eventyr i bygninger og kanyler.

gooooooooood morning!
(at least it will be morning by the time most of you have an opportunity to read this.)

i find myself with a little chunk of free time and the presence of mind to record my thoughts so i figured i'd attempt to expand upon my list of events from the last post. i'll begin with my afternoon of exploring with brittany.

my dear friend is taking a history of copenhagen course which requires her to explore the city and answer questions/take pictures of what she sees. i benefit quite a bit from her enrollment in said course because i get a free travel guide AND touring buddy. win-win.
her first assignment took us to the city hall. it's about a block away from the main building of our school. it was officially opened in 1905 and is actually the third city hall in copenhagen's history. the previous two burned down. a lot of things in this city have burned down. like the whole city.

fun fact: the clock tower adjacent to the main building makes the city hall one of the tallest buildings in copenhagen. apparently they opted to have tall humans at the expense of the height of this buildings.
above the front door is a golden statue of absalon, the bishop who founded copenhagen along with christian the fourth. the hall contains quite a few offices, a large hall that any citizen has the power to rent for social events, and a very interesting water fixture.

out on the plaza in front of the city hall is the zero mile marker. err...zero kilometer marker. upon it you'll find the distances to other portions of the city. although upon further examination, taylor realized that it gives three different distances to the same place. moving to google maps was a valuable choice.

next stop: the church of our lady. this ridiculously old and beautiful church is also just a block away from our school. the history of this place includes another series of fires and moving the site of the building from place to place around the city until the area it now resides in was settled upon. it fell victim to the british bombings of copenhagen in 1807 and needed to be rebuilt yet again. construction began in 1817 and was finally finished in 1829. the big controversy surrounding the rebuilding was the erection of the church tower. the old building, having been built in the medieval era, had a tower but the architect designed the new church in the neo-classical style which apparently has a prohibition against church towers. however, the tribe spoke pretty forcefully and they got their church tower.

the sides of the church are lined with marble statues of the 12 disciples, judas iscariot replaced with the apostle paul. at the head of the church is the christus. apparently quite a while ago a mormon prophet entered the church, saw the statue, and exclaimed that this is what jesus looked like. he had copies of the statue made and i believe there's one in every mormon temple.
in 1924, the church of our lady was officially named the national cathedral of denmark. however, it doesn't look like any huge events have happened in there for a while. in 1648, frederik the third was crowned and then, after a sizeable dry spell, the current crown prince and his wife were married there in 2004.

our exploration was cut short after this visit as i had to get to class. however, this wasn't your ordinary class. it was clinical skills day and i learned how to use a stethoscope, place an IV, and perform a lumbar puncture. it was a pretty big day. i think the craziest part of the whole deal was how nonchalant our professors were about the whole affair. as if it were the most normal thing in the world to give a bunch of 20 year-olds needles and allow them to stab things. including each other. yes, we were given the option of practicing our IV insertions on each other. a sweet girl in my class offered herself to be stuck but was too nervous to do it herself. i took her up on the offer and was ultimately unsuccessful, but she assured me (in response to me repeatedly asking, "am i hurting you?") that it really didn't hurt her. crazy day. i think it still hasn't truly hit me that i tried to put a needle in another human being.

we had a short week of classes because we all left for our short study tours that thursday. and since that was such an incredible weekend and deserves a post of its own, i'll stop here for today. but i'll leave you with a picture of some graffiti on the outside of the church of our lady.

kærlig hilsen,
kati

alle de ting.

hej, friends!

since my last post to you, my life has been quite a whirlwind. here is a summarizing list of things that have transpired in the last week:
1. tried to go to the ungdomhuset (the youth house) for a cheap vegetarian dinner only to find that dinner is only served on thursdays. it was a monday. alternatively, we (the sweet group of girls i was seeking sustenance with and i) enjoyed pizza at big ben's pizzeria.
2. explored the city by accompanying brittany while she completed an assignment for her history of copenhagen class.
3. went to two more meetings of the ICC bible study.
4. attempted to insert an IV in a classmate.
5. showed up 45 minutes late to a field study at the panum institute, a research facility that conducts multiple studies on HIV and AIDS.
6. spent the weekend traveling on jutland, the largest island of denmark's 406 islands.
7. visited a danish GP's office.
8. went to a fabulous modern art museum where i saw a 5-meters-tall boy and walked through the rainbow panorama.
9. did some relaxing inside a very hyggelig giant uterus.
10. started riding my bike to school.
11. held a conversation on the train with a man from afghanistan in danish. because he didn't speak english.
12. spent the night at brittany's host family's house in hvalsø, a 40 minute train ride outside copenhagen.
13. visited christiania, the free town of copenhagen.
14. held the first meeting of the DIS photography club which brittany and i founded.
15. was offered a job because of the aforementioned club. i'll get paid $8 an hour to go through their photo library, sorting them into folders and adding appropriate tags.
16. went to another copenhagen hucks practice.

and now i am finally home after a very long day, cuddled in my bed and enjoying some g-chatting with the parents. i promise i will expand upon this list with photos and prose later. but for now, i'll leave you with a picture of myself taken in the rainbow panorama. you can check it out for yourself here: http://www.aros.dk/samlingen/your-rainbow-panorama/
i was pleasantly surprised to find that my museum brochure unfolded into a free poster of the museum with the rainbow halo around the top. it now hangs next to my map of europe which i use to record the places i've been and to prevent myself from being so ignorant of european geography.

so much more to come.
kærlig hilsen,
kati

og nu med en cykel.

as of today, i've been in denmark for two full weeks. it simultaneously feels like it's flown by and feels like i've been here forever. i love how much this seems like a home. i already have so much of a life begun. but i find myself wanting to be busier. i think i just need to get a handle on traveling at night. too many nights spent in has made me anxious.

although considering the number of things i did this week, the preceding statement is borderline ridiculous. i suppose it just means i'm still adjusting.

in my last post i left all of you on an exciting cliffhanger: i had plans to go to the little mermaid statue. i know you've all been on the edge of your seats since then, so i'll not leave you in suspense any longer. here she is:

the danes always apologize for the statue because it's so small. i thought she was fun either way. very picturesque on the harbor and whatnot.

fun fact: she's been defaced a number of times. lots of painting. one time someone added a bra. but the big thing to do is decapitate her. who knew?
in addition to visiting the mermaid statue, our walking group made an unanticipated stop at a street hot dog stand. excellent decision. hot dogs in denmark are classy business. less mystery meat and more quality sausage. topped with yellow mustard, honey mustard, chili ketchup, onions, fried onions, and pickles, this thing was delicious. for the sake of my girlish figure and my wallet, i'll not make a habit of them, but i'm certainly glad i gave it a whirl. and all those who visit me in denmark will be making a stop at one of these stands. without a doubt. who wouldn't want to participate in this level of excitement?

our afternoon together as kollegium-mates ended with cake a coffee in the 5th floor party kitchen. our SRAs brought some danish cake recipes and we experimented with baking in grams, milliliters, and degrees celsius. it just makes me nervous. the cake was delicious, though. ended up having it for dinner. not such a wise idea before my ultimate frisbee practice.
speaking of which, frisbee was phenomenal. i'm so glad i got hooked up with the team here. however, it took about 10 minutes of practice for me to realize this wouldn't be a semester of athletic slacking off. our practice began with 30 minutes of circuit training followed by an hour of drills/throwing practice and finishing with 30 minutes of scrimaging. i had a blast but my body ached for the next three days. today was the first day i was able to climb the stairs to my room without groaning. despite the pain, i'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to stay in shape while i'm here. and i made a bunch of super athletic danish friends and another DIS girl, coincidentally named katie. even halfway around the world, i can't escape it.
the team practices three nights a week (monday, wednesday, and friday), but for the sake of trying new things, i think i'll stick to yoga on monday nights and do frisbee on wednesday and friday. fridays are scrimmage and hang out days. sounds like perfection.

thursday was a typical day of class that ended with a trip to a cafe in vesterbro with my danish language class. we had a cozy evening and enjoyed some danish cuisine courtesy of DIS. i enjoyed sparkling conversation with my table mates and left with three new friends, one of which i'll be traveling with this weekend on my first study tour.

the highlight of friday was our first patient interview in my core class (human health & disease). all of us gathered in a room with a 70 year-old woman and took a patient history. four students led the questioning and the rest of us added what we thought needed to be said when they were done. it was an intimidating experience at first but mostly just exhilarating. our first doctor-like act. this program is awesome. i can't believe the opportunities it's offering me--in the first full week, even. i'm so glad God led me to denmark.

on friday night, our kollegium had a rocking, five-floor party. each floor prepared some food/drink in their communal kitchen and we traversed the floors on a "tour-de-kitchen". we all ate entirely too much but enjoyed hanging out together in a relatively classy context. sadly, i'm still just not that much of a party girl. i stayed for a while but cut out after dessert--right before the drinks & dancing floor. with all this meeting people all the time, you just need some me-time every once in a while.

saturday was pretty low key--lots of grocery shopping and making plans for cooking. i made a helpful little sheet for taylor and i with easy recipes and ingredient lists with danish translations for simple shopping. i'm loving the opportunity to cook here and taylor and i are trying to take full advantage of the opportunity to cook for ourselves. to that effect, i had two girls from my amazing race group, karen and jill, over for dinner. the four of us enjoyed eggplant pomodoro and garlic-oregano chicken with a side of sparkling conversation. ah, the blessing of fellowship.

and that brings us to today. i enjoyed my second sunday morning at the international church of copenhagen and then went over to the studenterhuset to...

GET MY BIKE.

that's correct, i'm now a københavn resident AND the owner of a bicycle. as soon as i signed the contract, i felt instantly fabulous and european.
and then i had to carry my bike down the stairs to take on the train and felt very clumsy and american. but scrapes on my legs from the pedals and inexplicable black marks on my face could not kill my optimism--i will master københavn by bike. and it will be awesome.

i apologize for the picture-emptiness of this post. this week was mostly class and readings. but never fear: i'm accompanying brittany on her history assignment on tuesday which means lots of pictures to post. her class assignments are to explore. she's given a list of places and told to go check them out. this place is phenomenal.

i leave you with a picture of my kollegium mates and i with the little mermaid. this will give you a better perspective on her size. see if you can recognize my roommate yet. ;)

kærlig hilsen,
kati