The adrenaline is wearing off a bit now, but come on! I'm in Europe! I had my first day of class today at the Metropolitan Nursing school. I am so excited for this because the nursing class is the only one out of all of DIS where there are Danish students in the class with us! We are such a diverse group...just how I like it. There are 6 Danish students, 4 Chinese students from Hong Kong, 6 Case students (Emily, Mark, Annie, Jess, Kristen, and myself), 4 OSU students, 1 Purdue student, 2 Minnesota students, 1 Texas student, and 1 South Georgia student. Everyone gets along really well and I think that we are all going to put a lot into both the class and our experiences.
My two teachers seem great and really want us to go out into the City and step out of our comfort zones and truly try to understand the culture. They are challenging us as American students to find out if "our prejudices" are really true and to knock down some of the American prejudices that the Danes have about us as well. Challenge excepted!
While I cannot wait to learn more about the Danish health care system and the role of nurses in Northern Europe, I am most excited to learn about the Danish culture and its people. The six Danish students (all female) took the nursing class to this huge Copenhagen festival that has food, music, and of course øl (beer). Christine, one of the Danish students explained how much of a role that alcohol has in the Danish culture. At 16 Danish citizens are able to buy alcohol and 18-20 is the age that most bars will let you in. Often times, 10-12 years old is the first time that a Danish citizen gets drunk (generalization). Alcohol is also allowed to be open in public spaces, so it is completely legal to drink while you are on the Metro, in the square in the middle of the city, or while walking down the street to the grocery store. I have officially seen the most drunk 16 year old kids in my life. Drinking is definitely not so hush hush here. Cigarettes are also a staple here in Denmark and probably much of Europe. As explained to me, many 16 year old kids can be seen smoking and most were around 12 when they had their first puff, however a recent law was set by the government that only allows adults 18 years and over to buy cigarettes. It was funny...I have had a few Danish people ask me if I want to smoke and they are completely surprised when I say that I don't smoke because many of them figured that since you must be 21 to legally drink in the US that many more Americans smoke than Europeans. I have to say that I disagree and many more Europeans smoke, but I am only one person.
Techno music here is huge (Mark loves it) and plays a large roll in Danish culture. On our 4th day here DIS arranged a scavenger hunt where we had to find different landmarks around the city. By the way...downtown Copenhagen is SO clean for a populated city and the air just seems cleaner. Along the way we ran into a huge Latino parade that was playing amazing music and we all just danced and had such a good time. We managed to only make it to 5 out of our 6 destinations on the scavenger hunt, but isn't this whole experience about living in the moment and embarrassing the culture anyways?! Copenhagen has THE best street music. We "Ohioins" were every serenaded with a classic Bob Marley song:) Walking around and seeing the harbor was just what the doctor ordered for a "water baby" as my mom likes to call the two of us. I just love the water and the harbor was amazing to see. The scavenger hunt also led us to the Palace, the opera house (which is so huge and modern), the Parliament building, the Kings old summer house in the middle of this amazing park, and many other little adventures along the way (i.e. visiting the "Free City"). After being spontaneous and just getting off of the Metro to find our way the 6 Case students found this "looking tower" and decided to climb the 400+ stairs to the top. After traveling up the most steep and narrow staircase I have ever seen we managed to reach the outside spiral. While I love extreme sports, I still always want to pee my pants with heights, but I push myself every time. I managed to climb to the very top and while I didn't want to release my grip from the side of the building I had to let go and soak in the breath taking city view. It was simply bliss (see picture for a view form the top).
That afternoon we were treated to a canal tour which was so great because we got to sit and relax (we walk SO freaking mush here!). While it was freezing, because when the sun goes down here the temperature drops about 50 million degrees, I was in heaven because I just love the sound of the waves. At about 7 pm I had my first real restaurant meal with Emily and Mark for Mark's 21st birthday!! It was so nice to sit, drink, and eat with such good friends and enjoy a real meal with one another. After going back and trying to gain some energy (we all just want to sleep..anywhere...doesn't matter) Mark, Em, and I met up with some other friends for Mark's birthday celebration. After seeing that Danish people really do love their øl, we came home at a mere 5 am (most Danish 20 somethings don't go out until about 1 am and stay out until 5-7am). This led us to sleep until about...uhh, 1:30 in the afternoon:)
Tomorrow is a holiday, so today we are lounging out and trying to recover from out fun and energy sucking weekend and preparing ourselves for out first full day of class on Tuesday.
Oh, and I must tell you in a future post about our wonderful adventures with grocery shopping (not knowing what we're buying and getting REALLY lost trying to find "Netto") and adapting to the fact that while the bars stay open until 5am, everything else (including the grocery store) closes at about 6pm.
As the Danes say "hej hej" :)
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