Easter Holidays in the UK

Sorry for taking so long to post. If you recall, I went to Stockholm a few weeks back. I saw a museum with a giant boat that sank on its maiden voyage. I also met two Americans, two English girls, and an Australian and talked to them at the same time. 3 types of "English" being spoken at once! That was neat, and I had a great time, but other than that there isn't much to say.

From March 31st to April 9th I was touring the UK. Our first stop was London which was beautiful. The first night we explored Greenwich (an area outside of the city center where our hostel was) by foot. We found this DEEP staircase that went down to a foot tunnel under the River Thames. That was pretty sketch..but we found the old Naval College which was beautiful. We also passed a grocery store and I started my search for Hot Pockets (wikipedia says they are sold in the UK. I was determined to find them!) The next day we saw the major tourist locations such as Buckingham Palace, Parliament and Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower of London, etc. It was amazing! I ate fish and chips from a greasy stand outside the Tower of London, I saw the Crown Jewels and imagined Moriarty from the BBC show Sherlock breaking in and dancing in them, I bought amazing sunglasses with the UK Flag design on the lenses, and much more. Towards the end of our trip we passed a guy doing some quick but impressive paintings in the entrance to the Underground (their subway system). After walking about 100 feet we decided to turn around and go back and look. They were 10 pounds (16 dollars each) and there were three of us, so I asked if we could buy 3 for 25 pounds. He agreed! The neat thing is that each painting was different, they were all scenes of London but all were different. Definitely my favorite souvenir of the trip :D

We were supposed to go to Ireland from London, but we didn't really plan our traveling ahead of time. "Oh, we can figure it out when we get there". But then when we tried to figure it out "oh, you mean that Ireland isn't connected to the rest of the UK and we'd have to spend an entire day to get there by bus/train and FERRY?" Yeah, American's are bad at geography...so we decided to go to Cardiff, Wales instead. Best accidental decision ever. In Cardiff I found out there was a 4 hour tour of locations used for filming in my favorite show (well, tied with Supernatural P) Doctor Who for only 20 pounds (about 32 dollars). Four hours of talking about, learning about, and SEEING places that I love from my favorite show with people who share my enthusiasm? Priceless. I met a great English family that was visiting. The tour was the christmas present to their daughters. I reenacted some scenes and poses with the oldest daughter, Hannah (she was a Ginger like the character in the show :D). We also talked about their terrible school uniforms, how yellow school buses don't exist in the UK so they rent them for Prom, and other things. She informed me on facebook later that her mom wants to adopt me. I probably couldn't The tour guide was a really quirky but nice guy who has been an extra in 6 episodes of the show and had some great and embarrassing "fangirl" moments with David Tennant. But it gets better. We stopped at Amy Pond's house (she is a character in the show) and the "real" person that lives there told our guide that he had been warned they were filming there the next day. He only told me and the English family and we made plans to meet up the next day. So the next day we met up and walked back to Amy's house and saw them film! Karen Gillan walked by and waved and say Hi to us, and I even met her obviously gay flatmate who had come with her to watch. I asked him if she was a good flatmate, if she did her dishes and didn't leave her laundry around and he said yes, she was the best. Then I asked to take a picture with him and I probably weirded him out, but he said yes :D So I took plenty of pictures and even filmed a scene that showed two of the beloved characters (a married couple) fighting. I put the video on youtube and shared it on tumblr and it got picked up by a Doctor Who blog and now it has over 16,000 views :-)

Aside from the Doctor Who stuff, I toured Cardiff Castle which is a beautiful castle in the middle of the city. It is surreal to see that sort of structure in the middle of a city! At night Nikki, Danni and I went to O'Neil's, a chain Irish Pub place that had a deal: 2 meals for pounds (normal meals were 6.50, so for just a little more you could eat two!). So the first night I had fish and chips for one meal and "gammon steak" with another. That was essentially a ham steak with eggs and it was all delicious! Then we bought a bottle of wine and watched some live music in O'Neil's by a local band called "The Smoking Aces". I requested some great songs like "If I Die Young" (the girl looked like the singer from The Band Perry), "Just a Kiss", etc, but they didn't know any :-( During the night a girl walked in and sat down alone and was watching. The curious thing was that she was writing things down while watching. The twins and I speculated about what it could be and we decided she was reviewing the band. During a break I went over and started to talk to her and found out that actually she was just writing down private thoughts, like a journal or diary. She was also a french girl with a masters in econ who was in town for an interview to get into a Journalism program so she could be a finance journalist. I hope it went well for her! The next night the twins and I ate at O'Neil's again. I ate a bbq chicken breast and a bbq burger with bacon. English bacon. English bacon is basically a thin ham steak and is as delicious as traditional bacon, but for different reasons. And again we watched the live music and again we failed at making requests :-/ but both nights the music they did play was great! I didn't take any pictures, but I should mention that the look and feel of this hostel was great. The lounge/bar on the main floor had seats plastered in stamps, or stickers, or interesting colors as well as some beds set up as couches/lounges.

And then we went to Edinburgh, Scotland to meet up with some friends of a friend. My floormate of two years, Zane, studied in Edinburgh this past fall semester and most of his friends were studying there for a year. One of them was going on holiday and was kind enough to let us stay in his room! What a nice guy. Another of his friends, a Spaniard named Fernando, gave us the best guided tour of a city that I have ever been on! He knew so much information about everywhere that we went that I almost didn't believe him! It makes me feel bad about the College of Engineering tours I give :-/ That night we met up with even more Spaniards to go out and party for the only night over break. In Odense, Spaniards tend to stick together so I thought it made me chuckle to see that they do the same in Edinburgh. And, just like in Odense, they are some of the nicest and most fun people you could possibly meet! One of the girls did premium make up jobs for the other girls and then we went out to a super neat club called Espionage. It had multiple floors, each with it's own bar and I think slightly different music (though, my memory can't be fully trusted...). The next day we were taken to "Arthur's Seat", an extinct volcano literally just across the street from the residence hall we were staying in. It isn't super tall, but it is tall enough. And IN town. So. Cool.

At the beginning of this post I mentioned my search for Hot Pockets and then haven't said anything since. Because wikipedia is a liar and there are no goddamn hot pockets anywhere! There were poptarts and they were bloody expensive, but no hot pockets. :-/ O well, it was a pretty great (and expensive) trip, but well worth it all!!


oh, ps: American money is ugly and boring compared to European money. Seriously. look at the picture below for how awesome the coins in the UK are!!

p.p.s: i accidentally put the captions ABOVE the pictures this time. I hope it makes sense :P

Tower Bridge in London

Westminster Abbey

Me, rocking my sweet souvenir shades, with Big Ben in the background (Big Ben is actually the bell inside, but whatever)

The center keep (surrounded by a moat) in Cardiff Castle

Amy and Rory Pond (aka Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill) outside "their" house filming :D

My British family and our tour guide, Matt

My fish and chips meal and gammon steak meal, as well as a bacon burger, irish stew, and ham and bacon salad. We ate every bite.

The ceiling of a room in Cardiff Castle. Awesome, right?

I failed to mention this, but the street sweepers in Cardiff went around seriously every 30 minutes or so. It was insane. There was always one right outside the hostel cleaning. All day, every day.

Faggots are meat things made from a bunch of disarded pig parts. Apparently they like them in Wales.

Us sitting upon "Artur's Seat" in Edinburgh (where the rest of the picture are)

Copenhagen!

Hej!

So last Wednesday (March 14) we went to the quiz night again. But this time instead of 4 people, we had 20! We had two full teams of 8 and then a half team. I came with a group of Danes from my kitchen so they stayed on my team which was lucky for us. There were a lot more questions about Denmark this time so the other teams really suffered. But there was a Doctor Who question!! "Who was the first companion in the new series of Doctor Who?" Rose Tyler, of course! So that was exciting. But we still got second place by 1 point in the first round. Then in the second round we got 4th place. But out of 23 teams I'd say that's pretty good!

Thursday (March 15) I succeeded in doing what I hadn't been able to do in the past. I went out on a Thurday and made it to class on Friday. Congrats to me! And then on Friday I actually stayed in and went to bed around 10:30 or so so that I could wake up at 5:30ish to catch the bus for our Copenhagen Trip!

So Saturday we got up early and met at the Polish house (near the bus station) where we would leave our bikes. But Danni and Nikki weren't there so I called them. No answer, that meant they were probably riding and couldn't answer (or so we thought) we I texted them and said just to meet at the bus and we started walking. Then they replied saying they'd just woken up (25 minute before the bus was supposed to leave). Then they freaked out and caught a cab and made it on time, so that was a great way to start the day. Also, everybody was surprised that this was my first time on a double decker charter bus. It was kind of neat. but anyway...then we started the two hour drive to Copenhagen. There is a super long bridge to cross but it was far too foggy to see the beautiful view that is normally there. o well.

Then we were in Copenhagen! We dropped off our bags and hopped on the metro to our first stop: Christiania. Christiania is a semi-independent area in Copenhagen that Denmark allows to exist. It is their own little social experiment. We met a guide there who took us on a multi-hour rambling tour of the place. It was started 40 years ago by a group of hippies in the 70's in an abandoned military barracks. Since then it has been mostly known for it's "pusher street", a street where marijuana and hash are openly sold. It is pretty run-down, unattractive, and all-around slummy. But it is also an excellent choice of an alternative lifestyle for the mere 900 people that live there. You don't get to "buy a house and move in", you have to get selected to move in. The houses are not owned by the people that live in them, they are owned by the community and you rent them. Even if you build the house yourself, it becomes the communities property. There are jobs, businesses, "government", and other things.

It was a nice tour, but the guy kept talking and talking and extended all the way through our lunch break. We then had to ride the metro back to the city center and try to eat lunch in 30 minutes before catching a walking tour of Copenhagen. I found a subway right away and ate a delicious footlong (30cm according to them) sandwich. I had a BMT (it was their sub of the day), but I noticed that their chicken breasts looked significantly nicer than the ones in the US. Also, only one type of cheese (and it wasn't labeled American) so that made me sad. I miss my pepper jack :-( I also asked the veggie lady if she'd let me taste a pickle first because the ones I find here are sweet pickles, not normal dill. She looked at me weird but complied. I was relieved to know they were normal. Now, if only I could find them in the store...hm...All of my other friends were running late so we missed the best part of the walking tour, visiting the "round tower". Actually, that was really the only part of the walking tour. The rest consisted of us "walking", but not much "touring" through two main streets of Copenhagen. But that's ok, it was gorgeous. This is actually the first time I've really walked around a "big city" (i lived near minneapolis but I never took the time to explore it. oops) so it was really neat. We walked around for a while, spent a half hour in the Lego Store, saw a St. Patty's celebration going on in front of the City Hall, then stopped at an irish pub so the crew could drink a couple green beers and I could enjoy some refreshing water. I'd say they celebrate St. Patty's as hard as we do in America. Not as hard as in Chicago...but as much as we do in Iowa at least.

Then we went to a Turkish buffet (included in the trip) which turned out to be "ok". There was a pretty unflavorful roast, some-what tasty couscous, and some onion rings. Oh wait, those aren't onion rings! Much to us American's surprise, the onion rings were actually kalamari rings! They were squid rings fried in batter and they were delicious. The twins liked them until they realized what they were...and then it was just too gross :P They were really the only good thing served. Mid-meal a belly dancer came out and danced with a couple people so that was fun to watch, but it was altogether unremarkable.

After this we went to a bar that had made a deal with our group for "buy one get one" drinks, so we each enjoyed a double round and then headed back to our hotel to finish what we had brought with us (this is about 10:30am). There we got rick-rolled by VH1 Denmark which was fun. After spending 20 minutes trying to get a cork out of a wine bottle for the girls without a corkscrew, Alexis resorted to just pushing it through. Then we tried to research online and in guidebooks where a nice dance club was nearby...but eventually we just decided to wing it. We walked around and Mateusz and I looked in some clubs to see if they were good enough. Eventually we were enticed by an offer from a club for 130kr entrance and free bar. Then when we got the group over they said it would be 150kr....but we just wanted to dance so we took it. It was just shy of 30 dollars to get in, but some of us would have spent much more than that at a normal bar so I think it was a good deal. Also, it was nice to be able to order things that tasted good rather than worrying about getting your moneys worth. And order we did...and dance we did! Until about 4:30 then most of us walked back to the hotel in the pouring rain. Kamil and Mateusz stayed behind so that they could come in later and be loud and wake everybody up (except me! :D) and ruin their sleep. So I slept from 5 to 730 or so and woke up sober and fine. Or at least that's how I felt. The others were tired, and Kamil and Mateusz remained drunk for the entire day.

We started our day with a recovery ride on a harbor tour boat. We rode around enjoying some great views of the city. I got a couple great pictures that I'll show below. After this we went to the Queens residence or something and saw the changing of the royal guard which was pretty neat. There was some marching, and some marching-band playing, and then it went on too long...but I took some video. We wanted to enter a big Cathedral but it was closed. So we walked to Rosenborg Castle instead. The entrance was something like 80kr so we didn't go in, but got some great pictures of the derpy-looking lion out in front of it. Then we spent time looking for a "China Box", these little stands in the wall that sold boxes of Chinese food for approx. 30kr. I really really wanted one. But the first thing we found was a real restaurant that offered them but also offered a buffet...How could I say no to a buffet? So Tina and I got the buffet, Kamil and Mateusz settled for a box, Roberto ate nothing, and the twins waited and got Subway later. Tina spent the whole meal trying to break the rules and give food to other people while I ate my fill of fried shrimp, chicken, some tenderloin type thing, and lo mein. Yum. It was exactly what you'd expect: dry bland chinese buffet food. Glad to see that some things are universal :D but it was very much worth it.

There were a lot of great things to see (though I don't know what most of them are :P) but the best part was spending so much time with my great friends. We were all exhausted on the trip home and slept through most of it and I think we almost all slept for around 12 hours (or more!) Sunday night.

I took 450 photos on the trip, so maybe I will try to upload them to a flikr account some day, but for now I'll share just a few with you.

Settling into a routine

I really do apologize for being so bad at this and waiting so long between posts...it makes them long and hard to read, but I appreciate those of you that make an effort to read them :-)

Monday, March 5th:
A pretty standard day, slept in and did nothing, then went to Monday's Cafe for my weekly burger. Delicious as always. The real special thing today was that Anais brought some cards (actually a 70+ card Tarot deck, but we only used the 52-card "standard" sub-set of the cards) and we played what is now called "the slap game", which is Egyptian Ratscrew. Most of the people didn't know how to play, but they now have the hang of it and are hooked!

Wednesday, March 7th:
I was invited by Corina (Romanian) and Juncal (Spanish) to go to a bar called Bodegaen for their weekly quiz night. It was quite intimidating to be in a bar packed full of Danes expecting us to lose, but it went quite well. The first round was 5 categories of 3 questions each (15 total questions). The quiz-master asked questions in Danish and then came over and translated them for us. The first three were computer questions (The answer to the first one was ctrl + alt + del, the second question was "what is RAM?", and the third question was about keyboard layouts and the answer was Dvorak. I think I was the only person in the bar that knew the answer to that one...). Then after the round we handed in our answer sheet and waited for it to be scored. The quiz master began reading off the scores and places and teams cheered, but we didn't hear our name. Then finally we did, and one of the other teams boo'd. That's when it hit us: WE WON! A group of three friends from three different countries just beat a room full of Danish teams of 6-10 people. We were pretty excited and won a round of free beer. I don't know if I have said this on the blog before, but I hate the taste of beer...I barely got down half before I gave up. And that is also how the second round of the quiz went. They started asking questions about danish candy and danish kings and we said "nope...we have no chance". Altogether a great night out, though :-)

Thursday, March 8th
My first Danish lesson...I had missed the one before so I struggled through the beginning, but by the end I was able to say "Hej! Jeg hedder Cody. Jeg taler engelsk. Jeg kommer fra USA. Jeg bor alene på første sal til højre." Which translates to "Hi. My name is Cody. I speak English. I come from the USA. I live alone on the first floor to the right." I will tell you more about Danish lessons in the weeks to come.

I don't think I need to describe my weekend anymore...it's pretty standard at this point haha But I met some people from the Czech Republic for the first time, so that was neat. Also, next Saturday we will visit Copenhagen for an ESN trip, but this weekend they visited us and there was a big party at Club Retro. Somebody brought an ESN flag (reminder, ESN stands for Erasmus Student Network) and inspired me to put in an order for one myself. Then I will have all my friends here sign it :D

Monday, March 12:
I woke up later than I should have and raced to the bank to withdraw 1450dkk so I could rush to the university to pay for my Seabattle Tickets. [http://esnodense.dk/event/seabattle-0] For just over $250 I am going on a 5 day trip including a 48-hour cruise from Stockholm, Sweden to Talinn, Estonia. That includes transportation and dinner buffet on the cruise. There will be some other expenses along the way, but there is no denying that at that price this trip is a STEAL! That will be April 21-25. Oh, and all my friends got tickets as well :D After we got our tickets we went to the cafeteria which was an interesting experience. They had a buffet where you pay by weight, 8kr per 100g (if you convert it then it's 7 dollars for a pound or so). I got some rice (driest rice I have ever eaten) and some spicy meat/vegetable/slop that i put on it. I also cut off two slices of bread and grabbed some turkey for one and some salami/spiced sausage meat for the other for open faced sandwiches and a strawberry yogurt drink (the Dane's love yogurt drink) all for about 7 dollars.

Then I dragged Danni and Nikki to the city center to go to Lidl. That is where I bought frozen pizzas after arriving during my first walking tour of Odense. To keep myself from having to go back again soon I bought 10 pizzas. The American way :-) Then we rushed home to drop off our groceries before leaving again for Monday's Cafe. The meal of the day was "coq au vin med mos" - Rooster in wine with mashed potatoes. The meat, "gravy", and potatoes were GREAT, but there were these mini onion things in it that I strongly disliked. Also, it was not enough food...so then I ordered a burger. It was a large meal, but only 14 dollars for both meals. I can stomach that (pun intended!) Then, as is our new custom, we went back to play egyptian ratscrew :-)

Thanks for reading, I have many exciting trips coming up so stay tuned for many great pictures and stories!

Ewelina showed up after we won the first round at quiz night and was able to share in the spoils of our victory :-)

Totally inspired to get one of these flags now! How cool is this?

Coq au vin med mos - It was good! But not enough for me...

The back staircase in Ungdomshuset/Monday's Cafe has cool paintings all the way up. Upstairs we play Foosball :-)

Getting a little warmer...

Things are getting a bit warmer here in Odense which is good because when I went to leave for the "Monday's Cafe" (yes, they say "Monday's" as a possessive) in the city center on Monday I found that I had a flat tire! So instead of staying home I decided that the weather was nice enough to walk. It was a gorgeous day and 40 minutes later I found myself at "Ungdomshuset", or youth house, which is a place that is a cafe for young people and serves cheap meals on Mondays. They have a daily meal which was brisket, potatoes, and cole slaw and they also have a delicious burger meal which was a burger and fries with two types of mayo for the fries (which are clearly homemade). Most of us ordered that. It was actually very filling and most of us felt like we'd won a major battle by finishing it. Except Anaise...the tiny French girl was talking about eating cakes and chocolate and wanting ice cream after finishing her meal. It was really nice to get out and just talk and have a good time with friends in the city. I also got a pitcher of water for our table, but everybody was drinking beer with their meal (no thanks) so I drank a liter and a half of water by myself! After spying on our Greek friend George across the room talking to a girl (and not-so-sneakingly trying to take pictures of him) one of my friends asked me "did you get your project done for tomorrow?" to which I replied "nah, i'll have it done by class Friday." "but Cody, the delivery is tomorrow" (they say delivery rather than "it is due tomorrow") so then I had to leave early and walk all the way back to my dorm to work on this programming project. I worked from 9pm until 6am and made almost zero progress. But, I did double check that the lesson notes from the previous lesson said "if you do not finish the project in this period, finish it by next lesson" which conflicts with the due date on the calendar, so I emailed our professor (and got an automatic reply saying he is ill, and he is still ill so he couldn't look at it anyway) and said that I would get it done when I could.

After class Thursday I lamented to Anaise that my bike was still broken and I needed to get it fixed so I could go get groceries because I had no food. She offered to make me lunch, so I went over to her place and enjoyed a piece of chicken and some potatoes cooked in a french cream with a cooked cream apple thing for dessert. It was really good and certainly the best lunch I've had since I got here! We talked and she told me about her school and how every year they rent out an entire hotel in a town in Spain for about 1000 students to go enjoy for a weekend. It sounded really fun and they had a video about it and everything. Perhaps it is because I go to a bigger school (28,000), but it seems like it is more common in Europe for an entire school/class/department to do something big like that. Another example is the new freshmen bio-chem (or something similar) students here in Denmark just went on a weekend trip to get to know each other. Definitely a cultural difference from America that I wouldn't mind seeing adopted back home.

After I left Anaise's dorm I went to a bike shop to try and get my bike tube fixed. Naive me thought they could just do it on the spot. Nope, the next opening was Monday. So instead I bought a tube and walked home. I then proceeded to walk to where I thought my Danish class was. We signed up for the course at the University, so I just assumed the classes were there. Nope. Wrong. So then I was embarrassed and walked back to my dorm and found somebody to help me fix my bike. It was actually really hard because the gear shift on the back is an odd contraption that we weren't familiar with so we it took a while to figure out how to get it off. I still don't actually understand the mechanics of how it changes the gears, but o well. My bike works now! Everybody went out to A-Bar again (like they do every thursday) but I decided to stay in and enjoy a night at home chatting on facebook and plowing through Vampire Diaries until 6am (class was cancelled Friday due to the professor being ill).

Saturday afternoon (after a late night of watching movies. It had been a while since I had seen Zoolander XD) I met up with Nikki and Danni to go walk around the city center taking photographs. It was supposed to be nice out...unfortunately the wind was SUPER cold and numbed our hands, but I still managed to take a lot of pictures. Good ones? Doubtful. But I took them, nonetheless :D Though I have no idea what most of them are pictures of...but it is pretty! Prettier than Des Moines or Ames at least haha That night found us all partying in Anaise's kitchen in HCO which was nice because I didn't have to ride all the way to the City Center and back. Or at least I shouldn't have had to. But I'll get to that in a second. We listened to terrible music on youtube and played with play-doh. Ewelina takes the prize for the most interesting creation: a blue whale (made of orange play-doh) using a jump-rope and wearing a gold crown with emeralds. Corina is the runner up with her pretty multi-colored flowers. But somewhere in the night I thought it was a good idea to put my keys in the pocket of Ewelina's shirt. Which was fine and all...until she left. With my keys. Why my friends let me do that (or why I thought it was a good idea in the first place) I will never know, but it meant that at 3AM I had to ride across town (on a borrowed bike) to get my keys back.

Today's group supper was prepared by my Spanish floormate Sandra and was a spanish omellete: A circle cake shaped thing of eggs, fried potatoes, and onions (called a tortilla? but not like a flour tortilla, so I am confused) and then "pan con tomate" (break with tomato) which was little bread circles with minced/crushed/something tomato and olive oil. We also had chorizo and a special spanish ham. This chorizo is just too rich for me. It was VERY delicious, but more than a bite and it just hurt to eat. The ham was a bit more mild but still quite rich and oily (if that is the right word?) and is now my favorite hors d'oeuvres meat.

Enjoy my pictures below and thanks again for reading!

Just chillin' with my bro H.C. Anderson. (from now on he will be called H.C. Hammer)

My Bro H.C. Hammer wrote a story about a King and a Mirror or something. This is a statue (near A-Bar, actually) depicting the story

Me taking a stroll down a gorgeous, winding, Odense street

I had to beg them to do this, but I am glad they did :D

A food cart just driving down the street. It sells burgers and hotdogs and stuff. I very much regret not buying something from it :-(

Ewelina's king whale and his jump rope next to a cute turtle and a not-so-cute blue whale or dolphin or something lol what did YOU do on Saturday night??

Spanish Omelette/tortilla something with tomato, chorizo, and some ham stuff.

Fastelavn!

So I guess this is the time of year that people visit their friends. (when are you coming to visit me??) Sandra, my Spanish floormate, had her friend Silvia over for a couple days. Silvia is also from Spain but is actually studying in Germany. So Thursday I hung out with the Spanish girls (Sandra, Maria, and Laura) and Silvia as well as Juan, Carlos, and some of their other Spanish friends for a pre-party before going out to A-Bar. There I tried Jaegerbombs for the first time and I have to say they are definitely my favorite thing on the planet now which surprised me as I hate the two ingredients (Jaeger and Redbull) separately. But somehow together they are amazing. Conversations with Silvia were awesome and interesting because every third or fourth sentence included a German word (on accident!). She said she actually struggled to speak Spanish with the people here because she has been in Germany so long speaking German.

Friday was actually a recovery day and I stayed in to catch up on Supernatural and spend my night watching my new guilty pleasure "The Vampire Diaries". I love the show "True Blood" but there are no new episodes until July and I was really craving a good Vampire-melodrama. I am not ashamed to admit that I have loved every second of it :-)

Saturday was quite the experience and my first time partying with my Danish floormates. Odense was celebrating "Fastelavn", kind of a silly spring halloween. All I know is that it is an excuse to dress up in a costume and have fun. Wikipedia is better at explaining things than I am, so here is an excerpt from the article: Traditional events include slå katten af tønden ("hit the cat out of the barrel"), which is somewhat similar to using a piñata. The Danes use a wooden barrel, which is full of candy and sometimes oranges and has the image of a cat on it. Historically there was a real black cat in the barrel, and beating the barrel was superstitiously considered a safeguard against evil. After the candy pours out, the game continues until the entire barrel is broken. The one who knocks down the bottom of the barrel (making all the candy spill out) becomes kattedronning ("queen of cats"); the one who knocks down the last piece of the barrel becomes kattekonge ("king of cats").

So I dressed up as a cowboy borrowing a plaid shirt, handkerchief, and cowboy hat from Julius on my floor. One couple on my floor was dressed as a police woman and a prisoner, another like two Waldos, and Morten was dressed as an angel with pink wings and a white toga. We started with a group meal of Tacos which were DELICIOUS! They made a lot of meat, hard shells, cheese, corn, fresh and delicious lettuce, and some other stuff including half a kilo of peppers. Bo promise to eat whatever was left of the peppers at the end...Much to his gf's dismay, he followed through on that promise and ate nearly a pound of peppers after finishing a meal of tacos. And this was BEFORE any real drinking happened. We started out by playing a fun game called "Shrek". You make a giant pitcher of a mixed drink (whatever you want, we did a 2 parts juice/soda 1 part liqour) and start out with one die and six empty shot glasses (one for each number on the die). You go around the circle rolling the die, if that glass is empty then you fill it and it is the next person's turn. If it is full, drink it and roll again. If you fill the last glass or empty the last glass, then you have to drink all 6 (and then roll to see which glass to fill). It is really simple and fun. We were also playing rock band as well which was a blast. It had been too long since I'd played that.

Then we went to Huset (the house), which is a building they use as a bar/party room for events like this right at my dormitory. The drinks were cheap (mixed drinks for ten, jaeger bombs for fifteen kroner which is about 2.50) and the people were fun. The Spanish girls showed up all dressed as cave women which was really cool. Somewhere in the night, though, I lost Julius's cowboy hat...so I guess I'll have to pay him back for that. But I got to spend some quality time with the Danes and it was really nice. Then it was time to break the barrel. So there were two lines for two different barrels. I don't know if it was boys and girls or not, but basically there was a wooden stick and a wooden barrel and everybody got one hit. As you can imagine, it actually hurt the hand a bit because the wood was quite solid. So after several rounds somebody loosened one of the boards on our barrel and then I swung and did some real damage, messing the barrel up pretty good, and then Morten was behind me. He totally destroyed the barrel, but in the process he cut his thumb open. Poor guy :-/

After I ran out of cash I tried to buy some drinks with my card but was informed that I don't have the right kind, I need one with a special chip or something. I don't really know the details and haven't had a chance to ask anybody about it yet, but I was sad. Why didn't the bank issue me that type? O well.

Thanks again for reading, and I am planning a trip to Stockholm the weekend after our Copenhagen trip. So I promise that soon you'll have plenty of great pictures and stories from me!! Stay tuned~

Silvia, Laura, Sandra, Maria and myself

Morten and Kirsten watching in Horror as Bo devours a waldo-sized portion of peppers

Rockin' out!

Wow, time flies!

As they say, "time flies when you're having fun" and it really is true. I can't believe that it has been about 2 weeks since my last real blog post! So let me catch you up on the major happenings since then...

My last post was about my "Project Work" class. Well, this weeks was no better. To recap, the first week we made paper airplanes. Last week we learned about "cultural awareness", this week we played with legos :P We got put in groups again and there was a completed lego scene set up outside the room. Only one of us could go look at it at a time and could take nothing with us, and once we started building it we couldn't go look anymore. It was a police car and a little barricade thing. We setup the barricade correctly, but just couldn't get the car together...the other groups did fine, but we were awful. Also, we were the first group to start building, so we were made an example of by the teacher. I guess I would rather learn that lesson now than on our project!

My interview with Freddy Court for the CA position for the 2012-2013 school year went really well and I was offered the job! Yay! So what that means is that I will get a free room in a 4 bedroom freddy apartment and a monthly paycheck in exchange for weekly duties like letting residents in who get locked out, dealing with complaints, making sure my building isn't trashed, etc. I get to find my own roommates which is nice, but it worried me because almost everybody I know already has roommates and places to live. Fortunately my pal Curtis Ullerich from the computer engineering department had two roommates (also in our department) and was looking for a 4th. So they will be moving in with me :-) I was also offered a position as a CA in Helser, but I think this one will work out better. Even though it means having to cook my own food :-(

Last friday (2/17) the university threw a HUGE Party that they called "Semesterstartfest" or something. I don't think I need to translate that for you, but it was great. There were 2000 students IN the university from around 10-2am. Each of the majors bars in Odense had their own locations in the building and the biggest had their DJ's playing in different spots so you could walk around and dance to the music you wanted to. In America college students drink (shocker, i know!) but not IN the school buildings, or at least not sponsored by the school, so this was very neat! Most of the international students I talked to said that it was also new and different for them, as well, so we had a great time. By the end of the night the bars were competing very strongly with each other and were selling shots for 5dkk which equates to about 80 or 90 cents. Afterwards the official "after party" was at Club Retro which is a good 30 minute bike ride from the university. My dorm is only a 10 minute ride so I decided to call it a night (as well as the other people from my dorm) to rest up for the next day.

Which was a good idea because this past weekend my friend Stanislaw had some friends from Poland visiting. So Saturday night I went to their place to meed the friends and sing with the karaoke equipment they had brought! I have a video of me rocking out to "I want it that way" by BSB which I will upload later...no shame :P But after the pre-party we attempted to go to a place called L.A. Bar that none of us had gone to before. Unfortunately the Polish girls weren't allowed in, perhaps they didn't have the right ID? So we all went to A-Bar instead. On the way there I actually started talking to the visiting Polish girls, Maria and Monika. Maria was very nice and friendly and was completely willing to talk to me, but she informed me that Monika was very scared to talk to me because she was "bad at English". So of course I started talking to Monika and learned that while her English isn't perfect, it was very understandable and she was worried about nothing. So throughout the night I kept having small conversations with them and made sure Monika knew that her English was just fine. We got back to the Pollack's house around 4 or 5am (as is usual on Saturday) and sat and talked for a while before I left. When I left, though, they were taking some more liquor down the street to a park...I tell you, these Europeans are crazy @_@

Tuesday Feb. 21st was a "Danish Movie Night" hosted by the ESN network where we got to watch a couple of the more famous Danish movies. The first was "Worlds Apart", a true-story drama about a young devout Jehova's witness whose faith is shaken after meeting a young boy and finding out that her parents are separating due to her fathers infidelity. I really enjoyed the movie for a couple reasons. It was really great to learn a bit more about Jehova's witnesses other than that they knock on our doors. Also, it was fascinating to me to see a movie with an anti-religious message. To be fair, she wasn't a "mainstream" religion, but the boyfriend and his parents were atheists and at the end of the movie she abandoned Jehova and left her former life. It is a message that I just can't see being made into a mainstream American movie and it was done in a very tasteful way that I appreciated and agreed with. But, I think even religious people could appreciate the movie and would frown upon the intolerance that it brought to light.

Between movies we had pizza. It was different. The pizza slices were HUGE which was good, but the sauce and cheese were put on in VERY small amounts which was disappointing. They had some interesting varieties. One pizza had sauce, cheese and CORN as a pizza topping. A lot of corn. I tried a bite of a friends and it was actually pretty good, I might try corn and pepperoni in the future. Some of the other pizzas just had what appeared to be TONS of onion slivers. It looked really gross, but as most of you probably know I hate onions so I avoided that. I personally had a pepperoni piece and a piece that had some french fries, some onions (which I picked off), normal sausage, and some "sausage" (basically a hot dog, but they call them sausages of course). I wish there had been more pizza sauce, but that aside they were pretty good. They also had some "Pommes Frites Sauce" which is "french fry sauce" and it appeared to be halfway between ranch dressing and mayo, but I didn't want any on my pizza. Now I regret it :-/

The second movie was called "Flickering Lights", perhaps one of the most famous Danish movies. It is described as a comedy, though imdb also has the "action" tag on it which is definitely appropriate. Perhaps a lot of the humor was lost in translation or went over my head because of cultural ignorance, but I wouldn't really describe it as a funny movie or a comedy. There were parts that were funny, as in most good movies, but not enough for me to label it a comedy. Anchorman is a comedy. The Hangover is a comedy. This? Not to me, but it was a good movie. One of the things I most enjoyed was the flashbacks that each of the characters experienced, showing memories of what caused their particular psychosis or issue and also how they met. There is a scene that we were shown at our orientation days where the guy who is crazy about guns goes off into the woods and a cow starts looking at him wrong. He the proceeds to talk trash to the cow and ask him why he's staring at him, etc. Without context it isn't really funny, but even with context and having seen what leads up to it I didn't really laugh as much. But this is Danish humor, so here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IpVVhKrd4 That aside, I did enjoy the movie more for its story than for the humor, and would recommend it.

I found out YESTERDAY (Wednesday) that some of our girl friends were going to Copenhagen today (thursday) for the weekend and that we should try to go with. Oh, and isntead of train we want to hitchhike their and instead of a hostel we want to find a free place to stay on couchsurfing.org (the girls already found one). So we looked for places, but on such short notice (and originally with 4 guys looking to go) it didn't work out. Maybe in the future we will try something like that :-) but it's ok because there is an ESN trip to Copenhagen in March that I will go on! I'll be sure to let you all know how that goes.

As always, thanks for reading!!

This is a glimpse into one of the areas at the party. This was actually the second smallest party area out of 4 or so? And the biggest was WAY bigger

The bathrooms in the uni are co-ed. So you get your own stall with floor to ceiling door and then the sinks are out there. It actually makes a lot of sense, in my opinion.

An advertisement at a gast station for their twindog. The dogs come in a bun and like so and one is surrounded by ketchup and the other by what I assume is mayo. Looks good?

The two visiting Polish girls, it was nice to meet you!

The danish ladies on my floor made some delicious Danish pastries. They are always doing things like this and, as always, it was delicious! Oh, and the hat...This weekend they are celebrating "Fastlavn", kind of like halloween, I'll explain it more in my next post.

Our mega lego letdown

I was just walking through "Bilka" (walmart) when I found this shirt... "once you go norris, you are physically unable to go back"

I can make real food, see?? Chicken and rice!! :D

Oh just a sign in A-Bar..."Don't Forget, get pissed (for) cheap on Thursdays!"

Cultural Awareness

Today my "project work" class was actually a seminar on cultural awareness. We broke into groups based on our country. I was the lone ranger, championing the stars and stripes for you all against large groups of Frenchman and Pollacks and other Europeans. We went over "Hofstede" dimensions which are apparently a way of viewing certain cultural traits on a spectrum. The first of which is the Power Distance. I have learned that America is a "High Power Distance" culture, and so is our education. Denmark is a "Low Power Distance" culture. As such, those with "less power" are closer to their "superiors". That means that in school students are EXPECTED to question their teachers and to disagree with them, communication/discussion/speaking up is a staple in a Danish class room, and outside of class teachers are just another equal person. Even if particular teachers or classes operate similar to that in America, the general culture is quite different. For each dimension we discussed what might happen in a certain situation. For this dimension we talked about a factory employee questioning his boss and what would happen. I guessed that in a factory it would be expected to listen to your boss and not question them. I know other jobs have a lower power distance, but I imagine personal efficacy and responsibility is also a factor as well. Many employees feel less responsible for the outcome of their work and more for just doing what their boss tells them. Other countries were similar, but Denmark it is expected that if you knew your boss was wrong you would question them.

The second dimension is Individualism vs. Collectivism. But some of this was confusing..."collectivist: diploma certificates are important and displayed on wall". That is very true in America, but we are at the top of the Individualism scale. O well, I ignored this one. The case we talked about was how a marketing team in a company would use it's winnings. Would it use it all on itself for a bigger party, or invite all of their contributors to a more modest party. I said that in general the winning team would probably feel entitled to all of it, even if there were significant contributors, and would do the bigger party. But this was VERY hard to answer (as most other countries agreed) and it really does depend on the situation.

Femininity vs. Masculinity is the third dimension and is defined as quality of life and caring for others vs. success and achievement. The case we examined was a group was participating in a competition but one of them gets hurt at the beginning. If he continues, the group must help and they can't win. If they leave him there is a chance they could win. What would they do and why? Some countries like France and Turkey think they would bring him along and help, some others think they would leave the person out of concern for his injury and not wanting to make it worse, while others still want to leave the injured person to win. That's how I feel America would be, if they entered the competition they clearly wanted to win, so it would be expected for the members to continue on and try to win, leaving the other behind. (Note: the other person is in no danger by being left behind, there is staff to help them)

In education: A feminine teacher avoids openly praising students and at the same time a failure is a relatively minor accident. Students also practice mutual solidarity and behave modestly as well as choosing to study subjects that are intrinsically interesting to them. Masculine teachers praise their students, but failing is a more major thing. Students are actively competing and not as modest and choose subjects based on career opportunities. Denmark is a VERY feminine culture, at least in regards to education, whereas America is a very masculine one. Personally, I see benefits to both.

Uncertainty Avoidance: the extent to which people feel threatened by uncertainty and how far they will go to avoid it. This is the last dimension we explored. The case we discussed was about a group of students with an opportunity to tour companies in a country with a very difficult language. This difficulty made it impossible to make all of their transportation/accommodation arrangements ahead of time (they would have to figure it out when they got there) causing some students to be skeptical and consider not going. What would happen and would they still have the trip? The Danes said that no, they usually pick the safe choice when it comes to big things like that. The French and Pollacks felt more adventurous and said that most would probably do it anyway, it is more about the life experience than the plan. I said that on an individual level we are more open to uncertainty and would be more likely to want to make the trip, but on an institutional level we are not. The school would not be willing to tolerate the liability associated with the uncertainty and the risks involved and we wouldn't allow it.

On the educational level, weak uncertainty avoidance means "students feel comfortable in unstructured learning situations: vague objectives, broad assignments, no timetables. Teachers are allowed to say 'I don't know'. Students are rewarded for innovative approaches and teachers interpret intellectual disagreement as a stimulating exercise", but Strong uncertainty avoidance: "Students feel comfortable in structured learning situations: precise objectives, strict timetables with teachers who have all the answers. Students are rewarded for accuracy and teachers interpret intellectual disagreement as personal disloyalty". I, personally, have STRONG uncertainty avoidance. I can handle uncertainty when I need to, but I really prefer to avoid it. And I feel that culturally america lines up with stronger Uncertainty Avoidance principles in education at least. Denmark and Singapore is actually very low on the scale, so while in the case we discussed the Danes went with the safer choice, in many other areas of culture they are the opposite.

You can actually get more information about this and compare countries at this link: http://geert-hofstede.com/united-states.html

I know this might have been a bit of a dryer read than usual, but I thought I might take this opportunity to educate you all a bit. Hopefully I didn't misrepresent our country too much, or at least not any more than the other countries misrepresented themselves ;-)