Jul i København

The Danes began decorating and celebrating the holiday Christmas season (Jul) at the end of October.  It was a bit strange to see Christmas trees and lights being put up before Halloween and Thanksgiving, but it has certainly put me in the holiday spirit!  The whole city is decked out for the season and it looks beautiful!  There are lights, trees and garland EVERYWHERE!  Something I have noticed is that although the lights everywhere are very pretty and impressive, they are all white.  I miss my blue icicle lights from home!

This picture shows the decorations on one of the pedestrian walking streets in downtown CPH.

On our last day of classes (last week) some of my friends and I decided to celebrate by going ice skating next to Nyhavn Harbor.  It is a pretty little rink set up in the middle of a square and surrounded by Christmas lights.  We chose a wonderful night to go skating outside... it started raining once we got there.  The picture below shows my incredible skill on skates (I fell down right after the picture was taken).

For our final week in Denmark, Erin's brother and his girlfriend visited us.  We decided to show them around a bit and we took them to Tivoli.  Tivoli has re-opened temporarily for the holiday season and it was completely decorated and very festive.

There was a building set up as a Nisse (elf) village.  Even though we walked through the building, we felt as if we were on the Danish version of the "It's a Small World" ride in Disney.  The picture above shows Erin and I popping up through holes in the ice to meet some local Nisse.

On one of our last nights in the city, several of us decided to check out the Absolut Icebar.  This is a bar made entirely of ice (walls, bar, seats etc.).  It is a fun, unique place to go and we had fun.  In order to keep the place from melting, the bar is kept at a very cold temperature.  Therefore, we were supplied with big parkas, gloves and Kirby even had to wear booties.  We were allowed to spend 45 minutes inside and we got our drink served in a solid ice cup... it was extremely chilled.

So... thats the end of my story.  I have now shared with you my whole study abroad experience (for the most part) and I hope you have enjoyed my semi-regular postings.  I am literally at the close of my trip because I currently sit in the Copenhagen airport waiting for my flight.  In a matter of 12 hours I will be tackling my mother and Uncle John in the Boston airport.  I am extremely excited to be coming home.  I have had a trip of a life time, but I cannot wait to see all of you.

Thanks for reading! God Jul (Merry Christmas)!!

Holiday with my Visiting Family

First, I should let you know that I am writing this post as I wait for my visiting family to pick me up and bring me to the airport to come home.  I have one hour before they get here, so I will try to make this quick.

One of my favorite parts of my study abroad experiences in Denmark has been the time I have spent with my visiting family.  I really enjoy talking to them and learning about Danish culture.

Part 1
Two weekends ago our family brought Erin and I to Den Gamle By, which is an old town and open air museum in Åarhus.  We traveled 3 hours by car to experience this village made up of historical buildings and exhibits from the 1800s.  The buildings are real historical structures from all over the country.  They were taken down, brick-by-brick and rebuilt to establish the Old Town.

As we walked the cobble stone streets of Den Gamle By we could enter various buildings to observe traditional ways of making food, sending mail, brewing beer and weaving fabric.  There was also a variety of traditional Danish foods to try and shops to visit.

Later that day, our family introduced us to a traditional Danish Christmas dessert and drink.  We really enjoyed aebler skiver, which is a doughnut-like ball that we dip in powdered sugar and strawberry jam.  We also had our first taste of the classic holiday drink, Gløgg.  This is a hot wine drink with snapps (kind of liquor), raisins and almonds.

Part 2

Last weekend we visited our family for the final time.  For this special occasion out visiting parents prepared a traditional Danish Christmas lunch.  Typically, this occurs on Christmas day with the whole family and lasts for at least 3 hours.  There is A LOT of food, drinking and conversation.

Our lunch lasted almost 3 hours.  Now, as many of you know I am a relatively picky eater especially when it comes to meat and fish.  I have to say that I think you would be very proud of the kinds of food I tried.  We had about 4 different kinds of fish (including HERRING... yuck!) and at least 6 different preparations of pork.  My least favorite food was leverpostej (liver patte) which looked (and smelled) like a pile of mashed up... well, it was unpleasant.

My visiting mother and sisters also taught us how to make Danish paper hearts.  This is a very common thing for families and friends to do at Christmas time to get in the holiday spirit and to decorate.  The hearts a generally hung on their trees and they get filled with little presents and sweets.

Thanksgiving

My friends and I decided we really wanted to make a true Thanksgiving for ourselves here in Denmark.  Originally, it was just going to be a small dinner for the five of us.  We thought it would be fun to cook a big dinner for the Danes in our building, but we knew it would require a lot of money and time to pull off.  Well, apparently some of the American students who lived here before us had made Thanksgiving for the Danes.  When they started asking if we would be doing the same we didn't feel like we could say no.  So, we put sign-up sheets on our doors and figured that we would get maybe 20 Danes to join us... almost 50 people signed up!!!!

Thanksgiving Eve...

In order to save time, we made pies the night before.  We made pumpkin, peanut butter oreo and coconut cream (mine).  Erin's mom was nice enough to send us pumpkin pie filling and a box of pie crust.  In the picture above, I am rolling out the pie crusts.  The boxed crust turned out okay, but couldn't even compare to Gramis'.

Note:  You must be wondering how 3 pie could possibly feed 50 people... well they didn't.  First, cut them into teeny tiny slices for people to try bites of them.  Second, we made a chocolate cake and brownies to supplement our dessert selection.

Thanksgiving day...

We all had class on Thanksgiving day (a travesty, I know), but we began cooking around one o'clock in the afternoon. (We didn't serve food until 9:15 at night)  In order to put us in the holiday mood I turned on some Christmas music and opened a bottle of wine.  Any good cook will tell you that music and wine is essential in pulling off a successful meal.  Above, I am demonstrating my ability to multi-task by drinking wine and slicing garlic.

My friend Whitney's mom is a cook, so she was our head chef.  For the most part, we were her minions and we did what we were told in the kitchen.  Most of the recipes were from Whitney, but Erin made the sweet potatoes.  I helped her peel them (above) and they tasted pretty good, but they were NOT my mother's sweet potatoes!!!!  (she put balsamic dressing in them and mashed them to death...weirdo!)

In order to feed our whole party we cooked 4 turkeys.  Whitney was brave enough to tackle the cleaning and preparation of all four.  I give her major credit because there was no neat bag inside the turkey for its innards... I gather this was no fun task.  When it came to cooking and basting she assigned us each a bird to care for.  The one I am pictured with above is mine.  I dutifully basted my citrus-orange turkey every half-hour.

Our spread included turkey, corn bread stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, corn, cranberry sauce (the can-shaped kind), rolls, cornbread, pies, brownies and cake.

I think the Danes were really pretty impressed with what we made for them.  They all seemed to like the food and many asked for recipes.

What I missed from Thanksgiving at home:

-leftovers

-pie for breakfast the next morning

-Mom's sweet potatoes

-Grandma's pie crust

-Jake's camp fire turkey

-board games with the cousins

-Macy's Thanksgiving day parade

-All of you

Bloopers

I am now nearing the end of my stay here in Europe.  Most of what I have yet to do and see here revolves around writing papers, finishing group projects and studying for exams.  My schedule is completely insane and I am pretty sure my head may explode at any moment.  However, I'm guessing that pictures of me stressing about classes and finals would not make for a very exciting blog.  Sooo, I have decided to have a little fun with this blog entry.  I'm pretty sure I may make some enemies (2 in particular), but I will do it anyway for your viewing pleasure.

As you know, I spent the second week of my travel break galavanting around the continent with my mother and auntie.  They were kind enough to tell you about some of our adventures here.  In reviewing my blog, I have discovered that there are several stories and pictures that they "forgot" to include.  I shall now devote the rest of this entry to telling you "...the rest of the story" (yes, I did just quote NPR). 

London

The truth is... we had a blast in London.  The three of us thoroughly enjoyed all of the sights, monuments and culture there was in this great city.  It seemed like everywhere we turned there were beautiful buildings and statues to see.  My mother and auntie explained one of their posts that we got to ride the London Eye.  Pictured below, it is essentially a giant (extremely stable) ferris wheel that gives its passengers the chance to experience the true beauty and scope of London.

For me, this was a no brainer... of course we were going to do it!  Well, the two of them had "decided against it" prior to my arrival.  On the first day of our trip we took a tour that offered a ride on the eye, but they chose to get tea instead!!!!  They were too scared of the height and potentially rocky cars.  Eventually I was able to force them to do it and they had a wonderful time (no rocking).

There were other crazy moments in London, like the time my faithful companions tried to get themselves arrested and "forgot" to pay their bills.  I would tell you about those stories, but I am looking forward to a happy Christmas season too much.

Dublin

The true craziness began when we arrived in Dublin.  On our first excursion they declared that they had no interest in looking at maps or planning our trip, they would rather I took care of all that.  My dear auntie even tried to make me use my "feminine charms" to convince the waiter to help us out.

At Dublin Castle their behavior escalated towards being uncontrollable.  They did not find the castle entertaining enough just to look at or walk through...

First, Aunt Jill began falling down all over the place and throwing her belongings.  My guess is that she was acting this way merely to get my attention.

Then, even my mother's usually good behavior deteriorated when she decided it was amusing to climb into the castle's guard shacks and make funny faces.

If you have doubted the factual nature of my stories thus far, the next two pictures should remove any question of their truth...

Here is my auntie playing with her food.  A milk mustache?  I think not.  This would be her showing me her GUINNESS mustache!!!

Oh, mother.  I am afraid you are setting a very bad example for your impressionable young daughter.  

Yes, they told you about the night we went and saw Irish step dancers at a pub where we could pour our own Guinness.  What they left our was the number of glasses  they poured...  

**Note: These photos were staged.  No mothers were intoxicated during the taking of these photographs. **

As I conclude this "tell all" blog entry, I begin to fear for my safe return to the States.  For this reason I must tell you that while there is some truth to most of the stories I have just related there is also a hint of fabrication.  I found these pictures far too entertaining to simply provide you with the "real story."  To be honest, I often coaxed my auntie and mother to play along and act out ridiculous scenes for my pleasure.  I hope you enjoyed my stories and will not think less of them (or me).

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, think of me when you are eating your delicious turkey and cranberry sauce.  Know that I am incredibly jealous!!!

Czech Trek!!

For my last week of the travel break I signed up for an adventure trip offered through DIS called the Czech Trek.  This trip gave us the chance to experience various outdoor adventure activities in Cesky Raj, a northern region of the Czech Republic.  

Day 1

We left Copenhagen Sunday evening by bus.  I tried very hard to sleep during the overnight ride, but being squished into a tiny seat with someone sitting next to you and luggage on your lap made this a rather difficult task.  Needless to say my body was very sore and tired the next morning... a good way to start off an adventure trip!

Day 2

It took 17 hours to get there by ferry and bus, but we finally made it to the beautiful Hruba Skala Castle!  The castle was a series of old pretty buildings on the face of an enormous cliff.  As it was close to Halloween, there were several random and spooking decorations set up (notice the dummy being hung in the courtyard below).

After we got off the bus we had the chance to settle in a bit and then we jumped right into a 3 hour session of intense team building activities and icebreakers.  I was pleasantly surprised with some very clever and original games that I will be stealing for camp staff training this summer.  It was a really good time, despite the rain pouring down on us.

Day 3

For the remainder of the adventure portion of the trip our group of about 40 was divided in 2 smaller groups.  I was in the group that wished for a more challenging course.  We began the day with a 3 hour trekking and hiking trip through the woods and along the cliffs surrounding Hruba Skala.  The panoramic views were incredible and the nature was a nice change of pace from the cities I have been living in for the past several months.

Later that day we got an introductory lesson in high ropes elements.  We took turns rappelling down a cliff, zip-lining across a canyon and coming back over a rope bridge.  I really enjoyed the rope bridge because it required a lot of focus to keep it from flipping over and myself from flipping out.  

The rappelling was also fun.  The hardest part was the first part where I had to force my body to lean backward and trust that the rope would keep me from falling 50 meters down a cliff to my death... what a rush!!

That night we had a group scavenger hunt around the castle.  We were divided into 6 groups and given the task of finding small clues all over the castle grounds in order to figure out a riddle that would lead us to some kind of treasure.  We were armed with terrible paper maps and tea candles to guide us around the buildings, down into the gorge and forests.  Luckily, I am really good at deciphering riddles.  So, my group found the key to unlock the tower where the treasure (bottles of wine) were hidden before anyone else.

Day 4

We began this morning with a cave and rope expedition on and in a nearby village.  We were split into smaller groups of about 10 to trek our way into caves, through mud puddles, over cliffs and down bouldering hills.  This was my favorite part of the whole trip because we really had to work together as a group to find our way and make it through so tight (literally) spaces.

The first thing we did was crawl through a giant mud puddle to find clues to our map inside a cave.  Once we found our map we had to use it to make our way around the mountain.  Our Czech guide supported us if we were in desperate need of help, but mostly he taunted us by suggesting that our chosen path lead to blood and guts.  I took away his talking privileges early on in the trip.
The final cave we wormed (we actually had to crawl on our stomachs) our way into was a cute little circled space for us to sit together and enjoy some more treasure (wine).  Our guide, Libor, "forgot" to bring a corkscrew and glasses so we had to push the cork down in and play pass the bottle... classy, I know.

We later concluded our adventure activities with a more challenging climbing and rappelling experience.  As you can see above we are standing at the base the rappelling wall.

Day 5

For the final day of our trip we spent 10 hours in Prague, the capitol city of Czech.  It was an amazingly beautiful city with a great deal of old architecture and art.  

Prague is a very touristy city with souvenir shops on every corner and people crowding everywhere, but I really enjoyed walking through the city.  The buildings and churches are very old and picturesque.  A great deal of attention has been paid in making the old and new portions of the city aesthetically pleasing and interesting to look at.

I had a really great time on the Czech Trek.  It was a wonderful end to my 3 week travel break.

Highlights from Holland

Well, I would first like to apologize for how long it has been since my last post.  I got so used to having my mother and auntie write my blog for me that I have completely neglected it for several weeks.  Anyway, I had an incredible time on my 3 week study break.  I feel so fortunate to have been able to travel around Europe and experience as much as I have.  I really loved being able to spend time with family during the second week of break.  It did make me a bit anxious to come home at Christmas time to see everyone though.  However, for this blog entry I will tell you a little bit about what I experienced at the beginning of my travels in Holland!!!

Groningen

We left Copenhagen very early the first morning to travel 11 hours by bus and ferry.  Our first destination was a city in Holland called Groningen (sounds like groaning).  Groningen is a small, but pretty college town where we spent most of our time doing academic visits to special needs schools and facilities.  It was a very nice little historic town though, and I enjoyed it's cozy atmosphere.

Holland is very much like Denmark with the fact that it is greatly influenced by water and coastlines.  Groningen and Amsterdam had lots of pretty canals and cute little footbridges.

One day our class took a trip to the Martini Tower which is the highest church tower in Groningen.  We were able to walk to the very top which had a beautiful view of the city.  The climb was a bit challenging because it was just a narrow little spiral staircase.  We were out of breath by the time we reached the top, but the view was worth it.

For some reason when we were in Groningen I was on a bit of a Disney kick.  I amused myself by singing Disney songs (rather loudly) wherever I went.  Occasionally I was able to encourage others to join in on my fun, but mostly I got funny looks.  In the picture above I was channelling Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  I was so excited that the bells actually rang when I pulled the rope!

The Hague

We spent a day in The Hague, another city in Holland.  We visited a museum during the day and a play at night.  The Mauritshuis Museum was a relatively small building with paintings from the Dutch Golden Age.  The most famous painting that we were able to view was "The Girl With The Pearl Earring."  The play we say was Virginia Woolf's, The Waves.  It was a VERY odd play that I did not quite understand or enjoy.  It was a series of monologues from 6 different characters and their journey from children to adults.  The part I did find fascinating was that in between reading their parts the actors used a range of props and instruments to create the sound effects of the story.  

The picture above is me enjoying a wonderful cup of cocoa before the play.  I enjoyed this particular cup of hot chocolate a lot because I sort of made it.  When the waiter served it to me he gave me just a cup of steaming milk and a stick with a chunk of chocolate on the end of it.  I had to stir the chocolate into the milk to make my cocoa!!!  Well... I was entertained by it anyway.

Amsterdam

For our last few days in Holland we stayed in Amsterdam!  It was a very fun city to be in and I got to experience a lot of culture.  Some of our activities included a canal tour at night, a visit to the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House.  

The Van Gogh Museum was really impressive.  I am really not much of an art person.  I told my friends upon entering that I really didn't get a lot of art with the random splotches of color and unrealistic interpretations of life.  However, my appreciation for art grew slightly as a result of this trip.  I was very impressed by his works and my friends helped me to understand some of the "meaning" for various techniques.

The Anne Frank House was a bit surreal.  We were able to walk through the actual hallways and rooms where the Frank family lived and see documents that she had actually written.  I wish I could share with you the images of her bedroom and living spaces, but we were not allowed to take cameras into the house.

Well, thats all for now.  Tune in for next time when Kelly goes on a Czech Trek!!!

Mommie and Auntie's European Adventures Part 3

Beautiful Copenhagen......

So at long last we arrived in Copenhagen - finally we would be able to see where Kelly has been calling "home" for the last several months.  Since we were so tired from early morning flights we took it easy on our first day. Kelly gave us a tour of City Center, we visited DIS (Danish Institute for Study Abroad), went to an early dinner and then called it a day.  On the second day we toured the harbor area, visited Kelly's Kollegium, a grocery store and made her dinner while she did her laundry.  Rachel-Mom's wondering when YOU are going to start doing YOUR own laundry??

The first two pictures below are  from the harbor area.    We really enjoyed Kelly being the tour guide and explaining some of the Danish history to us. 

Our next adventure included renting a car..... thanks to Aunt Jill's bravery and Kelly's navigating we safely made it to Helsingor, which is about an hour north of Copenhagen.  We visited Kronborg Castle, which is also known as Hamlet's Castle.  We thoroughly enjoyed our tour and independence, but all the while we were there we kept thinking about how much we would have loved sharing this day with Jake (and everyone else).  So the picture below of the cannons is for you, Jake.  Mom has many more pictures to share with you.  
After safely returning to Copenhagen, we met Kelly's friend Erin and her mother, Susan for dinner.  Kelly and Erin really enjoyed a restaurant called RizRaz several weeks ago and decided to share it with all of us.  We had a really wonderful time and it was really special and very comforting to meet Kelly's friends.

Good Bye

So........this morning we had to say Good Bye to Kelly.  She is headed off on a trek to the Czech Republic.  She walked us to the Metro Station and gave us our route to the next step of our adventure.    It appeared as though she was very worried about Mommie and Auntie heading off on our own.    She has truly been our guide and we have thoroughly enjoyed letting her lead us!  Kelly, how incredibly proud we are of you and honored that you wanted to share this with us.  We love you!

We realize what an incredibly special time this has been and we truly appreciate how fortunate we are to have husbands, children,  family and friends support this big adventure.  Jeff, Joe, Matthew, Rachel, Jake, Gramis and Paul we love you all very much.  Thank you for supporting this adventure!

Next Stop.....Sweden to visit the Oden

We landed in Sweden this morning and tomorrow we head out to visit the ship that Jeff will call home on his big adventure.  Our mission -- pictures and descriptions!