Christmas in September

I know I just updated, but this will be a quick one. I leave for Estonia and Finland with my class on Sunday, so you probably won't be hearing from me for a while. Go ahead... pull out the map & try to figure out where Estonia is. Don't worry, I was guilty of that too.

Because yesterday was Tuesday, Iben had spinning class and wasn't cooking dinner. Becky was on her own for dinner too, so I invited her over thinking we could just boil some pasta or something. Somehow this got twisted into the rumor that Becky and I were going to be cooking some sort of gourmet meal for my host family. So I quickly resorted to my tried & true chicken and spinach recipe from runnersworld.com (THE BEST) and we tried to make due. Becky was lucky enough to experience my spastic kitchen attitude that I get when I'm cooking. I think it stems from all those summers flipping burgers at Tavistock. The pot boiled over a little bit, and we miiiight have set off the smoke alarm a little bit, but all in all it actually turned out pretty well.

The uncomfortable part was actually eating it. Thomas and Iben were going to be home late, so we set some food aside & it was just me, Becky, and the boys. They don't like to talk too much, but Becky does... so there were lots of awkward questions asked about girlfriends and such. I could tell they were dying to get away from us hahah but I pictured my own 16 year old brother in that situation and decided that he wouldn't be too happy about it either.

Then, since it was Sara's 21st birthday, we had to rally and go out to the bars. I wasn't feeling too up to partying after Oktoberfest, but all the girls got together and got dressed up and it ended up being pretty fun. We ended up at Sam's Bar, which has the karaoke, singing "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey. Sure... it's still September, but the crowd loved us. No, they really did. We were a hit. Plus, it's starting to feel a little bit like winter here anyway. I'm pretty set to stay in and do the "hygge" thing at night for a while now.

The only downside of the night was the poor birthday girl losing her camera :( Fortunately, I've already taken so many photos that I think my computer is actually about to explode, so I think I have enough for the both of us.

Now I guess it's time to actually do homework. We're hitting that point in the semester where I have to start doing my work. Booooo. Art History midterm on Friday - wish me luck! See ya post-Finland :)

So geht es in Deutschland

I had been looking forward to writing this blog post all weekend, but now that I have actually sat down to do it, I don't even know where to begin.

Courtney, Becky, Sara and I left for Munich early Friday morning. It was a little surreal because I had sort of secretly been planning this trip inside my head for like 3 and a half years... since the time I was in Munich with 3HS, CHA & our VONDERFUL tour guide, Silke. As incredible as that trip was, it doesn't even hold a candle to the experience we had this weekend at the largest festival in the world: Oktoberfest.

We had to transfer flights in Zurich (which is a little counterproductive, if you know your geography) but it was officially the shortest layover ever. Maybe 15 minutes, tops. I have no idea how we made the second flight because in Europe they don't let you off at gates and you have to go through security a second time. But, we successfully made it to the "Ambient Hotel Colina," where we met up with Meg, Meg, & Charisee (more Gburgers) and set off for Theresienwiese, where the party was. We had to take a bus to a subway to get there, which might have been confusing if there weren't millions of other people headed the same direction as us. The rule for finding our way became "FOLLOW THE LEDERHOSEN!"

We followed the crowd off the subway and up an escalator.. and there we were! Oktoberfest! It was so overwhelming. Our entrance was right by all the rides & carnival games and it immediately reminded me a little of the Jersey shore..... times 4 million. We wandered around a little bit and found the row of enormous beer tents and a sea of lederhosen. I have never been so proud to be half German. When I was little I never liked being German because I associated it with sauerkraut and WW2. I have completely changed my mind. I was flattered every time someone came up to me and started speaking to me in German. I even burst out singing Schnitzelbank at one point. Suddenly, my most embarrassing family tradition seemed like the coolest thing ever.

Our night really began when the frantic search for seats ended with some CREEPY Turkish guys making room at their table. We ordered some of those giant beers and the most delicious chicken I have ever had & camped out for a while. The one guy claimed that his name was Michael Jackson, another was Antonio Banderas... and then this one guy was clearly like 50 some years old and I don't think I ever heard him speak, but he was slowly but surely falling in love with Sara. She was visibly uncomfortable, but we were all laughing way too hard to do anything about it. The night went on in a similar fashion. We met some guys from South Africa, I had a full blown conversation en espanol with a Mexican named Eduardo, Courtney tried to steal someone's suspenders, and Becky somehow befriended "Red head Ted," the most beautiful British ginger I have ever seen. Not that I have seen many. We had to call it a night eventually though, because the plan was to get up bright & early to get in line.

We had a "free" breakfast at the hotel in the morning. (I'm putting it in quotes because the hotel itself was actually really expensive. Sara and I shared a single bed... which actually led to her sleeping on the floor, spooning with the mini fridge... but that's a different story.) At any rate, this breakfast was sooo good. Yeah, I know. Oktoberfest is supposed to be about the beer, but I think the food was really my favorite part. At one point we had something called kasespatzle & it was AMAZING. I never thought I would like German food.

Anyway, we got to the tents really early, and it was STILL hard to find seats. We ended up in the back of one of the Paulaner tents with a group of Italian boys celebrating their friend's 19th birthday. They were hilarious, but after a while we kind of decided we didn't want to spend Oktoberfest with Italians, so we set off to find some German people. But first, we had a photoshoot with a man passed out under a tree, ate some sort of sausages, and Becky and I bought these ridiculous hats ... the ultimate impulse. I immediately regretted it, but by the end of the day she had me convinced that they were a great purchase.

German-hunting was pretty successful. Our next stop was the Hacker-festzwelkdfheeujjaIdon'tknow, something tent. It was there that we found our favorite new friends: Felix, something that sounded like Vilko, Dominik, Michael, Reiner and Gabriel... among others. I think Gabriel was our favorite because he was SO drunk & was referring to himself as "Gabriel, the Earth Angel." One of the girls corrected him and said, "Don't you mean arch angel?" No no no... EARTH ANGEL. Oookkkayy Gabriel, whatever you say. Dominik was telling this long-winded story about how he is bi-sexual, but Michael was saying that he was full of it. Meanwhile, Reiner kept stealing my new headband because he liked the bow. They were all mostly 18 and 19, and we couldn't believe how young they were because they looked like they were in their mid-twenties. I think all the smoking that Europeans do makes them age faster. We probably shaved a few years off our lives just sitting with the chain-smokers all night, but they were too funny to leave.

We did take a break at one point, and Sara, Vilko, Felix and I were going to go on a ride... but that kind of failed because I somehow got seperated from them in the sea of people, and none of us had a phone because it's really expensive to use our Danish phones in other countries. (Just as the anonymous one who drunk dialed her mom on Friday night...) Fortunately, we all knew to meet back at the tent, so no harm, no foul.

People started to crash at the end of the night. Courtney even took a little power nap at the table. The guys were drinking what we THOUGHT was dark beer, but was actually half a mug full of Jagermeister. Nasty surprise when I asked if I could try it. I don't know where they got the energy from, but they wanted to go clubbing after the tent closed. The girls, on the other hand, opted for ice cream, chocolate covered waffles, and our hotel rooms. The Megs and Charisee had an early flight & the rest of us wanted to actually see the city a little bit in the morning. So we said Auf Wiedersehen & got on the bus.

Sunday was gorgeous, so we packed up our stuff and wandered around Munich for a little while. It's seriously one of my favorite cities... second to Copenhagen, of course. We didn't have a lot of time, but we saw the Glockenspiel and that church with the 2 tower-looking things (I don't know what it's called) as well as the McDonalds where 40 of us high school kids plus Ormsby made a bathroom stop on the way back from the Hofbrauhaus a few years ago.

Then, we got on the RIGHT train to the airport (almost had a huge mistake there) and boarded what was for some reason the scariest flight of my life. We were supposed to be flying Swiss Air, but they put us on some dinky little airline that I had never heard of, and I don't know why but I just had a weird feeling about it. I think Becky and I were literally the ONLY ones panicking on the plane, but when we took off it just did NOT feel like we were at the right velocity to get completely into the air. The plane was low, turbulent, and kind of sideways for a while. I feel like I've flown enough to know when something's off... but we survived, obviously. The next flight was much smoother but we once again had about 15 minutes in the Zurich airport.

I got home close to 9:00 last night, and when Daniel and Jonathan asked me how it was, I just stared at them blankly for a little while, searching for the words to describe it. There really aren't any. I'm reviewing what I wrote in this blog and realizing that I did not do it justice at all. There are so many litte hilarious stories ... some more blog appropriate than others ... but if you want to know JUST ASK because of course I'm willing to tell. I feel like I could talk about this weekend forever!

Ummm P.S. the whole thing cost us like $700, which makes me really want to cry... but something I've been realizing is that you can't put a price on experiences like this. I am having such an incredible time over here :) I just really better hide my wallet from myself until our travel break. IRELAND!

Reflections on an Expensive Weekend

Of the four weekends in September, this past one was the only one I will have spent in Copenhagen. And what is there to do in Copenhagen but spend? Let me tell you, fellow bloggers, spend we did.

Friday after class Jamie, Becky, Sara and I took the metro to Parken (football/aka soccer stadium) to exchange those senior citizen tickets. Don't worry, the women behind the desk got a good laugh at us too. We also realized that the Backstreet Boys will be coming to Copenhagen in December. I wish I had realized this early enough to get a ticket. Childhood dream come true?!? Though, to be fair... I was always partial to N*Sync. My heart broke the day my Dad told me Lance Bass had come out of the closet. BUT ANYWAY...

Afterwards we shoved our stuff in lockers at DIS and headed to Tivoli for the evening! I really need to track down Rob Jordan and tell him that his favorite vikingwoman Helga finally visited the place that inspired the name of what is now "The Grindhouse." There was an entry fee of 85 kroner, which wasn't too bad, but we had to pay extra to go on the rides. Of course, Sara and I were the only ones willing to do this, but it was soooo worth it. We went on "Himmelskibet," which is just one of those rides with the swings, except it took us wayyy up high & we could see the entire city. Right as we lifted off, the ride operator was like "Say hi to Sweden for me!" I'm not sure that you could actually see Sweden, but I wouldn't be surprised. It was awesome.

We went on one more ride, walked around the gardens for a little while, and then bought a re-entry pass so we could break for dinner. Tivoli was cool and all, but it IS old, and really tiny compared to amusement parks we're used to. I feel like Clementon Park could give it a run for it's money. So we went in pursuit of food and landed at some place (I don't even know what it was called) where we could sit outside with blankets and heat lamps. We had giant hamburgers. Yes, they were expensive, and yes, they were worth it. Definitely what the Danes would call "hygge," or what Becky would call "hoogely." So then we went back to Tivoli for a little while to see the lights and all. There was a concert at 10, but we were too tired to stick around.

I decided not to go out Saturday night either. For whatever reason I was just really content to stay in my bed & watch "Love Actually." Haha Iben made fun of me, though. Here's a conversation I never would have had with my real mother:

-Iben: You're not going out tonight?!
-Me: Nah, I'm kind of tired so I'll probably just stay in.
-Iben: But you were home so early last night!!

Yeahh. So that was that. But yesterday we went to the F.C. København soccer game at Parken, and that was a lot of fun. Though our seats were obviously as cheap as they were because when we sat down there was a huge metal bar right in our line of vision. We ended up moving though. There were a lot of empty seats because I think the team they were playing was really bad. (The score was 3-0, in case you were wondering!) Some guy asked us if we like Manchester when he heard us speaking English. Apparently, Danes can't really tell the difference between British and American accents. I couldn't believe that, until I really thought about it and remembered my spanish phonology class last spring and how hard it was to differentiate between different spanish accents. So I'll give him a break, I guess.

Today, I FINALLY got my CPR #, so I am now eligible for the wonderful universal health care that I've been learning so much about. Oh, and we did some shopping too, just to cap off the weekend. I got a shirt to wear when we go out tomorrow night. I mean, I can't disappoint Iben again.

"The man who paints the house"

I am supposed to be starting 2 weeks worth of architectural sketches that I've put off until now (who's surprised?) but I have recieved a complaint that my blog is too focused on the bar scene, so I'm here to redeem myself to my family members :)

Fortunately, embarrassing situations seem to follow me even during the daytime. Earlier this week, we decided to buy tickets to a F.C. Kobenhavn football (soccer..) game this Sunday. You'd think we'd be pros at buying tickets online by now, with booking flights and hostels and everything, but this site was partially in Danish so we had to wing it a little. Courtney, Jamie, and I thought we were purchasing the cheapest seats in the stadium (nosebleed section, I mean, come on) but in actuality Jamie ordered a child's ticket .... maybe she can pass for 17, not that bad really.... and Courtney and I ordered SENIOR CITIZEN tickets. I'm not sure we can pass for 65. So this one is going to be fun to sort out on game day.

Speaking of senior citizens, that is how Iben basically refers to everyone over the age of 50. I didn't realize this until tonight, but she had Daniel and Kristian when she was my age... so she's only 36! No wonder she always talks about people in their 40s being old. She said she didn't want to be an old mom, but wowwww.

I didn't have class today so I was the last one to leave the house this morning. This happens kind of often because everyone is always on different schedules. (I have no idea how the boys' school schedule works) But anyway, Iben always tells me to lock the doors and everything.... oh, and "the man who paints the house will be here in the morning." The man who paints the house has been here just about every morning since I got here. I'm convinced he is painting it one brick at a time. I have no idea what his name is, and he doesn't speak any english, but the other day we started exchanging "hej"s as I awkardly walk out of the house and under his ladder. Today he said something in Danish, to which I replied, "yeah." He's very mysterious, this man who paints the house. I think I'll miss him when he's gone.

In other news, Patrick Swayze died the other day (I'm sure this is not the first you are hearing this). So last night, I went to the DIS shared housing for dinner & to watch "Dirty Dancing" in his honor. Best line of the movie? "Where is my BEIGE, IRIDESCENT LIPSTICK?!"

Today my Public Health class had a field study to the Frederiksberg Health Centre (located on Peter Bangs Vej, btw). I decided that I was going to walk there because it didn't make sense for me to go all the way to DIS to meet everyone first. The walk was a little more of a hike than expected... probably a little over 4 miles round trip. It was a nice day though, and it was probably good to burn off those random hot dogs we got on the street last night. This field study was actually interesting, and all about health promotion/prevention in the community/etc. The one guy speaking was in charge of like sex ed and STD testing... and at one point I swear he said, "We don't want to tell them that if you have sex you WILL get chlamydia...." and I reeeaaalllllyyyy wanted to shout out "AND DIE!" but I'm not sure he would have gotten the reference to "Mean Girls."

Now that I have sufficiently procrastinated, time to go draw some "exploded axons" of buildings. I wish I knew what that meant. I wish I wasn't the only NON architecture student in the class. But that's whatcha get.

Until the next time I have a funny bar story.....

- Caitlin

Rave Run

I am going for a 40 minute run, and I am bringing you with me. Call it lame, call it an excuse to stop every few minutes... I'm calling it a tour. I see so many awesome things on my runs that I might not see otherwise. If I'm not back in XC shape by the end of this semester, slap me because I have noooo excuse. Check it.

We're only 1 minute from my house ... already lookin pretty scenic

Swan!!

6A... that's my bus!

Haha. My favorite bus stop. Silly Peter.

10 min. later we are at the zoo!

Elephants



You tired yet?

No Nazis Allowed!

A little bit of the "skyline," not that CPH really has one..

Well folks, our journey ends here. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! I'm officially never going to think that running in the battlefields is cool ever again.

Le Tour de Southern Denmark

I have re-earned my place in the family. I'm not sure how I ever lost it in the first place, but for a little while there I was convinced they hated me. Well, hate is a strong word, but ya know. Today is that kind of Sunday morning where I wake up and am so glad that I didn't go out the night before because the weather is awesome and I feel soooo alive! Ahaha I know, me and the weather. But anyway, I was feeling motivated so I unpacked and cleaned my rooms. In return, Iben made me a smoothie. SCORE.

So this past weekend (well, Thursday-Saturday) was spent galavanting all around Southern Denmark (Syddanmark!) with my Public Health class on what was officially the nicest tour bus I have ever seen. We passed by some of the other programs on their trips, and our bus clearly owned all of them. Our intern then informed us that gloating is a deadly sin in Denmark.

The academic visits were ehh. I started to realize over the course of the trip that I should have just sucked it up and taken chem with Tara this summer so that I could have been in the Medical Practice and Policy program. Public Health doesn't really do it for me. There were some highlights though:

First we went to a hospital in Svendborg (haa like you know where that is. I don't even know where that is). They explained the concept of telemedicine which is basically nurses having consultations with chronically ill patients that live far away via something kind of like Skype. We got to see this in action and even though it was all in Danish, the little old man on the other side of the screen was adorable.

Our next academic visit was to a General Practitioner in Rødding (good luck pronouncing that one) and that was actually really interesting. The healthcare system in Denmark is a LOT different from the U.S. but I'll spare you the specifics.

Our third one was on Friday, to the Region Syddanmark, which is basically a governing body in the healthcare system. SO BORING. omg. Ahh. The guy talked forever and ever. To be fair though, I thought it was awesome that they let us into the conference room that the regional council actually meets in. I was really impressed with some of the opportunities we had on this study tour, I unfortunately just wasn't that interested in the subject matter. Oh well.

Of course it wasn't all academic, and we had some fun too. The first night we stayed in a folkehøjskole.... which is like this school that some Danish kids go to in between high school and college to basically "find themselves." The whole idea is very hippie-like and SO awesome. They take mandatory classes but there are no grades, and they basically just work on building a sense of community, exploring weird interests, and "stimulating personal growth." It sounds sooo bizarre (because it is) but it's totally normal over here. We ate with them, played crazy variations of dodgeball, and sang together out of this song book that the Danes call "the Bible" but is really just full of Beatles songs and Carole King. I don't get it, but it was suchhhh a cool experience. We went out to a bar with the students afterwards, but none of us could handle their chain smoking. I was sandwiched between 2 Danish guys, and even though I only sat there for maybe an hour, I left feeling like I had smoked 3 cigarettes myself. Ick.

Other highlights included "Danfoss Universe," which I can't really even begin to explain to you. My best analogy would be an outdoor version of the Franklin Institute, but on crack. We did get to ride Segways though... SO fun. Also, Friday night we were wandering around the town of Sønderborg and stumbled across a free Johnny Deluxe (Johnny De-loooox) concert. Apparently this band is a pretty big deal in Denmark, so that was lucky. Probably the best part of the whole trip was that almost all of our meals were paid for, and they were fantastic :)

Last night, one of Courtney's many new danish friends invited her to a party, but we decided to stay in instead. And by staying in, I mean I traveled an hour to Becky's for some girlie bonding. It was a good choice. Oh.... and I bought a metro ticket for zone 3 this time. That was also probably a good choice.

"Tonight's gonna be a good, good night..."

I'm back! I think I'm addicted to blogging.

We'll get the boring stuff out of the way first. Classes are going pretty well... though ironically enough, Health Care in Northern Europe (my core class) is by far my least favorite. Despite being an HS major, I'm kind of liking art history the most out of all of them. Or my Rome class, even though it's only one credit. Every class "elects" 2 class reps to meet with the teacher every now and then to report how the class is going. There really was no incentive to do this in any of my other classes, but when our Rome teacher (Mr. Bro) said that he'd buy the reps cake and drinks in Italy, Becky and I jumped on that. We are now taking our leadership roles way too seriously and are planning to mandate a toga party, when in Rome. hahahh

So it's starting to look like Tuesday nights are going to be our big nights out on the town, since we're usually traveling and such on weekends. (This weekend we're all going on short study tours with our core classes.... woooohoooo.) Tuesday nights are also the nights when Iben goes to her spinning class and leaves us on our own for dinner. Since we were planning to go out afterwards anyway, Becky invited me over for dinner with her host family. They were awesome!! We had some big meatball things and they were delicious.

Becky and I got ready and she grabbed her bike out of the shed for the commute home. In the process of doing so, she somehow got it stuck on another bike. After wrestling with it for a little while, we decided that the night was off to a good start & started singing that Black Eyed Peas song that I love so much.

We then got on the metro (my first time! I was so excited) and even though they apparently never check the transportation passes, there was a guy coming around to do checks. I confidently whipped out my transportation pass and he started looking at me kind of funny. (Here's where my mind starts going uhh-ohhhh). We discovered that Becky does NOT actually live in zone 2 like she thought, but rather zone 3 which is not on my transportation pass. How you can get to zone 3 without first going through zone 2 is a mystery to me. This dude was not sympathetic at all... and gave me a 600 kroner fine that I have to pay at the post office. Lovely. At least I didn't get deported, right? I wanted to cry, but we decided it would be better just to laugh. YEP, tonight's gonna be a good night.....

Things continued to go downhill after that. We went to the Moose Bar, which I've decided is going to be like that frat that you know you should stop going to every weekend but you keep going back anyway. (You Gburg kids know exactly what I mean). There was some confusion and a bunch of people were going to migrate elsewhere, so I just followed along. I was kind of under the impression that all the girls I went out with were behind me, but I turned around at one point and they were not. Somehow it ended up just being me and Cole, and he kept saying how he wanted to go home. (Oh--- sidenote: my phone decided yesterday that it was going to stop sending texts... so when my friends were texting me telling me where they were, I couldn't respond.) Cole wanted to go home, but I forced him to stay with me until I found my people in a sad little karaoke bar rocking out to .... you guessed it.... Bruce Springsteen. I'm telling you, Denmark LOVES him.

After a few rounds of bad karaoke I decided I was done for the night. I dejectedly walked back to Radhuspladsen to get on the 93N at 1:30. The way the night was going, I was surprised I actually made it on time.... AND I still had time for a pit stop to 7-11 for a muffin. Poor choice.

When I woke up at 7:30 this morning to the sun aggressively shining in my window, I reflected on all of this... and the fact that I'm not sure what time my drawing class is meeting today. The only consolation came when I was making breakfast and finally discovered where my family stashes the Nutella. That is a sign that it's going to be a good day, at least :)

Eating Ribe

I just got back from my first weekend excursion outside of Copenhagen! Those of you that know me well know that I can be a little ... impulsive ... at times, and when the Study Tour people were presenting this little weekend trip called "Reading Ribe," to a cute little medieval town on the west coast, I pretty much jumped on it without even thinking.

Ribe is the oldest town in Denmark, and is about 3.5 hours from Copenhagen. It's pretty secluded... no, that's an understatement. And before the trip I didn't know anyone who was going with me, so I started to question my rash decision. Oh, and my host family of course didn't make me feel any better. Copenhageners believe that there is nothing worth seeing in Denmark outside of Copenhagen... especially on the Jutland penninsula. Ribe? Why???

Well it turned out to be completely worth it. I mean, it was a pretty low-key weekend and I missed out on a lot of the shenanigans that went on here, but I really had a great time. There were 16 (I think) students, and 2 DIS people, Carsten (this awesome history teacher who studied in the U.S. in the 60s and has some of the greatest stories ever) and Anders (a 24 year old Danish student who is, in a word, hilarious).

Our hostel was actually really nice, and provided us with a huge breakfast both mornings. Nice change of pace from the salty cornflakes. Both days we had great breakfast conversations with Anders about silver hightops and how it is acceptable to date someone as young as "half your age plus 7." Do the math and get back to me people. (P.S. this conversation was initiated by me saying that I have 16 year old host brothers..... and Anders asking me if they are hot. I said ew. And then he went on this ramble.)

Saturday morning was kind of rainy. And REALLY windy. We did a scavenger hunt around the city, but my group's answer sheet blew into the river. It was probably for the best. Then we climbed the church tower & the wind was so strong that --- I kid you not --- I was reclining back into it w/ almost all my weight and it was holding me up. We ran all around, took lots of unnecessary pictures of buildings, did some sketches of the architecture, and called it a day. For dinner we went to a Mongolian Barbeque (....think Danish with a Chinese accent, it was weird) and chowed down. Then Anders and Carsten used the DIS emergency money to take us to pretty much the only bar in town and buy everyone a drink. It was an emergency, according to them, we looked dehydrated. It was a good time.

Then this morning, we went to the Viking museum ...... and I just kept thinking about how Rob from Tivoli (the cafe) told me that I look like a Viking woman, and named me Helga. Too bad I'm not even Danish.

We topped the trip off with a traditional Danish buffet, and I am proud to say that I tried pickled herring. It's not as gross as it sounds, but it's pretty gross. The rest of the food was fantastic though and I don't think I need to eat for another week. If nothing else, this trip was definitely worth the food. I think next semester they should consider naming it "Eating Ribe."

I only have 2 days of classes this week, so start looking forward to more stories to come!

Hygge, Alarms, and more Nighttime Adventures

I know I've probably been updating a little too frequently, but it seems that everytime I walk away from my computer, something else ridiculous happens. Welcome to my life, people.

Monday afternoon I came back from class intending to go for a run. I noticed there weren't any cars in the driveway, but the fam finally gave me a key so I let myself in. As soon as I stepped in the door I realized I had set the alarm off. The beeping got progressively louder and louder as I panicked and called my host parents. No answer. The neighbors were staring, and I was mentally preparing myself to get arrested when Thomas called me back and told me the code. He then had to call the home security company and tell them not to send the cops. Good one, Caitlin!

Then, Monday evening my Survival Danish class met at a cafe called "Zugar Baby" for a free meal (sweeeeettt) and to experience was the Danes call "hygge." That literally translates to "cozy," I think, but my interpretation was that it just meant eating and drinking for an extended period of time. Our teacher had us all take a shot of something called Gammel Dansk.... the only way I can describe it is you know how a Yankee Candle store smells? It tasted like that. I don't know, but needless to say it was a good time. (Speaking of "I don't know," my uncle suggested DTE as an abbrev. for "devil the egg." Clearly better than IDK... going to have to start using that one!)

So Tuesday rolls around and Becky, Sara, and I (and hopefully Courtney too!) decided to sign up for a 1 credit class that will take us on a sick tour of Rome during the 2nd week of our travel break. Traveling with DIS definitely seems to be the way to go... muchhhh cheaper. I'm really excited, but our professor is nuts and his last name is Bro, which, coming from Gburg I find hilarious.

While we were waiting around for this class to start, some crazy lady who legitimately looked like Calypso from Pirates of the Carribbean came up to us and begged for something in some strange language. We shook our heads, and then I'M PRETTY SURE she put a curse on us. I'm waiting to see if I turn into a skeleton in the moonlight. This lady was freakin creeeeepy.

At that point, I decided to get on the bus and go for a short run before the Rome class. Afterwards, Iben asked me if I could only take one shower a day (Okay, legitimate request... they are super environmentally conscious around here) but then she was like, "...and can you try to keep them to 2-3 minutes?" SERIOUSLY? I took a shower in 6 min the other day and I thought that was good. I'm clearly never going to be able to shave so good thing it's cool enough to wear pants here. I've taken to turning the water off while shampooing and all that, and am proud to say that my current PR is 1:53 (time water was running).

Okay this is getting long, so I'll finish with last night. We had a big Gburg gathering at a place called the Moose Bar. (We don't have class on Wednesdays, btw) It was really tiny and cramped, but then there was this random giant room in the back where we all hung out with some Danish guys. Things got a little wild, some guy dropped his beer on Julia's head, I'd rather not go into details but if you want to know ... just ask! :) You all know I'm always more than willing to share stories. The good news is, I got on the right bus this time.

Anyway, I have 2 more days of classes, and then it's off to Ribe for the weekend! (Ribe is supposedly the oldest town in Denmark? It's on the Western coast.) I'm pretty pumped but I don't know anyone else on the trip, so hopefully I will make some friends.

I'm sure you'll be hearing from me again soon!