Ven!

It's hard to believe that today marks 3 weeks since I have been living here in København. Kayla and I keep talking about how we only have 2 weeks really to spend in the city now before we go to Croatia, and we really can't imagine how fast the rest of this trip is going to go. So, with that in mind, we're really trying to savor the time we have left for this trip.

Yesterday morning, we sent off the three girls we'd spent the most time with on this trip--Brittany & Allyson, who were from Meredith, too, and Sarah from Whittier College outside of LA. I still don't think it has sunk in that they're gone and we're not going to see them for class tomorrow. Speaking of class tomorrow, we begin our new class, Cross-Cultural Psych, first thing in the morning. I'm trying not to anticipate too much about it because I don't want to have any predispositions, but I think it will just be a much different experience than what I had in my Children with Special Needs course. However, it's a psychology class so I'm sure I'll love it anyway.

This weekend has been really fun for me. I found out a couple weeks ago that my ven, friend,Tory, who is a good friend of mine from High School, was traveling the Nordic region for the past month. He just happened to be flying out of København, so it was the perfect chance for us to meet up! His train from Göteborg, Sweden came in just before noon, so I met him there, helped him get settled into his Hostel, and then we explored the city for the day. This past week it had rained every day--and Friday was an absolute monsoon--but we lucked out and had an absolutely gorgeous day Yesterday to walk around and see the sites in København. Tory even admitted that, weather included, København was the most beautiful city of all the ones he'd seen in Scandinavia. (Marie's choice for study abroad, for the win!) So, after a long day of walking around, seeing lots of sites--some popular, and other not-so-popular ones--we found a grocery store and Tory fixed an awesome dinner for Kayla and me. It was such a nice day for all of us to catch up, talk about Scandinavia and life, and have some awesome food. We met up with Tory again today to have lunch since John & Jenny had to cancel our plans for today (but don't worry--we're meeting them sometime later this week). After lunch, we said our goodbyes, and Kayla and I wandered a little more before deciding we were exhausted and to just head back to our apartment to do the nearly 100 pages of reading we need for class tomorrow. We both settled on a nap instead, but we're about to get on that in just a bit!

Here are some of my pictures from yesterday's day of exploration!

Bike rules at Nyhavn...rules of the road are pretty important here!

Beautiful ship in Nyhavn

Ship on the harbor--the Royal Opera House is in the background

View of the Palace

Palace! Someone's home...

Frederik V's equestrian statue, which is in the center of the palace grounds

Frederik's Church--right behind the palace

One of the many city squares and equestrian statues in København

Some of the gardens behind the Parliament building

Fish in the fountain!

The view from Tory's 13th floor hostel room. I rode that rollercoaster (in Tivoli), which you can see winding behind the buildings!

Tory & I were both so attached to our own cameras yesterday that we forgot to take a picture together, so Kayla took care of that today! Coincidentally we matched almost perfectly...precious, huh?