can a city hall really be that ugly?

Keeping up with my blog is slowly becoming more challenging! I guess writing has never been my favorite thing and filling y'all in on everything that's happening involves more writing than I thought. But, after the very exciting weekend in Western Denmark, I felt like I needed to update. Most of this will be pictures, since they're worth 1,000 words, and I saw SO much in 3 days. We traveled to 4 different cities: Soro, Kolding, Aalborg, and Aarhus (2nd largest city in Denmark). The whole study tour was about seeing different types of architecture, typical Danish art, and sketching (a lot!). One of the coolest places we visited is called KOMPAN, and it's the largest playground manufacturer in the world. The guy that gave us a tour and spoke on his experience was once a student at DIS and moved to Denmark later in life to run this company. He was extremely energetic and really interesting to listen to, and the place was a creative environment with so many cool designs. My other favorite spot was the Aarhus Art Museum. You'll see a picture of a large boy sculpture, which is simply called 'Boy' and stands about 5 m tall. The museum was built in 2004, so it's really modern and has a clean design. At the top of the museum is a rainbow ring, which is referred to as Heaven, since the museum is 9 floors, with hell in the basement, and moving through the levels. The rainbow room was added on a few years ago, and can be seen throughout the whole city. 

The title of this post is referring to Aarhus City Hall. It's a long story, but we ended up being late to our lunch on Saturday, so in order to attempt to make our time slot for touring City Hall, we had to skip dessert after lunch, which was waffles and ice cream (we ended up going back the next day to get our own waffles because they sounded so good). Anyway, when we got to City Hall, we realized it is one of the ugliest buildings ever. I didn't even take pictures of it because both the outside and inside are bland and not interesting. Plus, since we were late, our tour guide was really bitter and made the tour not so pleasant... 

Here are some pictures, sorry they are a little out of order!

ARoS Museum, Aarhus (pretend that one of the silhouettes in the Rainbow is me!)

'Boy' 

Roommates in our hostel the first night! - the place was really nice, and breakfast in the morning was delicious :) 

out for dinner in Aarhus! 

Koldinghus - old fortress

inside of Koldinghus

view from the top of City Hall

 

walking around the campus of Aarhus Universitet Arhus

'Boy' closer up - he looked SO real!

in the Rainbow Room! such a cool place!

Rainbow Room

the best waffle I've ever had - & delicious European Chai Latte

The time since the trip hasn't been too interesting. I have my first design critique this coming Tuesday, so I'm working on things for that. Compared to design at home, this semester is nothing. I'm actually struggling because I feel guilty for not working enough! It's a very laid back style here, and I haven't had much homework at all, other than required sketching and painting exercises for my other classes. 

Right now, I'm sitting in the studio with a beautiful view over the top of Copenhagen (the studio is on the 5th floor - so great view but getting there is always a journey). Today is Gustav's 11th birthday! So this morning, Peter and Karin surprised him with a small cake, fresh pastries, and fresh bread (very different than his usual pasta for breakfast). Karin is taking him to a cake shop this afternoon to eat more cake, and his birthday celebration will be on Saturday. Peter's mom is coming tomorrow and staying til Sunday. So other than his birthday party, this weekend will be mostly spent in the studio. It's bittersweet, because this weekend some of my PhilaU friends from home are headed to Jubilee - a conference in Pittsburgh for Christian college students that I went to last year. Hoping they all have a great time, and will definitely be taking some time this weekend to reflect on what I learned there last year, and what I've been learning since I've arrived here. Almost to the one month mark! Thanks for your thoughts and prayers!

it's been a real slice

I can't believe it's been over a week since I've written! Time is flying by here, and I feel like not a lot of super exciting adventures have happened, but I know they'll come! It's still very very cold here; right now it's 28 degrees, but it's been in the low 20's and high teens this past week. This past weekend was my first weekend of really being out and about, since the weekend before I was still suffering from jet lag. Friday night, Laurel, Nicole, Maria and I tried to go to a comedy show we had heard about, but we got there 20 minutes late and couldn't quite find the entrance... so we ended up heading back into the city to find somewhere to hang out. We found this great cafe that's in an old library. It was so cute! There was a local band playing so it was a lot of fun :) After that we checked out a club near school to experience a bit of Danish nightlife!
Saturday was a chill day at home. Ida had a friend over and Gustav was at a friends all afternoon, so I did a little homework and had my first laundry experience here! The washer takes 3 hours to wash, and the family only uses the dryer if they need to, so there's a lot of drying racks around the house. Before dinner, I went with the family to a modern cafe called Cafe 8 Tallet. It's a newer place that is part of a contemporary apartment complex located a bit further away from the city than where I live. It's located in an area that has one of the only open field areas in Copenhagen (as close to nature as it gets!). There's an artificial lake outside, and two walls of the cafe are entirely glass so you're able to see the gorgeous open space. I definitely want to go back in the spring and eat and drink a latte and sketch. That night, I got together with some friends at one of the DIS dorms and watched some Disney movies and ate a ton of food :)

Sunday the family had brunch to celebrate Peter's birthday, which was about a month ago. I've noticed that, my family at least, doesn't celebrate birthday's on the actual day. Next weekend they are having a party celebrating the kids birthdays, and Ida's birthday was in early December. The brunch was nice, we had scrambled eggs, bacon (which is really popular in this family, not complaining!!), fruit, and pancakes (which are expensive in Denmark so I probably won't have them many more times while I'm here..). In the afternoon I went to a church called Vineyard. It's a Danish speaking church, and is really contemporary. It reminds me a lot of a church called Liberti that I've gone to at school. There were about 8 of us that went, so we sat in the back and had someone translate the service for us. It was incredible. The first song they sang was in Danish, but the rest were in English, and we even sang Mighty to Save. There is something so incredible about worshipping at a church in a different country, in an entirely different language, with complete strangers, yet feeling so at home, because we are all bowing down to the same beautiful God. 

My invitation to the kid's birthday party!

The Little Mermaid statue!

This week has been pretty simple. It snowed Monday morning, so it's been wonderful to have snow on the ground the past few days (the only good thing about the freezing cold weather). Tonight I'm going to my first choir practice, with a student choir that's based out of the Copenhagen Business School. Friday morning I leave with the rest of the Architectural Design deparement for our short study tour. We're going to Western Denmark and visiting 4 cities. I'm really excited to see a part of Denmark I haven't seen yet! It'll be cold, but what else is new?!