Here are just a few of the pictures from Halloween. The International students hosted the Halloween-themed Friday Bar at our school! I have uploaded more pics at Flickr, as usual. :-)

Iveta and her big nose!

My long black wig

Yeliz's vampire teeth!

Maria (as a Zombie), Kathrine (as a cat) and Camilla

Hana as a pirate (at least, that's what I think it was, lol)

Here I am, back with another update! First I want to thank everyone who left such nice comments on my last post, I really appreciate it! :-)

Secondly, there are HUNDREDS of new pictures on Flickr from this past month. I’d been too lazy to upload them but they are finally up now. Whew!

Well a lot has been going on for the past few weeks and I don’t even know where to begin. I suppose I’ll just mention the largest highlights:

The Bike
First, I got a bike! I got it from my classmate, Maria who let me have her old one when she got a nice new one! Thanks Maria!! :-) I got some things fixed on it at a bike shop and have been riding it around a park near the dorm. It’s a nice bike!! Yes, I still remember how to ride a bike, even after not riding one for over 10 years! I took it out in the street a few times as well. It’s going to take a while to get really used to riding it in the street though, since people here drive like they are trying to kill you. But the nice thing is that all the drivers here actually look for bikes at intersections, and the bike lanes are sooo nice and wide. Copenhagen is built for bikes! :-)

Afenginn Concert
I have a new favorite band!!! Thanks again to Maria, I was introduced to this wonderful Danish band called Afenginn, and went to their concert in Nørrebro almost 3 weeks ago. They play this amazingly unique, energetic and upbeat folksy music, and some of the songs have vocals. The vocals are in this invented language that sounds a little like Latin with other stuff mixed in…it has almost a choir-like sound. I love them and have been listening to their songs over and over and over and…yeah. They are playing again in about a month. I’ll be at that concert for sure!

Culture Night
October 10th was culture night. Museums, businesses, libraries, restaurants and plenty of other institutions all over the city stayed open all night and people could come in and view exhibits, go on tours, try new foods, hear music, etc. For 75 Kroner, the culture pass allowed free entry into all of the culture night exhibits and free transportation on the Metro, busses, S-trains, etc. I ended up going to 2 places, an art museum downtown (I forget the name, unfortunately, but they had a lot of stone sculptures) and the old stock exchange building. It was interesting, people were dressed up in costumes. Heh. There were so many lines that it was hard to get in anywhere else.

Fall Holiday: Louisiana, Zoo, Malmö
Last week was the Fall Holiday. It was a nice break from school before all the major project work begins. On Tuesday we went to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art to see this manga exhibition. It was really neat, and in addition to seeing the manga we checked out some other exhibits. Plus, the grounds outside of the museum are amazing. Pictures are on Flickr.

Then on Saturday we went to the Zoo and had a fine time. There were soo many animals yet it was all very close together and it was easy to see everything. They had a monkey house, a giraffe house (but we didn’t get to see the giraffes because they were cleaning the house. Oh well), a huge elephant house, a butterfly/tropical house, reptile/lizard house, a petting zoo area and a lot more I’m forgetting at the moment! We even saw part of feeding time for the lions! Haha. I’ve got plenty of pictures of the zoo up on Flickr!

Finally, on Monday, I went with Yeliz (who is from Turkey and in the bachelor’s program at RSLIS) across the bridge to Malmö, Sweden! It took less than 40 minutes total to get there by train. It’s a very nice and peaceful over there and thankfully we had nice weather (although it was quite windy). Malmö, we walked around the shopping streets, visited an old church, and a castle (one of the oldest surviving castles of the Renaissance period) that had been converted into a museum, saw the famous Twisting Torso tower and walked around by the waterfront. For dinner we had kebabs! The guy at the kebab stand was a little rude but the food was good!

The funniest thing that happened in Malmö was when we were looking for the museum and entered this old little building that LOOKED like it could be a museum…we weren’t sure where to go so we went to the desk labled “Information” up front. The lady didn’t even look at us even after we tapped on the window and called, “Hello? Excuse me…” We both realized that maybe she had some sort of problem (as in not “all there” in the head).  We decided to go on upstairs but saw no signs or any indication of where to go. I thought that maybe it was just an old house for people to tour or explore. Upstairs, we found a coffee vending machine and were almost about to buy coffee and tea but decided to do so on the way out so we wouldn’t have to carry it around the exhibits. We went around the corner and ended up in a hallway; maybe this was the main exhibition area or something. There was a door nearby. Yeliz slowly opened it and we both peeked in — and found ourselves staring into the faces of at least 10 older men decked in black and white suits sitting around a table in the midst of what looked like a business meeting. We were both like, Oh-My-God and quickly dashed out of there. Oopsie. Looks like it was a private office building we’d walked into!!! We couldn’t stop laughing. We had been about to buy hot drinks from their vending machine and everything. Shortly after that, we found the actual museum (the castle museum). What an experience!

Other places of note:
I’ve also visited Christiania a few times, both by night and by day. Christiania is an alternative, hippie-like neighborhood-community within Copenhagen (in Christianshavn). They have their own government and there is an on-going controversy over whether or not it should stay separate from the city. It’s a very interesting spot…a little touristy, but still different. At least 800 or so people live there, in unique homes around a lake shaped like a thumb. You are not allowed to take photos anywhere but we did manage to snap a few when we went to a Jazz night at a club there. By night, Christiania can be a little creepy since there are no streetlights (only bonfires and lasers whenever they have a laser-light show).

We also had a chance to visit the Black Diamond, which is the Royal Library of Copenhagen. It’s one of the architectural marvels of the city, and on the inside it looks like mall, not a library. There are old fashioned reading rooms as well as modern ones. I can’t wait to go there to work on my project paper. Sure beats working in the dorm!

That’s about it for this update! Til next time!! :-)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted last. This post will be a general update. There are new pictures up on Flickr as well.

Discovering Copenhagen #2 – A walk around Nørrebro
Last Wednesday Barbara and I went on a walk around Nørrebro, which is a multi-ethnic area of the city; a lot of immigrants have settled here. This is also the “rougher” part of Copenhagen. Riots have occured here in the past, and we walked by the site where famous riots have occured in the past (including a site where a youth hangout spot had been torn down due to clashes over its ownership). We also visited the historic cemetery where many famous Danes have been buried. Nørrebro is very interesting to say the least and has a lot of multi-ethnic restaurants and shops. Plus, Barbara was a great tour guide!! I took lots of pictures, and they are up on Flickr.

Discovering Copenhagen #3 – Central Station, the Bus System and Rådhuspladsen
Another discovery from the past week included a visit to the Central Station (which is near or part of Nørreport Station) and riding on the S-Train and having my first Danish hot dog at the Central Station (delicious!). I went with Kathrine, one of my classmates who is also from the US!

On Saturday we’d originally planned to go to the zoo, but it was rainy and yucky in the morning, so I decided not to go and to do some shopping instead. I decided to try out the bus system in the process. The bright yellow busses are very well organized and they run on the dot. I also like how you can buy a 10-ride ticket and it works on all of the public transportation options — the Metro, the bus and the S-Train. I ended up at the central city square, Rådhuspladsen, while waiting to catch another bus, so I did some quick exploring of the shops around that area. I will return on a later date to see more! Riding the bus is also a good way to see how the different areas of the city are all connected, because to me Copenhagen still feels like several separate cities rather than one large one.

On Saturday afternoon I visited my friend Hana, a fellow classmate, in her dorm room for tea (she lives in the same dorm as I do, but in a different building)! I had a really nice time, and stayed for dinner as well. Then, Saturday night I went to a kitchen party; I had been invited by my friend Iveta, a fellow international student who also lives in this dorm. The party was fun and I met some nice people!

Discovering Copenhagen #4 -A walk around the park
On Sunday I went with Hana, on a walk around this gorgeous park near our dorm. It looks very much like the countryside! So Copenhagen has it all — big city, quiet, green pathways and of course the beach (which I have yet to visit). It was a very pleasant walk and I took pictures of course; they are on Flickr.

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That is pretty much it for this entry. My week to clean the kitchen is coming up starting on the 28th. That should be interesting. I bought rubber gloves so it’ll be easier for me to do a good job without worrying about touching something icky. Ha!

On Monday (yesterday) our school hosted this interesting lecture about persuasive design. B.J. Fogg, a professor from Stanford University, gave a talk in the morning and a workshop in the afternoon. I attended both and found it quite neat. He talked about how websites, especially Facebook, uses certain techniques to persuade users to do certain things. Then in the workshops we looked at profile pictures and discussed how the lighting, angles, facial expressions and degree of cropping can affect the viewers’ perception. At the end of the workshop we broke into groups and put together a survey using our own profile pictures and apply some of the principles we’d discussed all day.

That’s it for now, more entries later!