A Long Week

This week was long, fun, busy, but great! Unfortunately, I didn’t really take many pictures to document it, but I will recap the highlights.

Monday: I don’t remember. I went to class (Public Health and Danish Language), and that’s pretty much it. I also got my package from Grandma and Bobbi, so that was much more exciting than class anyway. I am honestly enjoying all of my classes. DIS warned us a million times that we shouldn’t expect the teaching to be like the teaching styles at our home universities, but I really haven’t been able to tell a difference from the (non-lecture) classes I take at Iowa. We all sit there while the professor talks, and we have discussions. Maybe DIS thinks that students never talk in classes in the US and that we are just lectured at by professors? That maybe true for some classes, but definitely not most.

DIS does have a lot of group work though, which is something I am not used to in college. For my Public Health class, we are in groups of 5 and paired up with a health institution in Denmark for a research project. My group is paired up with the Serum Institute, which is basically like the Center for Disease Control in America. We are working with a woman in the Epidemiology department, and she helped us come up with our topic of HPV Vaccinations. She is from the Netherlands and told us that the rate of vaccinations for girls in the Netherlands was only like 30%, but in Denmark, it was much, much higher. Therefore, we are going to look at why that is the case, and we are also going to research the United States as well. I’m pretty excited for the project!

My Danish language class is a blast. Our teacher is so nice and awesome. Tomorrow is one of the girl’s fødselsdag (birthday), so our teacher is bringing in pastries. YES! I am actually starting to pick up on some Danish, which I thought would never happen. The words do NOT look like they sound, at all. I sort of miss Spanish haha. At least I will be able to use it when I go to Spain in April!

Tuesday: I had my Health Economics and Policy class and Muslims in the West. In Health Economics we went over how to write an analytical research paper, and my teacher actually asked us before class, “Have you guys ever written a paper like this before?” Are you kidding me?!?! Yes, we write papers in America, that is not something special in Denmark. We are all in college. It is what we have been doing for the past 2 years.

Gabi and I booked our trip for our break in April in the afternoon on Tuesday. We are officially taking an overnight train to Amsterdam on Friday night, spending a few days there, taking another train to France for a few days, then flying to Barcelona (we got that flight for like $40!). After Barcelona, I will travel back to Copenhagen for Czech Trek and Prague!

Tuesday night we went to a Handball game (match?). It was super fun, even though the team we were rooting for lost. These are Gabi’s pictures because I didn’t have my camera.

I would say handball is a cross between basketball and soccer. The players are a lot more rough than in basketball though! I swear someone was getting hurt every 3 minutes… and the funniest/best thing was that every time someone was hurt on the ground, they would start playing dance music! Gabi and I got a kick out of it. In the US, everyone is like silent when someone is hurt, but in Denmark, they just dance.

Wednesday: I had a field study for my Economics class at Parliament. We got a tour of the building and talked to a guy about healthcare politics. It was alright. That night we had a “mandatory” seminar for my Economics class. Two professors from Copenhagen University came to talk about Health Economics, but I was super hungry/tired/bored for the whole thing and there were cheese, crackers, and fruit sitting in the back of the room that they wouldn’t let us eat until the presentation was done. Needless to say, I was really mad that they didn’t take attendance.

Thursday: I had class, and that’s all I remember. Nothing eventful.

Friday: I had class in the morning, then I came home and decided to go on a run because there was a break in the rain. Of course I run 1.5 miles away from home when it starts pelting little ice flurries from the sky. Ouch. I made it home in one piece though. Then I we went out to a bar that night, Gabi thought she lost her transportation pass (about a $350 piece of paper), so we were searching around for about an hour for that while Gabi was freaking out. We finally gave up and decided to go home, and after I walked in the door, Gabi called me, “I found my pass! It was in a weird pocket in my purse.” We are never going to let her live that one down!

Apparently I did take some pictures that night… not great ones, but it breaks up all of my writing. And I want to embarrass Gabi and Tim.

Saturday: I woke up WAY too early to go shopping with Gabi, and I was basically a zombie the entire time. Then I came home and slept for a couple hours, and Gabi came over to my apartment to make dinner. I meant to take pictures, but with all of the cooking, talking, laughing, (wine drinking…), I forgot. We made penne pasta with chicken, bell peppers and onion in a red sauce and had it with this delish tomato bread that we dipped in olive oil… my fave! We also made the Oreo Cheesecake my parents sent me!!! SO GOOD! Then we went to the city to DANCE! We went to a place called Kolør Bar, which was so sketchy outside that we almost didn’t go in, but it took us forever to walk there so we went in anyway. It ended up being so much fun, and we danced with Danish boys for hours! My feet are killing me this morning! I love dancing though, so it was definitely worth it.

Today I should do some homework, which is extremely hard to do when you’re in Copenhagen!

I’ll work on taking more pictures this week. My camera will be with me wherever I go, promise!

Adios,

Emily