There’s always room for a Carlsberg!

Wowzas! It seems like I have had so much free time this semester… until this week. Basically everyone in DIS has been going nuts with papers, presentations, projects. You name it, it was due. I myself had 1 final exam, 3 presentations, and 4 papers due this week alone. BUT, it is the last week of classes, and all of my papers are completed! I have to give one (easy) presentation tomorrow, and then I am home free!!!!!! Well except a final exam a week from tomorrow in Economics, but that will also be easy peasy. I’m not worried.

Before this crazy week began, I made it to the May Day festivities at a park in Osterbro on Sunday afternoon. Supposedly it is supposed to be a worker’s demonstration, but just like everything else, the Danes have just made it a big excuse to get drunk, eat food, party, and hang out with friends (aka. “hygge” to the Danes). I went with my Skidmore Family :) I will miss them so much.

Basically we just hung out, listened to some random reggae music, and got hot dogs.

We also people watched… always a good time.

Monday I had my Public Health final. It was supposed to start at 8am, so like good students, we were all there on time. Then we waited, and waited, and by 8:30am, our exam proctor still was not there! We were so confused, so we just kept waiting until about 8:45 when a DIS assistant came in saying the proctors had some emergency and couldn’t come, so they wanted us to come in on Thursday morning to take the exam instead. Of course, my first reaction was to yell out exactly what I was thinking, “that’s ridiculous.” Thankfully my entire class had the same opinion, so we got our teachers to cut the exam in half since we had half of the time to take it. Plus we were all busy and did not want to come in on Thursday when we already wasted an hour of our Monday morning. Oh well, it ended up working in our favor! :) YAY.

On Tuesday I worked diligently to get most of my work done. Seriously it was the most productive I have been all semester. Then Wednesday I didn’t have classes, but I had a presentation night for my Public Health class. Throughout the semester we have been working on group projects, and my group researched why more women got the HPV vaccine in Denmark than in the Netherlands. It was really interesting, and our teachers seemed to like our project as well! After the presentation, we had a reception with food and champagne to celebrate the end of our class. It was really fun, and I spent most of the time chatting with my friends. It was a nice break from studying and writing papers too!

Today I had my final Danish Language and Culture class :( It was definitely my favorite class of the entire semester, and my teacher Suzanne is the greatest! I think my entire class is going to miss her! I had to give a presentation with my group about Education in Denmark, then we had a little end of the semester party with smørrebrød, or an open-faced sandwich on really dense rye bread. It was fun but sad at the same time. I think we are all starting to realize that the semester is coming to an end :( We also sang a song that my teacher wrote us, which is apparently something Danes do for basically every party. Of course they have to drink a few beers before they will actually sing. Us Americans have no problem being loud and obnoxious even if we are completely sober, so our teacher was proud of us for singing haha.

Then she gave us a little piece of information to take with us when we leave… and the store goes like this:

You have a big mug, and you have to fill everything that is important in life inside of the mug. First you have to start with big rocks, the things that mean the most in life, so we picked family, good health, and friends. Then you have some smaller rocks, education, a good job, a nice home, etc. Next, you pour in some sand, which would be like a beautiful summer house in northern Zealand, a fancy car, lots of money. Then, your mug is full and you have everything you want in life. If you put things in starting with the sand, it wouldn’t all fit. However, we were missing one thing… you can still pour a Carlsberg in the mug and it will fit perfectly!!!

So her word of advice: In life, there’s always room for a Carlsberg!

I think I am becoming more Danish because I completely agree.

In other news, today is Cinco de Mayo, so obviously Danes couldn’t care less. However, I happen to love Mexico, I happen to be done with all of my schoolwork, and I am going out to celebrate!

Oh, and today Gabi and I made a list of things we need to do in our last two weeks in Copenhagen… we are going to be super busy, but since we have zero class/school/any other commitments, I think we can do it all!

Emily and Gabi’s CPH Bucket List

Viking house

A-Bar

Kulor Bar (x3)

Carlsberg Brewery

The Little Mermaid Statue

Tivoli

Bakken

Walking around Vesterbro day

Beach

Zoo

Run around the lakes in Norrebro

Round tower

Climb to the top of the church in Christianhavn

Happy Pig

Canal Cruise

The Living Room

Nyhavn

Can’t wait to start crossing them off our list! Oh, and my host family found out who their summer student is going to be today. Sad. Oh well, I guess I knew all along that I couldn’t live this crazy life forever! At first, it seemed so weird being in Copenhagen. Gabi and I said all of the time how it wasn’t real life. Now living here is normal. I really feel like my friends have become my family, and my host family is my second family. I never thought I would come here and make such a close group of friends, but I did! I can’t wait to visit them in New York!

Hej Hej!

Emily