I wanted to go to Ballerup but instead I went to Hellerup...

Title=true story. :/

Anyway, yay for another blog entry. I will try to catch up!

So after our arrival on New Year's Eve Jose and I spent a few days exploring the city. We found this really cool pedestrian (sometimes?) street called Frederiksberggade, which is basically my middle and last names put together by a bad speller... It has a lot of shopping on it and goes from the town center across the downtown area. And if you take Jorcks Passage, it takes you pretty much right to the university. So we had an easy walk from the hotel to the main campus of the university - Neils Brocks Gade to HCA, then up to Frederiksberggade and through Jorcks Passage. Unfortunately, now that we've moved to Keops, it's not as close... haha.

I took a lot of pictures. But it's kind of hard/annoying to post a lot of pictures on here, so someone should recommend a good photo sharing website (other than Facebook, where you can find all of them too!) so I can dump them all on there and link it here. But I will post some...

Jose and I also met up with two friends from UCSC and we walked around. They showed us how to get across the canal and to the south campus, which is where the majority of the humanities classes are (plus our Danish language course that we're taking right now). We got pizza, haha.

Then we got our keys and moved up town! We're living at Keops Kollegium. I'm in building 10 and Jose is in 12, but there are only two so we're still in buildings next door to each other, haha. I'm on the eighth floor which is the top one! I have an amazing view from my room, too. First of all, the hallways on each floor are outside so from my front door I can see the S-train stop below, as well as this huge snowy field that turns pinkish orange at night from the lights, and more apartment buildings across the field in Nørrebro. Then, from the window of my room I can see the opposite direction, across town all the way to the cluster of buildings in the city center. I think I seriously have the best room in the whole building in terms of location... Now if only I could figure out how to make it not smell. :/

When I met my room, it was very clean and spacious, with hardwood floors and pretty high ceilings, not to mention the giant, almost-a-whole-wall-sized window and a tiny balcony. It has a bathroom that's actually bigger than at the hotel, which is nice... I was sort of apprehensive at first because there is no separate shower, just a pull-around curtain and a drain in the ground. But it's worked out okay, with minimal flooding, haha. You just have to figure out how to take a normal shower without getting everything else in the bathroom wet.

I have two hot plates and tons of kitchen stuff, including plates, silverware, glasses, cookware, etc. The tenant before even left me some food! I have canned tomatoes, two bags of rice, Corn Flakes and some other stuff. I had sardines, too, but I gave them away...selvfølgelig. There's a smallish cabinet/closet and a large desk with shelves on it. There's also a small table and two chairs. But the chairs are too high for the tiny table, so I made it into a dining table. You just have to sit on pillows on the ground... but it's fun! Haha. The guy before me left a blanket, sheets and two pillows so I just used those for the chairs. And the blanket is nice with lots of fish on it! A lot of people got things left behind (someone even got a bike!) but I'm not complaining; my blanket is excellent.

Well, okay, I am complaining a little, just because it smells so bad. At first I thought the person before me was a smoker but now I've realized the smoky smell seems to be coming from the hot plate vent between the stove and the fridge... :/ So I emailed the housing office and hopefully they'll do something. I just hope it's not a gas leak.

A couple days after we moved in, classes started! Well, pre-semester Danish language ones anyway. I found out that I am pretty hopeless at Danish. It's hard... :/ Despite posting words on here, I'm like the worst in the class. I'm always wrong, haha. I don't know how some people remember all this stuff. I think it has something to do with the fact that it's a lot easier to learn languages if you've learned multiple ones early in life. So these wonderkids from all around the world who speak three or four languages fluently can of course speak Danish well too! ...at least, that's what I've been telling myself. It's probably even harder for them, because the class is taught in English, so... :/

Danish classes have been going on since last Wednesday the 5th, so almost a week. It's a lot of work. We have mini oral tests every day, and I really should be working on memorizing my sixteen dialogues for tomorrow... :/ (I wonder if anyone actually does?)

Whew. That was a quick update on everything, I guess. I still haven't gotten my actual CPR card and they won't let me get a bank account without that. On top of things, I got a letter today saying I must state my bank account to the government or something. But I got a metro pass, which allows me unlimited (2 zone) rides on the metro/s-train/bus for a month. And I got a Danish SIM card! There's this pre-paid service called Lebara where it costs about $0.01 for every minute and $0.03 for every text (both in Denmark and to the US). I'm not really planning on using it to make calls, though... Or that much at all. Just if I need it - otherwise I'll be using skype!

Hmm. I think that's about it. But I will post some pictures, along with your Danish vocab words at the bottom! Remember to tell me about photo sharing websites if you want to see the full collection, haha... OH AND I LEARNED HOW TO ROTATE THEM IN THE MIDDLE OF UPLOADING. Yay! Sorry about the earlier ones. I'm lazy, haha...

A street in Copenhagen! (Shocking...)

This is the street our hotel was on. It was basically gutted with all the construction going on. Also, there's a lot of graffiti here... a LOT. And people don't seem to care as much as they do in the US. Like almost every train is individual because of the different graffiti. It's not just tags either. It's pretty elaborate. It's really cool to see it all around, and for people to actually be treating it like art instead of vandalism. :) Though there are some people who just tag everything. For example, "Satan" and "Easer" are everywhere...

Another street in Copenhagen. With the Danish flag! 

I got in an interesting conversation about flags with some international students in my Danish language class actually. They all were talking about how Americans love their flag, and I was like "Not too much where I come from..." and they asked why, because they really like the US flag. Weird, huh? But they think it looks nice. I dunno, it's just surprising I guess. I assume everyone from other countries hates everything US-patriotism-related, but there you go.

I'm still not a big fan of our flag though. :)

More construction. This shows the streetlights, which hang overhead and are generally a lot more interesting looking than ours. Floating lights! :D

Near city center. This is town hall actually. I think. It opens out (on the opposite side of the building) to the town square.

This is atop one of the tallest buildings in town square. Signs of American influence are everywhere... :/

"Probably, but we're just not entirely sure" - the Danes are more modest than us, haha

Hans Christian Andersen!

Inside a tourist shop, just for fun. Apparently Troll dolls were invented by a Dane. Which is not really something to be proud of, in my opinion.

THIS is something to be proud of. Hand-knit sweaters, each one different... I would totally have bought one despite the steep price if they came in any size other than emaciated infant.

On Frederiksberggade!

The sidewalks here have two lanes: one for pedestrians and one for bikes (sometimes I forget and bad stuff happens). This was marking the pedestrian lane and reminded me of the Steadfast Tin Soldier story by Hans Christian Andersen!

Nutella and cinnamon sugar crepe. Fantasticccc.

We walked into King's Gardens, and this is the sign. :)

So pretty! There'd be a lot more snow now, though...

Looking out through the gate back at the street

The gardens

Statue in the gardens.

More gardens

Winter trees in the gardens

There's the sign for the bike lane!

Looking back down Frederiksberggade on the way back; sunset at like 3:30 p.m.

Walking across the bridge into Amager (left side)

Bridge structure

Shot from the bridge again. See all that ice??

Late afternoon in wintery Copenhagen

The view from my room!

Sunset towards the city center, sort of.

More of my view from the window

More view

Ooh, sunset

First bus ride! Super artistic but mainly just because I was embarrassed about taking pictures on the bus in front of Legit Danes (i.e. not me). 

(You should see my other ones. There's like nothing in the shots. Haha.)

A tagged HCA looking at construction

Waiting inside a bus stop...in front of a bakery. Yum!

Bakery window. Yummmm. We didn't get anything because we had no money, but it turns out it was super expensive there anyway (tourist trap!). Uptown it's cheaper...

Here's that snowy field that I can see from my front door that I was talking about briefly. There's a giant wolf running across it! Yay! But..you can't really see. It was far away and moving fast... Yeah, this isn't from my floor; it's from the path that leads behind the design college thing to the Nørrebro Bycenter (aka mall-ish thing that serves as a warm passageway whenever we're walking to Nørrebrogade!)

Okay! Now time for some Danish!

œble: rhymes with Mabel. Maybe. Possibly. Probably not. (F in Danish: GO)

"Officially" means: apple.

Really (according to me) means: appel, pre-sin.

kylling: oh, wow, Danish. You're a little terrifying. Why is my Danish class teaching me the word for killing? It must mean killing! That or some other horribly violent thing!

"Officially" means: chicken.

Really (according to me) means: Danes enjoy killing chickens? Potentially...

killing: jeez, Danish. You sure surprised me with that last one. But - wait - "killing?" That sure looks like killing. This one must be a really, really violent word -

"Officially" means: kitten.

Really (according to me) means: Danes enjoy killing kittens?? Jeez...

hjœlpen: try pronouncing it. Really!

"Officially" means: helping.

Really (according to me) means: yelpin'. That's how it's pronounced anyway... as in, "tak for hjœlpen!"

indbyggere: now try pronouncing THIS one.

"Officially" means: inhabitant

Really (according to me) means: eenbooyeid, or something.

indvandrergrupper: part two of Large Words section.

"Officially" means: immigrant groups

Really (according to me) means: too many syllables, but really probably only two.

statsborgerskab: final word of Danish politics lesson.

"Officially" means: citizenship

Really (according to me) means: an amalgamation of some truly awful words: "statistics," "burger" and "scab." Three negatives make a positive?

Okay so that's it for now. More later! Tak for lœser, or something to that effect!

Hej hej!