love you
19.2.10
9.2.10
I could spend the rest of my Monday nights stuffed from dinner, leaning on Kelli's leg listening to trashy MTV reality shows in the background while
the rest of my dormmates shout out new rules for a new card game all the way from Jasper, IN thanks to Margot, while we all simultaneously practice our profanity with international accents from all corners of the room..."Hallo, my name is Tom ClaRk." :)
I couldn't think of a shorter title but what a perfect lead into a new entry. Pulling up to the bus stop coming home from our short-study tour (to Western Denmark) last weekend I felt something new with Copenhagen. The more familiar that the buildings and restaurants and "torvs" looked as we pulled up, the more happier I felt to be home after a busy busy three days with my class...let me rephrase being HOME. It hasn't even been a full month yet but I am in a place where having up-days and down-days is what makes it home here. I re-learn everyday about 'how to make the most of a new experience in just four months.' Although I wish all my family and friends could see and taste what I am exposed to everyday here, I know that I will be saying the same thing about my new friends here while I am back home in the spring. I want the best of both worlds with one foot across each border.
This past weekend on our study-tour was split amongst our programs. I felt really lucky with the people I got to tour with in mine and the places my professors pulled strings with to get in. My program here with Migration & Identity deals with a lot of immigration issues in Eastern Europe that I never had a clue about until my first day of class here. A lot of museums, a lot of lectures, and SO MUCH GOOD FOOD. A lot of Danish taste between the buffets and free beer. Our first museum tour in Odense was the Brandts Museum with a specific visit to the contemporary 'I-Lands' exhibit. I think the theme was open to interpretation regarding man as an island and what society makes us feel towards individualism and needing to thrive with the help of other people...very contemporary, actually. Another place I took heart to was the Sondervangskolen (side school?) where kids in grade 0-9 make up 85% of the ethnic background with 20 different nationalities between classrooms but almost all of them consider to be Danish regardless of where their family is from. School runs from 8a.m.-4 p.m. and they have the same teacher for nine years........NINE. Think of how much more passion teachers in America would have for their jobs and on top of the effect they would have on their students practically teaching through their whole childhood. The students here also have a mature aura about them that takes longer for most kids in the U.S. I got to sit down with a couple of ninth-graders and although they were shy to ask questions, one of them already had a year of work experience with his family's business, able to speak four different languages, and a respect for every one of his classmates. He's fifteen. I was really impressed with the school where I also learned the real game of Handball...no Berlin High opt-out gym class game...I had fun!
On the last day of our trip, we left Arhus after lunch, but I got the chance in the morning to take a walk by myself in the city. Arhus is the second biggest city in Denmark and for that there underlies a territorial grudge. My art professor had a few jokes about the city kind of drawing a similarity with Polish jokes in the U.S. My walk around the city center was easy to not get lost for a half an hour. I found a bunch of side streets with music cafes and coffee breweries and fair trade shops. We were pretty close to the harbor which still amazes me to see salt water frozen. I put my headphones on and followed an old couple bundled in fur walking my way which led me back to the hotel, eventually. It was nice to head in no direction on my own for the first time since I've been here. Our last stop before heading home was the ARoS meseum in Arhus. A lot more Danish modern art than just colonial.The museum was split up by levels with a symbol(ization?) to each floor...the top being Heaven where a lot of colonial art painting that symbolized Danish history and the lowest ground feeling like Dante's Inferno (Hell, I guess) with a lot of modern sculptures and active art. There was so much to see and interpret or ignore. Museums can express a lot about a particular place.
After being fed like a queen for one last meal on DIS' tab, we headed back on the bus for a four hour ride with European movies, a short quiz on Denmark, a quick pit stop, and a shot of Danish licorice liquor...oof. Inevitably, I have been sick for the past few days but so have a lot of my Keops mates. And what do you get when you're an American sick in a foreign country without your mom? A check-in from the rest of your roomates keeping dabs on how you're feeling/offering to make a Fotex (grocery) run... :) hyggely
I couldn't think of a shorter title but what a perfect lead into a new entry. Pulling up to the bus stop coming home from our short-study tour (to Western Denmark) last weekend I felt something new with Copenhagen. The more familiar that the buildings and restaurants and "torvs" looked as we pulled up, the more happier I felt to be home after a busy busy three days with my class...let me rephrase being HOME. It hasn't even been a full month yet but I am in a place where having up-days and down-days is what makes it home here. I re-learn everyday about 'how to make the most of a new experience in just four months.' Although I wish all my family and friends could see and taste what I am exposed to everyday here, I know that I will be saying the same thing about my new friends here while I am back home in the spring. I want the best of both worlds with one foot across each border.
This past weekend on our study-tour was split amongst our programs. I felt really lucky with the people I got to tour with in mine and the places my professors pulled strings with to get in. My program here with Migration & Identity deals with a lot of immigration issues in Eastern Europe that I never had a clue about until my first day of class here. A lot of museums, a lot of lectures, and SO MUCH GOOD FOOD. A lot of Danish taste between the buffets and free beer. Our first museum tour in Odense was the Brandts Museum with a specific visit to the contemporary 'I-Lands' exhibit. I think the theme was open to interpretation regarding man as an island and what society makes us feel towards individualism and needing to thrive with the help of other people...very contemporary, actually. Another place I took heart to was the Sondervangskolen (side school?) where kids in grade 0-9 make up 85% of the ethnic background with 20 different nationalities between classrooms but almost all of them consider to be Danish regardless of where their family is from. School runs from 8a.m.-4 p.m. and they have the same teacher for nine years........NINE. Think of how much more passion teachers in America would have for their jobs and on top of the effect they would have on their students practically teaching through their whole childhood. The students here also have a mature aura about them that takes longer for most kids in the U.S. I got to sit down with a couple of ninth-graders and although they were shy to ask questions, one of them already had a year of work experience with his family's business, able to speak four different languages, and a respect for every one of his classmates. He's fifteen. I was really impressed with the school where I also learned the real game of Handball...no Berlin High opt-out gym class game...I had fun!
On the last day of our trip, we left Arhus after lunch, but I got the chance in the morning to take a walk by myself in the city. Arhus is the second biggest city in Denmark and for that there underlies a territorial grudge. My art professor had a few jokes about the city kind of drawing a similarity with Polish jokes in the U.S. My walk around the city center was easy to not get lost for a half an hour. I found a bunch of side streets with music cafes and coffee breweries and fair trade shops. We were pretty close to the harbor which still amazes me to see salt water frozen. I put my headphones on and followed an old couple bundled in fur walking my way which led me back to the hotel, eventually. It was nice to head in no direction on my own for the first time since I've been here. Our last stop before heading home was the ARoS meseum in Arhus. A lot more Danish modern art than just colonial.The museum was split up by levels with a symbol(ization?) to each floor...the top being Heaven where a lot of colonial art painting that symbolized Danish history and the lowest ground feeling like Dante's Inferno (Hell, I guess) with a lot of modern sculptures and active art. There was so much to see and interpret or ignore. Museums can express a lot about a particular place.
After being fed like a queen for one last meal on DIS' tab, we headed back on the bus for a four hour ride with European movies, a short quiz on Denmark, a quick pit stop, and a shot of Danish licorice liquor...oof. Inevitably, I have been sick for the past few days but so have a lot of my Keops mates. And what do you get when you're an American sick in a foreign country without your mom? A check-in from the rest of your roomates keeping dabs on how you're feeling/offering to make a Fotex (grocery) run... :) hyggely
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