Danish school system

Today, after my classes were done and I'd been home for a little while, I hopped on the bus and met up with Sabina to eat at a pizza place near her school and then attend a presentation in which her choir was performing.

The presentation was for students who are in their final year of what Sabina calls "ground school" and are trying to figure out which Gymnasium to attend. Sabina goes to a really cool gymnasium. It was built quite recently and is quite probably one of the coolest buildings I've ever been inside of. The website is here.

It was fun to have a tour of her school building and learn about what the Danish school system is like. They basically have to choose, at the age of 16 or so, what they want to study in the gymnasium. I guess it makes some sense, and there are tracks available that cover a lot of different material (one at Sabina's school, for example, included Social Studies, math, and English), but it seems like a lot of pressure for a teenager! Maybe I just can't imagine doing it myself when I was that age, and besides, I'm used to the liberal-arts college model. Even though I have a major declared, I could have a semester which included Economics, Environmental Studies, Dance, and an HMCS class if I wanted to, and no one would think it terribly strange. Maybe that's what startles me. They do have some electives, but it seems so different to have to choose the path you want to go down at that age. Sabina said they are allowed to change tracks in their first half year (she actually switched from a music-focused track to an English/Social Studies track), but then they have to follow their track. I mean, what if you did the Math-Physics-Chemistry track and then in your second year took Drama as an elective and found out you loved it and wanted to do that with your life? I'm sure there are ways of getting around these things, but it's still such a foreign concept to me. It was really fun to learn about it though. One really cool thing was that a number of their tracks include media studies or philosophy or other topics we usually don't get to explore academically until we're in college!

Also, we ran into one of her teachers (I think?) and I introduced myself in Danish and the teacher complimented me! It was very nice. I also saw a sign that said "at spise og drikke" which some may recognize as part of the Norwegian table prayer. I didn't actually know what it meant, but I asked Sabina and she said it means to eat and drink, which makes sense and I think I knew that at one point. But it was fun to see how closely the languages are related, especially since just today in Danish, my teacher was talking about how when the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish royalty all get together, they are all able to speak in their own language and understand each other. She did mention that people from Jutland would probably have a hard time understanding Swedes since Jutlanders are used to German accents, and that she herself has a hard time understanding Ny Norsk, but the way the royals speak, the languages are mutually intelligible. It's pretty awesome!

A Trip to the Danish Nationalmuseet

One of the really neat things about the DIS program is that we don't have any classes on Wednesdays. It's not so we can goof off, it's so we can have awesome field trips, and today was my first one (also, the first Wednesday we've been in regular class mode).

So, today I went to the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen with my Nordic Mythology class. First off, I love my Nordic Mythology teacher. He LOOKS LIKE A VIKING. But he's actually incredibly nice and intelligent. Not saying that Vikings weren't intelligent. But they were definitely not nice.

Our trip to the Nationalmuseet was in order to look at artifacts from Danish prehistory. There were some really awesome things, some of which I took pictures of, and added to my photo album on Facebook, which can be found here. If you don't have facebook I'm not sure you'll be able to look at it, so here's the most awesome picture, which is of
a cauldron from the Iron Age or maybe a bit later. It was found in Denmark but it has depictions of very Celtic-looking gods, as well as what appear to be elements of Roman and Tercian mythology. It was likely made by Tercians. So overall, a pretty awesome thing, and a sign of the great amount of cross-cultural exchange (sometimes brutal and rather unpleasant - aka, the cauldron was either a gift or some Danish king totally stole it) going on. This cauldron is gigantic, also. A small person could fit inside it, and there's a scene on the inside that seems to indicate that this perhaps had some ritual significance.

Other awesome things included really sweet Bronze Age stuff, like the "Chariot of the Sun" which is kind of a misnomer, because the horse is not pulling a wheeled thing, but is on "wheels"/solar crosses itself. There were also gigantic musical horns which still play (our teacher said they were probably a bit like bagpipes, and they were actually designed to be taken apart, like a modern clarinet, only gigantic and metal), plus helmets with horns on them. Hint: it was Bronze Age Nordic peoples, not Vikings, who wore those things. In other words, the helmets with horns that Vikings are always depicted wearing were from thousands of years earlier. People just assumed they were made by the Vikings because they were incredibly intricate. The Bronze Age Northern Europeans had a thing with mixing and matching different animals/people, which was likely a significant part of their religion, though we really have no idea. Also, in the Iron Age they developed a way of burying their dead that has left us with lots of awesome stuff, including perfectly preserved clothing and hair!

So it was a great trip overall. In other news, today was super snowy in Copenhagen. I'm pretty sure it snowed all day! Sabina said it's very unusual for this to happen, and I could kind of tell, because hardly anybody shovels their sidewalks.

Yelling in Danish

This past weekend was quite fun and interesting. It was also very calm, which was nice. Sabina was away for most of the weekend on a "Christmas trip" with her sailing club, so it was just me and the host parents.

Dorte and Erling had friends over on Saturday night, as I mentioned in the previous post. There were two couples, one of which had two teenage kids - a boy and a girl. It was pretty fun. We had a lot of really good food, and I got to see handball for the first time. Iceland beat Denmark, so the kids and the two visiting men (with whom I was watching the game) were pretty sad, but it was really cool to see an entirely different sport. The best way I can think to describe it is as a cross between basketball and hockey, but that doesn't fully explain it. I didn't understand all the rules, but it was really fun to watch. At one point in the evening the girl, who was maybe 13, was talking about Twilight to her mom. I was a little sad to learn that that is just as popular here as it is at home. That's globalization for you, I guess - haha! The people stayed until 1 in the morning or so. I think it would have been a bit more fun if I spoke more Danish than what I've got. As it was, the evening dragged on a little bit for me, since I didn't understand any of the conversation that wasn't specially directed at me.

I didn't set an alarm for Sunday morning, but I woke up at 8:40 on my own, proving that my internal clock is skewed way earlier here! We had a leisurely brunch while watching a bit of tennis, then we went for a drive to see the coast. It was really cool - both in terms of temperature and otherwise. I saw the "whiskey belt" which is where the richest people in Denmark live, according to my host family, as well as some adorable houses with thatched roofs! We looked across the sea and saw Sweden, which was also quite exciting. Then we stopped by to visit some friends of theirs from the adoption group they worked with when they were adopting Sabina and Andres (my host brother who I haven't met because he's in Afghanistan with the Danish military) from Colombia. I think the family we visited adopted their children from Asia. The daughter in this family is in her first year at CBS - Copenhagen Business School. She said she was enjoying it quite a bit. I think the son must be around Sabina's age. He and Dorte seemed to be talking about 18th birthday parties.

After we got back, it was just a leisurely afternoon and evening. I got my reading done for the next day, and also discovered that Sabina likes Lady Gaga! It was quite exciting, and we talked about music for quite some time, which was really fun. I also got to talk to my parents and brother yesterday, which was my mom's birthday! That was also really exciting.

Today I had school. When I was coming back into the train station, I noticed some police (or maybe just transit authorities, I wasn't sure and didn't want to stare too much) standing by a guy who had a lot of blood on his face, especially his nose. Then, on my way down the stairs, I saw someone cleaning up a huge amount of blood. I don't know if the guy got in a fight or got mugged or if he just faceplanted on the stairs, but it was pretty nasty. So that was exciting, and a reminder that I do live in a city.

Then, when I was safely in the train, a ticket-checker got on. This was the second time I've encountered them. They come around sometimes to make sure everyone on the S-tog has paid to be where they are. The first time I saw one, she was speaking quite loudly to me, and I thought she was a crazy person because I didn't recognize that she was wearing a uniform, so I ignored her. She must have understood that I wasn't Danish, though, because she switched to English. It was pretty embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as a few nights after that, when a real crazy person got on and was speaking loudly. This person was wearing a snowsuit that looked similar to the ticket-checker uniform, so I started to get out my ticket until I realized that everyone around me was staring at the crazy person! But today I took note of signs that the person yelling at you is a ticket-checker and not a crazy person. They have name tags that are yellow and have something about the train on them. So, if you're ever in Copenhagen and someone begins speaking loudly to you on the train, you'll know.

The beginning of a weekend

Today I was supposed to go to a rugby practice in Svanemøllen, but I ended up getting lost. I got directions online, but I couldn't find the street I was supposed to turn onto. I also started off in the wrong direction. Maybe next time I'll make it to a practice. I was bummed that I didn't get to play rugby, but I enjoyed wandering around Svanemøllen. It was a really pleasant day here, there was a lot of interesting people-watching to do, and I successfully bought some shampoo and body wash, so it wasn't a total waste of time. :)

Yesterday I went to the Kommune to register that I'm going to be here for four months. It was very easy, and the woman who helped me was really nice and spoke excellent English - I suppose you would have to, if your job was registering foreign residents. Then, I went to DIS for my first Nordic Mythology class. There are two sections, but for the first class, we were together - there were a lot of people! My European Storytelling teacher, Bettina, is the instructor for the other section, but she did the introduction for both classes. Apparently my professor is a very important person at the University and had some sort of important meeting. It was exciting, though, because I recognized and sat next to a boy from two of my other classes - it's nice to have someone to sit by! He's a year-long student. Apparently there are about 50 of them altogether, but all but 7 of those 50 are architecture students, so he was talking about how strange it is to have to meet new people all over again. He was a nice guy, though, and I'm glad he's in a number of my classes.

Yesterday night was also the welcome party. It was fun - not least because there was free beer and free coat checks (at that club, coat checks normally cost 30 kr, which is something like 7 USD, so it was nice not to have to pay)! I ended up hanging out with the three girls I met one of the first days (Christy, Becky and Ashley) and with Owen and Bronwen, as well as a guy from my Danish class, Dave, who apparently knew Owen too. For not knowing many people, it's a surprisingly small world! One of the highlights of the evening was the excellent DJ. The transitions between songs were seamless - you didn't even notice when songs switched. Bronwen and I went back on the train together, and then I ended up walking back to the house because I didn't particularly feel like waiting 45 minutes for a bus in the dark, deserted train station. It was a pleasant walk, though, so I didn't mind.

Today, once I got back from my wandering around Svanemøllen, Dorte's nephew Peter and his girlfriend (?) Annika stopped by. They were fun and chatty - they have really cool jobs, working on ships! Peter is "like a captain" (Erling's words) of a boat that goes between northern Jutland and Norway, and Annika is a waitress on a boat that goes from Germany to Norway. She's originally from Lapland, so it was interesting to hear a little bit about her family and what it's like there. They were nice enough to mostly speak in English so that I could understand the conversation.

Well, I guess the guests will be arriving soon, so I'll close for now.

A lesson in Danish royalty & my first day of classes

I should probably start with yesterday, since I didn't get a chance to write about it last evening.

Yesterday was the final day of orientation. It began with a "scavenger hunt" which sounds pretty lame, but was actually really nice. It took us around the area of Copenhagen that DIS is in, from site to site. Although it was incredibly cold and my group decided to skip the last three stops because we were freezing, the sites we did make it to were awesome! We saw the Round Tower/Trinity church, a church and royal observatory built by Christian IV. I thought it was really neat that he built a place that so clearly demonstrates an interest in both science and religion. Next, we saw the King's Gardens and Rosenborg Castle. After that was the Royal Palace, which actually used to be four mansions of lesser nobles, but when the palace where the royal family lived burned down, the mansions were connected and became the home of the royal family. The place where the family used to live now houses parliament. That was one of the stops which we skipped. At the Royal Palace, we had a really interesting professor explain some things about Danish royalty and politics. I wish it had been warmer, because he lectured for a good 10 minutes before we were allowed to go and get free hot beverages. He told us some really interesting stuff, though, my version of which follows.

Feel free to ignore this paragraph if the Danish royal family doesn't interest you. In Denmark, all the kings are named either Frederik or Christian - it alternates, so that the first born son of the king is named after the previous king. Queen Margrethe II, the current monarch, messed up the system royally by being a woman, but she is apparently taking the place of a Christian - her father was Frederik IX and her son (Crown Prince Frederik) will be Frederik X when he becomes king. She also should either be called Queen Margrethe I or Queen Margrethe III, depending on your definition of Queen. She's the first to inherit the title from her father and be ruler (they had to have an amendment made to the Constitution in 1953 stating that in the absence of a son, the first born daughter of the King would reign, which I think is kind of funny: the Danish people voted on whether or not the Queen's power would be legitimate). However, there were two other queens before her who ruled because they had very young sons when their husbands died, and they were in charge until their sons reached majority. They apparently asked the wrong historian right before Margrethe's coronation, though, and he forgot one of the dowager Queens, so she's Queen Margrethe II. Then, in the 90s sometime, the Danish people voted again, and now the first born child, male or female, of the monarch becomes the new monarch, although it looks like that won't come into effect for a while, since Crown Prince Frederik and his wife have two small sons. The Danish monarch also actually has some real power and is more than a figurehead: nothing can become law without the Queen's signature. Anyway, that's some of the cool stuff I learned about the Danish royalty yesterday.

Yesterday I also got an email from the rugby club - the first practice is on Saturday! I'm super glad that there's a rugby team here to play with - hopefully this will become a source of Danish friends!

Today was the first day of classes! Thursdays are my earliest and busiest days, but today was fine, so hopefully that continues throughout the semester. My day started at 6:15 so that I could shower and eat breakfast before catching a 7:19 bus to the train station. My first class was at 8:30: Memory & Identity: Czech Republic. This is my "core course" which will include two study tours, one 4-day one to southern Jutland (the Danish peninsula, on the border with Germany) and one week-long trip to Prague, Budejovice, and Cesky Krumlov. The course will also only meet 7 times, so it will be over in March, which is quite nice. My next class was European Storytelling from Homer to Harry Potter. The professor for this one is adorable: she started the class by saying, "I'm Bettina, and I'm a certified geek. I'm sure many of you are also geeks." She's also really smart - I learned a lot about the theory surrounding the study of oral traditions, even in the first class. She said the first few classes will be theory-heavy so that we can apply these theories more thoroughly once we actually begin reading the myths, legends, and fairy tales with which we will be working. My third class of the day was Danish. It's basically the third time we've met, so I just learned some new things to say and a few new words.

Then, I came back to Holte. It was the first time I've seen the sun since coming here, and the first time I've seen Holte in the daylight - it's lovely, and was really exciting to see blue skies. Even though it's only been four days since the last time I saw blue skies, it was great to be reassured that the weather won't always be grey. Sabina and I spent some time talking about world events and where we'd like to go in the world, and she showed me pictures from her confirmation - it's a really big deal here! I also explained rugby to Sabina and talked about what things are like back home. We made burgers for dinner, which was really fun - the Ipsens have a super-intense, high-tech kitchen, but it's really fun to cook in.

Tomorrow I register with the Kommune. I think a Kommune is like a village office or county seat - basically I'm telling them that I live here, and then I'll get a card that will serve as my ID, my library card, and my health insurance card. Very exciting. Tomorrow also will be the "welcome party" for DIS - they've apparently rented a club from 8-11, so that will be really fun. Hopefully I'll get to meet a few more fellow students. That's been the hardest thing about living with a host family - I haven't met that many Americans. I guess that's kind of the point of study abroad, but it would be nice to have a few compatriots to socialize with.

Also, it should be possible to leave comments now! The settings were strangely set, but now I think anyone who desires may post!

Getting oriented

Today was the first real day of orientation. It started early - I woke up at 7 and ate breakfast with my host sister Sabina, and then at 7:45 Dorte (host mom) drove me to the train station because Sabina had to take her bike so that she could get to school later in the day. Sabina and I got on the train, and I was happy to see that Bronwen was on the same one. There were a lot of DIS students on this train, since the town where it starts (two stops before Holte, where I live) is where the Folkeskjole (I don't know if that's even close to correct) is located. The Folkeskjole is one of the numerous living options there are with DIS, although admittedly it's the one I understand the least. I think it's a little bit like living in student housing, but with the option of shared meals every day. Something like that.

The DIS day started with a welcoming ceremony, which was very nice and included some lovely music. The ceremony took place at the University of Copenhagen's Ceremony Room - a beautiful old room designed for ceremonies like the welcoming one. A highlight was the paintings of Copenhagen University history. Then, I headed out to find my way to the DIS buildings and pretty quickly got lost. I wandered across a large square and was thoroughly confused, but luckily I saw a gaggle of similarly confused- and American-looking girls. We figured out that we'd wandered about a block and a half too far, so we turned around and made our way to the DIS area, where we did a little exploring of the administrative building. We found the library (it's rather smaller than the Mac one - but no surprise there, really!) and then we got our books for our classes - I have a TON for my Nordic Mythology class. The other classes didn't have so many books, which was nice. Most of them have a "compendium" which is a collection of all the articles or book chapters we'll need to read in a nicely bound book. The one for European Storytelling is HUGE, but that shouldn't really surprise me.

Four of the girls I was lost with are also living with host families. We chatted after getting our books sorted out, and we ate lunch together. All but one of us had a lunch from our host family - some made it themselves and others (like me) had had a lunch packed for us. It was fun getting to hear about what their college experiences are like. Hopefully I'll get to see them again. We walked to the train station (Nørreport) together after our first Survival Danish lesson. Two of the girls live in host families that are neighbors and friends. It sounded like they were having a fun time with that - we all seem to be enjoying our host families so far, which is nice to hear. Also, Becky, one of these girls, is going to be doing the Iceland study tour as well! Yay!

At 1:30, we started Survival Danish with our orientation groups. I later learned that these are organized by our Danish classes for the semester, those of us who are taking Danish. So most of the kids in my group are also in my Danish class - except for the ones who aren't taking a language class at all. This class consisted of a trip to the supermarket where we learned how grocery stores work in Denmark (not so different - the one we went to was very like the Whole Foods near Macalester, if a little smaller) and then the words for many basic foods, and then some basic phrases: What's your name? My name is..., Where are you from?, I come from..., What do you study? I study..., Hi! and Bye-bye! (These are very fun to say in Danish - it's Hej! and Hej hej! - which are pronounced Hi! and Hi hi!) I found it much easier to learn these phrases when our teacher just said them to us and had us repeat than it was to read them - I'm sure I'll get used to letters making entirely different sounds, but for now, speaking and hearing are much easier.

After this, the day was over at DIS, so we wandered back to the train station to head home. I had no trouble getting on the correct train, and made it back to Holte without too much trouble. However, once I left the train station, I took a wrong turn and walked for half an hour, carrying my big bag of books, before realizing that I was lost. After a quick call to Erling (host dad), who sent Dorte to pick me up, all was sorted out. Dorte told me I was supposed to take a bus from the station to the house, which I hadn't known until that moment. Oops. I'll have to figure out which bus to take and when it comes for tomorrow.

This evening, Sabina showed me pictures of her sailing trips that she's done - they look like so much fun! I also took my first shower at the Ipsen house. Last night, I asked about time restrictions, and Erling and Dorte said "Oh, three, four minutes is good. Five minutes sometimes is okay." I'm really glad I asked! Water is very expensive in Denmark, I guess, so they prefer to limit the shower times. If you've ever lived with me, or near me, for that matter, you'll know I take absurdly long showers, but my first very short shower wasn't too bad, once Sabina showed me how the shower fixture works.

Peace!

Copenhagen!

Well, I've made it here!

The flight from Chicago to Stockholm was pretty nice - there were way more features than any airplane ride I've ever been on before. I sat next to a girl (Markeeta (sp?)) who is also at DIS, goes to school in Milwaukee, and is from Chicago originally. Highlight: tied between flying into the sunrise when landing and the fact that I was able to watch movies on an individual screen in front of my seat. Lowlight: Markeeta and I were in the last row before a box-like thing (apparently that's where SAS puts the Economy Extra patrons) and thus couldn't recline or sleep very much. The flight from Stockholm to Copenhagen was in a much smaller airplane, and obviously much shorter. For this one, I wasn't sitting by anybody, so I had 3 seats to myself, which I took full advantage of by taking a luxurious nap.

After waiting a bit at the airport in Copenhagen, a large group bussed over to the IT University in Copenhagen, where we were briefly oriented and then set loose to register and get cell phones if we didn't have an appropriate plan already or if we had ordered them online (this second course of action is the one I chose...definitely a good choice). Then there was still almost 2 hrs to kill before host families were set to pick us up. I spent them chatting with two of the other students from Mac - Bronwen and Owen - and with Markeeta. Right before I went to meet my host family, I met another girl with a pump. We commiserated on the difficulty of transporting diabetes supplies for the semester.

Then, I finally got to meet my host parents in person! It was very exciting! Dorte and Erling took me to the train station to get my transportation pass, and then we went home. At home, I met my host sister, Sabina, who was on her way out the door for a driving lesson. Apparently she will be helping me get to where I need to be for tomorrow. Their house is wonderful - it's very spacious and warm (as in cozy, not temperature-wise). I had a chance to unpack and get my room organized, and then we had a lovely dinner of soft-shell tacos.

I'm really excited to start getting oriented and meeting classmates...I'm especially anxious to start learning Danish! However, the next week looks like it will be remarkably busy, so I'm going to head towards bed now, even though it's only 7:07 pm here. I figure, since I only got 2 hours of sleep while traveling, 12 hours of sleep should be great!

Obligatory reference to some annoying old song about travelling

Well, I'm sitting here, in my small hometown in middle America, looking at my incredibly full backpacking pack and suitcase, getting ready to embark on what will surely be an amazing, exciting, and challenging semester.

I know who I will be staying with - my Danish family has contacted me via email and I am now a friend of my host sister on Facebook. I've purchased little presents for them, which hopefully they will like. I'm all packed (also terrified that I will end up forgetting something in spite of careful planning). I've purchased bus tickets to prove that I will, in fact, be leaving Denmark (never mind that I haven't got a plane ticket back to the States yet...I don't know exactly what the summer holds, so how can I make plans at this time anyway?) My mom got me a baller new camera, so that's pretty exciting, and I've set my parents up with Skype - technology is AWESOME! I just got to look at two of the syllabuses (should that be syllabi? My computer seems to think syllabi isn't a word...) for my classes - I'm so excited for them, now that I can see a little bit of how the coursework is shaping up! Also a little nervous, since I'm taking 6 courses. Even though it still adds up to fewer credits than a 4-course semester at Mac, it looks like these courses at least will be just as much work as a regular Macalester class. I guess time will tell.

I'll be doing the farewell thing in stages, I guess. Some friends from home and I have plans to go out and about this evening for what will surely be a good time. My family and I head out to Chicago tomorrow afternoon, once my brother gets home from school, and we'll stay in a hotel there. My family and I will be getting together with one of my friends from Mac, Robert (who lives 3 minutes from our hotel) for brunch on Saturday morning before my flight leaves at 4:25. I'm going to try to be at the airport around 1, which seems really early, but with the recent terrorist attempts, I'm guessing security will take rather longer. I also really don't want to miss my flight! Wouldn't that be terrible? Apparently there are several other folks who are going to DIS on the same flight - hopefully we'll be able to meet and chat a bit.

Despite all this preparation, it doesn't feel real yet. It's very strange. I don't feel like I'll be leaving the country in about 49 hours (Oh my goodness!!) even though I just spent the last hour re-packing and trying to squeeze as much of my life as will fit into a backpacking pack and tiny carry-on suitcase (which, by the way, is very difficult when your life includes boxes of diabetes supplies). I feel like I'll just be chillin' in my messy room at home, reading too many webcomics and sleeping late for weeks to come. But I won't be! I get the feeling it won't seem real until I'm in Copenhagen. Actually, it probably won't seem real until a few weeks after I get there. But it's sure going to be an adventure!