Destination Copenhagen

Popular club hit over here. Dansk musik!

Bridal Chorus

The neighbor below me is attempting to play "Here Comes the Bride" on their keyboard.
Wtf Danmark?

Challenges

So I truly wish I could write more often. There is always so much to tell!
I had a great Christmas on Jutland with Bodil and the others:

Had a once-in-a-lifetime kind of New Years in Copenhagen. We were up on the fourth floor of one of the DIS buildings overlooking city hall square. Fireworks in all directions for hours. Shared a bottle of champagne with a good friend, had a great veggie dinner before hand (all my friends are really culinarily talented!), a drunken sleepover, and the laziest first day of the new year that involved not leaving the house until 5pm, leftover eggplant parmesan, Grandma's Boy, and dozing with some friends. (I would continue to add a photo right here to show you the awesomeness but blogger sucks and it messes these particluar photos up when I upload them!)

2010 was a very interesting, fun, and quick year! Last new years I was with my high school girls in down town Reno. It was the perfect way to spend my first new years as a 21 year old. 

In 2010 I was single for the first time in over three years.  Dating is one of the weirdest things I've ever experienced and I am pretty sure I don't really like the general dating scene, although I have met a few genuine folks along the way. I continued the challenge of only biking and not having a car in Rohnert Park and Reno. Pretty proud that I managed, but hope I didn't burden the people around me too much, because, truth be told, we live in a society where a car is an essential component of being a fully functioning, social, and responsible adult. In 2010 I took my first ever winter session course (almost forgot about that completely), took a great tour to New Mexico to visit one of my bffs, Jessica Rosalyn Brittany Moore. Visiting the air force bases in Clovis and Albuquerque gave me a lot of culture shock but I was so happy to have gotten to see it up close and personal. Jessie is so amazing :)

Last spring I got my research project--Pedagogical and Parental Perspectives and Approaches to Power Play in Denmark--published, concluded my 3 years working for Dining Services, got a nice Easter visit from Morten, sang with the SSU choir, helped make a kickass clothing exchange at Earth Day with the GEAC, got accepted to be an intern at DIS!, had a lot of weird health issues including a peritonsillar abscess in my left tonsil, helped raise $12,600 for the Alpha Gamma Delta foundation by fundraising and performing in Lip Jam-Hip Hopera. I also had the immense honor of living with three of the greatest women on this planet. Beth House forever! I graduated with honors from SSU with my bachelors in Human Development and a minor in Applied Arts, said goodbye to Rohnert Park, saw my gorgeous and smart little sister, Dani Best, graduate from high school, and had a great summer.

Finally, I moved to Denmark for the second time and began my life as a real adult in this big, bad, and crazy world. Lucky for me, being an intern in the Happiest Country isn't too rough and is a really nice way to transition into adulthood.

Gotta say I am a really lucky person. I was having a slump month around the end of October and beginning of December due to stress at work, and I hate to say it, but I think the weather was really getting me down. Sorry to Karen who came here right when I was struggling the most and in a terrible mood! She handled it pretty well, but I know I wouldn't have wanted to spend a week with someone like me at that point. Like things always do, everything has been looking up and fine since after Christmas. I've been spending a lot of time with friends, trying to stay on top of the Danish, hit the gym when possible (a new center just opened right out my front door. Lucky me!). And I get to go home and visit my family for two weeks very soon which will be very refreshing!

So as of late....

I owned my first solo arrival week for the most part. I packed 700 welcome bags and personal envelopes for our students that included their transportation passes, class schedules, food stipend cards, living assignments, etc. Well, I didn't actually hand pack them myself, but I had a team of 5 people who I was responsible for who did it and we finished on time, with very minimal stress, which I guess isn't usually the case. Arrival Day was so smooth as well. Trust me, having 700 students fly into this city on the same day and getting them to where they live is a huge operation. DIS holds students' hands so much! This week I gave two Housing sessions for a couple of hundred students who live in Kollegiums and Folkehøjskoles (dorm like environments) with a co-worker, Staci, and I think both the sessions went really well and the students found them to be fun, interesting, and informative (or at least we hope). I took a group of full year students ice skating and out for a drink on Wednesday, and that was really fun too. As I was a full year student myself, I know how weird it is to have all of your friends leave halfway through your abroad experience, and have a bunch of newbies come in.

And Friday night I had my first huge student services experience: The Friday of Arrival Week we throw a huge party for the students at a diskotek right near DIS. The students can get in for free and once inside its free beer and champagne all night. It always is an ultimate shit show, but the students love it and its a really nice way to have all students together within the first week, and in a way, introduce them to the hardcore party culture in Denmark. So I always go out to sushi dinner beforehand, meet with the bouncers, work the door, set up the snacks, make sure coat check is working out, and that our students are being treated nicely, etc. The bouncers at this place are really great and funny and working from 8-11 at a party is not exactly a hard life. Naturally, after 11 we just join the party with the rest of the staff, networkers, and students who are there. It was a fantastic time. But around 3 in the morning someone comes and finds me saying there is a student barfing all over herself and passed out in the bathroom. SO one of my coworkers and I take her outside and walk her around the block, get her some water, etc. She is an absolute mess, all alone, and even though I am "off duty" and have been partying myself, I take her in a taxi home. Major obstacle: this girl only has these items on her: bag of peanuts, cell pohone, house keys, empty wallet that only contains her DIS student ID, and a hat. I take her back to the office down the road, disable the alarm, set her on the stairs, run up to check the database and find out exactly this girls address. She lives almost an hour away in Roskilde (another town entirely where we have about 30 of our students living). Great, so this taxi driver totally hit the gold mine with us.
We drive to Roskilde, have trouble finding her dorm room, but the cab driver was so nice. He was from Iran and wanted my phone number after the night was over, haha. He helped me find the right place for this girl. I helped her out of her coat and shoes, set her up some water and a place to vomit, made sure she threw up before she went to bed, etc. I even let her drink out of my own canteen at one point. Ew. Must boil ASAP. Then drove back to Copenhagen with Abbas (the cab driver, haha). The bill was 1500dkk which is about 300 American dollars. Thank you DIS Eurocard, swipe swipe swipe.

I was nervous that I was either under or over reacting to this situation: maybe I should have just left this girl to her own defenses, it wasn't my responsibility at that point (or was it?). On the other hand, I was a little nervous to leave her by herself in her room all alone at 4am. What if she choked on her own vomit and died and it was all my fault? She is fine now, my supervisor was glad I did what I did, and she certainly will need to come into our office and get schooled on what is appropriate behavior, yadda yadda. I mean, for most of these kids it is their first time in a club or bar-like setting. I know I was 19 when I first came to Denmark and while I was okay at holding my alcohol, knowing my limit, etc. (thank you Greek life and Greta Marti :)) going clubbing with the Danes is a totally different world than playing beer pong and getting hyphy in a garage in suburbia.

Time is moving quickly

700 new students arrived on Sunday. I am tired.


February 3-6: Short Study Tour to Western Denmark (Odense og Næstved)
February 7-19: USA (LA and Reno)
March 5-10: Long Study Tour to London + potential additional UK travel??
April 15-25: Lisbon and Madrid
Then Dani comes?
June 30-July 4: Roskilde Festival!!
July: Iceland? Greece?
August: Donezo
September: Højskole? WOOFF? Home?

Eat it

Today I ate sperm on rye bread. Or so I thought. HAHA.

At 2nd Christmas lunch this afternoon I was surrounded by a crowd of Danish dudes (one of them toting a chinchilla), who wanted me to eat a weird substance on bread.  They claimed that all the true family members try it. I asked what it was. Bodil's brother struggled to explain it to me in English. He said "cum". Then he said "jizz". I thought it was some kind of animal sperm mixed with some herbs and fat? (They eat some weird shit in this country) It looked like hummus. I took a bite, three cheers to open mindedness! I wanted to know what it was called in Danish so I could tell other people what I ate, and they went on further to explain that it is only a family thing. They used to eat it during the war when they had no money.
I was dying. It actually didn't taste that bad, just really strong with a strange texture. I was just flipping out, dying and laughing at this point. Turns out Mikkel meant to say "cumin" and not "cum" and "jizz" was his way of saying "yeast". The "J" sounds different here, so I understand the weird pronunciation issues we had. Mikkel was also drunk at this point. Just one example of the many hilarious lost in translation cross cultural moments I frequently experience.
The substance was 70 percent yeast and 30 percent cumin with some herbs. So strange. My life just makes me laugh sometimes :)

Had a great Christmas! Back to the grind tomorrow.