oh hey London :)

FINALLY! I’m so sorry it has taken me an incredibly long time to update. I want to fill y’all in on my amazing two weeks hopping all around Europe at the beginning of April. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep track of what we did during this break by journaling about it, but my lovely roommate Laurel did. So, I’m going to steal a bit of her journal to fill you in on all the crazy happenings that went on during my travel break :) I’m doing individual posts for each place I visited, so first is LONDON!

On March 30^th, we took a train and bus to get us to Stockholm, Sweden, where we flew to London. After getting a bit lost and confused by the intense metro system of London, we finally got to our hostel!

We decided to do a 2-day pass for the Hop On/Hop Off bus, which worked out really well because we got transportation to all the famous sites of London! The first day we took the bus to Camden, where there was a really cool market-place with clothes, scarves, a ton of jewelry, and a huge selection of food. I decided to get the traditional British meal of Fish & Chips, which was super tasty! On the way back we walked through the Regency Park, one of many beautiful parks we came across during the trip. Then, we got back on the bus and went to see a lot of the well-known sites: Big Ben, London Bridge, Tower Bridge (much nicer than London Bridge), Parliament, and the Tower of London. Although we didn’t go into any of these landmarks, we did our fair share of picture taking from the outside. For dinner, we ate at an English pub where I ate a delicious Steak Pot Pie :)

Our second day in London, we walked through Hyde Park and then it was time for the Harry Potter tour. Now as most of you know, up until a few months ago, I had never picked up a Harry Potter book. So before then, going on this tour would have been quite useless. However, since coming to Europe and opening my eyes to new things, I have started reading them and am currently in the middle of the 3^rd in the series. So now I could actually look for forward to this tour and know just a bit of what was going on. The tour was great; we saw a lot of scenes from the movies, inspirations for the books, and our tour guide (a true Potter fan) even told us a ton of historical facts about the city. After the tour, we peaked inside St. Paul’s Cathedral, a beautiful place to see, especially so close to Easter. After dinner we visited Buckingham Palace. Of course, since it was night, the guards weren’t out, but it was great to see the building at night, very different than the traditional picture of it.

Our third day we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum: a very interesting museum which was free and right down the block from our hostel! Then, we spent quite a few hours in Kensington Gardens – the home of the lovely William & Kate. We told them we were waiting for them, but for some reason, they never showed up… Then we went to King’s Cross Station (again, now I know the importance of this place!). Of course, we got our pictures next to Platform 9 3/4. Then, we walked to Camden Passage, but unfortunately a lot of the stores were closed; it was still a neat area to walk through though! Lastly, we had dinner at CHIPOTLE! For those who have never been, please go. This Mexican restaurant has become a staple for me at college, so seeing one while traveling was a glimpse of home :)

ready for the best spring break EVER!

Since I leave for my two week spring break on Friday, I thought I would update everyone on where I'll be traveling to! Friday afternoon, we fly into London out of Malmo, Sweden. We'll be spending 3 days there, while taking a day trip to Oxford. I can't wait to visit my friend Elyse Garner who is studying at Oxford right now! Tuesday morning, we fly to Dublin. I'm not exactly sure of the order of the cities, but we will be spending a week in Ireland, traveling between Dublin, Cork, and Galway. The following Tuesday night, we fly from Dublin to Barcelona. We'll be spending 4 days there, and traveling back to Copenhagen Saturday morning. It's going to be a hectic two weeks, but I think we've planned it so that we see as many cities as we can without getting burnt out. Please be praying for Laurel, Nicole and I as we take this adventure. All our flights are booked, and we have hostels planned out, so right now, pray for safe travels and a really fun time of exploring just a tiny bit of Europe! Can't wait to update everyone when I come back!!!

halfway there!

Just wanted to write a quick post, marking the half way point in this crazy adventure I'm having! Tomorrow marks two months here, and two months until I'm home. I'm having a lot of mixed feelings in saying that. It's true that I'm having a once-in-a-lifetime experience here, and for that I'm extremely thankful. I'm also anxious to get home, because I miss familiar faces, a familiar language, and just the comforts that home brings.
Yesterday, the AUC middle school and high school group went to the Vision Conference in Lancaster, as they do every year. Since it's Amy's senior year, this was her last year going to the conference, and it caused me to think back to the 7 years that I went to that conference. Every year a similar message was spread: Break out of your comfort zone and be willing to go where God wants you to go. I feel like every year I would say I was willing to do that, but never knew how I'd live that out. I never felt God calling me to be a missionary in Africa or go to a country I'd never heard of for any length of time.
Now I find myself in Denmark, a country I didn't know existed until a few years ago, living for 4 months with a family I'd never met before, surrounded by a language I'd never heard before, and will most likely never hear again. It's funny how God works isn't it?! No, I'm not translating the bible or running a camp for children, or doing the typical 'missions' work, but I'm here. I'm living in a country where less than 10% of Evangelical Lutherans (the official state church) attend church on a Sunday. I'm living with a family that does not believe in God, and going to school with students who don't either.
Looking back to the many Vision Conferences I've been to, I've realized that God does work in us at a young age. I always thought that I'd say yes to following God's call, but he wouldn't call me until I was older, out of college, married, 2 kids and a dog. Instead, I still have another year of college in front of me, and He's placed me in Copenhagen. I'm so grateful to be in His hands, and that I can trust in a God that knows me inside and out and knows what lies ahead of me. And I'm pretty excited that He does, because that means I don't have to worry about it! So let that be a lesson to all the students who were at Vision yesterday... if you tell God to stretch you and do what He wants with your life, He won't forget it! When you least expected, He's going to change you, and you're going to be amazed!
Keep praying for me, as I embrace these next two months. Time will fly, and the homesickness will probably get worse at points, but God is the God of comfort, peace, and joy, and I'm so blessed to be His kid :)

 

longest blog post ever?!

wow, I'm really sorry it's almost been a month since I've updated! I can't believe how much I am growing here and how my view of life has changed, and been challenged. School has been very easy; I actually just had the last week off for my long study tour, but I'll get to that in a bit. I had my final critique for my first design project, which went okay. There was good feedback, but I think they expected me to do a lot more than I could fit in a 2 week project. But, all in all, the project turned out well! Here's an image of the final: 

 

My other classes have been easy. I had my first exam in Danish, which was really difficult, but a lot of the class had trouble with it, so hopefully he'll be easy on it!                  

This is from a field trip my visual journal class took to Bagsværd church. That is my teacher Courtney. She's an amazing teacher, full of passion about architecture.

We also spent the day in Sweden a few Saturdays ago. It's a half hour train ride from Copenhagen to Malmo, so we decided to be adventurous and take a trip there!

Two weeks ago, DIS held a party for the Danish holiday Fastelavn, which is similar to Halloween in that you get dressed up, but it isn't based on death at all. I won't go into explaining it, but it takes place at the beginning of Lent, and involves something called 'Hit the Cat Out of the Barrel', which is like a pinata, but in the old days, you would hit a barrel that had a real cat in it. Now, it's just filled with lots of candy. Karin made the costumes for the kids, and I wore one of her costumes from a few years back. It was a lot of fun; I got to make crafts with Ida and there was yummy food!

This past week, I went on a long study tour with 29 other students from the Architecture Deparment to Germany and the Netherlands (also called Holland). Early Sunday morning, we flew to Amsterdam, only a 1 hour flight, and then stopped by our hotel in Amsterdam to drop our stuff off. Right after that, we had lunch at the Lloyd Hotel, and toured around the Borneo Housing Complex. The rest of the night was on our own, and we got the chance to explore old Amsterdam a bit. It is the most beautiful city I've seen since coming to Europe. A very old city, but new buildings are starting to take over, and the mix of them is very beautiful. Monday, we visited a Dutch architecture firm, and got the day on our own in Amsterdam. My friends and I decided to see the Vincent Van Gough Museum and go on a canal tour of the city! That night, we got to go to the large concert hall in Amsterdam and watch an orchestra perform, with a Spanish guitarist. It was so beautiful; I just wish I had been a little more awake for it.

a really neat walking bridge in the Borneo Housing development

Borneo Housing development

walking around in Amsterdam

Tiffany and I on the canal tour

view on the tour... SO pretty!!!

Tuesday was an interesting day. We took the train from Amsterdam to Utrecht, but Laurel, Nicole, Tiffany, and I missed the Utrecht stop, and we didn’t realize it until 2 stops after… So after finding change to purchase a train ticket, getting on the International (aka more expensive) train, and finding the bus to meet the rest of our group, we made it. However, I missed the tour of the one building I wanted to see. Before we had left for the study tour, we were put into small groups and assigned one building we would see on our tour. I was assigned the Educatorium, which is the student union of Utrecht University. My group researched it, did some analytical drawings, and built a 1:100 scale section model of it. Of course, getting lost made me miss my presentation of the building, and the time to see it. We got the university with a half hour to spare, so I was able to look really quickly, but it was a bit disappointing. After this, we visited the Schroder House, which was really interesting because we studied that last semester in my Architecture History class. After that, we got to walk through Old Utrecht and went out to a nice dinner!

the concert hall

Utrecht Library

Educatorium

inside the Educatorium there is this funky curving wall

The next morning, we had a 3 hour bus ride to Essen, Germany, where we saw the largest coal mine in Europe, called Zollverein. It has since been kept as museum, so we went through that, and also saw the Red Dot Museum, which has a lot of technology from the past century, and just cool things to see. Then, we left and drove to Cologne, Germany, where we saw an interesting museum called Kolumba. It holds the ruins of an old church that once stood on the site. Then, we saw the Cologne Cathedral, which was the most impressive and breath-taking building I’ve ever seen. It’s a Gothic cathedral, first constructed in 1248. That night we stayed in a very fancy Holiday Inn, and enjoyed a yummy pizza from Pizza Hut for dinner :) hey, a little taste of home never hurt, right?

The next day, we left for Hamburg, and had a guided tour of the city. We were taken out to dinner at a very fancy restaurant, then had the night to explore the city. But, we were about a 45 minute walk from the exciting area (aka where all the people were), so that was a little annoying, but luckily, it wasn’t too cold. The last day we got to tour Hamburg a bit, so we decided to do some shopping. We ended up in the more high-end area of the city, so I didn’t buy anything, but it was a fun time of being in a different area. After another great meal provided by DIS, we hopped on the bus, which then hopped onto a ferry, and then back on the bus, and then we were home.

Zollverein

the longest escalator ever!

Zollverein School of Management & Design

the Cologne Cathedral (my favorite place I've been so far)

no words to describe how beautiful it was

incredibly delicious! 

Hamburg

Hamburg

So needless to say, it was an exhausting week. But I can now say that I’ve been to Germany and Holland! There was a lot of getting lost, being late, good food, and time with good friends.

Tomorrow school starts up again. The time is counting down until I leave for my spring break! We’ve made definite plans for where we are going and I’m getting excited! Of course, traveling on my own makes me nervous, but hopefully Laurel, Nicole, and I can keep each other sane and patient. We’ll be flying to London on March 30^th, and over the next 13 days, visit England, Ireland, and Spain!

Thanks for the prayers; it’s nice to hear from my parents that people from AUC are thinking about me. This weekend and this coming week will be tough, because the missions conference is going on at home, and that has been a part of my life every year since I can remember. So even though I’m feeling a little homesick, I’m almost half way done my adventure here, and I’m trying to make the most out of the time that’s left! Bye for now everybody :) 

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?!