American University

So as you may have heard, D.C. has been absolutely trounced by snow this past week. And it doesn’t look like it’s over yet.

Now the National Weather Service is predicting 10-20″ tomorrow and Wednesday, to add to the two feet plus that we already have on the ground. Insanity.

The federal government was shut down today and likely will be tomorrow. D.C. public schools were closed yesterday (despite our Mayor at first declaring a two hour delays) and now are closed tomorrow, too. Almost every other school system around the Washington metropolitan area, in both Maryland and Virginia, is closed until at least Wednesday–although with this newest storm they’ll likely remain closed all week.

American University, my school, was closed today. Still wondering if we’ll have class tomorrow, but if the storm tomorrow night is as bad as expected, no class Wednesday (and possibly Thursday) is almost guaranteed. We shall see.

For now, I’m doing my best to stay productive. So far doing alright for staying on top of schoolwork (and got lucky, one exam was pushed back to next week) but there’s always more to do. Also, I’m trying to keep up with blog posts–be sure to check out my post from earlier recapping the Gibraltar Associates social media event from Thursday and discussing how to create a new “need-to-share” culture within governmental agencies.

Now on to more work. Got one more part of a paper to write, a few blog posts to draft, and then lots-o-reading to do. More updates soon and, as always, on my Twitter.

Yes, that’s #snom. As in, a snow monster just nom nom nommed all over our nation’s capital, leaving over two feet of snow in its wake.

Sure, it’s inconvenient. It’s expensive for the local government. And really, it’s detrimental to the productivity of our local businesses, schools, and government. But it’s just FUN.

Between last night and today I spent a fair bit of time in the snow, playing, exploring and just overall enjoying the largest snowstorm I’ve ever been in. This afternoon we even had a giant Alpha Kappa Psi (my co-ed professional business fraternity) snowball fight in the quad on AU’s campus. It was a blast. Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here’s some pictures of the #SNOM–the great D.C. Blizzard of 2010.

Ok so first of all, I got a bike (see right) and I’m really, really excited about that fact. As I mentioned before, it’s outrageously difficult to find an affordable bike here in Copenhagen. It simply doesn’t make sense–you’d think the most bike-friendly city in the world would have relatively cheap bikes somewhere. Nope. Instead, I bought this beauty from an American intern working in DIS’s IT department. He had recently bought a new one and was selling this one. It’s in fantastic shape, has seven gears (which is quite a lot in this city, evidently–since it’s so flat most bikes only have 1-3 gears) and runs perfectly. He even gave me a lock. And I got it for a better price than I’ve seen anywhere else (I’ve seen completely busted bikes being sold for more).

It’s an exciting experience, biking in this city. Of course I bike in DC, but here it’s a different experience–it’s a cultural thing. It really makes you feel Danish. Which is pretty sweet. But anyway, enough of that.

As I’d said in my last couple of entries, Sunday I returned from Sweden. Magical, fairytale-inspiring Sweden. To put it simply: it. was. amazing. And somewhat surprising. The trip ended up being much more (and much better) than I could’ve ever dreamed it would be. I had expected a pretty relaxing trip, some nice and easy canoeing, nature hikes and a pretty chill–but certainly not luxurious–stay at a local hostel. It was so much more.

To start, we drove to a small town called Angelholm and before we’d hardly woken up we were handed canoes and told to start paddling until we got to the other side of the city–about a three hour ride downstream. It was a ton of fun and would’ve been perfect, had it not been for the insane storm that decided to drench us about halfway through (the weather just before and after was beautiful, of course). But we persevered. After the canoeing we headed straight for our hostel which was just out of this world. It was a beautiful building, very luxurious, and they even had hot soup ready for us as soon as we arrived (which was much needed, as we were all still dripping and freezing).

But they only gave us a couple hours to relax before we were off to Nimis and the independent country of Ladonia. It was mind-blowing. The city/country/whatever you want to call it was started 29 years ago by a crazy man who decided to make some “art” out of basically nothing but driftwood. After two years the Swedish government discovered his “art” and declared it housing, unsafe and threatened to remove it. Instead of complying or protesting in the usual way, he ended up declaring Ladonia a free state with Nimis as its city and claiming independence from Sweden. Since then Sweden has basically just tried to forget about it, preferring just to pretend like it doesn’t exist. Now the city of Nimis has no inhabitants (although supposedly Ladonia is one of the fastest growing “micro-nations” on the planet) and gets about 30,000 visitors a year to its remote location. I can’t recommend the trip enough. Not only is it bizarre and fascinating but it’s in an absolutely beautiful location on the Swedish coast and you simply can’t beat the view.

Or so I thought. That was until we traveled to the nearby Kullaberg park along the same Scandinavian peninsula–and rappelled off a rock wall overlooking the ocean. The pictures really say all there is to say about that second day of the trip, but it was an incredible experience that I’ll really never, ever forget.

And now on to bigger and, perhaps better, things! Tomorrow morning bright and early I leave for Western Denmark on my first study tour with my communications program at DIS. We’ll be traveling to Århus and Odense. To be honest I don’t exactly know what we’ll be doing, but you can guarantee it’ll be interesting and I’ll have plenty of pictures to show when I get back! I’ll keep you updated. Until then, check out the rest of my pictures form my trip to Sweden, embedded below.

Like no joke. I don’t have time to write all about it tonight (I’ll post a full update–with pictures–Tuesday or Wednesday most likely) but I had to show you this. In the past 48 hours, I have been here, here and here, canoeing, hiking, rappelling and adventuring. It was one of the best trips of my life and I can’t wait to show you. But first… studying.

Just a quick note: I’m headed off to Sweden for today and tomorrow (that’s two E’s, not three–for those of you back home) for hiking, climbing and canoeing with DIS. Should be a blast! However, that also means I’ll be offline for quite a while, so don’t expect any updates from me until late tomorrow night or Monday. If I have a chance I may update my twitter via text, but we’ll see.

Back next week with the story and pictures!