den polterabend.

the week following short study included the info session for the photography brittany and i have founded here at DIS and a celebration of my friend elise's birthday.
the info session had a relatively good turnout and everyone who showed up seemed really excited to have the chance to develop their photography skills over the course of the semester. we've since hosted a technical workshop in which peter, a member of the DIS faculty with extensive photography experience and a passion for sharing his knowledge, offered some basic information about how a camera works and gave some tips on how to take better pictures depending on what kind of camera you have. we've also gone on a "photo excursion" which i'll describe in more detail later.

elise's birthday actually fell on the weekend of short study tour so we decided to have our celebration the following weekend. highlights included my first pastry purchase in denmark (after being there for almost a month. yes, they all though it was just as weird as well.), a trip to cafe paludan for a live jazz concert (it was the end of the copenhagen winter jazz festival), dinner at chili milli (a health food restaurant reminiscent of grins), and an invitation to attend a danish bachelor party. i suppose the last item warrants a story.

as we enjoyed our dinner at chili milli, we noticed a virtually constant stream of men coming from what appeared to be the bathroom. we hadn't noticed any of them let alone that many of them going in to the bathroom so we eventually stopped one of them and jokingly asked if there was a party going on back there. he replied that they were actually a bachelor party celebrating johnny's impending marriage. being a large group of women, the idea of a wedding got us instantly excited and we proceeded to cheer every time a man came through the door from then on. eventually a large group of men had accumulated on the sidewalk outside the restaurant and they appeared to be seriously discussing something. three of the men reentered the restaurant, approached our table, and proceeded to ask us if we would like to join them later in the evening. i think we were generally quite surprised but someone with enough moxie and initiative managed to get the details. we then launched into a discussion of what should be done.
let me interject here to note that while i would generally not give a second thought to such invitations, as a group, we outnumbered the bachelor party and...we're in denmark.

it was only about 7pm and we weren't asked to meet them until 11pm. we made an executive decision to go to becca's kollegium, watch a movie, and then make an official decision around 10:30pm when we would need to leave the kollegium to show up on time. since we're in denmark, the obvious movie choice was the prince and me so we had a highly enjoyable evening identifying the landmarks pictures in clips in between scenes. sadly, the movie wasn't actually filmed in denmark but we were too proud of ourselves for being able to recognize that fact to really care.
all of a sudden, it was 10:30pm and we all ultimately decided to give the bachelor party a shot. on our way out of the kollegium, we were pulled in to the club in the basement of becca's kollegium (apparently copenhagen is your destination for one stop fun, shwarma, and housing)and enjoyed a short dance party before grabbing the metro into the city. sadly, the story ends there: even though we told the bouncer we were there for johnny's bachelor party and he had reserved a VIP table, we still had to pay the 80 kroner cover to get in. ultimately decided it wasn't worth it but hey--we'll always have the story.

i believe that story requires enough digestion for it to have it's own entry. so i'll save the chronicling of my trip to brussels for tomorrow. until then, enjoy this photo that confirms that i am too short to ride public transit in a stable fashion.

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