A Change in Scenery, New Arrivals

Again, I've been astounded at how fast time has been flying these past couple weeks. I've hardly had time to organize my thoughts, let alone blog about them; it's been one thing after another. I'll definitely make a more concerted effort to keep the blog updated, but it's tougher now that the pace of my life abroad is picking up.

Last Saturday, a group of friends that I had made from my Positive Psych class and I decided to take a trip to Malmö, Sweden. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a miscommunication about the timing of when we were supposed to meet. Two of the girls who were planning on making the trip with us arrived at København H (the main train station in Copenhagen) several hours early; after realizing that nobody else was at the station, they decided to leave by themselves. The worst part of the whole scenario was the fact that they left their phones off because they didn't want to incur any phone charges (the cost of making international calls, even between nations as close as Denmark and Sweden, can be astronomical) - so none of us could contact them. Needless to say, tensions were running a bit high as we left without them. Once we arrived in the city, things got better - we grabbed a quick lunch downtown, toured around for a while, and even saw the two girls (Caroline and Kelsey) for a bit. However,  they decided to go off and see the city on their own, and we could still sense some latent tension. The city couldn't really compare to Copenhagen though, and after our return I went and visited the kollegium that my friends lived in (Gronjords), met a few other people who lived there, and hung for a while before returning to Hoffmans.

Radhuset, the City Hall in Malmö

The next day, I went to pick up Jared Scheck around noon; we had been in contact though Facebook for a while, and I knew that he would be staying in Hoffmans as well. We met at Nørreport Station (the main Metro and S-tog station downtown) and I brought him back to Hoffmans. I showed him around the kollegium for a while before he passed out on my floor from jet lag; however, once he awoke we met up with Katie Schratz downtown (whom I had seen only a few times in Copenhagen before then) and we grabbed dinner at a local vegetarian salad bar. Afterward, we all hung out at a public park nearby and reminisced about our days at Denison. After we were finished trading stories, we met up with a few of my friends from Gronjords and chilled for a while before deciding that it was time to head back; Jared was really starting to feel the jet lag and we figured that we didn't want to be out too late. Jared then slept in the Hoffmans common room for the night.

Posing with a Troll in Malmö

The next morning, I took Jared downtown for the DIS orientation, then went to return my textbook from the first session before I headed to a beach in Amager to hang out with Sara, Eszter, and a few others from their kollegium (Tåsingade). Sadly it was a bit windy and not as warm as we had expected, so nobody really wanted to get in the water. Instead, we all just lay out, read, and joked about Sara's musical taste (she had brought her iPod, which according to her hadn't been updated in a good ten years). Later on, I went back to Gronjords to play a game of basketball with Dustin, David, and Sam (a guy from their kollegium whom I had met a couple nights earlier; as it turned out, he was taking the same class as me for the second session). As we found out, though, we were all sorely out of shape and got winded pretty quickly after just one game of 2 on 2. After that, I headed back to Hoffmans, grabbed some dinner, and went straight to bed.

An Odd Statue Garden in One of Malmö's Public Parks