"Work hard and enjoy LIFE"

On Friday, I had my LIFE orientation. It was an all day event that began at 10am and concluded at midnight. Here's the rundown of my entire day:

9:40am: Meet Olivia at the corner intersection (Olivia is my friend from Germany, we were in the same Danish language class, she is also in the LIFE department, and lives only a few blocks away from me).

10am-3pm: Welcome and Orientation Meeting at the main auditorium on the Frederiksberg Campus. Topics and presentations include: a welcome from the associate dean, housing, our First Contact (FC) mentors, the LIFE weekend trip (which I signed up for!), IT services, the Danish classroom, culture shock, student services, the LIFE library, and other practical information pertaining to student life. One phrase that a presenter said which really stuck with me was "work hard and enjoy LIFE". I believe it's an excellent motto to follow, not only for my stay here in Copenhagen, but also for everyday life too.

We had a short break between 11am and 11:15 am and lunch from 12pm-1pm. They provided fruit, water, soft drinks, and bagels filled with various toppings (including salmon, vegetables and hummus, etc.) for our meals.

During lunch, I went with Olivia to the library because she wanted to put a book on hold. The library was relatively small and there were several things I didn't expect:
1) There were lockers for students to put their stuff in while they studied in the library.
2) It also sold fruit and those candy jar things where you put in a coin and you get a handful of peanut M&Ms, meaning you are allowed to eat inside!
3) You are free to talk with friends at a volume that's louder than a whisper. I discovered this when I was whispering to Olivia and a Danish student said to me "you don't have to whisper in here".

This library, at least for me, is more of an exception to the rule. Eating and talking loudly would never fly in the library on the Berkeley campus.

Towards the end of lunch, I signed up for the LIFE weekend trip. It is offered by the First Contacts (our Danish mentors) and it allows up to 110 students to travel to the cabin outside of Copenhagen for the weekend. It is a great opportunity to meet other students in the Life Sciences Faculty.

3pm-6pm: Meeting concludes and all of the students are broken up into six different groups. Two mentors led my group on a tour around the campus. We took breaks during the tour to play some ice breakers such as going around the circle saying your name and an animal whose first letter is the same as the first letter of your own name.  I was Natalie Nightingale, most of the students didn't know what that was. I helped another girl come up with 'newt', everyone was puzzled by that too. We played a different version of "I love my neighbor", but it was called "I don't like my neighbor, who...". Another game required us to make objects with our bodies. If the person in the middle points to you and says "toaster" or "shawarma", that person and the two on each side of him or her have to create it with their bodies. Finally,  we played "Evolution", but instead of fish, shark, and surfers, we played with chickens, rabbits, dinosaurs, and Superman. I must admit, after awhile it started to feel as though I was working at summer camp again.

During the tour, our student leaders showed us the different parts of campus, including the student garden for agricultural students, the academic bookstore, and the library. I learned that the campus is broken up into three sections: A1, A2, and A3. At one point during the tour while we were walking through the campus garden, the FCs asked us to partner up with someone who we had never talked to before and to find one interesting fact about that person, which we would later share with the group. I was with a Norwegian girl named Ing-will (that's how she told me it is pronounced, I have no idea how to spell it). She told me she is in her first year of the Master program (in Denmark, it takes 3 years to get your bachelor's degree and 2 for your master's). The interesting fact that I shared is that she did Tai-kwon-do for 11 years and has her black belt.

When our tour ended, all of the groups congregated on the grass behind the auditorium where we met a few hours ago. We played a giant game of Evolution and just my luck, I was the last rabbit standing (meaning I couldn't beat anyone in rock-paper-scissors to advance to the dinosaur stage).

6-7:30pm: At this point I was huun-gryy, and it was a good thing they provided us with free dinner. I ate with Sebastian, a German who I met during the Danish language course, he's pretty funny, and a new guy who was in my tour group, Stephen from the Netherlands. It was "buffet" style but there were so many students (from both the masters' and bachelors' programs) that they quickly ran out of food.

7:30pm-12am: A plate full of beets, bean salad, and pesto pasta later, my hunger subsided. I sat with a masters student, Kyle from Austria (who's 30, but looks much younger...we played the "guess my age" game) and we talked about our studies. He's studying food safety and we discovered that we have a class together. He also told me that he has traveled to China more than 5 times in his life and that one day he would like to visit the US, more specifically D.C and New York (I tried to advocate for San Francisco).

After talking for a little, we headed downstairs to the student bar A-Vej (short of Acaciavej, the street that it's on). On Wednesdays, it's a place for students to hang out, play games and have free hot chocolate and tea. Every Friday night, A-Vej becomes the Friday bar for LIFE students. In one of my previous blogs I said that the cheapest drinks I found were in Christiania, but I was wrong. The student bar is truly aimed towards students with their cheap beer, ciders, and hard liquor. One Tuborg on tap cost me just 15 DKK (about $3)! It was pretty crowded, but next week I'm sure it'll be packed since it's the first Friday bar after summer break. According to my tour leaders, each week there is a theme put on by different student groups (last semester, one of the themes was a toga party) and they are pretty popular even if people don't dress up.

Towards the end of the night, I left the bar and went to get my bike that I had parked in front of the auditorium earlier that morning. For some reason, I couldn't find it and I was pacing back and forth flashing my lights in hopes of seeing my blue beauty. It was during that time when it hit me, I'm very much attached to my bicycle. As my main form of transportation, it not only saved me a lot of money (riding the metro, bus, and train here are expensive...a single ride ticket costs 24DKK, which is almost $5, and it expires after an hour and fifteen minutes) but it has been many places and has been my companion in the rain, sun, on sightseeing trips, and too class. It's not brand new, in fact, it's far from perfect (there's a hole in the seat and my butt constantly gets wet), but it's definitely my favorite purchase here and I would be devastated if it got stolen. I realized in that moment that I'm very much attached to my bike.

I was thinking, "alright, I'll come back tomorrow. Maybe it is here but I just don't see it" and "I really hope it didn't get stolen, that means I'll have to walk home and then what do I do? Buy a new one? I don't want a new bike, I like the one I already have."

So after a few minutes of near panic, I found my bike. Stupidly, it was right in front of me. I've been having that issue lately of not seeing my bike when I'm staring right at it. After a sigh of relief, I jumped on my bike and rode back to my kollegium.

My plan was to meet my friend Katrin after the Nik and Jay concert (a popular Danish hip-hop/rap duo) that was taking place at Tivoli. By the time she texted me around 12:30am, I was half asleep. But I met up with Katrin the next day to go sightseeing with her and her friend Lisa (they attended the same university in Switzerland). We took the bus (not our bikes because Lisa didn't have one) and got off at Stroget, walked to Nyhavn (saw the the best restaurant in the world, Noma), took the water taxi to the Black Diamond/Royal Library, walked along Islands Brygge (witnessed kayak water polo!) to look at Copenhagen's more modern architecture, bought salads from Fakta (a chain supermarket) and ate on the grass, then headed back on the metro, got off at Norreport, took the bus back to Keops and I rode my bike to pick up some ingredients for the rice salad I made for that night's potluck dinner. After the BBQ, a bunch of us (including Ned, Dan, Katrin, Sonia, Stuart, Max, Rachael, Christina, Lisa) rode to a bar on Norrebrogade, there was a DJ and lots of dancing. Got back to my kollegium really late...4:30am. The real Danes were out even later!

The water taxi we took from Nyhavn to the Royal Library. You can ride it 

Islands Brygge

A first: kayak water polo

A condominium that is shaped like an '8'