The work is starting to step up this week, though I've still managed to work some fun into things! The FCK football game on Sunday was fun (if surprisingly cold) and I went to dinner with Dara, Nadine, and a couple of Dara's psych-program friends at the Laundromat Café in Østerbro, which had been on Dara's and my list all semester. The laundry machines do in fact exist in the main restaurant area, but they're sort of hidden in the back near the restrooms, which let me enjoy my single but massive piece of tomato bruschetta in peace.
Monday brought a meeting with a bunch of the Brown kids here-- there's a big educators' workshop going down at DIS at the moment, so the woman from Brown wanted to see how we're all doing and liking the program (by all accounts, good and a lot). I felt that, if nothing else, I needed to go to thank her again for processing most of my application in less than two weeks and tell her how glad I am that its worked out so wonderfully.
Tuesday, there was a panel discussion in conjunction with my Migrants, Minorities, and Multiculturalism class regarding immigrant integration. There was a scholarly expert on the subject and two guys from opposing political parties on the issue. It was an interesting discussion on a definitely interesting topic (which I now should be writing a paper on, come to think of it), but the event got a bit sidetracked by personality. The expert and the social liberal were more than a bit overshadowed by a representative of the Dansk Folkparti, the Danish People's Party best known in my class for their essentially racist anti-immigrant views. This guy was more than a bit over-the-top, though-- he didn't answer anyone's questions (except to get excited about Fox News when someone asked if he was a fan) directly, and wouldn't stop talking despite the moderator's best efforts. He definitely came off as a bit of a nutjob--suggesting we read Jerry Falwell's biography to learn about putting religion in public life, likening wearing a headscarf in Parliament to being naked in Parliament, and rattling off way too many statistics--and that impression was capped off by his likening of the liberal politician to Galinda from Wicked. Yes, the Broadway musical. It didn't help that the liberal guy sounded like a Muppet and couldn't get a word in edgewise.
On Wednesday, my Danish class went to Dyrehaven, the old royal hunting grounds, for our field study. Now, previous field studies have included a trip to Parliament and one to an asylum center. This one included a walk through a huge public park (complete with riders on horseback!), rundbold (Danish-style baseball, which is similar but much more confusing and there's no keeping of score), and amazingly rich (and DIS-sponsored) hot chocolate. I have to say, taking Danish appears to be a very hit-or-miss thing in terms of one's enjoyment, and it mostly depends on teachers, as far as I can tell. I've talked to several people who like learning languages but really can't get into dansk-mode, whereas I usually don't enjoy learning languages at all but really like the class. Nina, our teacher, is delightfully enthusiastic, which can be contagious most days; plus, the group of students is mostly great, and it helps that we seem to be learning a lot-- more than students from other classes are, anyway.
Thursday I had my lone morning class and spent the rest of the day getting work done, including an interview for the aforementioned MMM paper. That actually turned out to be very interesting: the paper is on the criteria for successful integration into Danish society, so, among other sources, we had to interview both ethnic Danes and immigrants in groups. My part was to find the former, so, lacking a host family or immediate access to Danes excepting the 20-something guys who are technically the authority figures in our building, I wandered into Café Retro, which had repeatedly struck me as a local sort of place. I ended up chatting with an older-middle-aged couple, Gitte and Leif, who were very talkative once we got going. It was an interesting context to have met people, too. I feel like with a lot of the Danes and Russians I've interacted with, the effort was more focused on finding banal things in common, whereas in this case I could legitimately ask, "What do you think of this?" and have a whole discussion about the answer. Of course, now I actually have to write the paper, but that's another story...
Friday was quiet until it technically wasn't Friday anymore: Dara, Jen, and I tried out a club in Vesterbro called Vega, which is one of those places that all the DIS kids go to but we hadn't yet. It was fun! The place had no cover charge before 1 am and multiple stories, so you could dance to techno on one floor or sit on couches and chat on another one. Good times, and now I know that the night bus requires two stamps on my klippekort. I'm also getting a hang of the bus system.
This afternoon, the entirety of the European Politics & Society program was invited to our EU politics professor's house for a light lunch. This was fun in and of itself-- it's a good group, we got to see a really lovely little neighborhood in Hvidovre, and the food was just fine. But the professor is quite a character, too-- he's this charming 60-something with an academic background that took a big detour into Parliament for a number of years. He was Minister of Transportation for a while (which helped us get into a lot of places in Brussels, because European ministers serve in the Council of Ministers of the EU), until he got caught speeding in the midst of a campaign for lower speed limits. Seriously, try Googling Jacob Buksti. The upside is that now we get quite the insider's view of European politics, as well as plenty of wink-wink-nudge-nudge jokes about France.
And now, I really am going to work on that paper. Really.
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