Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Exploring in the snow

I moved into the family room to type this. My host sister Signe is on her laptop too during homework and the TV is on the news. I have no clue what the TV is saying so I can't really watch it or pretend to watch it easily.

On the TV, they are showing a woman who is a hoarder. I guess that's not just an American problem. My host mom is helping me figure out what they are saying on the TV. 
I saw a commercial for Disney on Ice. My host mom said she saw it when she was little. I said me too. 
She's playing on her phone and she turns to me and says, "What's the capital of Indiana?" Having lived there, I answer, "Indianapolis." pause. "Ah, thank you." then "What's Mt. Rushmore?" I saw "South Dakota" and again she pauses and says thank you. She's playing a quiz game with her mom. It's cool that both my moms play games on their phones. 
They like to light candles in their home in the evenings. Many Danes do too because it helps with the long cold winters and short days. 

Today was another busy day. If you want the picture version of my day, see the post before this one where I posted pictures I took on my phone because I didn't bring my camera.
We did the DIS Amazing Race (their name, not mine. Our professor even told us, it's not a race, you don't have to go to all the locations, so it's kind of a silly name.) and the Communication program meeting. The scavenger hunt lasted 9:30 to 2:30. At 3:15 to 5 was my meeting. We ate dinner around 6:30, and now it's like 7:40.
In the morning, I woke up at 6:45. I ate corn flakes and half some bread with nutella like chocolate. I made tea too. Julie and I took the 8:30 train and met up with Cheng. I tried to pay attention to learn my way around.
We made it to the classroom our group was assigned and then were put into smaller groups by where we were sitting.
To be honest, I didn't love the girls in my group. They weren't awful but they just weren't people I would choose to hang out with and we didn't have a lot in common. I made the best of it and kept to myself for the first half. I got tired of that so I started participating in their conversations and asking questions. They looked a little surprised that I was asking questions. When we took the water ferry back I continued to talk to them. I tried my best to be friendly and social.
It was a stressful situation to be thrown out into the cold snowy streets of Copenhagen and asked to find four or five famous Copenhagen spots. Luckily the other girls seemed to have a good sense of direction so we rarely got lost or confused for very long. One time we asked a nice man to help us find our way and he was he helpful. We stopped at the University of Copenhagen student hangout coffee shop place and got a free Danish. Yum! It was very cold outside and snow on the ground so it was nice to get out of the cold and take our backpacks off. On the ferry I found out I wasn't the only one whose shoulders were hurting. That made me feel better because my bag wasn't that heavy or anything.
When we made it back to the classroom, we had to present on our favorite location and two things we observed. Our group liked the charming square (I forget the name) and talked about the architecture and children in snowsuits. Kids waddle around wrapped up in these huge snowsuit. It's pretty cute. The architecture is modern and historic. Some buildings burned down in history and were rebuilt close to the orginal. There aren't a lot of tall buildings or buildings outside the official Copenhagen color scheme. Our guide says urban design dictates their should be a stimulus every 4 seconds. Hmm.
I had an hour to kill before my next meeting so I chilled in the student building in the quiet study area. I needed some peace and quiet and me time. I thought my meeting was in the building I was in but it wasn't. It was across the street. I wasn't late and it wouldn't have mattered because the meeting didn't start on time. We were emailed that it was pushed back an hour but everyone forgot that so the woman was very frazzled. She was like an intern or program assistant. She passed out individual water bottles to us and apples. Instead of pizza and soda, they gave us water and apples. Haha. She showed us two videos and told us about what to expect of our Communication classes and study tour trips. It was informative.

I met a girl named Alex who wants to be a veternarian and interned over the summer at a vet clinic for dogs and cats. So we had things to talk about with how to give vaccines, heartworm blood tests, vet schools, euthanaisa, etc. She wants to go to the University of Wiscosinc vet school but still needs more shadow hours. I didn't know you needed so many shadow hours with a variety of animals. 
I'm meeting a lot of neat people. 

After that I met my host mom and with Cheng we took the train home.  It's a ten minute walk to the station. I'm trying to learn and memorize it. Same with how to get to the train and how to get to DIS. I'm trying very hard to orient myself and memorize key landmarks. (like go past The Drunken Flamingo and turn at 7/11. Turn at sign that looks like Esmerelda, go past weird statue, go past gentlemens club. etc. I'm just using the most memorable landmarks to help me recognize things.). 
My host father went hunting this morning and brought back a deer. It's in the garage, hanging upside down right now. My host mom showed me. Ewww. We are going to eat it this weekend.



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