Ten Years Later

I was ten years old and in Mrs. Hedges fifth grade class. We knew something was wrong all day, but nobody told us anything. We had indoor recess. Two kids from my class were picked up early. We were dismissed for the bus in an unusually organized manner. And as I was making my unusually organized way from my classroom to the bus I ran into my father. And I thought “father dearest, whatever are you doing here, you are supposed to be at work.” Or something of that sort. He had come to pick up my sister and me, and he was surprised that we didn’t know, and he told us that a plane had hit the World Trade Center Towers in New York.

So I felt relieved. I had known something was wrong all day. I had been trying to figure out what was wrong all day. The best my fifth grade mind could come up with was something about a guy with a gun near my school. I had heard rumors about what was wrong all day. The best my fifth grade peers could come up with was a bomb scare at the Renaissance Center. To find out that whatever was wrong happened 635 miles away in a building I had never heard of was quite a relief. I felt guilty about that for some time, but I know that at the same time I did feel really bad (angry, sad, etc) for what happened in New York. So I’ve mostly gotten over feeling guilty about it. Relief might have been inappropriate, but I was ten.

That’s my September 11th story. Where I was, how I was feeling. And it just amazes me that there are people who are alive today who might not have their own. It’s not that the attack feels like yesterday. It’s just that it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago.

My grandmother’s 5th birthday was the seventh of December, 1941. That was a long time ago. She remembers when it happened. Not the details of the attack or what was on the radio, but the reactions of her family, and how they were listening to the radio, and how everybody put down every other thing that they were working on to learn about what had happened. And she knows how that day changed the world.

And I think that’s important to remember on the tenth anniversary of September 11th: Even those who didn’t know what was going on on this day in 2001, they know how people reacted. My ten year old self heard the words “plane” and “crash,” heard statistics and numbers, but didn’t know what any of it really meant. A five year old probably remembers his parents transfixed to the television, or people being worried. Those younger than that are likely to not remember anything. But in the past ten years, we – those who were really young on September 11th 2001 – have seen things. Among other things, we have seen airline security tighten, had a lot of education about what terrorism is, and watched as our government pays for a huge war. We may not have known or fully understood what was going on then, but September 11th is a as much a part of our lives as it is for those who knew things or who could begin to understand what it might mean for the future.

I went to France

I'm going to be honest. Chances of me writing long, detailed blog posts of what I did on my study tour to France are slim. While I was on that trip, at least until we got to Paris, I made a list entitled "Potential Blog Posts." Instead of letting these blog posts reach their full potential, I'm going to type them up here for you.

• Feeling like Harry Potter on my way to catch the bus (It was kind of dark outside, and I was pulling my suitcase down the street and nobody was around. Like that scene after Harry inflates Aunt Marge. Except that a suitcase is easier to pull than a trunk. And I was on my way to France.)
  
• Ordering "2 scrambled eggs" gets you "2 ham and egg plates." In case you ever need to order breakfast at a truck stop in Luxembourg.
• Went to Verdun. Saw the battlefield.
  
• While in a restaurant in Verdun, we met a couple that owns a resort in Minnesota. They recommended a piano bar in Paris that we didn't end up visiting.
  
• The actual town of Verdun is so small - my friend Devika and I went walking in the morning to see the church and the World Center for Peace.
  
• First French croissant!
• Saw 3 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Reims
• Champagne. It was pretty good.
  
• Flaming Creme Brulee!

Shocking news, guys

So a lot of the blogs I like (well, not alot, but, like, one) are doing Blog Every Day in April. In case you haven't noticed, I will not be doing that. What I will be doing is leaving Copenhagen on Monday for, like, two weeks of awesome vacation. . . so I thought I'd maybe give you a few tidbits of information, since I haven't done that in just about forever.

Last weekend I watched a movie with my host brother. And I assumed that, since his parents weren't home and we were watching a movie while eating pizza and drinking soda, that we would sit on the couch. No. We ate at the table. My host brother used a knife and fork. I am constantly being shown up in the table manners department by a 6th grade boy.

And I went to the Opera this past month with my Danish class and some friends and I went to McDonald's for dinner beforehand. We thought that a classy night out deserved a classy meal - and it was fun to see how Danish McDonalds are different than American McDonalds. Brace yourselves for this information, guys: Danish McDonalds is not as greasy. There is still grease involved. It's just not making the fries soggy or overpowering the pickles on the hamburger. I also got a strawberry milkshake. Which was freaking amazing. Probably has something to do with using real ingredients or something. I don't know. Oh, and you have to pay for ketchup at Danish McDonalds.

I wrote two papers for the past week. One was about how Baudelaire discussed the architectural changes Haussmann made to Paris in the mid to late 1800s. And the other was comparing two development projects in Sierra Leone by Children of the Nations and the United States Agency for International Development.

Today, I went grocery shopping with my host dad. My host parents are really organized, so they have a list every week of what we will be having for dinner and what they need to buy for it. So tonight, we're having Paris Beef. Which is delicious. And involves beef. Of the ground variety. Which took us four grocery stores to find.

Blogging is difficult!

In case you hadn't noticed, I've been away from the blog awhile. Part of this is me just not putting up any posts. And I'll try to get some more of that up here. More wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.

But part of my being away from the blog is me being in France on a class study tour. Here is the powerpoint I made about it for my Danish class. I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Studietur ppt

View more presentations from xanthotrichious.

Lizapalooza, Day 4

I went with some of my friends to see the royal palace, Amalienborg. We saw the changing of the guards and took our pictures with the guards. You can see that Diana and I are standing very far away from them - they tell you to move away if you get too close!

Lizapalooza, Day 3

Today for Lizapalooza, I took snacks into my Development Economics class and got a package from my aunt. And then I came home and ate frikadeller for dinner. Frikadeller are Danish meatballs. It's pretty much just meatballs except that somehow they are more delicious than meatballs. I will see if I can discover this secret for you guys. . .

Min fødselsdag - Lizapalooza, Day 2

Today was my birthday! I woke up this morning very early so that I could eat breakfast and actually be awake before catching my bus.

In my Danish class, my teacher brought in flødeboller, delicious chocolate covered almost marshmallow+y but really sweeter and softer stuff that alot of Danish kids take to class on their birthdays. They were delicious. We also sang a Danish birthday song, which was more complicated than The Happy Birthday Song, because it has more words that just Happy Birthday. Later today, my host family told me that there are more Danish birthday songs, too!

And now for about half an hour or so before I go to sleep, I have been chilling in my room listening to my Youtube playlist, and I thought maybe you might want to listen to it, too. Because I like it. And it's my birthday. So you'll like it, too. (Does my Liz Logic make sense to you?)

Lizapalooza, Day 1

Today was the first day of Lizapalooza, the week long celebration of my birthday. And I celebrated by moving out of an apartment of American study abroad students. In the apartment, I awoke every morning to this sight of naked Poseidon and naked Hermes:
Now, I can wake up every morning to host parents, two host brothers, and a host dog. And a host bunny. As great as my view of naked Poseidon and naked Hermes was, I think this arrangement is better!

My host family celebrated my birthday today, because my host sister Anna and her boyfriend Lars came over. We had special birthday rolls before dinner. Hakketbøf for dinner (Hamburger patties that we ate with onions, potatoes, and brown sauce). And a delicious raspberry filled cake for dessert! It was a lot of food, and it was really good! Also, they decorated the room and the cake with Danish flags, which looked really cool. . . . Maybe I should add a picture later . . .

But now I have to go to sleep because I have about an hours commute to class in the morning! Cross your fingers I don't miss my bus!

Min familie

Min familie bor i Michigan. Min forældre hedder Mark og Cathy. Min far spiller ukulele. Min mor bager kage. Jeg har en søstre. Hun hedder Heather. Hun går på universitetet og hun studerer kunsthistorie.

That was my Danish assignment. Just so you know I am actually doing my homework! I think that if you know a little bit about me, you might know what it means!

Køge

So this is a post about the weekend before last weekend. A little wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff going on here. DIS has a visiting family program so that students who don't live with Danish people still get to meet Danish people. And so I went to visit my visiting family in Køge. We ate brunch and then we went to a museum in their town. The main attraction in the museum is this room:


These paintings were the designs for a set of tapestries that were made for the Queen Margrethe the Second about twenty years ago. They depict all of Danish history, starting from the viking era (the painting on the right in this picture) and ending with the Queen and her family (direct center of this picture). There are eleven of these paintings in chronological order around this room. What I thought was really cool about this set is that there are really modern things in a tapestry, which you don't see often because tapestries are such an archaic decorating concept. The painting at the left in this picture has people and events from the 1900s: JFK, Ghandi, World War II, and alot of other things that I recognized.

We also went to their library and it was really cool to see. Firstly because I love libraries, and secondly because of this:

Yes, in case you were wondering, that is the oldest house in Denmark. No big deal or anything. It's just a part of the local library. You know, it's just chilling there full of children's literature.


This was also cool: I found my favorite books from middle school. This is the shelf of books by Tamora Pierce. She's pretty cool. If you're looking for good books, this would be the shelf to find. You can probably find a similar shelf in your library that has these books in English, if Danish isn't really your thing.







Once you find the English-language equivalent of this shelf in your local library, you might want to pick up the English-language equivalent of this book. Harry Potter excluded, this was one of my favorites in middle school. (One of my favorites because I actually liked another Tamora Pierce series better.) So you might want to read it. Or recommend it to your favorite middle school-er. Or both. I think maybe both. . .

Danish Reggae

This past weekend, my Memory and Identity class went on a short study tour to Western Denmark. We saw alot of different things, and I will be posting more later this week. I just thought I would embed this video for you now. You know, just a video of Danish reggae music. No big deal.

The band is called Von Du. I have no idea what the name of the song is. It is in Danish, which is a language I do not speak. I think it's really cool how they have a reggae feel in a song that's completely in Danish. Mostly because reggae was not what I was expecting when I came to Denmark. . .




(Enjoy the wonderful quality of a video taken by Jane the point-and-shoot camera. Because it would have been just too convenient to have Cody the video camera in my pocket when I needed him.)

Cake

Today I went on a Hans Christian Andersen and Kierkegaard themed walk. While we didn't walk as far as I thought - I guess I'm saving The Little Mermaid for another day - it was still interesting to learn about the buildings closer to where I live.

We ended up at a very old cafe - so old that Hans Christian Andersen could have been there himself - and had hot chocolate. I also bought this piece of cake. It was very expensive because it is a well-known place with very good cake. I picked a type of cake called H.C.A. and it was delicious!

I blend!

Jeg vil gerne have en burger og en Coca-Cola.

That's how I ordered dinner on Monday night. And I was served a burger and a Coca-Cola, so it seems to have worked. Knowing a sentence in Danish is useful - but it's not that useful.

It kind of amazes me how easy it is to blend in in Copenhagen without speaking the language. I've been here just over a week. And I've studied Danish for less than that. I've been having the "asking people to speak English" experience - buying a public transportation pass at (get this) Seven Eleven, asking for directions, buying school supplies, ordering a pastry (more on that later). Which is normal. It's Denmark, and when you walk up to the counter, the person working there speaks Danish. But today, I was approached by three people trying to speak Danish to me.

This morning, walking towards my 8:30 class, there was a group of people handing out rolls in bags that had information about donating to charity written all over it. At least, that's what I assume is written on it, because a man offered me one of the bags, and when I clued him in on my inability to speak Danish, he told me to remember to donate to Africa and to have a nice day. After class ended at 4, I saw a big event with tents and music on the square, and I kind of think it was a fund raiser related to the delicious breakfast roll I had been given earlier. So then I decided to take a walk, and as I was strolling down Strøget, a young man smiled at me and said something in Danish. The only thing I understood was that he wanted to talk about Unicef. And I only understood that because he was wearing a jacket that said Unicef on it. When I informed him that I am fluent in English only, he told me he worked for Unicef and then he went to talk to someone else. So I continued walking, and I walked into Matas, which is kind of a drugstore except that it's got a ton of perfume and make-up and skincare products, and little to no medication. And as I was looking around, a woman came up to me and asked me a question - in Danish. And then I told her I didn't understand her question because I don't speak Danish, and she walked away. She had a clip-board, making me assume she was asking me to take a survey or something.

So I fit in and look Danish enough that people assume I speak Danish. I don't stick out like a sore thumb, and I don't have a figurative (or literal) neon sign over my head declaring I'm an American. And I think that means I am fitting in well for someone who has been here a week and a half.

Elsinore

I went to Elsinore on Sunday. Here are pictures!

This is the outside of the castle.


And the view looking out from the castle. It was very foggy, but if you look closely, you can see Sweden in the background.


Of course there was a Shakespeare plaque. The tour guide told us that nobody knows whether or not Shakespeare ever went to Elsinore. She said it was very possible that he had actually been there. From the specific detail in the Hamlet, it is clear that either Shakespeare visited in Elsinore or he talked to somebody who had.


I like this door. You can see the C4 at the top of it, which means it was the door of King Christian the Fourth. Every king for quite a very long time has been named Christian or Frederik, so they can "label" things - doors, churches, other things they have built - with their initial and number.

Found

When we were in North Carolina for Christmas, my aunts found a puzzle of Copenhagen at the dollar store. So they got it for me, and we put it all together, and then my pop-pop challenged me to find the picture when I got to Denmark.

Surprisingly, the picture on the dollar store puzzle happens to be one of the most photographed places in Copenhagen. With the exception of The Little Mermaid. So it wasn't that difficult to find. On Saturday, I walked over to Nyhavn, the street the picture is from, and took these pictures!

The picture above is, obviously, me. The actual stretch of street from the puzzle is right across from the buildings all the way to the left. And the picture below is what the puzzle looked like - only it was panoramic, so I think it went a bit further on both sides. And the puzzle didn't have all the cars in it. Oh well.

Yogurt

Carton of yogurt?
Kiwi vanilla flavor?
This is fantastic!

Orientation

I have been going through orientation for my program. Apparently, “orientation" is Danish for “scavenger hunts.” Monday, we did a scavenger hunt for practical places. Yesterday, we went on a scavenger hunt for tons of historical and cultural sites around Copenhagen. Today’s scavenger hunt was hunting for food in a Danish grocery store. I speared the elusive ground oksekød and my foraging for the exotic æble -fruit was successful.

Dulles was Dull

This is a picture of me sipping a Starbucks strawberry smoothie last Saturday at Washington Dulles International Airport. I was there for almost five hours. I read and people watched for a while and then I got this smoothie and opened my laptop to charge my iPod. Which I, of course, didn't use on the plane.

And then I boarded my flight to Copenhagen, ate some not-bad-at-all airplane food, tried to sleep, ate more not-bad-at-all airplane food, ending up in Copenhagen at seven in the morning to be driven towards a glorious two hour nap.

Confession

I've been thinking about plan write-a-blog-post-before-I-leave for about a month now. Even though I created this blog to share my experiences studying abroad, I wanted to get the first post out of the way before getting there. And then I could say, whenever people told me they wanted to hear about my study abroad: "I have a blog." Instead of what they got to hear - "I'm kinda thinking about maybe starting a blog . . . yeah."

First, I was going to write about seeing Much Ado About Nothing. My friend from church choir, Mara, invited me to go with her. It was amazing, partially because I love Shakespeare, and partially because Beatrice and Benedick were spectacular, and partially because the Department of Theatre and Drama did a very good job. But mostly because Joey Richter, who played Ron in A Very Potter Musical, was in it.

My second plan was to write about the drive to North Carolina to visit my grandparents for Christmas. We hadn't driven there in a few years, so the plan was to catch all the thoughtful reflections on past trips and post them on the internet. Thoughtful reflections: The backseat was smaller than I remembered and Ohio took a lot longer to drive through than I remembered. And my first trip to Chick-fil-A yielded a very tasty chicken sandwich. Not-so-thoughtful reflections that were not-so-deserving of their own blog post.

And then the plan was a New Years Eve post. I played Loaded Questions and ate Jell-O. I highly recommend both activities.

I'm sure you can tell which plan I chose - plan wait til the night before my plane leaves, and then give you a lengthy account of the plan. So let's just hope that plan catch-a-plane-to-Denmarks works out better than plan start-my-blog-before-plan-catch-a-plane-to-Denmark!