Obsessed with Oslo

Whew, what a week.  I think this is the first week that has been completely filled with classes for me!  (rough life, right?)  Anyways, here's a look at my week in retrospect.  

Monday-Tuesday

Classes. Bleh.

Wednesday

Here on Wednesdays we don't have actual classes.  Instead, we take field trips with our classes to places in Denmark that are relevant to whatever we are studying.  This week I went on two field trips- One with my child development class and one with my Danish class.  With my child development class I went to a school that was primarily Muslim.  This was especially cool because there is such an interesting dynamic between Muslims and Danes here in Denmark.  (Mostly that many Danes have a problem with immigration into their once homogenous society).  After a tour through the school and having a Q and A session with several children of various ages, we headed back home.

     My second "field trip"  was to a famous church in Roskilde, Denmark.  This was surprisingly cool because it had all the famous kings and queens of Denmark buried inside.  After a nice 1 1/2 hour tour of this church I headed back to my apartment in Copenhagen.  

Thursday

On Thursdays I also don't have real classes, but instead I spend the entire day in a Danish daycare.  The kids I work with are between 3-5 and are the cutest little things I have ever seen.  This particular daycare is interesting because they have children from all over the world in attendance. A few of the children are Somalian refugees, many are from Turkey, Iraq, Korea, Uganda, and of course- Denmark.  The relations between these children are really spectacular.  At such a young age, you can already see how they form groups based on race and ethnicity.  To me this is really incredible because as a sociology major I am really interested in divisions based on race and ethnicity and such.  So the formation of these groups (Danish children only play with one another, Muslim students with each other, African students) is really striking.  In a couple of weeks, I am meeting the children's parents and I am extremely interested in seeing how the parents interact with one another, and potentially seeing how the worldviews of the parents are affecting the kids.  Anyways, moving on.  All day the kids played outside on a playground.  Literally all day.  We came inside for approximately 35 minutes for a quick lunch of apples, pears, and rye bread.  (SO MUCH HEALTHIER THAN THE US).  And then back to playground.  So for six hours I played on the playground, which was surprisingly tiring.  

Friday

On Friday I went to classes blah blah blah.  Then after classes I packed up my stuff and headed off to Oslo, Norway via cruise!  Jess and I met up with some of the Vandy kids that live around us and got on board.  Since I have never been on a cruise before, I thought this was the coolest thing in the world. On the boat there were shops, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, a grocery store, etc.  AFter looking around a bit, we took the elevator down to the bottom of the boat were our room was.  Little did we know when we booked these rooms was that our room was legit under water in the BOTTOM of the boat.  We also didn't know that our room was the size of a shoebox, where from the center of the room you can touch everyone's bed and the bathroom. Luckily, we made it out of there alive.  After a little bit more exploring we spent the rest of the night eating a packed dinner, chatting in the coffee shop, and trying not to get too seasick from the boat swaying.

Saturday

At 9 AM we landed in Oslo!  As we pulled into the port, I could immediately tell that I was going to like this city.  The landscape looked beautiful and the whole city was surrounded by water and fjords.  As we climbed off the boat, Jess and I took off as self-proclaimed "aggressive tourists," to see the sights. While in Oslo, we saw the Opera House, Parliament, the Royal Palace, a beautiful harbor, a really old fortress, the National Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art.  My favorite spot was easily the National Gallery.  They had been advertising "The Scream" by Edvard Munch, which drew us to the museum in the first place.  As it turns out there was a ton of other amazing art that hadn't been advertised by the museum since the artists weren't Norwegian.  We stumbled into a room that contained the self-portrait of Van Gogh, two Claude Monets, and about 4 paintings by Pablo Picasso! At around 4:30, we wandered back to the boat and boarded- but this time for Copenhagen! 

Sunday

After another 9 AM wake-up, we all headed back to our respective apartments in Copenhagen.  After an afternoon of much needed rest, relaxation, and a tiny bit of homework, we headed to a FCK (Copenhagen's team!) soccer game against their cross-town rivals. This was such an incredible experience.  The stadium is absolutely massive, and our tickets (provided by DIS!) were FREE.  (A word I have heard zero times since my arrival in Europe).  We sat in the fifth row and cheered on FCK to a 2-0 win. 

Oh man what a week.  Although this next week is pretty relaxing, I leave for London in just under two weeks for my long academic visit! After this, I will be heading to Dublin for the weekend with Jenny.  I am beyond excited.  This week, Jess, Jenny and I have made some pretty good travel plans for our two week break.  Right now our plan is to go to...

Florence to Rome to Seville to the Canary Islands to Barcelona to Paris and back to Copenhagen! Yay! So that's all for now loves, but I hope to have more updates soon.  

xoxoxo

Mandy

PS- I finally included some pics!  Most of these are on facebook, but Mom and Dad these are for you!