One down 9 to Go

Today was my first day of class. It was a very interesting experience. Both my classes were female dominated, something I am not used to. It is so eye-opening to be in a classroom full of international students and to listen to their responses to various questions.

My first class was Value Based Leadership. My professor is from Cambridge and seems very nice and intelligent. When she asked the class what they wanted to take away from this class I was surprised that many people wanted to learn ABOUT leadership but not how to become one. Another surprising thing I noticed was that many people when referring to a leader would use the the pronoun he. I don't know if that is a European thing because in my languages there are masculine and feminine pronouns but I found it interesting none the less.

My second class was Management and Culture of International Business. This professor is visiting from USC. It was kind of nice to have a familiar form of teaching. It is so shocking that so many international students have studied in multiple places before and know several languages. I am jealous. I don't think that my classes will be too difficult but I think it is more about learning a wider view of the subject through the eyes of different cultures than just being able to read a book and regurgitate answers.

Happy but Not Extremely Helpful

Today we adventured all around Copenhagen. We saw many of the popular tourist attractions as well as famous, old and important buildings. One thing about Copenhagen that I love is that there are so many parks all over town. You will be walking down the street with cars and busses flying by and all of the sudden there is a huge park with beautiful flowers and a giant pond.

On Saturday a few of us ventured out to Christiania. Think Eugene with all the "free spirits" but to the FAR extreme. These are people who want to be separate from Copenhagen. It is very strange to come across. You are walking down a normal-ish street (slightly more sketchy) and you stumble across what looks like a little park. But you walk through the arch and it opens up into this huge commune type place. For some reason it reminded me of the Puyallup Fair, except instead of selling elephant ears and ice cream they are selling drugs and other related paraphernalia. It is very controversial and attracts many tourists, but they do not let you take pictures once you are inside. yeah. weird.

In Denmark they celebrate graduation in a very special way. They drive around the city in the back of a giant truck that is decorated with signs. The graduates wear sailors hats and get driven around the city blaring horn to punctuate the loud music while the drink and wave and everyone staring. I have witness SEVERAL of them driving around the city.

Now I remember why I hate small purses.

So I was not planning on doing a blog but after emailing several people the exact same thing I thought this would be easier! and what else am I going to do when I wake up at 3 am. Just to warn you I am running off of 9 hours of sleep in the last....I don't even know how many hours/days. So here goes....

Arrival to Copenhagen was not too bad. The flight was long and slightly uncomfortable. I feel like I am now better able to empathize with chickens flying down the freeway on semi trucks all smashed together in cages. But it is all part of the experience!!!

My room is small and cute. However, I don't think that cleanliness was their number one priority in preparing this room for me. It is very Ikea-esque. In fact I think all of my dishes, furniture and bedding is Ikea! Pictured above.

After we got semi settled in, aka plugged in our computers, checked our emails and called home, Brett, Malia and I adventured to the grocery store. That was quite the experience. Not being able to read any of the labels or really decipher prices made it fun. It was kind of like when you buy a grab bag of random crap....you don't really know what you are getting! I wanted cheese and purchased gouda because it was the only one I had ever heard of before. Apparently they don't sell Tillamook cheddar here :( After several people took pity on our very obviously foreigner souls we made it to the check out at the "discount" grocer.

After that trip we decided to walk around and see if we could find a hair dryer. And then we stumbled upon some pretty wonderful discoveries. We found a store I like to think of as our Danish Target. It had everything!! Including Pringles! we will definitely be revisiting that store frequently! We kept walking and walked into what we later found out was the most expensive grocer in Copenhagen. Perfect. We made a great friend. The cutest old man who works in the wine department, well we was standing by the wine shelf, teaching us what red wine goes with what cheese. I like him. We will be visiting frequently.

From what I have seen of Copenhagen so far it is very charming. People are very friendly. Most of them assume that we are Danish and begin speaking to us in Danish which is always a slightly awkward experience as you stare blankly at them. But everyone speaks English. Now if only they could work on the labels..... One thing that is interesting is that there are bikes everywhere. But some people don't really care about them. They are literally tossed on the street. That is on the top of my to do...find somewhere I can rent a bike.

Well off for more adventures today. Hopefully our Danish Target opens early because I am realizing I bought some weird stuff on my last grocery outing....