My debut!

I feel like I just got back from summer camp! My core class went on our short study tour this weekend. It is best described as the pre-game for our long study tour to London in October.

We left super early on Thursday morning from Copenhagen and arrive in Odense at around 10. On the way there, we went over the really huge bridge that connects the island Copenhagen is on to Fyn, the next island over. Our teacher gave us lots of trivia during the drive such as telling us that one of the small islands we drove through was where they used to send morally loose women. He told us that one of the students last semester had a great name for it: Slut Island. He also informed us that the tops of the pillars of the bridge are 10 cm apart, but wanted us to figure out why. When no one could figure it out, he explained, "Because of the curvature of the earth...it's logical."

Off to a hilarious start, we then took a quiz to see who would get the suites in our hotel, the Cab Inn Hotel, where you "Stay cheap in Luxury." Some of my friends ended up being put in the Commodore Suite, which turned out to be two of the tiniest beds you've ever seen in a room that barely fit them. This was opposed to the other rooms: bunk beds and enough floor space to pull out a trundle. Of course the bathroom was a toilet, sink and shower head- good luck not getting EVERYTHING wet. I stayed with two girls, Paige and Emily.

Our first stop was Funen Village. I think what happened was they took houses from all over Denmark that were built within a certain period and put them on a plot of land. Because Odense is where HC Andersen was born, they tried to tie him in, but were very unsuccessful. So they took us on a tour of Jakob's life and constantly said, but HC was doing this instead because he went to school. It was more or less like, this is a normal person from the town Kathy Griffin is from and this is how they lived because they aren't her. Weird. BUT, it was absolutely gorgeous, so you should look at those pictures when they are up.

After FUNen Village and our "rustic lunch," we walked around Odense's city streets. At a huge 160,000 people, it's Denmark's 3rd largest city. What?! We met back up with the other half of the group and went to my 3rd TV station, TV2. TV2 was awesome in that we got a really interesting perspective on international TV and broadcasting nationally to only 5.4 million people. They also showed us a clip of their journalists going to Afghanistan and being on the front lines with Danish soldiers. Controversial but also amazing journalism.

TV2 led to our first buffet of many for the weekend. And dinner led to a bar, but nothing too crazy since we had to get up pretty early.

On Friday morning, my group went to Brandts, which is a media museum in Odense. They also offer a class where you put together a news broadcast from picking out the stories, to lighting and camera work...we ran the show (along with the creepiest Dane I've met yet). This was a fascinating experience for me because I've never done anything like a TV or news show before. I was on the team that went out in the streets and created a segment with live interviews. We decided to ask people about biking safety in Denmark and had a blast pulling together the interviews. We met some pretty odd people, like one guy who saw our equipment (a camera and a mic) and wanted to know if we were from MTV? No. CNN? No. Fox? No. ABC? No. The list went on. I think it went pretty well. In the final cut, my opening line, "Bikes" and my closing line, "And now back to the studio," were both cut, so it's a little abrupt. Also, we didn't have the best instructions/couldn't read the Danish editing program to do a great job. But, Matt, who did the editing, had experience with it and was able to pull together a good segment in not a lot of time. Julie uploaded the video to YouTube for easy viewing.

When we were finished, we were definitely in the mood for a drink. Just like some Danish high schoolers... The trip focuses on both academic experiences and cultural experiences, so part of our cultural experience for the day was meeting some young Danes who are going to Texas to study abroad this year. We were dropped off at their gymnasium or school and went to their Friday bar. Every other Friday they have a bar in the basement of the school where everyone can go and drink, which is exactly what they did. We were at the Friday Bar for a couple hours and met lots of Danes. It was really fun to talk to them since they are all going to Austin Community College. Some of the DIS students planned and exchanged contact info with the Danes and we planned to meet up with them later that night.

When we left the Friday bar, our trust bus driver, Jakob had bought the bus a case of beer to share before dinner. We went to a Chinese buffet for dinner, which was regrettable. A few of the girls and I took a nap before getting ready to go out, and eventually met up with some of the Danish students to go out to the A Bar or Australian bar. The place was hopping, and we had free admission and free drinks until 12. I definitely wasn't feeling my Chinese food plus just waking up from a lovely nap, but when they start playing all of you favorite dance songs, you soon forget all of that and start having a really good time.

There were lots of DIS kids at this one bar, which is a chain and there's also one in Copenhagen by school, so we all got to bond more and hang out. The time absolutely flew, and I rallied the troop to get back home before 3 am.

We had to get up again at 9ish to be ready to go by 10. We headed out to lovely Svendborg, Denmark to check out Valdemars Slot. This castle was more interesting than the first one I saw, but no one was in the mood to listen to broken English and tour the house of real people. It was actually sort of voyeuristic in that there were pictures of the family who lives in the apartment that's closed off to the public. We saw some of the bedrooms that the current Royal family has stayed in recently...it was a fully functioning home that they do tours of for money.

Lunch was much better with another buffet at Hotel Troense (all our breakfasts were buffets too) of lots of traditional Danish foods: dark bread, herring, pork, cheese, lox....and beer. The area the restaurant in was, again, gorgeous and on the water. Our trip wrapped up with a little cruise in the water to get back to our bus. So cute.

On the way home, our teacher told us another story about when he was a part of the Militant Young Against Apartheid. He and his friends planned a heist at a Shell (who had some sort of stake in South Africa) gas station and kidnapped teddy bears. After the heist, they gave a letter to the paper saying that they would start beheading the bears if apartheid didn't end after three days. Obviously, it didn't end, so they started the beheadings. When the one or two articles died down, they tried to beef media back up by giving the broken bears to school children and having them mend them. Pretty funny.

All in all, I got to really get to know a lot of people in my program. Everyone is really nice, and I'm looking forward to spending the rest of the semester with them and especially going to London with them!

Pictures will be up soon on flickr instead of snapfish, so be on the look out for a new link to those.