Random fact: Danes are very conscious about conserving energy, both for reasons of the environment and their energy bills (energy stuff is much more expensive here)! They try to use as little water as possible, especially in the shower. The preferred method of taking showers is to turn the water on to rinse your body, turn it off while you apply shampoo/soap, and then turn it back on to wash off. I’m sure I’ll welcome the American way of taking showers when I get back, just in terms of not being cold in the middle of my shower, but there is something to be said for this method – I might feel a little bit guilty when I get back.
It’s been snowing a lot the past few days, especially since yesterday afternoon. It’s not incredibly cold as it was this past Saturday (about 20ºF was the high…now just around 32ºF), but the snow presents its own difficulties…just got through helping my host mom get out of the driveway because of the snow. There’s something you don’t often have to do in Texas!
This past Saturday, I went with a big group from DIS on 2 buses to the town of Elsinore and Krønborg Castle. This town and castle were the focal point of the famous Shakespeare play, Hamlet! After having a couple of hours to roam around the town, we were to meet at the castle at 1:30 for the tour to begin. Unfortunately, I heard the meeting place wrong: I thought that we were supposed to meet back where we were let off by the buses, and that we’d take the buses over to the castle. Apparently not, though, because when 1:30 rolled around, there were no people and no buses at the place where I though there should’ve been, haha. I had just been sitting around lazily eating my sandwich and trying to bide my time until we were supposed to meet, when really I should’ve been hiking it over to the castle. It actually wasn’t more than 10-15 minutes away from the middle of town, though it looked a little farther than that. After calling one of the authorities that was on the trip, she said that the tour was about to start, so I should get there as fast as I could, and hopefully they will still be there. Well, after running/quickly walking there (in 20º weather with boots on), I got there, and it seemed that the tours had already left. I talked to the ticket person, and she said that they had left, but since I told her that I was with that group, she let me have a ticket for free (the tickets had been with the DIS people, since I had already paid online) and go try to find them! I was quite thankful for this. Then, I told the lady taking the tickets my situation, and she gave me directions to where my group probably was. And indeed, in no time at all, I found my group! Only the caboose of the group saw me, so I just blended right in and went on with the tour.
Today is Wednesday, which means I have the day off, save for any field studies that I might have scheduled for the day. Today, I don’t have any at all, but tomorrow, everyone leaves for their respective “short study tour.” Here’s how it works: at DIS, you choose a different subprogram based on whatever your major is, and you take a corresponding class (called your “core class”). With this class, you go on this upcoming short study tour and then a long study tour at the end of February/beginning of March. This means that everyone can go on these nice study tours without interfering with any classes, etc. I’m sure a lot of study abroad programs do something similar to this, but I certainly think it’s a great way of doing it.
So, for my study tour, I’m going to Western Denmark tomorrow. We meet at 7:15am in Copenhagen and then will take a bus to a place called Esbjerg (I’ve never heard of it). There, we will apparently be participating in some type of actual positive psychology “intervention” program. I will have to give you more details once I’ve done it, because I’m not sure of many of the details; all I know is that whoever we’re doing this intervention with has actually expressed their own interest in participating in this, meaning that it’s not like that episode of The Office where Michael tricks and drags Meredith to the rehab clinic (and no, I don’t think this has to do with alcohol addicts, either…). In any case, I’ll find out soon. We’ll be there for 5 ½ hours, though, so it must be pretty intense. Then, we’ll go to the old town of Ribe, where we will stay in a hostel for the night. The next day, we’ll go to the town of Århus, do some things there and stay for the night in a hostel there. The last day, we will go to Roskilde (I’m just going to let you look up all these towns, if you want :) ), where we will attend a lecture on Danish “hygge” (a feeling of (an almost spiritual) togetherness…hard to translate to English, apparently) and the Viking history, then visit the Viking museum. Since I’m already taking a Nordic Mythology class, I will be going to this museum anyway, and I have a feeling that I’ll get plenty of history, but that’s alright – I’ll really know it by May, hopefully! Afterwards we will come back to Copenhagen by about 5:30 on Saturday evening.
I plan on updating this blog again on Sunday, hopefully, so that I can tell all about the trip. In the meantime, I will appreciate your prayers as I go west!
P.S. should you want my address, here it is:
Annexgårdsparken 43
3500 Værløse
Denmark
No comments:
Post a Comment