Wandering around Rome

That's pretty much what Mickey and I did today, wandered around Rome. I followed Megan's instructions and successfully picked Mickey up from the train station and brought him back to her apartment. I accidentally walked past it because I didn't see the street sign, but I knew we were right by it

We got breakfast and then walked around the main part of the city, by the Colosseum and all the ruins and such, but we decided against paying to go in anywhere or take a tour of anything. The line at the Colosseum was way too long. We went to the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps.

The McDonald's by the Pantheon is a lot more upscale than any other McDonald's that I have ever seen.

Velkommen til Italy

Today, Mickey and I both left Copenhagen.

I felt bad about not being the greatest host while he was here. Having a seizure put a damper on things. And then on Sunday, I had to finish a paper that I had gotten an extension on but didn't want my teacher to think I was just taking advantage of her, so I finished it. And Mickey finished a book by Obama. On Monday, I ended up not being able to skip my classes, so Mickey had to wander around by himself. He went all over the place - Tivoli, the Carlsberg "beer factory" (also known as a brewery, to some) and to the palace. We got on the train to go into the city and happened to sit with my friends Mark and Andi. I normally take the 8:32 bus, but we took the 8:52, so it was lucky that we ended up on the same train. Mickey asked what he should do and suddenly, Mark whips out a map and says "Well, I'll tell you. There are lots of things you can do." And he pointed out all these different places and I gave Mickey a map and while I went to school, Mickey went wandering. But I was and am still impressed - that was very clutch of Mark, as they say.

Mickey is going back to Istanbul for the night, for about nine hours. It was much easier to get two round-trip flights to than it was to go from Istanbul to Copenhagen to Rome and back to Istanbul.

But anyway, I got to Megan's tonight. She picked me up at the train station. She gave me instructions, which were a little off, but I got there. Instead of an overpass, I ended up going through an underpass. But whatever. It worked and I got the ticket she told me to and got there.

It was scary on the train. I couldn't see the signs, so I ended up standing up by the entrance. I was next to this guy in sunglasses who looked harmless enough. I get off the train and someone puts an arm around me. I assume it's Megan trying to surprise me, but then I look and see it's this guy and I jumped up and screamed a little. It's really bad when people surprise me. I can't help it. I jump and scream and it's very loud and obvious and embarassing. Megan didn't end up seeing or hearing it, though.

I'm excited to pick up Mickey tomorrow morning because Megan has classes. She has some classes this week, so she was even more excited I was here (also because I think we're friends or something like that) because Mickey would be wandering around alone much of the time otherwise.

Malmo Excursion

Today, I was not feeling very well. I woke up and took a shower and thought I was fine. And then I proceeded to have a grand mal seizure. Luckily, it was out of the shower and Mickey was fully awake and there to make sure I was OK. He was great - he moved things out of the way and just made sure I didn't hurt myself. When I stopped shaking, I saw him and asked if we were in Turkey. He's studying there this semester so it's not as random a question as it sounds. Then he told me we were in Denmark. He said I asked him why and I couldn't imagine why anyone would come to Denmark, which is funny, because I think that's what I and many other DIS students thought before we really explored the program and ultimately chose it. After recovering, Mickey and I went to brunch and then he showered so we could head out. Normally, I go to sleep after I have a seizure but I didn't want to disappoint Mickey and I wanted to go to Malmo, too, so I didn't tell him that.

We ended up cutting our Malmo trip short because I really wasn't feeling well and he was worried about me. But it was a lot of fun walking around. We were pretty hungry, so we found a sandwich place and got lunch. I had a normal sandwich or at least, not an open-face concoction with a lot of shrimp dumped on top. Tuve, a student at Grundtvigs who is actually Swedish, later told Mickey it was called räksmörgås. The plastic Belle standing next to it was a gift from one of Mickey's sisters, who asked him to take pictures of her with foreign things.



We were there long enough to have fun, though. We walked around a lot, which is always fun to do. We got to see the Turning Torso, which is controversial 190m-high residential and conference tower. It was finished in November of 2005 and is in the docklands of Malmo's western harbor. It is apparently based on a sculpture done by Spaniard Santiago Calatrava, the architect himself. There are 54 stories that twist 90 degrees as they go up. Unfortunately, it's not actually open to the public, so all we got to do was look at it. But it looked pretty cool and was a fun thing to go see.

After walking around a little more, we went back.
We even got back to the højskole in time for dinner, so we didn't have to buy it.

Saturday night was a future-theme party, so dinner was actually at 7 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. It's always fun when the Danes plan parties, because they go all out. The dining hall was decorated and lots of people dressed up. I wore pink tights, but that was about the best I could do. I wish I could get costumes together for all of their parties. Some of them are fantastic. But usually, the Americans just go as ourselves with some odd piece of clothing from the downstairs costume closet. It's cool that they have a costume closet, though. It comes in handy sometimes.

Mickey comes over!

Tonight, my friend Mickey came to Copenhagen. His vacation started today, so he wanted to visit me in Denmark and Megan in Italy.

I'm excited - everyone else has brought friends over but I haven't yet. It's hard because it costs $20 to get from Nørreport Station (where school is) to Grundtvigs Højskole Frederiksborg in Hillerød. Sometimes it's upsetting to live so far away. But it's even more awesome that he's here because it's so exciting to show him my greenhouse. He was amazed with my room. It really could be a triple, he said. Someone keeps asking about my bathroom, so to answer, I have my own bathroom. It's small, but it suffices. It's one of those bathrooms that turns into the shower. It was a little weird at first, but that's somewhat common in Europe and I was expecting to encounter that. It's even weirder in my gym, though. Some of my friends won't shower there. It's a room with three shower faucets coming out of the walls, no curtains or dividers of any kind. I'm OK with it. I don't really think anyone's concentrating on me. And if they are staring at my naked body, well, I think I'm cute so I'm glad they agree, haha.

But anyway, tonight we got in and we ended up just staying in for dinner. Mickey and I watched The Island with the Danes. The Americans were planning to go out but we all knew they weren't going to leave until 10 p.m. at the earliest. Mickey, at my request, brought me some Raki. It's a Turkish drink. It's also known as "lion's milk." It's cool because it turns white when you add water. Anyway, we had a little of that and then went to go watch the movie.

Then we went out to the Oklahoma bar with the other Americans I live with. It was fun, but Mickey and I headed back early. They were just going to go bar-hopping and then walk home, but we didn't feel like walking over a mile back and I don't like to drink a lot anyway so we took the last bus. The driver was really cool because he didn't make Mickey pay. He's seen me enough times and must've realized this confused kid following me must've been my friend. And what does he care, anyway? It was a fun ride because he had to stop the bus in front of the Frederiksborg Castle to call the police to take care of this drunk guy in the bus.

Mickey and I are going to sleep soon so we can get up to go to Malmo. I have yet to go to Sweden yet so I am very excited to go with Mickey.

A DIS Festen

Tonight was my hygge dinner with my Danish class.

At 6 p.m., we were supposed to gather in Vestergade 10A - 35 for dinner. I got there really early because I had a field study for Gender, Body and Sexuality at 1 p.m., so it didn't make much sense to go to Hillerød and back. It was funny, because I saw Mogens, my teacher, and we got up there and he looked at the classroom and said, "No, this won't do. It's not hygge enough."

So we went all the way to the bottom of Vestergade 7 to the basement, where we normally have class and Mogens said "This will do much better." So we went back to go get all the food that was up there and leave a sign on the door.

The hygge dinner, other than that warm, comfortable feeling, also included a dinner of smørrebrød, the traditional Danish open-faced sandwich and Festen, a Danish "dogma" film.

The sandwiches consisted of several combinations of fish, eggs, meat and cheeses on rye bread. I didn't like the bread, and it also happens to be Passover, so I just ate the top part, but I liked that. I don't eat meat, except for fish, so I was very excited also to be able to eat something because a lot of Danish food involves meat. We also had this dessert, which Danes love to try and get Americans, or other foreigners, to try to say. It's called røde grød med fløde, which translates as red fruit dessert with cream. We specifically had strawberries, or jordbær. It was delicious. I'm excited that I chose to take Danish. The University of Maryland didn't force me to, but I thought it would be a good idea and I'm very glad that I did.

The movie was also really powerful. It's a Dogma movie, which in and of itself is an interesting concept. Everything is meant to be as real as possible. The camera work is all done by hand without and the clothing that the actors are wearing is their own. I've also heard that the sex is real. Based on Festen, I suppose it's possible that that's the case. It took place mainly at the 60th birthday of Helge Klingenfelt. All of his friends and family are there. He asks his oldest son to give a speech, which turns out to be "the speech of truth," as Helge realizes that his son is going to reveal some damaging family secrets. I highly recommend it if you are ever in the mood for something serious. It's certainly worth your while.

Frankfurt for the weekend and two Passover seders I didn't understand

Class was cancelled this Friday, but since I only had one at 8:30, it didn't get me out of a lot. I also had a 9:40 flight, so I had to get up really early for that anyway. I was lucky, because I went on rejseplanen.dk to check up on bus times. I thought it was weird that it said I had to leave at midnight when I typed in a request for early morning times. Then I realized that it was a holiday and the bus schedules were different. It was pretty late when I realized this, so I went downstairs hoping to find a Dane. I found Helene sitting with Marc in the foyerway.

Marc was going to Amsterdam the next day, so it was lucky I came downstairs because he didn't even think about Friday being a holiday. Helene found a number for a taxi company in her phone and made the arrangements for Marc and I. We had to take a 5:30 cab to the train station, which was annoying but we at least got to split the cost so it was only 50DKK each instead of 100DKK.

Frankfurt was interesting. I met my brother there because he had an interview for a possible job offer. There wasn't much there. It was a pretty boring city. We went to a Jewish museum, but most of it was in German, so it was kind of lost on me. Howard realized it wasn't for him and he thinks the people who interviewed him also realized that.

But anyway, part of the reason I went to see him was that it was Passover. He found out about some seder for young professionals and students, so he paid for both of us to go to that. It was in German, English and Hebrew, so I only understood some of it. It was a lot more interesting for Howard than for me. He knows German and the people there were closer to his age and point in their lives. But it was interesting.

I got back to Copenhagen Sunday afternoon. I went back to Hillerød to bring my stuff back. Howard and I traded suitcases. He brought one filled with food for Passover and I gave him one with all of my winter clothing to take home. I turned around a little later to go to Copenhagen. DIS arranged for students to be invited to a seder at the synagogue on Krystalgade, a few blocks from school. DIS paid for it, which was exciting. Not a lot of DIS students went, which was sad, but I enjoyed the company of the people I sat with. The seder was in both Danish, English and Hebrew but there were plenty of people reading the English portions in the Haggadah. The rabbi there was really cool, also. Very spirited and just made us feel welcome.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get home. The trains weren't running all night and even if I got home, I'd have to wait for the night bus which only comes once an hour. So I was sleeping in Allison's apartment. It worked out great because her roommate's sister was going to take her bed, but she fell asleep in her parents's hotel room so they weren't going to move her. She had her boyfriend here so they went to go stay in a hostel so Allison was kind enough to lend me her bed. But since I was afraid of waking her roommates, I left with them after the meal ended so she could let me in. So with that and my early flight, I ended up leaving both seders after only the second cup of wine. But they were nice seders while I was there.

Even if they were in German and Danish.

Happy Birthday, Queen Margarethe!

Every year, the Danes celebrate the Queen's birthday.

They do a lot of interesting things all around the city to celebrate. All of the buses have two Danish flags on the top. They also put little golden balls, which they call "golden apples" at the top of the fountains. The fountain in the picture lower down is the one on Gammeltorv. If you look closely, you can see the golden apples. The other fountain picture is a man, I assume he was drunk, trying to get to the top to steal them.




I went with my Danish class, but several DIS students, along with 5-10,000 Danes, according to the tour guide at the museum at Amalienborg Palace.

The Queen comes out at noon with her family to wave to the crowd, which was certainly an enormous amount of people. In addition to the hoards of school children, there were several older people and people from the media.

It was a fun little excursion and I was glad we went. It's interesting that so many Danes go, many of whom come every year. It was adorable to see all the little kids with Danish flags.

Later today, I had a field study for Health Care in Scandinavia. We went to the teacher for the other class's house, which turned out to be in the middle of a construction site and even further away from my commute to DIS, which is already at minimum an hour. We split into four groups that represented various regions of Denmark and had a list of health care initiatives and had to vote on which we thought the little money we had should be spent on. It was actually kind of interesting, once we got there, which was a pain.
I wasn't so excited for it and we were getting a bit bitter while we were walking there. It started raining and they told us to take the 2A bus, which didn't exist so we let the 4A leave as we looked for the 2A and then I get a text message from Jeppe, the teacher, saying he was sorry, and we were supposed to take the 4A after all. We got on the bus and then were kicked off of it. I have no idea why, but we were. It was 12 of us or so, from both classes in this group. We got closer and Lars, the other teacher for the other class, picked us up and brought us there, but we'd already gone through this whole hassle. Luckily, there was still pizza and drinks left when we got there, or else we would've been really disappointed because it started at 6 p.m. and went until at least 8:30 or so. After it was done, a group of us left because we all had to take the E train, or the Lilac Line, as Ruya calls it. Not all of us had passes that covered every zone, so we had to walk there. I didn't get home until now.

Alice the former prostitute

I met a real, live former prostitute today.

I'm taking a class called Gender, Body and Sexuality in Scandinavia and this morning's session was canceled because Alice could only schedule speaking to us tonight, because she has a new job. I belive it's working for an isurance company.

I really learned a lot. Alice did not go into the business because of drugs, like you might assume most other girls do. She divorced her husband and was really worried about how to support her two children and it seemed like an easy thing to do. At this point, the thought was just crossing her mind. It wasn't until she started dating, and later married, this guy Flemming, who admitted that he had thought about going into the porn business. She was 39 when they started writing ads and he'd drive her to the clients. It got really bad - sometimes, they wouldn't go to family parties because they could be out making money. Or they'd leave early if a client called during an event.

She talked to a girlfriend of hers, who is a therapist, about it. Alice still thought she was happy at the time, but the therapist asked her if she wanted her daughter to be a prostitute and if not, why not, because you always want your kids to go into the family business if it's working out really well and you're so happy. It was then that she realized she wasn't happy and that'd she'd been blocking out her feelings to the point where she was working from the neck down.

I really admired how she told her kids as soon as she could work up the strength. Her daughter had found one of her advertisements and knew what was going on and was just glad her mother finally came clean. Her son had no idea and just thanked her for telling him, but said he never wanted to hear anything about it ever again and that she would always be their mother and that was that.

Now, she has a new boyfriend, who knows about her history. But he's accepted it and Alice is really happy. She also works to help other women get out of the business. She called an organization and they didn't have a group for women who started prostituting but not because of drugs or alcohol, so she started one. These women can still get too far into it, as she did - Alice had to have her uterus removed and after they sewed her up, the doctors told her she couldn't have sex for six weeks. So, instead, she just did S&M for a few weeks or other acts that wouldn't aggravate it as much as "normal" sex. I couldn't believe that, to have a giant scar across your stomach but still not be able to stay away?

Her story was really intense. It sounds weird to say I'm glad I met a prostitute, but it made me realize a lot about the women who go into the business. And I don't think any of my professors at Maryland would bring in a prostitute. However, I'm taking Human Sexuality in the fall, which I've heard is very intense (and also one of the Maryland must-take classes) so maybe I'm wrong. I'll find out when I get the syllabus in August, I suppose.

Ruya comes to play!

It wasn't a particularly exciting excursion, but today my friend Ruya came to Grundtvigs.

It was so we could work on our paper for Health Care in Scandinavia class, which is fun class, but I have to say, I'm getting a little sick of reading about the laws of abortion in Denmark. In case you are wondering, they're all free for women as long as they're in the first 12 weeks.

But it was just really fun to show someone else the greenhouse that's my home that I love so much. I felt bad that she had to pay to come here - I live in Zone 9 and she's in Zone 5, I believe, so she had to pay the difference. I have an alle zoner (all-zone, obviously) pass, I could've gone to her place without paying any extra, but she didn't really have wireless internet and we have a computer lab here, so she didn't even need to bring her laptop.

She lives with a host family and they were excited when they realized she was coming here - their daughter, who is now in her thirties, went here back in the day.

This week is going to be weird - tomorrow morning, all the Danes are going to Berlin with the school. They're renting the place out to senior citizens. We're also not getting any meals. Alicia asked DIS about that and got us 150DKK to help pay for food for the week, which was a good amount. It's going to be so weird without the Danes here and I'm really going to miss them. And I like getting food that I don't have to pay for.

But anyway, I wouldn't have been here for meals tomorrow anyway because I'm going to LEGOLAND! I can feel myself decreasing in age as it gets closer and closer.

Open Mic

The Danes informed us that we were planning tonight's open mic, so Josh had taken up the call to action and the rest of us sort of followed when he needed.

It was really fun, and also, I had the best cake ever at Grundtvigs. It was cinnamon and chocolate. I told Alicia she had to try it and when she asked me what flavor it was, my immediate response was "Good. Try it." The look on her face was one of such urgency; she got up right away to grab some.

Open mic night was very successful. A lot of people signed up to perform. A lot of it was in Danish, but most of it wasn't. And one group sang a lot of childrens' songs, some of which were songs like "Itsy Bitsy Spider" translated into Danish, but with the same tune, so it wasn't all lost on us.

It was also Marc's birthday! So we sang "Happy Birthday" to him. There's also a Danish birthday song that the Danes sang, which they also sang at dinner, when Signe and Amanda presented Marc with a chocolate raspberry cake in the middle of the dining hall.

But even Ole performed. If I haven't mentioned him before, he's this really cute older man who is a teacher here. I think he teaches French, but he's the one we talk to the most out of everyone. He runs our Monday night meetings to check in with us about how things are going. He read a poem by T.S. Eliot. He's so funny. I'm going to miss Ole Vind come May 18th when they kick me out of here. I don't want to think about going home!

Vi elsker, vi elsker FCK!

Today was the soccer/ fotbold match between FCK and Mid-Jutland.

Most of DIS got to go. If you were enrolled in Danish, you got to go automatically and if not, you could buy a ticket at the front desk. A few people got closed out because they didn't have enough tickets.

I didn't go with the rest of the kids from Grundtvigs; my Danish teacher offered to take us all with him and I didn't realize how close it was to school! But I went with Mogens and everyone in all his classes. I love Mogens. Danish late at night is worth it because he's my teacher.

We got there and Chloe and I went in immediately because we wanted to buy FCK t-shirts, but then found out they were actually outside and we couldn't get back in if we left. So we didn't get t-shirts, but the game was still a lot of fun.

FCK didn't play so well that day. It was sad. And they lost. I forget whether they even scored or not, because there were a few close calls. But Mid-Jutland won with a score of 2. But at least soccer/ fotbold is better to watch than a lot of other sports, I think. There's always something going on, even if the way your team is playing makes you want to cry. I feel like in baseball, you're waiting for that amazing home run to happen. And sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn't.

In other news, Alaina and I were on a mission to get on the jumbo-screen and we succeeded. We saw the camera guy filming a bunch of kids a few rows in front of us, so we decided to hold out our cameras and see if we could get on the screen and get a picture of it. We did! It was awesome. Ours are both blurry, but hers is much better, so I'll post it when I get it from her. It was funny, because a few people I saw later told me they saw my coat on the jumbo screen, to which I responded, "You know, that's funny, because I was actually in my coat at that point in time." I never got comments like that before, but everyone here thinks my coat is really distinctive. So far it's been good, people don't lose me in crowds. Or maybe no one's tried hard enough to lose me. I hope not.

After the game, amidst the masses of people, both DIS students and Danes alike, I ran into Allison and some of her friends. I sent her a text message asking her if she wanted to get dinner. She forgot her phone, but we were on the same page and she invited me to go to the Laundromat Cafe with her, which was really cute. Kind of touristy, but cute nonetheless. It was expensive which was unfortunate, but the tomato-avocado sandwich I got was about the size of my head and really good, so I got my money's worth. And I tried actual strawberry juice. I've never seen the brand (or even much strawberry juice in general) in the United States, but it was really good.

Farmer Party.

Tonight was the welcome party at Luux. I thought about going back into the city for it. I was done with class at 1 p.m. and I couldn't get my free drink until maybe 8 or 9 p.m., at the earliest.

But after an adventure to Vero Italiano, a small (cheap!) Italian restaurant in Copenhagen with Allison, I went back to Grundtvigs and found out that it was a farmer-themed dinner. No one really knew what that meant, except that dinner was moved to 7 p.m. instead of 6 p.m.

So, I put on the only button-down shirt I had, which was white but had some frills, and then a pair of jeans and boots. It was cute - they decorated and everything. Most of us dressed up for the occasion. The tables all had on red and white checkered table cloths and fruit and vegetable centerpieces. It was supposed to be kind of a tribute to rural Denmark at the turn of the century. They played Danish folk music the whole evening. It was kind of cool.

Interestingly enough, only one of the Americans, Carrie, could identify the leek sitting on the table. Molly and I were trying to figure out the English word. All the Danes knew the Danish word. Finally, Signe looked it up in a dictionary.

I must be a bad vegetarian, I need to freshen up on my vegetables, apparently.

Japanese Party

Tonight, I got home late from school as usual. Danish ending at 5:45 is a killer sometimes.

I got home to find the Danes (and some Americans) in the gym playing a game where they put cherry (or grape, I forget) tomatoes on their heads and rammed into the wall.

Then, the evening went on with Sing Star, which is karaoke. It was on a play station or some familiar video game console, but it was funny because there were a lot of Danish songs in addition to all the cheesy American ones that are always involved in karaoke.

Visiting family visit #2

I saw my visiting family for the second time today.

It was really great to see them and also to have a home-cooked meal. The food here is good, but it gets tiring sometimes. I also met their other daughter, Tine. I still have yet to meet Peter but I'm sure I will soon enough.

I love talking to them. It's kind of fun to explain American things and have them explain Danish things. I was talking to them about what a sorority is. I forget how it came up, but I was explaining the concept to Peter, one of the Danes at Grundtvigs, and I happened to mention that to them. It's a little bit difficult to explain, I've realized.