Angela's Amazing Abroad Adventures: FRIENDS!!! And LEGOLAND!!!

(Note: This post has been edited to include things about my classes!)

The past three days have been SPECTACULAR!!! Like, completely amazing.

Thursday, I woke up and went to class where all we did was talk about stereotypes of the Roma minority. It was really interesting. Roma (also known as Gypsy) are Europe's oldest minority by a lot. They've been discriminated against for a very long time and were one of the targets of the holocaust... Then, after class I went and bought my BOOTS!!! Yay boots.

Not the best picture of boots, but you get the idea :)

Then I went to my other class... which wasn't as interesting. Its a tough class for me (Language, Ideology, and Society) its really interesting...but I don't have much of a base in sociolingustics so a lot of the theories are way over my head. So far, what I've gathered is there is no such thing as a language because all the edges are blurred and you can't tell where one language ends and another begins... but we use FUNCTIONS of different languages... but then aren't you dividing languages up? I'm rather confused. But its interesting and fits very well with my other classes. After class, I stayed at KU and did some reading until...

I went to pick up Amanda, Zoe, James and Ryan from the airport!!! Yay friends!!!

I took then to their hostel and then I took them on a mini-walking tour of Copenhagen hitting the important sights (King's Gardens, Nyhavn, Royal Residences, Mermaid...) and then we went and got china boxes for dinenr :) It was SO GOOD to see them again. We ended up at a quiet little bar, sitting outside just catching up on everything for a couple hours before we called it a night- we were all rather tired...

The next day, I had class so they were on their own. They went to a couple museums... and I had two AMAZING classes. In the first one, Ethnic Conflict in Modern States, we did small group learning. We split into groups based on regions of interest, and were told to propose a solution to the ethnic conflict there. Our group was 3 american students, a danish student, a Lithuanian student and one who grew up here but is from Sri Lanka. Our region was Iraq. That whole situation is rather complicated. First, someone in the group proposed that we divide the country up into zones to keep the different groups apart. We decided that goes back too close to when colonial powers drew borders everywhere and that, no matter what, a group would feel that they got the short end of the stick and get even more angry. The oil situation also made things complicated, of course. So, we decided that was out. Then, I started thinking about my new favorite theory: the theory of imagined communities. It basically says that all of our groups are simply social constructs. Much like race doesn't exsit because it is a label developed by people. Imagined Communities just says that about every group ever. It says things like languages create borders to the groups and then you create 'admission criteria.' It says nationality is all a social construct, and the construction of the past builds a connected and unifed past. Things like that. So, we, as a group, decided that that was the theory we were going to go with. We decided that first we have to give them back a security force. Then, we have to start with schooling and use that to create a national identity instead of a divicive religious identity: so get them to call themselved Iraqis instead of "shia" or "Kurd" or "Shite." We proposed schooling, a national museum emphasizing a communal past, a national anthem and pledge of allegiance... things like that. And made sure to mention that we need to utilize non-hostile Iraqis to implement these things and build the economy back up. Anyway... it was lots of fun talking about this... Even if it is an EXTREMELY optimistic proposal. We are all still in school... What did you expect?

Anyway, then I ran over to my next class, one of my favorites: Migrants, Minorities and Multiculturalism. We had a guest speaker who works for the Danish Institute for Human Rights and helped create the Migrant Integration Policy Index. We had read parts of it for class, and it was really interesting. It breaks policy down into six core groups: Family Reunification, Access to Nationality, Long Term Residence, Labor Market Access, Political Participation and Anti-Discrimination. It talks about the pros and cons of the policies in the EU countries and about what the outcomes of different policies are. She told us about the purpose of it and why they picked the core issues and how they did research. She talked about how she feels Canada, while not perfect, has the best immigration/integration policy in the world and said how she is going to move there. She talked about how it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to become a danish citizen, even if you are a second generation immigrant who has grown up here and lived here for your entire life... And then at the end asked for questions. My professor then asked her a leading question, taking the VERY conservative viewpoint on the 24 year rule (You must be 24 years in order to qualify for family/spousal reunification. Its stated purpose is to limit forced marriages coming into the country. Whether it actually does that or not is debated...) She was SO passionate about her answer. It was great to watch. She talked about how that is the ONLY law prohibiting forced marriages and they don't do anything else about it other than say its very bad... And talked about how it was a giant violation of human rights, since in order to feel at home in a place, you need family. They argued for a bit and we all learned a lot. One really interesting thing she mentioned was that there are ~90 national institutes for human rights. The United States does not have one... These are institutes connected (kinda) to the government, who give advice on most laws that go through parliment. Why don't we have one?

After class, I went and met up with friends and we went over to Christiania. It was their birthday, 37th, so everything was crowded and there was music everywhere. But it was lots of fun. AND I bought an AWESOME winter hat!!! I also want this BEAUTIFUL silk embrodered bag thats pink and brown with flowers... but its over 60$... And I just can't do it. but the hat. its awesome.

Its wool with fleece lining... SO WARM!

Christiania is super cool, so relaxed. but, I can only spend so much time there. So we left and went back to their hostel to hang out for an hour before heading out to bars. We went to Scottish Pub with decent live music... But it was loud and we wanted to chat, so we went back to the quiet bar from the day before and stayed until 12:30, just sitting around chatting. It was a good time. Then I went and gathered my things, bid them farewell for another 3 weeks, and headed to my bus.

After getting a whopping 4 hours of sleep, I was up again! For LEGO LAND. There are 100 pictures of legoland up on photobucket. I suggest you go there. It was a 3 hour bus ride (that I slept on, of course) and then Kara and I wandered around and looked at everything. The lego things were awesome. They MOVED! Haha. After a while we got hungry... and roasted bread over the fire!!!

That's what they do here instead of marshmellows: bread. It was actually very tasty. I'm going to definatly bring this tradition back. What USUALLY happens is you take the stick out and put a hotdog in. Genious!

We also ate fish and chips and were suprised by how not-greasy it all was and how they gave you a salad with your meal :) After that we went on rides (2. wow. :P) and got on the bus and now I'm home. But... I have many pictures! here are some highlights!