One other thing

I forgot to mention that after graduation, these high school students get a year off to travel or do whatever they want. After that, they can find a job or go on to university, but unlike the U.S., there isn't this crazy pressure on kids to go to university. It's much more of a personal choice than a societal mandate. Because here, education is not about getting a diploma and getting a job, it's about bettering yourself, so if you're not in it for yourself, you don't go. If this happened in America, I have a feeling 90 percent of American college students wouldn't be there. Also, it is free to go to university here thanks to the social welfare system. There are tons of differences economically and socially, and I'll get into those next time..

A Great Week

It's been a hectic week. I just finished my classes for the week and am ready to take a nice long nap. A bunch of great experiences have occurred in the past five days, however, so I figured I'd give an update.

I've really grown fond of this class I'm taking--20th Century European History--and the amazing professor who teaches it. He's undoubtedly one of if not the best professor I've had in my 2.5+ years of college. He's hard to describe, so I won't even try, other than to say that his charisma for history (and all that it encompasses) is extraordinary and captivating, which results in an extremely interesting class every time. It's almost like he's this gifted storyteller who manages to bring the broadest scope of history into a narrative. Again, it's hard to describe. But suffice it to say it's a fantastic class and by far my favorite here in CPH.

On Monday night, I attended my first Copenhagen soccer club (I forget the official name) practice. My program, DIS, has a small affiliation with this club so that a group of students can join one of the various teams. The first few weeks of practice are more like a try-out, because the club itself is broken into 4 different teams (A, B, C, D) and the A team is essentially a semi-pro league, consisting of some of the best Danish soccer players that aren't on the official Danish National Team (which qualified for the World Cup in South Africa this summer). On Monday night the temperatures were brutally chilly, and of course we were playing outdoors on what the Danes called "turf," even though it was more like cement painted green. I thought the field looked like what a mini golf course that had been closed down and decomposing for 20 or 30 years would look like. It was that bad. It was also extremely dangerous because there were some super-slippery areas of the field where groin and knee injuries were waiting to happen (not to mention, I tore a few square inches of skin off my knee and ripped a hole in my sweatpants as I made a goal-saving slide tackle to preserve my team's shut out towards the end of the game. I felt cool for about ten seconds and then realized how stupid it was to do that. You would have been proud to see it, though, Dad!) As a whole I played some of my best defense ever (I was center back/sweeper) and cleaned up everything that made it through the porous defenders in front and to the sides of me. I got some great comments from the Danes I was playing with, and I think I might actually have a decent shot at making the A team. If not, the B team for sure.

There were about 20 or so guys from DIS playing. It was fun to play with mostly Americans on that first night (the only Danes were the three guys running the program and helping us get acquainted), but as soon as the teams are made, I will be playing with predominantly Danes, and I'm looking forward to that. I did take out one of the Danish leaders with a really hard, probably illegal tackle, but in my defense the "turf" was so slippery that the ball almost glided along it as if it were ice, so it was very tough to time the tackle (alliteration anybody? Sorry) and so as I was going for the tackle the ball kind of squirted out and I missed it and basically just collided hard with him. We both went crashing to the ground. I immediately got up and went over to him and helped him up. He gave me a hug and a nod and said "nice tackle man" (not sarcastically). It was pretty sweet.

So that was Monday. Tuesday night was also really fun because my Danish Language and Culture class does these integration events where we go out to really nice restaurants for free and go to Danish high schools to get to know some Danes, etc. Later in the semester we get to go to an FCK (Football club of Kobenhavn) soccer match between their crosstown rivals (forget the name). So Tuesday night we went out to this great little restaurant where we ate some delicious food for free. We also watched an intense handball match between Denmark and Norway, a game which Denmark won in the waning moments. It was nothing short of epic (at least for everyone sitting around us). These people love their handball, and I have to admit, it looks like such a great sport. It's a great combination of basketball, a little hockey, a little soccer maybe. I'm hoping to play at some point.

Wednesday morning I had to get up early to meet my Danish class (small...maybe 10 or 12 people) at the train station to head out to a Danish high school. I would shortly find out about the dramatically different style of public high school compared to the U.S. First of all, the place looks like a private school. It's a large campus with separate, specialized buildings for music, art, athletics, labs, library, and then of course standard classrooms. The general vibe at this place was one of indifference, which surprised me quite a bit. Kids were just sitting around, playing games, eating snacks, walking around, etc. I was there for three hours and took a tour of the entire place, and only saw one classroom where there were students in there being taught by a teacher. My Danish class met up with an English class at the school. It seemed like the teacher didn't care about who was paying attention or what they did or said. But at the same time, it's not like the kids were being disrespectful and the teacher just didn't care. It was more like everyone, from the teacher to the students, was in this perpetual state of happiness and laughter and "I don't really care about this school, let's just have some fun!" euphoric state. This was weird because I always thought of the Danes as these extremely smart people (based on talking to them), but after this experience, I realized that a more proper analysis would be to say that they don't put nearly the emphasis on education (like math and science) that we do in the States, and their perceived intelligence comes from their in-depth cultural awareness and social comfortability as a result of their constant partying and social interaction. When I say there isn't a shy Dane in Copenhagen, I mean it. There isn't a shy Dane in Copenhagen. It's amazing. They're all so sociable and outgoing, presumably because the time we spend learning math and science in high school, they spend hanging out with the friends and going out to parties and fun social events. I mean, when we were there they were working on transforming the school into a host location for a big school-sponsored dance rave where they provide free alcohol for all the students and all this crazy stuff (I also haven't mentioned yet that the kids are older in high school--instead of 14-18, it's more like 15/16-20. And the drinking age here is 16, with 18 for the bars and 21 for a few exclusive clubs). Of course, none of this would ever happen in the U.S.

So that was Wednesday morning (oh yeah, and I should mention for those who don't know that the DIS program doesn't do classes on Wednesdays--they're reserved for class field trips such as this one).

Wednesday night was great, as the 11 Tufts students that are here (there is a twelfth somewhere...some senior girl, who none of us juniors know) met up for a dinner where some of us were meeting for the first time. It was a lot of fun to catch up and talk about mutual experiences from Tufts and stuff like that. It seems like a great group of people. We all got along like best friends after just five or ten minutes of knowing each other.

Thursday was non-eventful, other than having class all morning and into the afternoon then walking around the city a little. This morning I had my European history class, and now I'm here typing away.

Of course, Sunday's trip to Frederiksborg Castle was wonderful. It was a massive structure with beautiful architecture. I will be putting up pictures soon so you can all see for yourself.

Tomorrow and Sunday are two more trips: Saturday, to Elsinore Castle, and Sunday, to this Medieval Abbey place where we can shoot bows and arrows and things like that. My roommate went last weekend and said it was amazing. I will of course take lots of pictures and put those up asap.

Till next time,

Philip

So I've posted a bunch of pictures from the past week...in reverse order. The pictures of the Roskilde Cathedral and the Viking Museum are from today. Both places were amazing. The architecture and design of the Cathedral were beautiful. The Cathedral itself is home to 22 Danish Kings and 15 Queens dating back to 940 A.D. And they are actually in the Cathedral, lying in the ornate caskets that I could actually touch. It was really cool. Most of the Kings and their immediate families had a chapel room just for them. Unfortunately the Cathedral was being renovated, so some of the potentially beautiful photos were somewhat inhibited by the scaffolding and construction.

The Viking Museum was extremely interesting. They found remains of these 4 old Viking ships off the coast of Denmark 40 (ish) years ago and had to go through all these intense processes over a 25-year span to figure out which pieces went where. We were able to walk out on the Fjor (the bay) because of the frozen ice, which, oddly enough, hasn't been frozen in over 25 years. In other words, it's the coldest here it's been in over 25 years. It's not torture, but when the wind is blowing, it really is painfully freezing.

The surrounding town of Roskilde is also very beautiful. It was a great trip, and now I have to recharge the batteries before heading off to Frederiksberg Castle tomorrow.