Whale Bones!!!

Sorry I haven't written since Sunday, as it were, I haven't done much lately, but I seem to be very busy...

Monday = no class so I took the day to go to the Black Diamond which is the HUGE Royal Library in Copenhagen (and I think also the main library for U of Copenhagen, but there is a very real chance that I just made that up...) to do all of my homework for the week. It is a really nice place to study, it is a fairly new building but of course they decorated some of the study rooms to look like they are from Harry Potter (although other rooms are more modern). If there are any Cornellians out there in blog world, this library reminds me of a huge Mann Library with random rooms from Uris inside. But anyway, I tried out 3 different places to study (I like to change my scenery while I study, and I also wanted to multi-task and explore the library while still doing work) all of which were very nice, and QUIET (like most public places here - it is really true that Americans are more loud and obnoxious!). Obviously almost everyone in the library was Danish which was awesome, the guy at the next table started laughing at me when I pulled out my Danish for Beginners book and started practicing counting in Danish!

After my study session, I headed home to relax, cook, etc. - the normal family routine! I think we had pasta with mussels for dinner (soooo good, it is actually a recipe from a former host student!). I stayed up pretty late finishing my Philosophy homework, which by the way, sucks. Thank you Cornell for making me take this class, when I die, you can't come to my funeral!

Tuesday is my big class day, starting at 8:30am ending at 5:15pm. BUT after my last class I met up with a group of people from my core class (this is the class I travel with - western DK last weekend, Germany in 2ish weeks) and we went out for dinner then drinks. It was a good time, we ended up at this Italian restaurant which was good - our waiter of course had a cousin in Chicago, as most good Italians do! I had spaghetti carbonara, which is actually different than our carbonara, but still good. After that we went to 2 different bars and just hung out and talked/relived our glorious night in Ribe (and our not-so-glorious day after Ribe). We left around midnight because we all had to catch trains home, but the trains don't run very frequently at night so it actually took me like an hour and a half to get home :-(

This morning I was up bright and early for my field trip to the Zoological Museum in Copenhagen (part of U of Cph) with my marine mammals class. First we went down into the basement and saw MASSIVE, as in, bigger-than-my-house-massive whale skulls/skeletons. It was sooooooooooo interesting, you really cannot conceptualize how big these marine mammals are until you see a skeleton/animal up close - it is kind of scary but awesome! Then we went around and saw the behind-the-scenes collection of over 10 million different specimens housed at the museum (which by the way doubles as a research facility for zoologists/technicians from the University). They had tons of marine mammal bones, along with preserved mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, bugs, birds, etc. I got to touch a real (though now dead and stuffed) lion, which is cool because that is probably as close as I'll ever come to the real thing! We also got to explore the actual museum that is open to the public a little which was very nice too! I've found that most museums here are really interactive which is awesome because you are never going to really learn anything going to these museums unless you're actually engaged.

After the field trip I came home and took a nap, relaxed, did some homework, etc. until dinner. After dinner we watched this awards show on TV. It was HILARIOUS!!! It was kind of just general pop culture stuff (it didn't have a specific theme like the Grammys or Emmys). They did best artist, best song, best radio program, best sport moment, best commercial, best comedy show/act, etc. In between awards they had all these little skits which were a scream! One of them involved this guy attempting to steal one of the award statues so it was like a Matrix spoof and at the end he put an Oscar on the platform instead of the Danish award as a poke at Americans (I explained that really poorly - it was hilarious if you saw it...)

Food Log:

Breakfast: muesli (I've been spelling that word wrong the whole time, I think this is the correct spelling) and yogurt and COFFEE (though it was instant so it tasted horrible but I can't help it, I have a problem...

Lunch: peanut butter and boysenberry marmalade sandwich, mmm!

Dinner: Pasta with a coconut milk/shrimp/lemon grass sauce, DElicious (though I'm kind of getting pasta-ed out...)

P.S. Over dinner my host family told me how their last student always made this type of "cake" which was absolutely awful and they couldn't stand eating it but she said it was a super popular dessert in the US... it was Rice Krispie Treats!!! haha, scratch that one off the list of things to make!!!!

P.P.S. They then went on to express their undying love for choc. chip cookies - does anyone have a really really really good recipe that I can impress them with?