A bunch of things

A bunch of things are happening in my life:

First, a week or two ago, my friend Kate, and I had some time so we decided to go check out Rosenborg Castle, which is where the crown jewels of Denmark are kept. The castle it was kept in is GORGEOUS inside. Sadly, they charge 20 kroner extra to take photos, and I was feeling cheap, so I didn't buy the photo pass, even though I really regret that decision now. There were so many cool rooms in the castle. One room was all mirrors. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, all mirrors! Other rooms had thrones, artwork, beautiful ceilings and much more. Then the crown jewels themselves were beautiful and not what I pictured. The crowns were incredibly intricate and detailed, not just a round, pointy slab of gold with some stones stuck in it, like I'd kind of expected. But I did buy a few postcards, which I took photos of, posted below:

Rosenborg Castle. I actually took this picture in September. Denmark is not this bright and sunny anymore.

Another view of the outside of the castle, also from September

Postcard photo: Lions surrounding thrones. You can also kind of see the amazing sculptures on the ceiling.

Postcard of Crown. Seriously, look at how detailed it is!

Postcard of a room inside castle. Again, look at the ceiling.

Another exciting development: I finally tried smørrebrød, which really popular to eat over here. It's basically a cold open faced sandwich with various toppings on it. My Danish teacher brought them into our class for us all to try. She brought in four different varieties: roast beef, frikadeller (a Danish type of meatball), egg and shrimp, and fried fish. I tried all but the fried fish one, and picked the shrimp of the egg and shrimp one (don't like seafood) and they were all really good! I can see why people eat them on such a regular basis. Also smørrebrød, is on really good bread, called rugbrød, which I just Wikipediaed and apparently is a type of sour-dough ryebread. I've been eating rugbrød very regularly since coming to Denmark, and I, unlike some of my American friends, really like it, but it was even better when it was part of smørrebrød.

Another recent change is the amount of daylight. As I write this it's 4:30 PM, and it's definitely starting to get dark already. We just had our daylight savings, so now it's really getting dark earlier and earlier. Weather.com predicts sunset today at 4:47 PM.

The view outside my window at 4:38 PM.

The final important development in my life is the amount of schoolwork at the moment. I'm not going to lie. The classwork with studying abroad has not been all that difficult or time-consuming. And I am most certainly not complaining. Having spent four semesters at JHU, where the workload is anything but easy, it's been nice to have a semester off of late nights of studying and more papers than I care to think about. However, since DIS is technically an academic institution, they do give some schoolwork, which I would imagine is more challenging than a typical study abroad program (they claim it is anyway.) And it just so happens that 90% of my work for this semester has been due either last week or this week. Not fun at all. So while writing two ten page papers and taking two midterms in eight days might be par for the course at Hopkins, let's just say I've gotten out of practice. To get through it, I'm just holding on to the fact that I when the work is over (or when I decide to take a break from it) I have some REALLY cool stuff coming up:

• On Wednesday I'm going to museums with a Danish friend who said that they will be really cool!
• Thursday. Turning 21! Not as big of a deal as it would have been in the States, but any birthday is fun no matter where it is. So despite the fact that I'll be studying for a midterm that's on Friday, I'll still be 21.
  
• Friday. Last day of classes until November 16! Start of travel break!!!
• Saturday. Being completely lazy and useless. Sleeping.
  
• Sunday. 5:30 AM. Leave for Rome!
• The following Friday. Rome to Prague.
• Following Tuesday. Prague to Krakow, Poland. (We had some serious issues booking our train ticket from Prague to Krakow. We went to the train station in Copenhagen, since we couldn't figure out how to do it online. So at the train station, my friend and I paid and were handed a pile of tickets, all in Danish. The tickets were broken up into two parts: one from Prague to Polish border and one from the Polish border to Krakow. However, there was only one piece of paper for each, and since we don't read Danish, we couldn't tell if they were actually tickets for two people. So we went up and asked the woman at the counter to double-check that these actually were for two people. She told us very condescendingly that, yes they were for two people, couldn't we read those [Danish] words right there that said it was for two people? Assured, even if not by the friendliest person I have met in Denmark, we went back home. At home, our Norwegian RA, who's been extremely helpful with the language barrier involved in booking travels in Denmark, offered to look over our tickets just to check that they were right. However, as he was looking over it, he noticed a problem. Yes, indeed, we did how two tickets out of Prague to the Polish border. However, we only had one ticket from the Polish border. So one of us was doomed to sit in the middle of Poland and the Czech Republic, hoping for an open spot on a train. Now, that does not sound fun!
• Following Friday. Going to Berlin, Germany!
• Very early Monday morning. Back to Copenhagen. I realize I am going to be completely exhausted for class on Monday, but it was significantly cheaper to fly in Monday morning than Sunday night.
  

Should be an amazing travel break! The thought of it is definitely what's getting me through the upcoming days.