All of my good friends here live with host families. There are several living options at DIS including host family, Danish roommate, shared housing, Kollegium and Hojskole. A Danish roommate is someone under 30 who simply hosts you but it's not as intense as a family. Shared housing means you live with other DIS students in an apartment in Copenhagen. Kollegium and Hojskole are the closest thing to dorm living that there is. Basically, when you live in anything but a host family, you can really do whatever you want since you're pretty much on your own watch. As a member of a host family, you really become a complete part of that family.
From day one, Helle, Sofie and Cecelie (plus Stine and Louise even they don't live in the house) have welcomed me into their home and family. With that comes a certain level of obligation and committment to being a part of the family as well. It's not a big deal if I'm going to miss dinner or spend the night at someone's house, I just need to make sure I let Helle know so she doesn't plan on me when she makes dinner. I've found that some of the people who live in other housing options don't really understand our predicament--especially for me, trains only leave Norroport (our train station near school) to come out to Borup once an hour. And the latest train leaves there at about 12:30am. Luckily though, my friends are in similar situations and we can all relate to each other. We all talk about our host families a lot and share stories since we all have different family structures, siblings etc. We been going to each of our houses for dinner to meet our different families.
First we went to Jesse's house last weekend but not for dinner...just dessert. He lives with his host parents Karsten and Maj-Britt. I'm hoping we can get back to his house for dinner because Maj-Britt is an unbelievable cook. She made us homemade carrotcake with chocolate icing and these crazy pastries with nutella on the inside. Jesse also told us about the bacon wrapped green beans he helped make recently....I think I could go for that!
I spent that night at Claire's house....she lives with her host mom Pia and her host sister Freya who is 9. She has another host sister, Zette, who is 18. She also lives with Herman, her host dog who looks remarkably like Wishbone the dog from the PBS show of the same name. We're still planning on heading over there for dinner.
Last Tuesday night we went to Mary's house for dinner and to plan our weekend trip to Berlin (more details on that to come later in the week probably). Claire and Mary live in the same town, Farum, but they live on opposite ends--it's about a 50 minute walk between them. Mary lives with her host parents, Michael and Dorthe, and her host siblings Simone (15) and Thomas (11).
So the week lead up to an evening/day in the countryside of Denmark. Mary, Claire and Kaitlin came over yesterday after classes were done for dinner and to spend the night. I asked Helle to make one of my favorite meals that she makes: frickadeller and potatos. Frickadeller is like the Danish national meal apparently. They're shaped like meatballs but they're made of pork and sort of meatloaf-ish with other ingredients in them....then there's a side dish of potatos and a sort of a pesto sauce but it's different than that. I'm going to force Helle to give me the recipe so I can make it when I get home. She claims it's easy...I'll be the judge of that!
Anyway Claire had never had frickadeller before and Kaitlin's family only gets the store-bought kind. We watched The X-Factor, Denmark's version of American Idol and hung out at the house. Then today Cecelie drove us to Roskilde, a much larger town, about 20 minutes away from Borup. There is a lot of shopping, a walking street and some cultural sites including the Roskilde Cathedral, which is where all of the kings and queens of Denmark are buried. The weather started off pretty nice, but got kind of cold and windy towards the end of the day. Regardless, we took part in the free ice cream that some place was giving out. We don't really know why they were....but it was DELICIOUS nonetheless. Here are some pictures of the cathedral and coast of Roskilde. Next weekend I'm going to Berlin so I'll be sure to update after that!
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
winter in borup
I just wanted to post some pictures really quick of the recent snow! We got about four inches in Borup and about two in Copenhagen. These are pictures from right around my house:
Back behind our neighborhood is wideeee open space and theres a little walking/biking path that I'll use once the weather gets a little nicer.
There's the open space I'm talking about!
The first two pictures were taken when I continued just a little further down this street. You can see the open space a little bit in the background of the above picture
The street sort of parallel to this picture is the one that I take to get to my house. Just about 100 yards to the right of this picture is my house. The following picture is the intersection on the left side of the above picture.
I liked that someone built a snowman! It's all really pretty in the snow...but I can do with out snowy bike rides! Back to homework :)
Back behind our neighborhood is wideeee open space and theres a little walking/biking path that I'll use once the weather gets a little nicer. 
There's the open space I'm talking about!
The first two pictures were taken when I continued just a little further down this street. You can see the open space a little bit in the background of the above picture
The street sort of parallel to this picture is the one that I take to get to my house. Just about 100 yards to the right of this picture is my house. The following picture is the intersection on the left side of the above picture.
I liked that someone built a snowman! It's all really pretty in the snow...but I can do with out snowy bike rides! Back to homework :)Monday, February 16, 2009
Day trip to Malmo, Sweden
I spent a few days last week (from Wednesday-Friday) on the DL with a stomach virus so by the weekend I was itching to get out of the house. I missed class on Thursday and 2 out of 3 classes on Friday. The one I went to was international advertising and I had to go because I was giving a big group presentation about coffee purchasing in Denmark vs. the US. Riveting stuff, I know. But in between all of that my friends and I decided to take a trip to Malmo, Sweden. It's literally right there and was easy enough to get to. We met at about 10:30am at the Central Station in Copenhagen and it's about a 40 minute train ride for about $12 each way. Sort of like going to NYC or DC on NJ Transit or MARC Trains. Not bad at all, and we got into a new country! We sort of neglected the whole planning process...but my friend, Claire, had a tourist book that had a small chapter and Malmo and we stocked up on tourist maps from the tourism center at the train station.
This is the main tower of the church
I know it's kind of hard to see, but hopefully you get the idea. We walked towards it which should have taken another 30 minutes or so, however we got sidetracked when we saw the Maxi store, aka the closest thing to a Wal-Mart or Target here. It was great! Usually everything here is smaller. Grocery stores are usually very little, sometimes the size of a super Wawa or so....so the Maxi was a breath of freshair! I was really thirsty and I got a litre of water for 7,50 Swedish kroner, which is under $1. My friends got things like shampoo and makeup for cheaper for our travelling and there was even an aisle simply devoted to candy that we dabbled in. We finished up and continued to the Turning Torso. The point of going there was to stand at the bottom, and look directly up to see how the building was built to look like it was turned. It's kind of bizarre but here's the best picture I could get...the lighting is really weird because it was dusk but hopefully you can see it:
We just decided to start walking and see if there was anything we could happen upon something interesting. We came upon St. Peter's Church, which is the oldest building in the city. It was built in the early 14th century.
This is the main tower of the church
The altar in St. Peter's
After that we walked around a little more, found some shopping and consulted the guide book. There was a chocolate factory listed so we knew this was a must-see! Unfortunately when we got there it was a bit of a bust. The chocolate was good, but the factory was really more of just a room. And there was supposed to be a museum but it was really just a few glass cases of old wrappers. We weren't discouraged though, and continued on in pursuit of museum island which also had a castle. We never got to the museums, as it was getting late in the afternoon and they close early, but we were able to see the castle (Malmohus) from the outside (there was some sort of a wedding going on inside that prevented us from going in)
This is a picture of Malmohus...taken by Claire because my pictures weren't as good. I am still waiting to see a palace-type castle...but at least this had a moat!
So we walked around the castle and found a nice area in the back with a small canal and there was also a huge windmill
Next we saw this building through the trees 
(photo taken by my friend, Kaitlin)
Here is where we're going to play a little game of: What do you think this is??!! We thought maybe it was a huge mansion, or some state-owned building, or another castle...but no. It's actually a casino. Kind of a let down. But we pressed forward...because after playing on the playground of the casino for like 25 minutes, it was beginning to get dark. We really wanted to see this building called the Turning Torso. Claire had seen a Discovery channel special on it or something and it was apparently an architechtual wonder when it was made. Here is a picture from far away (taken by Kaitlin):
By the time we finished up here it was getting close to 6pm and we had been walking around in the windy freezing weather so we took a cab back to the train station to buy our tickets to get back to Copenhagen. Of course, nothing goes without an adventure with us. We got back, bought our tickets and saw we could make the 6:22pm train. The big Departures board still had x for the track number meaning that it wasn't decided yet. We waited, and waited, and realized that the next train coming from Copenhagen to Malmo was delayed. Not a problem, except then we realized that alllll of the trains coming from Copenhagen to Malmo for the next two hours were delayed. Time to investigate. I asked someone who looked important who turned out to know practically nothing except that "there may be a bus somewhere outside...a special bus..." We went outside and found a family who looked equally lost and decided to follow them. Eventually the "special bus" came, we all crowded on and we embarked on the journey back to the next train stop closer to Copenhagen. Except since this was a local bus, it took about 45 minutes. We eventually got back into Copenhagen around 8:15pm, I just missed the train back to Borup so we went to McDonalds for a McFlurry and waited for my next train at 9:12 and I was home by 10:15. It was a long day but a lot of fun. It was a trip we realized we could just walk around and take in the sights and still have fun. Today after class we spent a few hours trying to come up with some weekend trips and other travels so I'll keep you updated as they come up and as they are finalized! Hope all is well with everyone and I'll talk to you soon!
Love,
Olivia
Saturday, February 7, 2009
first travel adventure
This weekend we had our first study tour of the semester. The communications program went to Western Denmark. There were a few other programs there as well, but some went to Berlin. Here is a map of where exactly we went:
I have to begin my post with how my trip began: hitchhiking onto our tour bus.
As I've said before, I live a ways outside of Copenhagen. You can see on the map where it is....and directly left, where there is a yellow dot is the town Roskilde. I love slightly south of there. My class was supposed to meet in Copenhagen right near our school buildings at 7:15am in order to leave CPH by 7:30. Trains generally only run about once an hour during off-peak times. I could have taken the 6:28am train out of Borup and it would have arrived in Norroport Station at 7:10am. Then I would have the 7 minute walk to the bus. That would definitely cut it close in the time department, however the one prior to that left my town at 5:47am getting me into CPH at 6:30am, when nothing is open. I figured I would just take the 6:28am train and pray that it wasn't delayed. Helle had a different idea. She decided it was ridiculous for me to take an early train into CPH just to come right back out and practically drive by our house. She formed the brilliant idea to have the instructor call us when they got to a certain point on the highway (picture....I-95) and we would meet them at Exit 34. The bus got off at the exit and stopped on the ramp where Helle and I were waiting in her car. I jumped out in the middle of the ramp and got on the bus. The class had been driving about 45 minutes at that point, so most of the bus was sleeping. The instructors hadn't explained to everyone that I was going to do this...so half the bus was confused, about a quarter of the bus thought I woke up late and that's why I had to meet the bus on the highway, and my 6 friends naturally picked seats in the BACK of the bus and laughed at me the whole way as I walked my fat ass down the aisle of the bus. It was about another 3 hours or so before we got to Arhus, the yellow dot up north.
Arhus:
Despite being the 2nd largest city in Denmark, what we did wasn't super exciting. We began with a lecture at the Danish School of Media and Journalism and visited Midtjyske Medier--a media company that produce many smaller papers in Jutland, the peninsula part of Denmark. We finished our day by visiting ARoS Museum, which had kind of bizarre modern and contemporary art. If I learned anything on this trip, it's that anything can be considered art.
This is a big giant wax figure of a guy. It's creepily realistic...even the feet have realistic toenails and visible viens. And it always seemed like it was staring at you. Not cool at all.
That night we stayed at a hostel. It was basically like girl scout (or indian pricesses) camp all over again. There were 6 girls in my room, all bunk beds. We had to find our own dinner that night so we walked around a little and found the cheapest good-looking food we could find. It was along this canal in the middle of the city and was actually good. There was supposed to be a trivia night at some Irish pub near there that our teachers told us about. We figured it would be in Danish, but decided that could still be fun. We got to the bar and it was PACKED except there was no trivia to speak of--so we left and found another bar with some small band playing that most random American music ever and left on the last bus available to get back to our cabin hostel.
Kolding:
We had to stop in this very small town to visit a castle. Now, when I think of a castle I think of a regal palace. We were never led to believe that Koldinghus would not be a regal palace. We got there and turns out it's some dumpy ruins of a castle on the outside, and they've added all sorts of modern things like platforms to walk around and these creepy faux animal statues on the windowsills---and not just any normal animals they had a fox, ferrets and a squirrel.
Odense:
We finally made it to Odense for my favorite part of the trip. We began by taking a tour of Denmark's TV2 and speaking to a managing editor of the channel. The TV channel's are completely different over here. There arn't that many to begin with (no Fios or digital cable or directv etc) so there's really only 2 news channels: TV2 and DR1. TV2 is the most popular in the country and is actually more than one channel. They have TV2, TV2NEWS, TV2Sports, TV2radio, TV2Zulu, and TV2Film. I have a tv in my bedroom and I generally watch TV2zulu because that's one of the channels that plays a lot of American films and tv shows. During the tour we even got to stand just off camera during the beginning of the 4pm newscast. None of this compares to the highlight of my trip though:
As we were waiting outside of the building to start the tour a guy left the building. I saw him and thought I recognized him and as he walked away I realized who it was!!! I can't find a picture of him online, but he's one of the analysts from the handball world championships I had been watching for the past few weeks. Naturally I got really excited. Later we walked by him again but he was outside...so I decided if we saw him a third time I was going to ask for a picture. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you see it) I never saw him again.
The whole trip ended with a long walking tour of Odense, where Hans Christian Anderson was born, lived and died. Basically this town is around in order to talk about him. EVERYTHING is Anderson related. It was a cute little town. Here are some pictures:
This is the home where Hans Christian Anderson grew up.
That's pretty much it. It was a busy few days but a lot of fun! It was nice to get out and see a new place besides Copenhagen. My friends and I are now in the midst of planning some local and further travel so I'll be updating you on that in the coming days and weeks! Miss you and love you all!
Olivia :)
I have to begin my post with how my trip began: hitchhiking onto our tour bus.
As I've said before, I live a ways outside of Copenhagen. You can see on the map where it is....and directly left, where there is a yellow dot is the town Roskilde. I love slightly south of there. My class was supposed to meet in Copenhagen right near our school buildings at 7:15am in order to leave CPH by 7:30. Trains generally only run about once an hour during off-peak times. I could have taken the 6:28am train out of Borup and it would have arrived in Norroport Station at 7:10am. Then I would have the 7 minute walk to the bus. That would definitely cut it close in the time department, however the one prior to that left my town at 5:47am getting me into CPH at 6:30am, when nothing is open. I figured I would just take the 6:28am train and pray that it wasn't delayed. Helle had a different idea. She decided it was ridiculous for me to take an early train into CPH just to come right back out and practically drive by our house. She formed the brilliant idea to have the instructor call us when they got to a certain point on the highway (picture....I-95) and we would meet them at Exit 34. The bus got off at the exit and stopped on the ramp where Helle and I were waiting in her car. I jumped out in the middle of the ramp and got on the bus. The class had been driving about 45 minutes at that point, so most of the bus was sleeping. The instructors hadn't explained to everyone that I was going to do this...so half the bus was confused, about a quarter of the bus thought I woke up late and that's why I had to meet the bus on the highway, and my 6 friends naturally picked seats in the BACK of the bus and laughed at me the whole way as I walked my fat ass down the aisle of the bus. It was about another 3 hours or so before we got to Arhus, the yellow dot up north.
Arhus:
Despite being the 2nd largest city in Denmark, what we did wasn't super exciting. We began with a lecture at the Danish School of Media and Journalism and visited Midtjyske Medier--a media company that produce many smaller papers in Jutland, the peninsula part of Denmark. We finished our day by visiting ARoS Museum, which had kind of bizarre modern and contemporary art. If I learned anything on this trip, it's that anything can be considered art.
This is a big giant wax figure of a guy. It's creepily realistic...even the feet have realistic toenails and visible viens. And it always seemed like it was staring at you. Not cool at all.
That night we stayed at a hostel. It was basically like girl scout (or indian pricesses) camp all over again. There were 6 girls in my room, all bunk beds. We had to find our own dinner that night so we walked around a little and found the cheapest good-looking food we could find. It was along this canal in the middle of the city and was actually good. There was supposed to be a trivia night at some Irish pub near there that our teachers told us about. We figured it would be in Danish, but decided that could still be fun. We got to the bar and it was PACKED except there was no trivia to speak of--so we left and found another bar with some small band playing that most random American music ever and left on the last bus available to get back to our cabin hostel.
Kolding:
We had to stop in this very small town to visit a castle. Now, when I think of a castle I think of a regal palace. We were never led to believe that Koldinghus would not be a regal palace. We got there and turns out it's some dumpy ruins of a castle on the outside, and they've added all sorts of modern things like platforms to walk around and these creepy faux animal statues on the windowsills---and not just any normal animals they had a fox, ferrets and a squirrel.
Odense:
We finally made it to Odense for my favorite part of the trip. We began by taking a tour of Denmark's TV2 and speaking to a managing editor of the channel. The TV channel's are completely different over here. There arn't that many to begin with (no Fios or digital cable or directv etc) so there's really only 2 news channels: TV2 and DR1. TV2 is the most popular in the country and is actually more than one channel. They have TV2, TV2NEWS, TV2Sports, TV2radio, TV2Zulu, and TV2Film. I have a tv in my bedroom and I generally watch TV2zulu because that's one of the channels that plays a lot of American films and tv shows. During the tour we even got to stand just off camera during the beginning of the 4pm newscast. None of this compares to the highlight of my trip though:
As we were waiting outside of the building to start the tour a guy left the building. I saw him and thought I recognized him and as he walked away I realized who it was!!! I can't find a picture of him online, but he's one of the analysts from the handball world championships I had been watching for the past few weeks. Naturally I got really excited. Later we walked by him again but he was outside...so I decided if we saw him a third time I was going to ask for a picture. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you see it) I never saw him again.
The whole trip ended with a long walking tour of Odense, where Hans Christian Anderson was born, lived and died. Basically this town is around in order to talk about him. EVERYTHING is Anderson related. It was a cute little town. Here are some pictures:
This is the home where Hans Christian Anderson grew up.
That's pretty much it. It was a busy few days but a lot of fun! It was nice to get out and see a new place besides Copenhagen. My friends and I are now in the midst of planning some local and further travel so I'll be updating you on that in the coming days and weeks! Miss you and love you all!
Olivia :)
Sunday, February 1, 2009
first snowfall
I was not paying any attention to the weather report recently but apparently they were calling for some snow...so I awoke at the crack of noon to a white ground outside my window. It was only about an inch but here is a picture of the backyard.
Here is a link to a satellite map of directions of where I live to the train station. Joe: you thought Glen Mills was the country? Welcome to Borup, Denmark.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=M%C3%B8lleparken+34,+4140+Borup,+Denmark+to+18+hovedgaden+borup+denmark&sll=55.494874,11.972968&sspn=0.00162,0.004807&ie=UTF8&ll=55.501173,11.981063&spn=0.012956,0.038452&t=h&z=15
Just to address a few comments from my last post:
Joe, I explained that we have been doing hard labor since we could walk, but she didn't think this was the case. She is more concerned that I eat breakfast everyday.
Aunt Kim, I think you're forgetting my all-time favorite vacation--to Annapolis, Maryland. Or to Aunt Sue's house that time when she freaked out at a telemarketer. It's a close call.
Feel free to ask questions or anything in the comments section. I'll try and answer them in the following post. I'll write again probably on Wednesday to preview my first trip that I'm taking to Western Denmark with my communications program.
Love,
Olivia
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