What is cornbread?

On my last night and dinner with my host family I offered to cook. The menu was simple and reflected my longing to be home in the blizzard. Chili and cornbread. In general, I hate cooking in a foreign place, which includes someone else's kitchen, let alone a foreign country. There are just too many challenges associated with it.

And as expected, I ran into those challenges today. In reality, the chili was a relatively smooth process, minus being short on tomato sauce and having to substitute tomato soup. In the end it turned out just fine. However, the same can't be said about the cornbread. When I first thought of this menu I okayed it with my host dad regarding the main ingredients. Its worthless to plan on making chili and cornbread if you can't get chili beans or corn meal. He assured me they had everything.

Well, on Saturday when we went to the grocery store (2 in fact) there was no corn meal to be found. Instead, I had to substitute corn starch. Couple that with the fact that my host family owns zero measuring devices and baking the bread became quite the event. Having to guess out oil is not easy, and I failed. Way too much oil. Still, after baking for about 25 minutes I was left with a solid, kind of yellow looking bread. Once I tasted it though, I knew it had failed. Not miserably, but still a failure. It was served anyways and my concoction was saved by ignorance.

No one in my host family had eaten cornbread before, so they had no idea what to expect. This worked out perfectly, as they loved my creation. And the entire meal was a big hit. Their last memory of me can be my success in the kitchen, that is until they go back to the US, have real cornbread, and wonder what it was I made for them.

A Different Kind of Thanksgiving

So as I mentioned in my previous post, my family came over for Thanksgiving. One of the main events was making Thanksgiving dinner for my host family. First, when I told my host family that my real family was coming over towards the beginning of my stay in Denmark, they were so relieved. I guess DIS explains to the host families the importance of Thanksgiving to American's, and especially American students as its normally a time when they return home. All of this information made them nervous about the whole situation, and they were more than happy to pass off the meal to my family and me.

The preparations began a week ahead of my family's arrival, as shopping lists and cooking utensils were cross-referenced. This led my host family confused as they had no idea what all this food could be for, or why we needed a 6 kilo turkey (about 12.2 lbs) for only 8 people. Working on a deadline of the Thanksgiving meal taking place Wednesday night, my mom had her first Danish shopping experience the Monday before. She managed to find almost everything. Anything she couldn't find initially, my host Dad helped her with on Tuesday evening. Later that night the pumpkin pies were baked. When I got back from a DIS dinner that night, I just couldn't help but beam as the smell of pumpkin wafted down to me as soon as I entered the door.

Wednesday was then the big cooking day. Unfortunately, I had a major group assignment/presentation due the next day so I wasn't around too much. This meant I missed my favorite part of cooking, which is the browning of the onions and celery for the stuffing. The aromas associated with that step just whets my appetite and gets me prepped for the meal. When I did return, my nostrils were treated to an even better smell and caused me to announce to absolutely no one that "Its Thanksgiving!". I lended my assistance for the final steps, but for the most part the meal was set.

As we sat down on the table we were greeted by turkey napkins and an amazing meal: turkey, mashed potatoes, homemade cranberry applesauce, cranberry jelly, stuffing, carrots cooked in brown sugar and raisins, gravy, pumpkin bread, and a pretty nice Ohio Amish red wine. A true feast!

So the most important part of this meal was my host family's reaction. I think its safe to say that they were pleasantly surprised, especially regarding how all the flavors meshed together. I can also proudly say that my host brothers acted like Americans and absolutely stuffed themselves. I had never seen Victor eat so much, and Marc must have had four helpings of mashed potatoes. All and all, the meal was a huge success! The last surprise of the evening was people's reactions to my mom's pumpkin pies, which were excellent as usual. My host parents were not expecting it to be like it was. The texture and lightness really threw them for a loop.

The only negative of the meal was that my host family had no idea what to do with all the left-overs, as its not something they are used to (and I'm sure I've mentioned this before). I managed to make a bowl of potatoes, stuffing, turkey, and gravy to have for lunch the next day, and I was able to extend the shelf life of the applesauce to today, and the pumpkin pie to yesterday, although, sadly, it was thrown out with four pieces left!

After dinner one of the best parts of the evening happened. My whole family went down to my room and we called both sets of grandparents via Skype. Needless to say, they were both shocked to be receiving a call from Copenhagen that was coming form a computer. It was great to hear how excited they were by hearing my voice as well as the rest of my family's.

Overall, the transplantation of Thanksgiving across the Atlantic was a huge success, and I think a true cultural experience for my host family to take part in. And perhaps most importantly, I got my favorite meal, and was able to enjoy it with my family, so I was more than satisfied!

Smoke Inhalation

In my complexity of cancer course we are currently learning about various forms of chemotherapy. The text associated with the lectures was pretty intense in terms of level, and I really only gained generalities from it, such as chemotherapy sucks in terms of the toxicities. It sounded brutal, and this was a scientific article! It really makes me not want to have cancer. The other thing I picked up from the article was that radiation therapy can act as a carcinogen, which typically results in neoplasia 10 years down the line. If that is true for other carcinogens, and I end up with lung cancer 10 years from now, I know who to blame: FC Copenhagen and Broendby IF football fans.

This weekend my host family and one of their friends went to see the match between these two bitter, Copenhagen rivals. It was an entertaining game, which FC Copenhagen ended up winning 1-0, but the game itself wasn't the only excitement. The fans decided they would provide some "atmosphere" to the 24,000 person stadium, by lighting flares (some of which were thrown on the field) and smoke bombs, as well as by setting a chair on fire. Couple that with all the Danes that smoke while watching soccer, and I inhaled enough smoke to last me a life time. Nevertheless, it was a pretty good atmosphere for a soccer match. I've tried to capture it in my photos on webshots, but I've also added a new dimension. I recorded some video with my digital camera trying to capture the fans singing and cheering. Take a look and see what Danish soccer is really like (in terms of the fans, at least).

A dad is a dad

My family loves to pick on my Dad (my real family). It's just what my brother, my mom, and I do. It's all in good nature, as I know we all have a ton of respect for him, although in his opinion it might go overboard every now and then. But fear not Dad, because a dad is a dad no matter where you are in the world. Case in point, my host family. What is my 2 host brothers and my host mom's favorite activity -- why picking on their Dad/husband (although I don't think they are actually married, but that's for another post) of course. And just like at home, sometimes it goes a little too far for his liking, and he yells, and it stops. It all sounds all too familiar. I guess this just means its something I get to look forward to down the line.

In other news, I was taken out to dinner by my host family this past Tuesday, at the invitation of one my host parent's friends, Lars. First, Lars lives in this great apartment complex. It's right off the main drag, Amagerbrogade, on the island Christiana. But you would never know it. Once you go through the main doors off the road you enter a courtyard, and as soon as the door close behind you, so does the rest of the world. It is like a little oasis within the big city. You can't hear the people, nor the cars. Instead you are greeted with a courtyard that in reality is like a wild garden, as well as apartments from the 16th century. These are some of the oldest if not the oldest buildings in Copenhagen, as they were spared from the British bombardment and resulting fire in 1807. It was really impressive.

Anyways, Lars invited the family to eat at the community center near where he lives. They were telling me that something along these lines exist in New York City, but I'm not sure. Here is the setup. You walk in to what could be called a cafe as there are multiple tables scattered about, magazines, newspapers, fliers, a foosball table, and a place for live music to perform. There is also a bar that serves beer, wine, coffee drinks, and desert. We ended up here after dinner for an hour or so. Dinner itself was served upstairs in a small room that can seat probably 50 at most. This is why you have to buy tickets for dinner ahead of time. The ticket, besides entrance, gets you water, unlimited bread and salad, and the main dish, as there aren't any options. On this night they were serving veal, potatoes, and a tomato salsa. It was quite good. From what I was told, they only serve dinner twice a week and it is dirt cheap (relatively speaking), about $10, which in Copenhagen is no price to complain about. All in all, it was a fun evening and a good "cultural" experience. For whatever reason, I keep having those. Odd, huh?

A smattering of thoughts (part deux)

I don't have just one story to share, so this will just be a bunch of random thoughts:

• My goodness is Michigan horrible this year. Isn't the Big House supposed to be a form of home field advantage? And doesn't this normally mean that you don't lose to Div I-AA teams, and an unranked Oregon (that had to travel from the west coast)? I'm actually becoming embarrassed to say that I am a Michigan fan.
• So my commute home on Thursday was a touch longer, but completely uneventful. The protests ended up being peaceful, although the police were ready for anything. There were paddy wagons all over town, just ready for any trouble.
• Speaking of trouble, Denmark has had its excitement, though, too. Over the last week 10 or so Danish citizens or legal immigrants have been arrested for having explosive material and being associated with Al Qaeda. Nothing visibly has changed and no one seems really concerned (my host family and other DIS students), but still, interesting.
  
• I have now experienced my second Danish birthday party. The first was last week for a family friend, which was a long, boring affair. I mean, its great to see how the Danes do things, but spending 3 hours at a restaurant and saying 25 words isn't that much fun. All day today was my younger host brother Victor's birthday celebration. I gave him copies of Bad Boys and Bad Boys II, which he seemed excited about. Today/tonight has been better as I've been able to head down here when bored, but still, not a lot of talking going on on my part. I guess that's part of the problem of not speaking Danish.
• Speaking of the family friend's birthday. She was turning 18, which is the big birthday for Danes. At 18 you're able to buy alcohol easily, get a driver's license, etc. So to properly celebrate the occasion the birthday girl was the recipient of a special hair cut, which involved the Danish style of hair extensions. The price, a cool 5,000 DKK, that's just a little less than a $1,000. Crazy.
• I think I've discovered my new favorite breakfast. Initially, I was having corn flakes and some fruit every morning, but at the end of last week I tried something new. Raw oats, cut up banana, and strawberry yogurt. Highly recommended.
• I don't think I've talked about my host family much in terms of describing them, and that will have to wait, but I will say this -- they are incredibly generous sometimes. When I first arrived they said they were going to treat me as part of the family and I should help around the house (as I would want it), but it hasn't quite happened to that extent. Sure I help around the house, but a lot of the time my offers of help are turned down. On top of that, last night my parents had a party to go to, and my brother was working, so dinner was on my own. No biggie. I was planning on eating out with some friends, and told my host family that that was the plan. They responded by giving me 100 DKK to cover my dinner. I tried to refuse it, but to no avail. They're supposed to provide me with dinner, so they were.
• Speaking about going out last night, I learned one key thing: Danes love American music. My friends and I must have passed 4 bars that had like cover bands singing American rock, along with the entire bar, with quite a bit of energy.
• I don't know what's more shocking: how dirty Copenhagen is on Saturday mornings, or how clean it is on Monday mornings.
• After a full first week of classes I have come to at least one conclusion/realization. I am spoiled rotten at Carleton. It's so nice to have professors that are amazing at teaching and enjoy doing it. Some of my teachers (they aren't professors, no Ph.D., so I'll call them teachers) just don't seem to know how to teach, which includes being poor at communication. I sent an e-mail to a teacher with a question, and he doesn't respond. Instead, he makes a comment in class that some random person e-mailed him. He didn't even know I was in his class -- of 20 students. So yeah, I'm missing Carleton profs.
  

Windows, doors, and bugs, oh my!

Here is one aspect of Danish culture, and for that matter European culture, that I just don't fully understand. First, they don't believe in screens for their windows or doors. This is fine, and to each their own, but they also believe in airing things out, quite frequently as well. In my house, this means that multiple windows and doors (like the front door!) will be left wide open all day (assuming someone is home). This is fine and all, except for when night descends, because then, the house with lights on, becomes quite attractive to the bugs -- especially mosquitoes. So last night, while listening to the debacle at the Big House (I don't even want to go into that), I gained quite the collection of mosquitoes in my room. In the end, I think I managed to kill about 15, and that wasn't even all of them. The good news is I now have nicely decorated walls. Nothing says "home" like smeared bug guts!

The Biking Adventure (x2)

So today I thought I would be very Danish, and bike into DIS. I made sure I was thoroughly prepared with directions and the like, so as to make the trip as easy as possible. The other thing you need to understand is that the Danes love, love, their bikes. It makes sense as biking is the cheapest and fastest way to commute into Copenhagen. Anyways, I leave the house this morning and start on my way, feeling out how fast people go, and the little nuances of etiquette that I wasn't previously told. Then problems started to happen. First, in Denmark, the street signs aren't like they are in the states. They just use a small sign that is on the side of a building, which is absolutely fine, except when I'm zooming by on a bike, with other bikes completely surrounding me. Needless to say, I missed my turn. So I pulled over and stopped, and consulted my map, and didn't really gain any insight, because I wasn't really sure where I was. I just continued to go straight hoping that would lead me somewhere useful. I even stopped again, and looked at my map again, but still couldn't figure anything out. Right when I was getting fed up, and close to becoming late to my meeting, and planning on asking a random Dane, I saw a building I recognized. This gave me hope! And after two lucky turns I was at DIS.

After the day's events I was off to soccer practice. Since I biked in, I had to bike there; however, this was pretty straight-forward as I was following a DIS employee who also plays for the club. It was rather uneventful, minus the two bikes behind me with DIS students that crashed together when one didn't realize we were stopping.

It just happened that my host brother, Marc, also happened to be having soccer practice at relatively the same time as I did, so he hung around for a little bit, and we rode our bikes back to the house. He took the "shortcut", which I swear was anything but short. Irregardless, as we were heading back Marc found a group of his friends, and stopped to briefly talk to them, while he told me to go on ahead (straight-ahead). I did as I was told and continued down the street, which curved in a new direction. The only problem with this was that I was supposed to go "straight-ahead", which meant leaving the road, and going on a dirt path. This led to about 20 minutes of phone calls trying to figure out where each other was. I had managed to get myself very close to home, and could have made it back, but Marc insisted that I meet up with him. He didn't want to lose me, and I can't really blame him. So after all of this I won't be biking for a day at least (although that has more to do with receiving my books more than anything else).

The other interesting tidbit I heard on the ride home was Marc's views on immigrants. With my help every now and then with filling in words to actually understand what he was saying, he was expressing himself pretty well. His views are also very interesting, although not that shocking as I had read about the concept before in a book and Danish culture and etiquette. Pretty much he was arguing against the immigrants because of their lack of desire to integrate with the rest of the Danish population. Instead they live together, and do not work (living off of government benefits), and harass the Danes (as he told me multiple stories of having things thrown at him and being chased, from 12 year olds to 25 year olds. In reality his whole point was to warn me to avoid them if I'm ever alone after dark, but nonetheless, it was very interesting to hear his opinions. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the conversation was when he told me that one way the government is talking about dealing with this issue is to not allow immigrants to live together in communities, therefore almost forcing them to integrate, or so the thinking goes.

Now about the soccer itself, it went fine. I'm out of shape. Badly. And it was evident. I was one of the best DIS players for the first 30-45 minutes that we practiced, but after that my legs were gone, and I couldn't do anything. It was a lengthy practice, both in time on the field (2+ hours), and time in general (I left DIS around 4:40, and didn't get back to my house until 9:30+). Because of those two things, and the amount of effort it would take me to put into it, I'm totally undecided if I'll keep doing it or not. I think a large factor will be how much work I have to do for my classes, as that could limit my time. We'll see.

"One night in Copenhagen, And ya know, The nadir's fluorescent"

I made it! I am now in Copenhagen (København if you're a local)! The excitement with the flights started right away, as a coup occurred and one of my bags was not overweight, saving me $25. Once I reached the terminal I quickly found out that I am not the only DIS student with Northeastern Ohio ties, as there was 6 or 7 on the flight to Newark. That flight ended up being delayed for over an hour (sitting on the runway) due to traffic/weather issues in Newark. This wasn't much of a problem, as I had a 3.5 hour layover. After getting lunch there, I made my way to the gate, to figure out that DIS might as well have chartered the flight. Half of the people on the flight were DIS students. I'm sure the other travelers were ecstatic to see a large number of mostly highly excited college students. This flight was also delayed by an hour, this time due to a lengthy cleaning of the flight before we boarded. Once we took off everything went quite smoothly. The only problem was my inability to fall asleep (even with taking a Tylenol PM), which leaves me right now begging for bed. The highlight of the flight by far was the perfect timing shown by the flight personnel in turning on the lights in the cabin, as it allowed a gorgeous view of the rising sun towards the east, and the fading stars to the west!

Once we landed and set foot off the plane you immediately knew you were in Scandinavia as the flooring was made entirely of wood, and had that distinctive Scandinavian feel. After making it through the passport control line it was on to pick up my baggage. The baggage carousel was very cooly automated in that bags were only added to the circuit when there was an opening. However, this meant I waited for about 25 minutes for enough other bags to be removed so that my bags could be added.

We then took a 15 minute bus ride the University of Copenhagen, which is where the housing orientation took place. We had about 2.5 hours to get some food, and go over the masssive amounts of paperwork DIS had for us. I was able to meet up with a couple of my friends from Carleton at this point, and we caught up on each other's summer activities. All of the students staying in homestays or shared housing were then herded into the main lecture room for a brief, and not very useful, orientation on our housing choices. This was followed by the most nerve-wracking aspect of the morning -- waiting for your family to come in the room, call your name, and be on your way. It almost felt as if I was up for auction, and hoping someone would bid. Eventually someone did, and I joined the majority of family (Michael, Britta, and Viktor). We made small talk, grabbed my bags, and made the way to the car, and eventually back to the house.

The house is gorgeous. It has to be biggest house on the street by far, perhaps even twice as big as the next-door neighbors, especially regarding the yard size. Just like the airport, there were wooden floors throughout, as well as the latest technology (pictures will be up soon demonstrating all of this). My room itself is quite cozy, with my bed, a desk, a chair to read in, and my dresser. Of course I put off unpacking beyond my computer, and was happily greeted by the presence of a wireless connection. That's because Marcus (the other brother) has 3 computers (not 3 monitors as I thought, but 3 complete computers). I then managed to unpack about half my of my things before I was treated to my first Danish meal, a typical lunch (fish sandwiches on rye toast). I then proceeded to make my room actually mine, as well as go through all the papers that I was given earlier.

Of my two brothers, Marcus is clearly the more outgoing one of the two, although this isn't a surprise as he is older and has more experience with English, and is much more confident in talking with/to me. Viktor has been shy, but it is pretty evident that that won't last for too long. It was great to see both of their excitement when I gave them their Columbus Crew mini-balls (definitely a good purchase). In fact, Britta and Michael seemed pretty excited by their homemade Amish apple butter.

Dinner was then concluded by going over some of the odd, and sometimes awkward questions about daily life and practices within the house. Micahel and I then had a great discussion where I explained to him the finer points of American salary caps in professional athletics (NFL, NBA, MLB, and MLS), and he was quite amazed by all the differences and how subtle they are. Then I came here, completely out of energy, and definitely ready for bed. Tomorrow brings the start of actual orientation, which includes an opening ceremony in the morning, a tour of Copenhagen (expect pictures from this), and some orientation on athletics. Hopefully, I'll also manage to get a public transportation pass, and find a place that I can work out at.

Already today I've definitely had moments of up and down feelings, but I'm glad to say I'm now going to bed with a postive view on things, and I think that's all I could ask for.

P.S. Danish pillows only come in one size. Square.