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.