Katie in Denmark: Kapsejladsen, Legoland, and Skagen!

I haven't posted for two weeks, oops! I have been nice and busy around Denmark! I haven't been travelling, however, on Wednesday I will be heading to LATVIA! With four other exchange students, I am unbelievably excited for that!

SO! The last week of April was GORGOEUS weather, I wish it stayed, but the entire week was like, 25 degrees Celcius outside and sunny every day. Pretty much the hottest weather I have ever experienced, and it isn't even summer yet! I got to study outside a lot, that was fun ;)

On the Tuesday (Apr 28), I went to Student house, however, not very many people showed up! On Wednesday (Apr 29), I went to a nice little BBQ at a kollegium close to the campus called Dania kollegium, with my roommate Doni and some of her classmates. It was really fun! and So nice out! We had some delicious food!

On Thursday, it was the 30th of April, and apparently in the Netherlands this is a Dutch Queensday... so if there is a 'reason' for a party, the exchange students will have one! So at Skejbyparken there was a Dutch Queensday party, where the theme was ORANGE! Especially the dutch people were very nicely dressed for the occasion!

On Friday, I went to the Economics Friday bar, that was fun :) That night me and Liga decided to go check out a Danish party on campus- it was held by the Economics department as well, so we pretended to be economics students for the night.. we just wanted to meet Danish people, is that so bad?? It was really fun, we met some of Ligas friends from her classes (shes in Law, but other people were pretending to be economics students as well apparently), and met some Danish people! Some actually talked to us for a long time! Very exciting!! Didn't stay out too late, however, because on Saturday... I went to LEGOLAND!!!!! Which was fabulous!! I loved

every minute of it, it was so cute!! Absolutley everything was Lego themed, including like, garbage cans. They had different sections of Legoland- they had one section that was mini-villages of real life villages and cities. For example there was a mini Copenhagen, which totally looked like the real Copenhagen!! Things moved too, like boats in the little canals and trucks on the street! There were little towns of places in Germany, all over Denmark, Sweden, norway perhaps, Netherlands, Japan, Beverly hills/LA, and other things! After looking at a lot of Lego, we walked through a food section that was like, cowboy themed, and then made "Snobrød", a

Danish type of bread, and roasted it over a fire in an Indian themed section!

There was a HUGE pirate section, I think that was my favourite in the whole park! There was this big 'lake' of water, where there was a ride on it that you were in a boat in the water and had to shoot targets and the people in the other boats too. You got absolutley SOAKED on this ride! Unfortunately the people I was with did not want to go on it! I went with Doni my roommate, her friend from school Tina, and Tina's Danish boyfriend named Thomas. Thomas has a car so that is how we got there, it was fabulous!!

We went on some rides after that- one that went up really high in the Pirate section where you could see a lot of the park, that was pretty petrifying, as well as one on a canoe where we got a little wet! Another one went through a castle, and we almost got kicked off the ride because we had our camera out. Woops! We got yelled at. Bad. oopsies. :)

There was this one ride/roller coaster that was SO GOOD! It was sooo scary, you were in a little car with 4 people in it, and there was such a huge drop at one point, I totally couldnt feel my stomach anymore and I was screaming sooo loud. Throughout the whole ride, actually. And were told by a girl on the bottom (Tinas friend) that she could definately hear us the whole time screaming. Slightly embarassing. In the end, Legoland was totally worth it. It was really expensive to get in, but I loved it!

The following week was busy with school for the first half, I had a presentation in my Microbiology class about microbial symbiosis between invertebrates and sulfur oxidizing chemoautotrophs...... interesting, right? haha, I hate presentations, but it's all over now!

on THURSDAY was a huge school event called Kapsejladsen. pronounced like, 'cap-se-lays' (seriously, Danish pronounciation is weird), and this was the thing we had been hearing about since we arrived in Aarhus. It is a huge boat race that takes place on the lake on the campus between departments, hosted by Medicine, and Biology was competing this year in it! One guy from my fish biology class last quarter, Jonas, he was participating in it! It was very exciting, they said there was about 15,000 people there (oh yes, so many), it was unbelievable! The departments competing put on big introductions before they actually went out to race- one was Pirates of the Carribean themed, that was really cool, they had canons and everything. Another one was a mix of Wheres waldo (in Danish: Hvor er Holger/Find Holger.. they changed his name!) themed and a Danish television show called Bubber, who looks like waldo sort of, and he sits in a bathtub and has a camel in the show. And they totally had a real camel there. Very shocking!!!! One of the other departments introduction had someone being set on fire and then jumping into the lake, and another totally had strippers. That would totally not be allowed in Canada! Nor would the excessive amount of drinking in public areas. Its totally normal in Denmark! Like, legal! crazy...

he actual races were good, the announcers were all speaking in Danish, and since we were sitting with a huuuge group of exchange students in a place that you couldn't see a thing of, I decided to go find some Danish people from my classes so I could actually see / get it translated. Made it much better! Biology came second in their heat, which is apparently amazing! They thought they were going to come in last. However, not enough to make it to the final round! Since it was medicine that was the host, it was Biology's first time competing in the competition in like, six years or something, because like six or seven years ago, Medicine was hosting an afterparty to the event, but Biology decided to also host an afterparty, so they hated biology after that.

After the races, I was talking to one of my Danish classmates Steffen, and he said that a bunch of Biologists were going over to the biology house for a bit, so I went there for a bit and was lots of fun! I stayed for about two hours, and talked to the two girls, Mette and Sanne from my class a lot of the time (the two girls in the pic under this one). And Tommy and Lene (on the left right there!), and Steffen! Im pretty sure I love Danish people.

After that, at around 8:30 I went back home for some supper, and then Jonas (the guy from the boat race) had got me a ticket for a big afterparty downtown, so I went to his house before so we could all go down together. He had a bunch of people over at his house too- let me see how many names I can remember.. Paul, Peter?, Casper, .. yep, thats it. There might have been 10 people there though, I just extremely suck at Danish names. When I was at the Biohus after the races, I was talking to this girl from my class named Janne and she was trying to get me to pronounce extremely Danish names and I totally butchered them- like Lene, Janne, Mads, Morten, and many more. It was bad on my part. haha

We eventually went down to Train, where the party was. It was a club, which totally aren't my thing because I cannot dance, but it was fun anyway. There were some exchange students there as well as the Danish group of people. It was sooooo crowded, it was unbelievable. Like, impossible to move for about an hour! I ended up staying out pretty late, but it was an alright night in the end.

On Friday it was a national holiday, something like a National Prayer day, where at one point there were a bunch of little holidays throughout the whole year, and one year the king or someone decided to put all of the little holidays together and make one big holiday, so nobody really knows what they are celebrating on that day. That night I went to a dinner at my mentor Mads' house, with the other exchange students he was helping out, Miriam from Germany and Laila from Latvia. It was a nice quiet night, I enjoyed it a lot :) He made really good food!

And finally, yesterday, Saturday, I went to SKAGEN! Pronounced 'Skain'. the G is totally silent, odd. It was a trip organized by the student house, and it was fabulous. I knew probably about 75% of the bus, which was great, it made it so much more fun! First we went to this church that only the top of it was visible- the majority of it was underground and had been covered many years ago by sand dunes. How cool is that!

After that we went to the actual city of Skagen, where all of the buildings were YELLOW (weird, huh) and it was suuuch a cute little town/village/city). We went to the museum, and I walked around looking at stuff for about 5 minutes, and then found a childrens section of the museum, and I think I was there for an hour and a half. Good times. Highlight of the museum by far. We made these cool little crafts (the picture underneath this one). Unfortunately, mine died on the transportation home, and one of our tour guides Thomas made one also, but he left his at the restaurant. So, so sad.

For lunch we went to this Taco place, I went with Jun-Rong, Fabian, and the two "tour guides"- Thomas and I have no idea what the other guys name was- where there was a delicious buffet for only 60 kr! It was soo good! American/mexican/italian/something else food. Sooo yummy!

After exploring the city a little bit, we went to the famous part of the city- to the "tip" of Jutland!Called 'Grenen'. It is really famous because it is where two seas meet! Ive been saying that it is the Baltic sea coming from the right and the North sea coming from the left- but I think it is actually Kattegak on the right, which separates Denmark from Sweden, and on the right the waters of Skaggerak, the straight that seperates Denmark from Norway! Very cool! It was soo neat when we got there- because the waves were coming from two different directions, and they were crashing into each other in the middle! We took lots of pictures, it was so pretty, and the beach was gorgeous!!

On the way back (it took like 3 hours to drive up to the top of Denmark.. this is a very very long drive for Danes), we stopped at the "Highest live sand dune in northern Europe"..... woooooooo. I didnt know titles like this existed. But it was actually really cool. It felt like you were in the middle of a desert, and the white sand was blowing like crazy, and it was the finest sand ever. Soo pretty!

o that is pretty much it, now must just upload lots of pictures! Enjoy!!