Unjamming the story jam

Happy March!! (I realize it's the second day of March but it still deserves a nice recognition that I forgot to give it yesterday).  

This will be an attempt to finally finish writing about last week so I can then start writing about this week.  Getting behind in a blog is like a traffic jam. All the stories just get stuck behind one another but once the light turns green all the cars still have to pass through just one or two at a time so it might take awhile. I got in a bit of a story jam but I don't want to skip any of them, so here they all are!  

Back up just a tiny bit from my last entry, to Thursday morning. 

Thursday was a day of biking.  I went to my therapy appointment which is just a few train stops past where I go to class.  I rode the S-tog with my bike (well, Jesper's bike) to Enghave and got there a little early so I went riding around the city.  Silly me started riding on the main road, which was great until I wanted to turn.  I was so intimidated and wasn't quite sure what to do so I just kept riding straight muuuuuch longer than I meant to.  Then I had to hurry my butt back towards the station and head to the therapist's office.  I did get a tiny bit lost on the way but I made it with one minute to spare!  Here is where I go to therapy:

 Haha, just kidding.  In case you can't read that, it says Carlsberg, which is one of the main beer brewing companies in Denmark.  And the building where I do actually go to therapy is, I think, an old building that used to be a part of the brewery.  Most of the buildings in that area now have been turned into apartments and office spaces.  It's pretty interesting.  After therapy I saw this for the first time:

Believe me, I was as befuddled as you are. What on earth could this possibly be?!?  (wanna know the answer? keep reading)

After my appointment I rode to DIS and had danish class. Following Danish was when I had my whole hat and candy adventure :)  After the lovely time I had listening to the clarinetist and eating candy, I met up with my European Urban Design Theories class.  We went for a bike ride around town, stopping at different places to see particular aspects of architecture or city planning. It was cooooold, but it was definitely worth it because my mental image of the city became much more accurate after physically being on the roads and figuring out where things are in relation to one another.  We rode away from the city hall square where we met and our first stop was at this awesome park, with a few buildings on one end and this brick fancy-looking wall on the other end.  The story goes: The King used this area as his hunting ground. It is sort of on the edge of what used to be Copenhagen many, many years ago.  As Copenhagen grew the King did not want to move his hunting ground far away, so he kept this space green in the middle of the growing city.  When a few citizens got injured he decided to put up a wall.  Then whenever he wanted to hunt he would let all kinds of animals out onto to grassy space and just go for it.  

Parrot playground!

Hunting lodge I think

I was so tempted to play on this!

We kept riding only to stop a few blocks later in this cool housing area.  Back in the day the apartments near the street were the most expensive. This isn't a very good view but maybe you can see that they actually made little courtyards and wrapped the apartments around so everyone had a view of the courtyard and then the owners were able to make a little more money on the apartments too. 

 Then we headed down Sonder Boulevard which is a not very busy boulevard that ends up at the Carlsberg brewery (where I was approximately 4 hours earlier!) I finally found out what the befuddling hanging strings were.  "Art" that you can play on!

So much fun!

 The Carlsberg area is getting turned into a more social, community area so they have a few really fun installations to encourage more people to come into the space. We certainly did, and we had a blast!

Fun bouncy, springy things.  

Acoustic speaker that you can put your ipod or iphone in and it will increase the volume so you can jam out to music while hanging out on the cool hammocks and such.

And on the other side of the building there were cool mounds to ride over, skate over or just play on. 

So turns out the Carlsberg Brewery area is way more fun than ever expected.  Guess that's one way to get me to go back to therapy :P  Anyway, we stopped a few other places and then rode on the "green" bike paths that are off the main roads, going through residential areas and parks and such. It's a very lovely way to go to work or school.

Cool sculpture at a park in Norrebro. 

Love this :)

And then we made the cold 10 minute trek back to DIS, where we had some chocolate and coffee. Man, I love biking around this city :)

Phew that was long. Onto Friday and the massive birthday party.  I got home from classes around 1:30 and dozed until the house came alive around 3 when Andreas and his friends got home from school and started getting ready for the party. Holy cow. This is what the living room (which usually have a desk, a couch, a table and some stools) looked like:

The party started at 5:30 (before which I got to skype with my family for a while!!) and included a nachos and taco feast, lots of games about knowing the lyrics to songs, whistling songs, singing songs while listening to the music with headphones and all sorts of other fun competitions. Here are a few snapshots of the evening:

Host brother = Excellent host :)

Mother and son!

What's funny is that no one else could here the music but they had to sing the words so their team could guess the song. Sooo funny!

The boys really rocked out!

Beautiful "Vanna White"s for the games

A few weeks ago while they were planning the party Karina had asked if I would like to teach a song or two of Zumba for the kids. I was more than happy to but when it came time I had butterflies in my stomach! It was so much fun though and it turned out there was no reason to be nervous. The kids were awesome. They tried everything I asked them too and they followed me in a dance to a Zumba warm up song and then to a fun song they know called Welcome to the Club (Link to the music video is here You can double click the link and choose "open in a new browser" if you don't want to lose this page). It was mostly just really simple moves that included a lot of jumping and fist pumping :P And we had a great time! They really seemed to enjoy it and I had a blast! It's been awhile since I've been able to chorgeograph and teach Zumba so I was in happy mode :)  Afterwards some of the girls started talking to me about it and I made a few friends.  I ended up rocking out with them most of the night...which resulted in me being more tired than I have been in months at 9:30 at night. The party didn't even end until 10 but at one point I sat down on the dance floor. I was that exhausted. Haha, I guess I am too old to keep up with all the youngsters.  I also think I had too much yummy food in my stomach to be bouncing around quite so much.  

Here are some of the friends I made

And we danced...a lot :)

Fog machine! I told you this party was awesome!

Saturday was a nice, relaxing day of homework and cleaning up from the party.  I also had the chance to make my mom's famous chocolate chip cookies. I am sad to say they are all gone now :( but that means they must have been good! They were a good addition to my nighttime tea while I did homework and watched a movie.  Saturday evening after the cookie making I went to the city for Mexican and hanging out with some DIS friends.  We watched a few episodes of a ridiculous/hilarious show called Dating in the Dark.  It was a very hyggeligt evening.  

(I'm almost done, I promise. Hang in there!)

On Sunday the Larsens were invited to a brunch with one of Jesper's coworkers and his family.  They were kind enough to invite me along. We headed out a little early and went to visit some classic Copenhagen sights.  

You know a host family is amazing when they will walk along Amager beach in the freezing winds just to show you one of the places that is on your Must See list.  

Beautiful church where Jesper's brother got married :)

We stopped to get cakes to take as dessert. And these were just too cute not to photograph. 

Amager Beach

Karina and Rebekah getting a little relief from the very cold wind

If it would've been a little nicer, we would have been able to see Sweden from here

H.C. Anderson. And our feet :)

My host sister Rebekah!

Cute little village of Dragor. All the houses are yellow and absolutely adorable.

Eventually we got to the house of Jesper's coworker and we had a lovely meal with some traditional Danish food I had not yet had.  We started out with bread topped with butter, mayonnaise and shrimp. We also had cod frikadellers (meatballs), fish egg pate (I have to admit I did not try that one. Rebekah liked it though so I should have), hamburgers and a delicacy that was some type of thin meat on top of ryebread. While the females had hamburgers, the males had a delicacy (I can't remember the name of it) but it is bread, butter, raw ground beef, and some vegetables and dressing-type things on top.  That's right, raw ground beef.  My question was "How is that healthy?" but apparently it is very lean ground beef and it is quite delicious.  I definitely did not try that one although I shouldn't be one to talk about health because I offered raw cookie dough to my host brother without really thinking about the eggs in it. Oops. When it comes to cookie dough all I can think is delicious.  Perhaps salmonella-avoidance should take preference over the delicious aspect...but let's just hope I don't have to learn the hard way.  After the meal of yummy Danish food, Rebekah and I took their adorable dog on a walk at a super cute park nearby.  Rebekah and I cannot communicate very much because of the language barrier but it is so fun to be with her. I do wish I knew what she was thinking more often or I could more easily tell her how cute she looks, but we are able to depend on simple phrases and laughter to get our points across.  Here are some adorable photos of our adventure together

So many puppies at the park!

 Need I say we had a really great time?

Okay, I have literally been working on this blog for over 2 hours. I do believe we got the story jam...unjammed. To keep it that way I'm going to quickly bring you totally up to speed and then I have to sign off for the night!

Monday- Danish class then Danish architecture class that included a trip to see the IT (information technologies) University. Incredible building.

Tuesday: Psych class and developmental neuropsych class. Giant pastry. And then home again where I actually got real work done.  Later that evening I finally got to catch up with my best friend/roomie Emma from Knox.

Wednesday (today!): I did work this morning (man, I am on a roll with the getting work done!), then I went to the city to  meet up with Bridgette, one of the other Knox-ers here at DIS and we got delicious sandwiches for lunch and then explored the Botanical Gardens.  All I can say is that it was the most peaceful experience I have had in awhile and we both agreed we forgot how much that smell of soil and green things really meant to us. It smelled so good in there. And it was warm. And beautiful. And fascinating. We had a wonderful time. I took a million pictures. I will post my 3 favorites.

And finally, tonight. I made a very Clark-like dinner for the Larsens. I love being in the kitchen (even though I make a huge mess of it!) and I was so happy nothing burned or got knocked over (by me in particular) or got ruined in any other way.  Feast your eyes!

Parmesan breaded chicken breasts

Spring Celebration Orzo: a true Clark favorite!

And my super sweet host family!

Ok, are you still with me?  I cannot believe how long this is. You are a trooper if you made it through (even if you just looked at the pictures only, I am still impressed)  Thank you for being patient while I update you...now I will have room to write all about my upcoming trip to Milan! 

Tak for reading.  Until later, hej hej!