obligatory first post

WELL well well! I've been in Denmark for about a week and figured it's about time to lay the crack down on this blogging business. 

Walk back from the train station!  Farm buildings on the left, Krogerup in the back!

I'm living in Krogerup folkehøjskole in Humlebæk.  To say it, make the "k" and "r" sounds as far back in your throat as you can then pretend that the rest of the letters in the word don't exist.  "Folkehøjskole" sounds like "folkemay4jklaynkayiynkfschooluh" to ears from the United States.  It is a school designed for Danish and international students generally between the ages of 19-25ish who would like to learn for learning's sake and figure out what they would like to do in life.  The classes mainly center around discussion and experiential learning and don't assign homework, papers, or grades.  I've never actually attended one of the discussions, but maybe it can best be described as the late-night conversations that occur in college study lounges.  Or my freshman year FYS class. 
Our folkehøjskole consists of 13 students from the United States in my program, about 50ish Danes, and about 15-20ish international students from all over the world.  There are people from relatively nearby places like Iceland and Hungary, and also from as far away as Japan, the Maldives, Ghana, Mauritania, and Israel! The folkehøjskole invites us to most of their evening programming which often consists of folk dances, group talent shows, and community-building games.  It's like Danish summer camp during the school year!
Krogerup is located towards the northern part of the Zealand island (right across the water from Sweden) and sits next to the largest organic farm in Denmark, and let me tell you IT'S GORGEOUS! We have to walk through the farm and a nearby forest where is rains prehistoric monster slugs to get to the train station, and it's like walking through a scene from _Everything Is Illuminated_ or something!
(These pictures are from my phone camera.  I'll have better ones up as soon as I buy some batteries for my camera!)

Look at those sunflowers! And that sun glare!

This is where Danish kids learn to tend the earth.

I'm not quite sure where this path goes, but I'll find out someday soon!

It takes about 15 minutes to walk to the train station across the farm and through the slug forest and then about 25-45 minutes to get to København, depending on which train you catch and finally about a 10-minute walk to the classrooms. Oooorrrr, on Tuesdays and Fridays, a 20-minute bus ride to the København Universitet classrooms.  Tuesdays and Fridays are also the days that I have class at 800.  I'm not even going to think about when I have to wake up, but here are some pictures from my veryveryveryvery early-morning commute!  Sorry they didn't come out too well; my phone's camera must have been sleepy.

A slug from slug forest

  We had orientation during our first few days here.  It was pretty much like freshman year orientation. BUT IN DENMARK.  We learned how to navigate the Danish streets, that Danish people are ketchup, and where to buy the cheapest groceries and eat (i.e., which places charge two dollars instead of three dollars for tap water).  We had our commencement in the city hall, which was super cool and modeled after an Italian plaza.  I have pictures on my other camera, but it died right after I took them because I left my batteries at home.  LIKE A DUMMY.  Anyway, commencement consisted of lots of really tall Danes talking to us with really literal Google-image-search pictures relating to their speeches on a projector.  It culminated in a speech given by a person with arguably the coolest title in the world, the Lord-Mayor (LAWD-MAYYOOROROR) of Copenhagen.

After orientation, we had a few more days to wander around before classes started, so we explored Denmark bit more.  This is some of what we found: 

Hmmm...I see what you're doing here, Copenhagen.  Where's da Little Caesars?? Daz all I wanna know.

Free lattes in Copenhagen!  (The number I had rhymes with "free").  Let's turn the label and see who's crazy enough to give out free stuff in Denmark!

H&M!??? what are you doing making coffee????

Danish people don't know what window screens are apparently, so we always get lots of visitors.

We went out to Helsingør to hang out with Hamlet, Ophelia, and Hamlet's dad-ghost at Kronborg (on the left), but they weren't home so we hung out with this double-rainbow instead.

Dani$h ca$h!!11!~~ (This is about enough to buy a chocolate milk. MAYBE.)

Building with the dragon-tail spire!  I'm not sure exactly what it is.   Probably some tower like the one where Christian Bale fights the dragon in...

  Since I'm technically in Denmark to study, my classes are Cross-Cultural Encounters in a European Context; Muslims in the West; Youth, Language, and Society; Service Learning Seminar; and Danish I & II.  They are all pretty self-explanatory and straightforward.  There's a lil' bit more work than I was expecting, especially in Youth, Language, and Society, my class at Københavns Universitet that has three Danes with Bachelors in Linguistics already.  I bet they feel reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaal smart taking a class with a bunch of American undergraduates.  

I'm going to end this entry with a resolution -- I want to write more!  I used to do a lot of writing in high school, but fell out of it at Wooster.  Hopefully Denmark will help to put me back in the groove!  Okay! daz all!

Hey hey!

OH! P.S.  my blog is named "watching danes drive" because 5/4 Danish people ride their bikes everywhere.  I don't really get the sense that most of them are exceptionally comfortable behind the wheel of a car which leads to some very entertaining experiences watching them try to park or maneuver cars into small spaces.  When I get ballsier, I will snap lots pictures as proof!

OKAY! Vi ses!