So I’ve officially stepped foot in the room Obama will be dining in Friday afternoon–before he himself has.

Today I went on probably my favorite field study so far, with my Copenhagen History and Contemporary Urban Issues class. We visited three places. First we traveled to Nyboder near Østerport train station. Basically these are some of the oldest buildings in the “new” part of Copenhagen. King Christian IV almost doubled the size of the city in the early 1600s and designed this section of the city to house the Royal Navy. Pretty cool stuff–also got a glimpse at St. Paul’s Church, built in the midst of the Nyboder, as well as some pretty cool lamps marking one of the earliest contracts signed by Copenhagen to a British company for basic infrastructure (i.e. water and gas lines).

After that we went to Kastellet, the old citadel perched on the edge of the city. The citadel is incredibly preserved and exhibits the old medieval fortifications of the city really well. My pictures show it better than I can, though (see below).

Finally we ended with a tour of the Royal Palace at Amalianborg–not something your average tourist gets to do (or even your average Dane, evidently). According to our professor these tours are hard to come by. Not to mention the excitement in the air given that the Prince and Queen will be wining and dining with the International Olympic Committee AND our President Obama over the next two days (including today!). We even got a chance to see the dining room that they’ll likely be eating in. It’s gloriously extravagant and fun, and boy do I wish I could be there tonight/tomorrow/Friday afternoon. So many important and influential people are bound to have some remarkable conversations and it would be an incredible learning experience. Ah well, perhaps some day

But I have pictures! And as an excuse for procrastination I already have them titled, tagged and uploaded to Flickr. Check them out in my flickr set or in the flash slideshow below: 

It’s gonna be a good day. In fact, this week has been good so far. It’s had its stressful moments, to be sure, but I’ve decided I’m just not going to let it get me down. I’ve managed to be super-productive this week, getting almost all my big projects done already and getting caught up on a lot of things I’ve been behind on. Hell, I even cleaned last night (which my room was in desperate need of).

And I’ve also been able to enjoy myself a little this week, which is always nice. The weather the past two days has been beautiful (finally–after all the rain we’ve had). Cold, but I’ll take cold and sunny over hot and rainy any day. This has made biking to and from downtown much more of a pleasure than a pain.

The end of this week looks to be extremely eventful. In fact, the next three days should be pretty huge for me, as well as for the United States and Denmark. As most of you have no doubt heard, President Obama will travel to Denmark for the International Olympic Committee’s selection of a host city for the 2016 Olympic Games this Friday. Madrid, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and of course Chicago are competing for the privilege, with Chicago and Rio considered the frontrunners.

I’m all for Chicago as far as the selection is concerned. While admittedly the Olympics have never been held in South America before, Chicago has a far cheaper and economically feasible proposal, is clearly a safer venue and seems to have made the athletes the center of their plan–making transportation between events quick and relatively painless. I must say, I’m confident Chicago will win. Not only does it have the largest support–the majority of the United States versus the majority of Brazil–but it’s more practical and, as the article above mentioned, we’ve got the “Obama factor”. His influence here in Copenhagen on Friday will make a huge difference, and any closeness there might’ve been in the competition may very well be erased thanks to his appearance (not to mention Michelle Obama, Oprah, the Transportation and Education Secretaries, and numerous Olympic athletes here pushing for a Chicago win). Chicago has even reserved the entire city hall square for festivities on Friday to celebrate the announcement and rally for Chicago’s selection. I’ve even signed up to “volunteer” for the event–although mainly that means I’ll be on hand all afternoon to celebrate wearing a Chicago t-shirt (no complaints here).

Also: Jessica reminded me that Rio is also hosting the 2014 World Cup–two huge global events in as many years? A bit of a stretch for any city, much less one that is still very much developing infrastructure.

On top of the IOC selection the Danish Climate Movement is organizing a quick event Friday morning at the Bella Centre, where Obama will be, to encourage his attendance and action at COP15 in December. We’ll be there around 8 a.m.–should be an interesting morning.

Beyond climate and Olympic activities, unfortunately I do still have school this week, with a political rhetoric message analysis due Thursday, and an architectural analysis presentation and advertising midterm on Friday. Thankfully I’m well on my way to completing most of them (and studying) and I’m not too concerned about the midterm. I love marketing, communications and advertising–so studying isn’t much of a chore in this case.

Anyway, I hope everyone out there in the blogosphere/twitterverse/facebookworld is having a great week and has great plans for the weekend. I’ll be updating more soon, particularly as I prepare for my trip to London on Sunday! 

Finally. That’s all I have to say about that.

Also: just realized this is two entries in a row that start with “finally.” Does this mean I’m finishing a lot of things, or that I’m just exasperated by working on them so damn long?

FINALLY. I’ve got all my pictures up-to-date and online. It took a while, but I’ve got it. And I’m not going to waste much time with words when I’ve got so many great photos, so here’s the deal. You can either hit the “read more” if you’d like to see the flash slideshows, or you click the following links to go straight to the set page on my Flickr and browse them at your leisure (and leave comments, if you want–I love comments!). These photos are also all on my Facebook and my MobileMe Gallery. 

• Olympic History exhibition at City Hall
• Christiania
• Scavenger hunt for my Copenhagen History and Contemporary Urban Issues course
• The Louisiana Museum
• Climate change “Wake Up Call” demonstration
• Tall ship sailing

So I made a few quick updates to my blog design tonight. If you take a look to the right, in the sidebar, you’ll notice that I have removed the components for my Twitter, my Flickr and my Delicious tag cloud. The reasoning is twofold: First, I feel like my site is a relatively slow site as it is. It’s not a super-complex site, but with all the youtube videos, flickr slideshows, etc. that I often post in my entries, I feel like it may be too slow for some users. Secondly, I feel like they’re kind of useless. As often as I talk about Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, etc. in my entries (not to mention the social media icons all over my site) I feel like you know I’m there, right? And seeing as how most of my traffic to my blog comes from Twitter, Facebook, etc. and not the other way around, I feel like if you know I have a blog you also know I have a Twitter account.

Let me know what you think via Twitter or in the comments, if you get a chance. I’m really curious to hear what you think.

I’ve also added some new links to my blogroll! You should check out Milli Mike’s blog for a great mishmash of politics, PR, social media and pop culture. And I highly recommend checking out Environmental Graffiti, if for no other reason than they just have some fascinating and cool stuff. Check out my abroad buddies blogging from here in Copenhagen: Jonelle, Brittany, Jessica and Mallery; as well as my friends in London: Elyssa, Melissa and Jeff. That’s it for now, enjoy!