I developed some level of hypothermia that day but nonetheless, I am a survivor. After the 3 hours of sketching, my presentation group (my friend Lex who has been previously mentioned and a girl named Anna who is one of the ten kids in my graphic design class) went to the museum. Our assigned museum was the Statens Museum for Kunst, which is actually a pretty cool museum. There is, however, a very creepy exhibit in the modern art section that was supposed to be a replication of a hospital room where the wax figures in the bed are "dying". It was just a white, sterile, very hospital feeling room that you were supposed to walk through in silence while you contemplated your own mortality so yeah.. pretty creepy. At the museum, we were supposed to study the graphics in the way findings and branding materials there. The graphic design program is very integrated with the architecture program which is fun. Pretty sure after that, everyone just relaxed at home that evening.
Friday morning, we had studio in the morning where Lex, Anna and I started putting together our presentation. Afterwards, we came home and napped. Later Friday night, a very large group of DIS (my school) kids went out to the bars. Being legal is fun! We started the night by drinking in the court yard of the DIS housing closest to the bars, but had to evacuate the premises once the clock struck 11 because after that we aren't supposed to drink at home. At the court yard, there was probably close to 35 of us but we all broke up into much smaller groups to bar hop. I am not really sure how many bars I went to, but I do know that I had a mojito (mmm), met some nice Danish people here and there and went to McDonalds at 3 am as the sun was already rising. In Copenhagen, it is okay to walk around the streets with open beers which is pretty nifty. However, I do not like beer (because I am a weenie...sorry Dad) and have developed quite the love for ciders here.
Saturday morning, I slept til noon (old habits die hard) and then attempted to go to museums with my friend Morgan. However, the first museum we went to was closed unfortunately so we decided to try to go to SMK (the museum I did my presentation on). After waiting for the bus for awhile, it never showed up and people were starting to get confused so we decided to just walk (according to my iPhone maps, it was only about 1.8 miles and it was a nice day out). However, as iPhone maps usually do, it took me to some random place that was actually a hotel on the beach and nowhere near the museum. We re-mapped it and we had to walk an additional 2 miles to get to the museum in which we then only had about a half hour to spend there until we had to leave to be back home. It was still fun to get lost in the city, which just lead to me getting even more familiar with it. At 5, we headed back home to go on a canal tour with our building. We went down to Nyhavn --which translates as New Haven (if you google "Copenhagen" its the colorful buildings that literally show up in every picture) for our canal tour, which was actually slightly miserable because it was freezing even though I had on pants and jacket, and the seats were wet because there was a surprise rain (that's apparently how Copenhagen weather goes). After the canal tour, which was nice aside from the horrendous weather conditions, I got my first Danish hot dog. It was delicious! It is a super long hot dog wrapped in bacon, which is then put into a bun doesn't have a slit in it like American hot dog buns but rather is has a hole going in the long ways where they pour the sauces in and then put the hot dog in. After that, everyone came home and napped. Well I napped. Most people were out for the night but being the night owl I am, I woke myself up at 9 PM and ended up playing on my computer for a few hours researching different ad agencies in various cities until my friend Ian (a fellow night owl) texted me to tell me everyone of his friends were also sleeping but we did not want to waste our first Saturday night in Copenagen and we proceeded to bike out to the bar scene at 1 AM and go to this cute little Irish pub where we were at until about 3 AM. The Danes go out really late and stay out really late, which is awesome, and perfect for me :)
Sunday morning I woke up planning to ride my bike to the beach (it was supposed to be a nice day) only to realize my bike had been stolen. I decided to take the metro to the bus instead to the beach where it then proceeded to pour rain on me. So sad ;( Later Sunday, Anna, Lex and I finished up our presentation and Anna bought us Dominos pizza which was the highlight of my entire life and it was everything I could have ever asked for in a pizza. Thanks Anna! After we finished, Rachel, Morgan and I met up with some friends at a little dive bar called the Happy Pig to watch the USA game where I met a girl who just recently graduated from UMich and is interning at the US Embassy. Woohoo for Big 10!
Monday-- Lex, Anna and I were the first group to present and we did pretty well I think! After sitting through an additional 2 and a half hours of other presentations of fellow graphic design students and architecture students, I desperately needed a nap so I came home and napped (everyone else eventually came home and napped too-- we love napping here in Amagerbro--that's where I live). After I woke up, I took a shower where I then proceeded to blow the fuse in my bathroom because apparently European outlets do not like hair dryers. As soon as I plugged it in, I noticed my hair dryer smelling bad and glowing orange (which is NOT supposed to happen) so I unplugged it really quick which was followed by a "boom". Luckily, all I had to do was flip the switch on the electrical thingy in my room. Problem solved. Then, like everyone from DIS went to this bonfire thing on the beach which is like a big holiday here celebrating the longest day of the year and in the past, they apparently used to burn witches on this day so yeah. It was pretty fun! I saw a jelly fish in the ocean.
Today (Tuesday) was our full day study tour to "Greater Copenhagen" where we had this bomb dot com bus that was tables in it so we could seat four to a table and there was a small kitchenette in the back which we didn't use but it was still cool. Our first stop for the day was a church. The second stop was the Danish Maritime Museum which was actually really cool and really makes me want to be like an experience designer so I can design cool museums and stuff like that. I also had the best brownie in my entire life there and was wishing my mom was here to share it with me because she would have liked it too :) Next to the maritime museum was the castle that is apparently in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" which is pretty cool too. Our last stop of the day was the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (It was not in Louisiana, it was in Denmark... obviously). While the museum itself was nothing that excited me too much, it was on the ocean with a lot of trails and big grassy areas so I pretty much just laid out the whole time and did some nature sketches.
So that concludes my analysis of my week. Reading back on it, it sort of seems like a lot of things have gone wrong but it doesn't really matter when you're in EUROPE :) The good absolutely has outweighed the bad. We are now preparing for our week long study tour to Sweden and Finland so that should be fun.
I miss Taco Bell so bad though OMG I even googled today how far the nearest Taco Bell was. Apparently Europeans are not impressed by Taco Bell though and basically every one they have opened has failed so that's extremely unfortunate but that will make my reunion with Taco Bell that much better. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, right?
Well that is all for now! I will try to write more often so that my posts don't make me develop carpal tunnel.
Hej hej! (That means bye in Danish)
Yours Truly,
Beanie
Anyways, hi mom and dad (pretty sure you're the only ones who read this). Sorry for not writing for a week but they keep me very busy here. I am very much looking forward to when things calm down after the study tour. The only pro to my first blog post of today deleting itself is that now I actually can remember what I did last week without having to go through my syllabus and email so that's good.
I'll start with Wednesday since that's where I left off. We started Wednesday morning with a studio class where we were supposed to visit museums that were assigned to us for a presentation. However, my group decided to go pick up our bikes instead (priorities! woohoo!). After we picked up our bikes, we had our first Visual Journal lecture which is my 1 credit hour class where we basically practice sketching techniques and learning how to document and save design inspiration stuff. The first lecture of it, while the professor is interesting, was horrible because I could barely keep my eyes open. After class, me and my friends who live in my hall rode our bikes home for the first time which was quite an experience. I am actually picking up on directions and areas pretty well here which is nice, so I was the leader, but the Danes are very skilled and quick bikers and driving in the bike lanes is much like driving a car only surrounded by many other bikers in close proximity so the first time riding on the bike lanes on the highways was pretty terrifying. Later that night, I took the metro to a soccer game at the canal with my friends Morgan and Rachel and we ended up a little further from the canal than we thought but we got to have a nice walk through the smaller canals and a cute little park. I also had a wine cooler drink from a gas station called Dirty Passion and Rachel had one that was apparently "Wild Cactus" flavored so that was interesting.
Thursday was the day I decided to wear shorts for the first time in Copenhagen. It was also the day that happened to be the coldest its been since I have been here. Apparently iPhone weather apps do not function very well here. Not only did I have to ride my bike to class the day after being .03 seconds too late for the bus, but it was also the day we had our first Visual Journal class where we sketched outside for 3 hours. Luckily though, it is very common to have blankets at the outdoor seating areas of restaurants here and a waitress lady was kind enough to bring me not one but two blankets. I am still undecided whether or not I developed some level of hypothermia that day but nonetheless, I am a survivor. After the 3 hours of sketching, my presentation group (my friend Lex who has been previously mentioned and a girl named Anna who is one of the ten kids in my graphic design class) went to the museum. Our assigned museum was the Statens Museum for Kunst, which is actually a pretty cool museum. There is, however, a very creepy exhibit in the modern art section that was supposed to be a replication of a hospital room where the wax figures in the bed are "dying". It was just a white, sterile, very hospital feeling room that you were supposed to walk through in silence while you contemplated your own mortality so yeah.. pretty creepy. At the museum, we were supposed to study the graphics in the way findings and branding materials there. The graphic design program is very integrated with the architecture program which is fun. Pretty sure after that, everyone just relaxed at home that evening.
Friday morning, we had studio in the morning where Lex, Anna and I started putting together our presentation. Afterwards, we came home and napped. Later Friday night, a very large group of DIS (my school) kids went out to the bars. Being legal is fun! We started the night by drinking in the court yard of the DIS housing closest to the bars, but had to evacuate the premises once the clock struck 11 because after that we aren't supposed to drink at home. At the court yard, there was probably close to 35 of us but we all broke up into much smaller groups to bar hop. I am not really sure how many bars I went to, but I do know that I had a mojito (mmm), met some nice Danish people here and there and went to McDonalds at 3 am as the sun was already rising. In Copenhagen, it is okay to walk around the streets with open beers which is pretty nifty. However, I do not like beer (because I am a weenie...sorry Dad) and have developed quite the love for ciders here.
Saturday morning, I slept til noon (old habits die hard) and then attempted to go to museums with my friend Morgan. However, the first museum we went to was closed unfortunately so we decided to try to go to SMK (the museum I did my presentation on). After waiting for the bus for awhile, it never showed up and people were starting to get confused so we decided to just walk (according to my iPhone maps, it was only about 1.8 miles and it was a nice day out). However, as iPhone maps usually do, it took me to some random place that was actually a hotel on the beach and nowhere near the museum. We re-mapped it and we had to walk an additional 2 miles to get to the museum in which we then only had about a half hour to spend there until we had to leave to be back home. It was still fun to get lost in the city, which just lead to me getting even more familiar with it. At 5, we headed back home to go on a canal tour with our building. We went down to Nyhavn --which translates as New Haven (if you google "Copenhagen" its the colorful buildings that literally show up in every picture) for our canal tour, which was actually slightly miserable because it was freezing even though I had on pants and jacket, and the seats were wet because there was a surprise rain (that's apparently how Copenhagen weather goes). After the canal tour, which was nice aside from the horrendous weather conditions, I got my first Danish hot dog. It was delicious! It is a super long hot dog wrapped in bacon, which is then put into a bun doesn't have a slit in it like American hot dog buns but rather is has a hole going in the long ways where they pour the sauces in and then put the hot dog in. After that, everyone came home and napped. Well I napped. Most people were out for the night but being the night owl I am, I woke myself up at 9 PM and ended up playing on my computer for a few hours researching different ad agencies in various cities until my friend Ian (a fellow night owl) texted me to tell me everyone of his friends were also sleeping but we did not want to waste our first Saturday night in Copenagen and we proceeded to bike out to the bar scene at 1 AM and go to this cute little Irish pub where we were at until about 3 AM. The Danes go out really late and stay out really late, which is awesome, and perfect for me :)
Sunday morning I woke up planning to ride my bike to the beach (it was supposed to be a nice day) only to realize my bike had been stolen. I decided to take the metro to the bus instead to the beach where it then proceeded to pour rain on me. So sad ;( Later Sunday, Anna, Lex and I finished up our presentation and Anna bought us Dominos pizza which was the highlight of my entire life and it was everything I could have ever asked for in a pizza. Thanks Anna! After we finished, Rachel, Morgan and I met up with some friends at a little dive bar called the Happy Pig to watch the USA game where I met a girl who just recently graduated from UMich and is interning at the US Embassy. Woohoo for Big 10!
Monday-- Lex, Anna and I were the first group to present and we did pretty well I think! After sitting through an additional 2 and a half hours of other presentations of fellow graphic design students and architecture students, I desperately needed a nap so I came home and napped (everyone else eventually came home and napped too-- we love napping here in Amagerbro--that's where I live). After I woke up, I took a shower where I then proceeded to blow the fuse in my bathroom because apparently European outlets do not like hair dryers. As soon as I plugged it in, I noticed my hair dryer smelling bad and glowing orange (which is NOT supposed to happen) so I unplugged it really quick which was followed by a "boom". Luckily, all I had to do was flip the switch on the electrical thingy in my room. Problem solved. Then, like everyone from DIS went to this bonfire thing on the beach which is like a big holiday here celebrating the longest day of the year and in the past, they apparently used to burn witches on this day so yeah. It was pretty fun! I saw a jelly fish in the ocean.
Today (Tuesday) was our full day study tour to "Greater Copenhagen" where we had this bomb dot com bus that was tables in it so we could seat four to a table and there was a small kitchenette in the back which we didn't use but it was still cool. Our first stop for the day was a church. The second stop was the Danish Maritime Museum which was actually really cool and really makes me want to be like an experience designer so I can design cool museums and stuff like that. I also had the best brownie in my entire life there and was wishing my mom was here to share it with me because she would have liked it too :) Next to the maritime museum was the castle that is apparently in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" which is pretty cool too. Our last stop of the day was the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (It was not in Louisiana, it was in Denmark... obviously). While the museum itself was nothing that excited me too much, it was on the ocean with a lot of trails and big grassy areas so I pretty much just laid out the whole time and did some nature sketches.
So that concludes my analysis of my week. Reading back on it, it sort of seems like a lot of things have gone wrong but it doesn't really matter when you're in EUROPE :) The good absolutely has outweighed the bad. We are now preparing for our week long study tour to Sweden and Finland so that should be fun.
I miss Taco Bell so bad though OMG I even googled today how far the nearest Taco Bell was. Apparently Europeans are not impressed by Taco Bell though and basically every one they have opened has failed so that's extremely unfortunate but that will make my reunion with Taco Bell that much better. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, right?
Well that is all for now! I will try to write more often so that my posts don't make me develop carpal tunnel.
Hej hej! (That means bye in Danish)
Yours Truly,
Beanie
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Hej, blogosphere! (hej means "hi" in Danish)
Here is my first post about my first few days in Denmark thus far.
I arrived here after a long but semi pleasant flight (as pleasant as an 8 hour flight crammed into coach can be...basically because I slept the whole time) in the early afternoon on Sunday where I was greeted by a Danish family who I was connected with via my college roommate/bff Karla (s/o to Karla) to stay with them for the night because I was not able to get into my student housing yet. This Danish family (The Rasmussens) have a son (Frederik) who is our age who was an exchange student who lived with Karla for a year in high school. I had a lot of fun with them and they are so nice and made me feel very welcome in my first night here. Frederik took me to ride our bikes to a little amusement park down the street then we met up with his girlfriend and ate dinner in the city at an American restaurant (their choice..but it was pretty good :)). The Rasmussen's house was soo beautiful...it looked like a house from a European Pottery Barn catalogue.
Anyways, the next day (Monday) Frederik's mom (Lene) drove me to my housing where I met 4 girls from Oregon the second I got here. One of them is named Bri too! There are a lot of students from University of Oregon here. I unpacked and then went to a little convenience store down the street with some other people in my hall. My roommate got here later in the day, around 4. Our rooms are very cute, with all white furniture that looks like its from IKEA with little kitchenettes and our own bathroom. However, the exterior of our building is sort of like a sore thumb, standing out with its hideousness against the otherwise picturesque exteriors on this European street. Once everyone in my hall had arrived, we had a floor dinner of traditional Danish food which is basically bread, lunch meat and cheese along with some fruits and veggies and a traditional Danish strawberry cake. Me and some of my new friends then went to the other student housing for design students, which is when we realized our housing was a little less nice and a lot less closer than the other housing unit but our housing will suffice anyways :) We then went down to the main canal where we watched a World Cup game playing on giant screens set up in a grassy area. Eventually, my roommate decided to walk back home because jetlag was getting the best of us.
This morning (Tuesday), we woke up at the wonderful morning hour of 8 am (too early for me) and went to the welcoming ceremony for our school where some head faculty gave speeches and four girls played some songs on the violin for us. Afterwards, we were sent on the DIS "Amazing Race" where we had to go to four locations and take pictures. It was a nice way to get accustomed to the city, but it definitely wiped me out. I was especially touristy during this activity and took some pretty nice pictures (none with me actually in them, unfortunately) which I will upload to Facebook eventually. We then went to our first class, where our graphic design class (of 10 students..woohoo!!) just did some basic outlining of the class then went on a walking tour with our professor to a fancy furniture store and a design book store. She then took us out for coffee (where I got ginger lemonade, which was very good) and sent us on our way. After class, I went with my friends Lex and Jack back to Jack's housing to wait for Lex's roommate (the other Bri) with Bri's friend from U of O, Amanda. Eventually, we realized Bri wasn't coming so Lex and I rode the bus back to our housing while Amanda and Jack rode their bikes. Once we all got here, we decided to go down the street for some cheap pizza at a place I found on Yelp. Afterwards, I went grocery shopping then came back and watched a TV show about a lawyer on Danish Netflix with Jack and Lex (they go to Pratt in NYC btw). We were hearing sirens downstairs for awhile and noticed a lot of fire trucks outside our window with a decent sized crowd of people, along with smelling burnt plastic but were choosing to ignore it. Eventually a girl in our hall came and told us to evacuate the building because there was a small electrical fire in the dance studio downstairs. They let us back in our housing after about 15 mins, which then smelled like burnt plastic and sweet sweet carcinogens for a little while.
Anyways, it has been some very long and activity filled days but so far I am loving Copenhagen the more time I spend here and am very excited for the next 7 weeks! (well 6 and a half now)
Sorry this post was kind of boring, I just figured I would write a blog post instead of trying to tell everything to the four people who have been asking me for details (mom, dad, Tori, Andrew) so there you have it! Woohoo
Peace and blessings,
Bean
Here is my first post about my first few days in Denmark thus far.
I arrived here after a long but semi pleasant flight (as pleasant as an 8 hour flight crammed into coach can be...basically because I slept the whole time) in the early afternoon on Sunday where I was greeted by a Danish family who I was connected with via my college roommate/bff Karla (s/o to Karla) to stay with them for the night because I was not able to get into my student housing yet. This Danish family (The Rasmussens) have a son (Frederik) who is our age who was an exchange student who lived with Karla for a year in high school. I had a lot of fun with them and they are so nice and made me feel very welcome in my first night here. Frederik took me to ride our bikes to a little amusement park down the street then we met up with his girlfriend and ate dinner in the city at an American restaurant (their choice..but it was pretty good :)). The Rasmussen's house was soo beautiful...it looked like a house from a European Pottery Barn catalogue.
Anyways, the next day (Monday) Frederik's mom (Lene) drove me to my housing where I met 4 girls from Oregon the second I got here. One of them is named Bri too! There are a lot of students from University of Oregon here. I unpacked and then went to a little convenience store down the street with some other people in my hall. My roommate got here later in the day, around 4. Our rooms are very cute, with all white furniture that looks like its from IKEA with little kitchenettes and our own bathroom. However, the exterior of our building is sort of like a sore thumb, standing out with its hideousness against the otherwise picturesque exteriors on this European street. Once everyone in my hall had arrived, we had a floor dinner of traditional Danish food which is basically bread, lunch meat and cheese along with some fruits and veggies and a traditional Danish strawberry cake. Me and some of my new friends then went to the other student housing for design students, which is when we realized our housing was a little less nice and a lot less closer than the other housing unit but our housing will suffice anyways :) We then went down to the main canal where we watched a World Cup game playing on giant screens set up in a grassy area. Eventually, my roommate decided to walk back home because jetlag was getting the best of us.
This morning (Tuesday), we woke up at the wonderful morning hour of 8 am (too early for me) and went to the welcoming ceremony for our school where some head faculty gave speeches and four girls played some songs on the violin for us. Afterwards, we were sent on the DIS "Amazing Race" where we had to go to four locations and take pictures. It was a nice way to get accustomed to the city, but it definitely wiped me out. I was especially touristy during this activity and took some pretty nice pictures (none with me actually in them, unfortunately) which I will upload to Facebook eventually. We then went to our first class, where our graphic design class (of 10 students..woohoo!!) just did some basic outlining of the class then went on a walking tour with our professor to a fancy furniture store and a design book store. She then took us out for coffee (where I got ginger lemonade, which was very good) and sent us on our way. After class, I went with my friends Lex and Jack back to Jack's housing to wait for Lex's roommate (the other Bri) with Bri's friend from U of O, Amanda. Eventually, we realized Bri wasn't coming so Lex and I rode the bus back to our housing while Amanda and Jack rode their bikes. Once we all got here, we decided to go down the street for some cheap pizza at a place I found on Yelp. Afterwards, I went grocery shopping then came back and watched a TV show about a lawyer on Danish Netflix with Jack and Lex (they go to Pratt in NYC btw). We were hearing sirens downstairs for awhile and noticed a lot of fire trucks outside our window with a decent sized crowd of people, along with smelling burnt plastic but were choosing to ignore it. Eventually a girl in our hall came and told us to evacuate the building because there was a small electrical fire in the dance studio downstairs. They let us back in our housing after about 15 mins, which then smelled like burnt plastic and sweet sweet carcinogens for a little while.
Anyways, it has been some very long and activity filled days but so far I am loving Copenhagen the more time I spend here and am very excited for the next 7 weeks! (well 6 and a half now)
Sorry this post was kind of boring, I just figured I would write a blog post instead of trying to tell everything to the four people who have been asking me for details (mom, dad, Tori, Andrew) so there you have it! Woohoo
Peace and blessings,
Bean
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)