Velkommen til København!

It's been about a week since I've arrived in Copenhagen for my summer program at the University of Copenhagen. I admit I'm still quite jetlagged at the moment, but I'm glad that with the tremendous help from many friendly Danish classmates in our program, floormates in my dorm building, and nice Danish locals in the city, I've managed to find my way around this extraordinary city and have settled quite smoothly into my home in this kingdom of fairy tale for the next three weeks.


Highlights from my journey so far:

I embarked on my journey last Thursday, July 8th, flying from SFO to Chicago O'Hare then finally arriving in Copenhagen on Friday, July 9th. I was expecting the weather in Denmark to be colder than that of the Bay Area, but to my surprise it was actually quite hot and humid. After a ten-minute ride on the Metro from the CPH airport then a 15-minute bus ride, I arrived at my dorm in the suburb.

For the first two days, I spent most of the time getting myself oriented in downtown Copenhagen and familiarizing myself with the KU campus. (A little trivia about the University of Copenhagen: it was founded in 1479 and its notable alumni include the famous physicist Niels Bohr and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.) The picture on the right features Alyssa, one of my fellow classmates, and the CSS building (Center for Sundhed og Samfund, translated into English as Center of Health and Society), where our summer course takes place.

After a quick visit to the KU campus, we decided to take a walk in the the Rosenborg Slot (Rosenborg Castle) and headed down to Nyhavn (meaning "New Harbor,"pronounced as "new hound" without the "d"), the famous waterfront and tourist destination in Copenhagen.

By the time we got back to our dorm on Sunday night, we were just in time for the World Cup final match between Spain and the Netherlands. One of my floormates is from Spain, so we watched the game with his family. It was a great game and we ended up celebrating Spain's victory together.

 

The course began on Monday morning, July 12. We have classmates from lots of different countries such as Australia, Russia, Japan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Ethiopia, Nigeria as well as many local Danish students. Since we have so many students from different countries and a variety of majors and areas of expertise, they help bringing in different perspectives and make ourclass discussions very intellectually stimulating.

Here are some pictures of my fellow classmates in the program:

After our class on Friday of Week 1, we went on the famous boat tour in Nyhavn. Our Danish classmate Marie was teaching us how to say "I love you, Copenhagen!" in Danish, and it's "Jeg elsker dig, København!"  (pronounced as 'yai elsker dai, Kobenhound!' [again, without the "d" sound])

It's been an incredible experience so far and I'm really looking forward to the next two weeks here in Copenhagen!