So I’m not going to write too much just yet, because it’s late and I’ve spent all evening working on getting this uploaded, but I have a LOT to show you. I’ve been busy the past few days–not only did we have a canal tour and welcome party at a nightclub downtown on Friday night, but I also toured Helsingør (Elsinore), the famous setting of Hamlet, attended a “Giraffe Party” in my kollegium (basically a huge welcome party for all the new people in the kollegium–the “giraffes”), and went on a tour of “the Other Copenhagen” guided by a local.

You might notice that’s a lot of links. Well hit the “read more” button and I’ve embedded each photo gallery for you, as well as the five new videos I’ve uploaded on YouTube from my busy weekend. Finally, I also added a new page here on my blog–click the “Photos” link at the top to see a selection of my favorite photographs that I’ve taken.

First, the photos:

And now the videos:

That’s all for now, folks. More to come soon, no doubt.

I have them! Right here! And I’m embedding both of the two sets (one with some general pictures from this week and another with pictures from our scavenger hunt on Wednesday) I just put online right below this text. So yea, lookee! Especially this one, because I think it’s amazing. But København is amazing, so that’s appropriate. Anyway, this is all for now as I’m headed out soon to go on a canal tour (plenty of pictures to come from that, I’m sure). Enjoy!

Apparently no one wants to take the blame for all these tasty wienerbrød (Danish pastries) I’ve been eating lately. See, in the U.S. and elsewhere we refer to them simply as Danishes. But did you know that here, wienerbrød translates as Vienna bread? I can’t say I blame them for not wanting ownership of the name, I’ve been pretty guilty from all those empty calories it seems like I’ve been eating for breakfast, lunch AND occasionally dinner. No more! I’m beginning to discover all the other food options Denmark has to offer.

So once again I apologize for the lack of any significant updates recently (and I know I know, I’m slacking on the pictures, check my twitter, I’ve posted a few there). But things have been busy!

So far I’m having an absolute blast. I’ve made some really great friends already, seen some really great parts of Copenhagen already and even made several Danish friends. Wednesday we had a “scavenger hunt” in the city with our groups from our “Survival Danish” classes during orientation. It was so fun. Among other things, we missed our stop on the water taxi, got lost in the new part of the city around the royal palace, wandered into a building in the Copenhagen Stock Exchange to find a bathroom and strolled along the harbor at Nyhavn. And I have pictures! I just haven’t had time to put them online yet (and at the moment I’m on a DIS computer in the library). However, I think I should have time tomorrow for sure, so they’ll be up then–with commentary! I also joined the “food club” on my hall in my Kollegium, so now I’ll be eating a meal with my hallmates every night and I’ll even cook for them all one night in a few weeks. It’s a really great, social, and cheap system that should be a lot of fun and make for some really good food!

My first day of classes is today. My first class was great–the professor seems really cool, really knows his stuff, and of course all my classes are subjects I’m actually interested in this time, so that’s nice. This morning was Current Trends in News Media, this afternoon I have Political Rhetoric and International Marketing and Branding. Should be fun! Of course I’ll keep you updated on those as well.

It’s looking like a busy weekend. There is a party this evening and Saturday night at my Kollegium–Egmont–and then there is a DIS organized party on Friday night, after our canal tour! On top of that, I’ve got class tomorrow, a trip to Elsinore (the site of Hamlet) on Saturday, and a tour of the “Other Copenhagen” (sort of a local’s view of the city) on Sunday afternoon. Busy busy!

Another interesting thing from yesterday: went to get my Danish CPR card (sort of like their version of social security, except it means free health care since theirs is all socialized) and once I turned in the forms and everything, the lady helping me handed me an invitation to go to Copenhagen City Hall later in September to meet the mayor and hear the President of Hilton Hotels in Copenhagen speak about adjusting to life in Copenhagen as a foreigner. It should be really neat! I’m not sure how many people got this invitation, but I get the feeling it may be sort of a random thing, as I haven’t heard of anyone else receiving one yet… either way, I’m excited!

That’s all for now. Again, I’ll do my best to get some nice pictures up here for you tomorrow and perhaps I’ll do a video update sometime this weekend as well. Hej Hej! (Bye!)

Second day in Denmark has been a blast so far–still having lots of fun meeting people and exploring the city. This morning we had our opening ceremony at the Black Diamond (aka the Royal Library, sort of the Danish version of the Library of Congress) and it was great. They brought in a wind quintet to play some music for the ceremony, and the DIS Director, a professor and two interns gave speeches welcoming us to Copenhagen. The auditorium we were in was beautiful too (the whole building, really), it even had side panels on the walls that adjusted for the acoustics when the quintet played versus when the speakers were speaking. Cool stuff.

After the ceremony I grabbed a cheese pretzel with some new friends at gammeltorve(pretty sure that’s the right spelling) and then just got out of my “Survival Danish” class. Also picked up my train pass–pretty interesting how it works, basically I have unlimited rides, 24/7 on the bus and the train system up until sometime in October. Pretty decent deal, I’ll see how much I actually end up using public transit and then decide if I want to renew the pass for the rest of the semester.

Anyway, off to meet a few friends, probably going to head back to my kollegium, maybe do a little shopping, grab dinner and drinks and find something fun to do tonight. More later.

So I’m here in London, no problems so far (knock on wood). The entire trip has gone great, really–minus the babies wailing on the flight here from Chicago (one wailed for literally three hours, even my new headphones couldn’t block the little guy out). Both flights so far left on time, arrived early, and there have been no luggage, security, or customs snafus or anything to deal with.

We arrived here in London around 6:30 a.m. local time so I grabbed breakfast at giraffe. Got all-natural muesli with dried fruits (and goji berries!) to compensate for my gorging on airline food. I had originally planned to fast for most of the trip since this lifehacker article recommended fasting for 16 hours to avoid the jet lag and reset your sleep cycle, but obviously that didn’t happen. What can I say, I’m weak. Plus, British Airways food wasn’t awful, and they had pretty decent cheesecake. Hell, they even offered me wine, but I figured that wouldn’t help the jet lag any.

Speaking of which, still no sign of jet lag, which is nice. Every time I’ve been abroad before I didn’t get hit too hard with it either, even in Japan, so I’m hoping this trip is no different. Right now I’m feeling great, I ate dinner around normal time for home, and then ate breakfast based on UK time, so I feel like I adjusted well. Managed to snag three hours of sleep (despite the screaming babies) so that should keep me going through most of the day, since I don’t usually require too much. Plus I’ve still got another two hour flight I can sleep through. I managed to catch up on all of Mad Men anyway–SO good, that’ll probably get it’s own post at some point in the near future.

Anyway, I’m going to wander a bit–this new Terminal 5 in Heathrow is super-nice; almost feels more like a shopping mall than an airport. Not that I can afford anything with this godawful exchange rate.