Shipping Out

It has been a busy, sleep-deprived week, but now that it's over, I'm just finishing some last minute things before heading off to Berlin and Prague tomorrow! It should be a great trip and I am very excited to have mid-terms over with, hopefully they went well, and to have a few weeks to travel around. Although, traveling this much and this far is not exactly relaxing...

This past week has been busy! On Tuesday we visited the host Grandparents, which means I completely stuffed myself on lots and lots of amazing food. On Wednesday, amid my mid-term studies and after my 2+ hour OD run, which felt refreshing, I watched "After the Wedding" a really great, but VERY emotional Danish Film.

Thursday I had ski training again, after which we carved PUMPKINS!
It was soo much fun! My family had only carved them with one other student and had never tried roasted pumpkin seeds before and I was happy to be the first to introduce them! I don’t know why, but while I was walking through the city the other day I realized that I am going to miss Reese’s peanut butter cups on Halloween. Maybe it is because we have them a lot at school, or because they are one of the staple hand-outs when trick-or-treating… While I will be in China on Halloween and probably will have completely forgotten what day it is, the fall weather here has been making me think of home. The leaves are changing and it is getting VERY dark. I have to wait until around 7:30 for it to be light enough to run outside and it gets darker earlier and earlier every day! But the smell of rotting leaves and crisp fall air makes me happy and also a little homesick.

Anyway, Friday night was Kulturnatten here in Copenhagen, which is similar to ‘First Night’ in the US. You buy a button and then have a huge buffet of events to choose from. My friend Janna, from SLU, and I bought our buttons and met at school around 5pm, spending the next hour planning out our very busy night. We wanted, and succeeded in, getting as much as we could out of the free entrance to museums and shows. We visited the Round Tower, a site I have visited before but went to again because it was free, for sunset around 6:00 and then again at night to see the city lit up. While we missed out on a show we planned to attend, we instead visited the Danish Design Center and a natural food type display, before taking a bus to the other side of the city for a gospel concert at a local church.


The gospel concert was probably the highlight of the night. Although the church was not particularly easy to find, someone knew I was coming because once we found it there was a fire and s’more materials outside the church. I practically cried with joy as I helped a little girl assemble her s’more before making one of my own…delicious. It was also completely surreal, and exciting, to go to a gospel concert performed by a small choir of white, Danish men and women, singing classic American songs including ‘This Little Light of Mine,’ ‘Oh Happy Day,’ ‘Swing Low,’ and the particularly powerful for us Laurentians, ‘When the Saints go Marching In.’ It was a little odd, but amazingly comforting to hear such ‘American’ songs sung with such fervor!

After the concert we walked through the botanical gardens and wandered around to a few more unsuccessful stops before heading to the train station and calling it a night.

Today was a low key day of packing, cooking, and a little rollerski expedition (no matter how many times I try to meet up with other people, or just work out in general, every attempt is complex process.) I cooked a ‘Team Dinner’ for my host parents and a family friend of garlic bread, spaghetti and meatballs…I hope they actually liked it and didn’t just say so!

Well, anyway, now going to sign off and head to bed! Talk to you in a week!