One Long Week

Wow, I feel like this past week lasted forever. I think I was really thrown off when I went out on Tuesday (we don't have class on Wednesdays)and didn't get home until 6:30 the next morning. That definitely disoriented my week. I'm going to make this post a series of observations I've made and experiences I've had because I don't have a coherent theme in mind.

- I finally got myself to the gym for the first time and it felt so good to just sweat. The gym is called Fitness World and it's a chain around Copenhagen. The one near my house is about a mile away so I ride my hostmom's bike there and back. I know Portland has been compared to Copenhagen a lot because if its similar bike culture, environmentally conscious attitudes, etc, but I don't think we could ever achieve the same bike-friendly atmosphere as Copenhagen because Portland is just too hilly. Copenhagen is extremely flat for the most part, and it has bike lanes and even bike traffic signals all over the city. I didn't realize until I started riding the bike to the gym that they even have bike traffic lights- how cool is that? Another thing is, at the gym, none of the girls really wear athletic shorts or even athletic clothes in general. Every woman I've seen on a treadmill or eliptical is wearing long spandex (I'd be so hot!) and they also don't exactly have running shoes or workout shoes, just regular tennis shoes. And while I'm talking about athletics, in Denmark, if you want to participate in a sport, you have to join a club team. There are no sports teams associated with schools or any high school sports teams. My recent experiences at the gym combined with this team sports fact made me realize how integral team sports are to the American high school experience. High school sports teams are a huge rallying point for school spirit, determine social hierarchy, get people into college, and have an entire community rooting for them. I just never really thought about how unique it is that we have that experience.

- I visited the oldest patisserie in Copenhagen this week called La Glace. It is right by my school and has all these adorable old women in green aprons working there, making homemade pastries and cakes. A cup of coffee is the equivalent of 10 dollars. I got what looked like a chocolate frosting ball filled with a thick cream. Oh my god it was so flaky and delicious. I devoured even more pastries this weekend because today was the holiday Fastelavn (I'm not even going to try to tell you how to pronounce that- it's almost like "festalaun") that is kind of like Halloween in that kids dress up. But the day is centered around the activity of beating a barrel full of candy (though historically the barrel had a black cat in it and the goal was to beat the barrell until the cat fell out or died or something and whoever does that is King of Fastelavn. so weird) until the barrel breaks and all the candy falls out. The Fastelavnsbolle are the traditional pastry made only during Fastelavn and are usually covered in frosting and have a whipped cream inside. Amazing.

- I started my photojournalism semester-long assignment this week. We had to find someone we don't know to take pictures of for the whole semester and create what is called a three-picture story or photo essay. On Monday, after wandering around for almost two hours in the freezing cold, I finally got a guy who works at a bike shop to say yes to being photographed. I returned on Thursday to take pictures and it was great. He actually wasn't doing anything that exciting, so the pictures aren't amazing, but he's a really cool guy who was easy to talk to and I'm excited for the opportunity to get to know a Danish person pretty well. He's actually half Iranian and lives in Sweden with his girlfriend of ten years and their one and a half-year-old son. And he reads more online American news media than a lot of Americans I know. He's really well informed and speaks, in addition to Danish, English, German, some French and some Persian. So impressive. He used to race bikes professionally and now just works at this shop.

- I literally can't do homework here. I had to write a three page paper, double spaced, this weekend, and it took me two whole days. That's ridiculous. Because I'm never busy and don't have anything to do most of the time, it's really hard to be focused when I need to be. My life at home is so much busier than it is here. On one hand, it's nice to have the break while on the other, I don't know what to do with myself. It's definitely an American thing to be busy and stressed all the time, but I have to say, I think my hummingbird personality runs better on that. Though I'm not complaining about a life full of tea, pastries, and taking naps!

Being abroad is such a disorienting experience. In an act of drunken homesickness at 4:30 this morning, I wrote to my friends about how much I missed them and wished they were here to help me feel more grounded. I think my friend Maddie put it pretty well when she responded by saying that the one reason studying abroad helps you define yourself is because you are forced to look internally to be the person you want without any external familiarity. That just totally clicked with me. You are surrounded by a bunch of people you barely know in a city that's completely foreign, and it's easy to sort of lose a sense of yourself. It makes you really aware of the way you're behaving towards others and check yourself in terms of the way you're spending your time and who you're spending it with.

Ok, I'm off to bed before I get too deep and insightful. Haha. Thanks for reading! Oh and here's a link to the website for La Glace. Look at all the cakes!