Din Fart

I finally got a picture of a danish speed control sign:
So, this past week I went home to visit mormor and morfar, which was very nice. Mormor found my favorite type of pastry, and morfar fixed my skirt zipper and found a ton of tourist catalogs to help me figure out what I want to do with Kevin and Amanda when they come. Also, I got my mom's old bedspread in the mail; it is COVERED in red hearts, big and small, and thus is perfect for my room. So naturally I had to paint my nails to match. They look like hooker nails though, so I decided to enjoy the act of picking all the polish off. Plus I now have a really comfy new desk chair (also red) that Pernille is storing in my room for the semester.

I also bought myself some tiny roses :)
The other day I went in to spend an evening with Helle, and the best part was taking her new puppy for a walk. This is the view from the beach her house is on:
Anyway, my kiwi flatmate is home again, and he came bearing tons chocolate, and washed all the dishes and washed the floor. I like him already. I'll have to take pictures of the flat, Pernille and I had a lot of fun rearranging the furniture, so it is now much more cozy, and our flat has now become a favorite place for movie nights.

After spending the past month trying to find a cheap way to scan my passport so that I could get my scholarship money, I found out yesterday that Pernille has a scanner in her room, so now all is well and I can move on to figuring out other things. Like financial aid. Crap.

I miss speaking Danish. Even though I'm here, I speak English the majority of the time, but I suppose it will be easier to make Danish-speaking acquaintances once I start actual school (not until the END of feb, as it turns out...).

Last night, Pernille treated me and her other friend to a free movie (she works at the theater) so the three of us went and saw "Klovn," a Danish comedy based on a very popular TV show. It was like a more sexually charged, more explicit and inappropriate version of The Hangover, and even ended with a slide show of ridiculous pictures.

Some good news: I've put junk food behind me (until valentines day) and am starting to get the hang of feeding myself. Oh! I nearly forgot; I took a video of the sheep I walk by on the way to work: (yes, it really is on of the most exciting parts of my day)

Strange Sightings

So, as my favorite thing to post is weird city sightings, here's a good one to start with. It says "shall we dispose of your bike? Then put it here." Or this sweatshirt in a shop window:


Then there's this add in the newspaper for a very expensive necklace:

And this children's book entitled: "the big butt book"

"When people get bigger, their butts grow too, and the farts and poo get bigger as well!...blah blah... Peoples butts have different colors. In China, butts are yellow, in Africa, they are black, and in Denmark, they are white."

What the English call butts

Storkespringvandet: a typical place to meet people in the city
And apparently there are enough Hansens in Denmark that they make door mats with just that lastname.
And Pernille's new bookshelf! (she found a way to put all those darn textbooks to use.)
Anyway, since the blog, I took a few new friends on a tour of Copenhagen. We saw two castles, two churches, a statue museum, the little mermaid, and an old battle fort.

By the way, this is Ash, she's a kiwi (from the same town as flight of the conchords, and has actually run into them on the street several times!)
Ash likes to carve our initials into potatoes:

This is my English friend Blake

We made the ever so hard to pronounce: Rød Grød med fløde

I'm glad that I found cool people to hang out with, I feel much less lonely now that I know I can just go knock on someones door and have impromptu nacho nights and such.

Skandinavian Yoga

THAT, my friends is Sildepostej, in case you were wondering :) mmm, I've had it 3 times today.
Yesterday after class I walked around the area and realized that the building is right by Nyhavn, which is a pretty place to be every day. I walked past the building that I just so happened to have as my desktop background:



Right, so not much new has happened. I got to know some of the girls in my building though, we made dinner together and went to a party for international students, and three of us almost got stranded 3 stops from our building on the way home, so we bonded a bit.
A new metro is being built by the language school, and while they were digging, they found a bunch of ruins and artifacts from the middle ages, so now I walk by an archeological dig every morning. It sounds cool, but there's not much to see.
Tonight I saw a VERY dark comedy as one of the cultural activities for exchange students, and met some of the girls from the building invited me to join them for Scandinavian yoga afterward. I went home and changed, but when I got to the yoga place, they'd split into two groups in different rooms, and because I came a few min too late, I was put in the room WITHOUT all the people I was supposed to meet. So, I laid down on the mat while the instructor tried to get us to reach deep meditation. When he got to the part where he said "everyone close their eyes" (he did too) I made a run for the door and caught the next metro back in time to skype with Kevin.
Speaking of Kevin, he made this the other day: get it? I didn't at first. (Hint, the man is Nik, from Nik og Jay)

11-1-11

What a cool date. Javier said that today is his friend's birthday, and if you add the numbers in the date, you get her age, and (of course) this works every year!

Today was (finally) my first day attending the language course. I have been moved to Studieskolen instead of the university, which means that I am not taking the course with other students my own age, but rather a room full of very nice people, most of whom seem to have a Danish significant other. "strange..." (I think that's the top reason why people learn Danish.) Luckily we are using the same text books as last time I was here, so I have my old answers written in my book. But I DO want to learn, so I am spending extra time studying the material.

The lady who gave me my placement exam yesterday misunderstood and thought I wanted to take the big weed-out test that you have to pass to get accepted to the university of Copenhagen and study in Danish. I just wanted to figure out what level of course I should be taking to improve. So after the 4hr test, she proceeded to degrade my essay, pointing out how bad it was, and said my written Danish was just not nearly good enough, and that my vocabulary was too small for academic writing. I didn't see how it could be possible to write too poorly in Danish to place into a course that is supposed to teach you to write in Danish, so after a brief explanation on my part, we got things cleared up. Still, she left me in a poor mood.

Luckily, the outlets in my room smiled at me, and so I felt better.
On another note, I thought I'd share Lars' picture exemplifying the new packaging requirements for cigarettes
And here is a true Viking:
Denmark has had frigid temperatures and tons and tons of snow, that never did get plowed or properly shoveled, yet still the mail arrived, via bicycle of course.

Last on today's Agenda: my Neighbor's name:
"Skovmand" = Forrestman
I wonder if his ancestors were known in town as men of the woods, or something? Lars should have that last name... Lars Bjørn Skovmand...

More pictures

I just got the pics I took with mor's camera. This is a house near Helle & Peter's, It was next to the church we visited on Christmas eve. Below are 2 of my three cousins; Patricia on the left, Maiken on the right.


This reads : "Organic men have better sperm (seed)" heh heh
A better picture of the tree

Strøget

We went to Tivoli before new years eve to see the fireworks. I got a years pass as a Christmas gift, so I intend to go much more once it opens again. I love the rides, and I've heard a lot of concerts are held there. (I've heard Nik & Jay perform there)

The good'ol peacock got iced up for the winter season, which was quite pretty
THE BEST PART:
FlØDEBOLLE factory!
This was the best one I have ever eaten; it had a marzipan bottom!
The walk that almost cost me my long purple toes
and then Happy 2011

Kolligie

After saying goodbye to Mor and Lars, Mormor dropped me off at my new apartment. My room is much bigger than I was expecting. It has a nice hardwood floor, everything except the desk is white (walls, ceiling, table, closet, curtains etc.) And I have decided that the room will be totally red and white, in true danish spirit. I bought a bunch of red candles, (some of which sit on a white plate that has red hearts on it) and a red heart-shaped alarm clock, red hearts on the walls, red hangers, and soon, my mom's comforter from when she lived here, which is: White with a red heart pattern!

Lars helped me unpack the day before I officially moved in, so I had help decorating and arranging things, plus he tightened some loose bolts for me and helped me vacuum and clean. Best brother ever.

I share a kitchen, living room, and two bathrooms with the 3 other students who live in the apartment. One is called Tom, from New Zealand, (He's gone for the month of Jan though, so I only meet him shortly) Javier from Spain (he and I share a bathroom) and Pernille, who is Danish. They are all very sweet and fun to hang out with. We've watched some movies together, and I am finally able to go out with Javier and his friends tonight, since I just got my train pass yesterday!

The logistics of everything was very stressful at first, it took me a whole day to workout what exactly I had to do. Yesterday I did almost everything: I bought a train ticket to go to Nørreport Station and get pas pictures taken, so that I could buy a really expensive train pass for the month, and then got my rental agreement printed and walked to a government office to register my new address and declare that I have moved back to Denmark, so that I could get a health insurance card, which I needed in order to get a Bank account (!) and a Danish Debit card, which I need to get the kind of SIM card (cell phone service) I want. So tada! I did it all in one day and still had time to buy chocolate milk and gummy candy shaped like "Big tits"
And butts (also piles of shit, not pictured)
The company that makes these candies is called Bonbon and they even have an amusement park with rides that are related to the candies. (for the "dog fart" candy ride, you go through a doghouse and a giant dog farts on you, complete with a sound effects and a smelly gust of wind)

I met a cool girl from Iceland (named Linda) the other day, and she has become my first real friend here. She is also a Psych major, and we have the same stressful and confusing to do list...
While we were walking to the bank the other day we witnessed a piece of Danish Cultural history: a baby buggie parked on the sidewalk outside a store, with a sleeping infant in it. I was surprised that people still do that here, considering that Denmark is starting to loose it's quiet safe nature.
Also, the library we went to in search of printers had large hammocks for students to study in!
Last night I met up with Linda and went to a place called Hornsleth Bar, which was a slightly disturbing themed place, that had more of a night club feel than a bar. It was the first of the biweekly parties held for exchange students with no cover charge and a nice discount on drinks. It looked like there was blood dripping down the walls, and a lot of the pictures on the walls were XXX rated. Not to mention that the bar's logo is female genitalia. But at the same time it was a very cozy and cool place, almost completely lit by large dripping candles lining the walls. We had a lot of fun just approaching and talking to complete strangers, and met a lot of fun people.
We met a couple from Germany who were a lot of fun, and the guy actually looked like a German version of Cornia to the point where it was freaky.