one week ends, and another begins

So, this last week has been pretty amazing I must say. I've been hitting up the jazz scene here, one club on Tuesday night and another on Saturday. Both of which were equally amazing in their own ways, I'll spare you the exact details other than the fact that last night I met this 30-something year old Danish woman who kept buying me drinks (she might have had alterior motives...I could see the despair in her eyes after she asked if I had a girlfriend).



By the way, have you heard? Handball histeria has reached new heights in Denmark, literally. Here's a picture of the handball team on the balcony of City Hall in city square. Unfortunately I cannot take the credit for this picture as I was at home with the realization that there was no way I could make it to city square in time to see it. 25,000 Danes came to celebrate the victory.


Another highlight from this week has been the practicum part of my Children in a Multicultural Context program that I am in. Every Thursday I'll be going to a daycare located in a part of town high in immigrant population (currently a huge issue among Danish people and even more so, the immigrants themselves). Anyways, last Thursday was the first time I got to do this and it was amazing. We were bussed out to a farm about an hour north of the city, situated among a coastal community. A group of only the most enduring children, a couple pedagogues (supervisors) and I set out for a long walk along the coast. Here's a snippet of the scenery...


After the walk we arrived in the classic farm area and went inside to eat lunch. After a long day of me being attacked by multiple children, an hour bus ride back to the school, another 45 minutes of commute to my house, it was 5:30pm -12 hours after I had woken up- and I was exausted.

Today was a holiday called Fastelavn. It's been described to me as Haloween without the horror. It is a festival trying to rid the community of evil spirits before the coming of the spring. In the old days a black cat was used to symbolize the evil spirits. It was put in a wooden barrell and the barrell was beaten until it was completely disintegrated (cats were harmed in the making of this tradition). Nowadays barrells are filled with candy much like a pinada. Also, kids parade from door to door dressed in costumes. Traditionally the women would bake Fastelavn cakes which are croissant-style flaky pastries with a cream-filled center. I was biking around yesterday and stopped at some bakery and got one -fucking delicious. Today, most of the people just give some money to the kids -some stopped by today and sang me a song, so I gave them 10 kr. My host mother also took me to a small Dutch-influenced town outside of Copenhagen from where you could see the 20km bridge to Malmo, Sweden. There were horses, lots of people, amongst a beautiful town. The big celebration came when all the riders of the horses lined up and rode back and forth taking a swing at a suspended wooden barrell. I've compiled a sequence of the 1hr long running of the horses. Each round was probably about 10 minutes long.