Author: fullerc18

A Night at the Opera

On Tuesday May 10, I went to the Copenhagen Opera house with three of my friends and classmates for what can only be described as the strangest opera I have ever seen.

A little back story before I get to my night- I have been to operas before with my dad back in San Fransisco. When we went, we would make a whole nigh out of it- dressing up, going to a nice restaurant, buying nice seats. Basically what you would think of as a classic night at an opera house. One of my favorite nights with my dad was when we went with my best friend and her father. We splurged on box seats and as soon as we sat down, my dad pointed to a group of seats about 20 feet from us and told us that that was where the opera scene in Pretty Women took place.

I knew going to the opera here would be different, I just didn’t think it would be that different.

My story starts 12 hours before the opera began when we bought our tickets. I had a friend visiting from W&L and he brought up the possibility of going to the opera that night after he saw that The Tale of Hoffman* was showing. I loved my past experience at the opera, so I of course said yes and invited Maggie to join us.

Fast forward to 6 p.m. when we are getting ready. The opera started at 7:30 and our plan was to grab food at Paper Island and head over. Unfortunately, we completely underestimated how long the walk would take us, so we had to sprint to the Opera House with food in hand just as it started raining. Thankfully we made it to our seats with one minute to spare- then the real fun began.

From my past experiences, I knew to read the synopsis before the show began because even with subtitles, operas can be hard to follow, especially since this one was in French. What I didn’t realize was that the subtitles would be in Danish, not English; as soon as the show began I instantly regretted my decision to take 7 years of Spanish instead of French.

So there I was, about to sit through an opera in languages  I wouldn’t be able to understand…and then a man appeared on stage in a glittering dress, only to have it ripped off to reveal a corset underneath.

Over the next three hours I witnessed the strangest show I had ever, and probably will ever, see. About every few minutes Maggie and I would just look over at each others with looks of shock, confusion, and embarrassment depending on the scene.

While I won’t go into specific details, throughout the show we witnessed a lot of crossdressers, pornographic images displayed on the large screen and some very graphic scenes that left nothing up to the imagination. During intermission the four of us honestly stood outside the theater for a solid 5 minutes not saying anything- still in shock from the first half of the show.

The opera ended in the same unique fashion in which it started and even though I knew the plot, I still couldn’t tell you what happened. Although my night at the opera turned out to be a different experience than what I thought it would be, I still had fun. If anything, this is going to be a fantastic story to tell my friends and family when I’m older. I mean how many other people can say they accidentally went to a opera/drag show while studying abroad in Copenhagen?

* This actually was a great opera- the music and songs were amazing. I would highly recommend it to anyone. Just go in with the expectation that it is different than more classical operas.

And I will walk 500 miles

Exercise trends seem come and go every few years. From Jazzercise, to at home fitness workouts, these programs tend to stick around for a little bit before they slowly fade away- but recently, one trend has seemed to stick: walking.

Now this may seem silly- isn’t walking always “in”? And yes people have always used walking as exercise, but what I mean more specifically by this is the trend of counting your steps. Just look around the next time your outside and try to count the number of Fitbits or IWatchs people use while they try to reach that magical number of 10,000 steps a day.

At Washington and Lee, I found it a little difficult to reach 10,000 steps a day. My average walk to campus was under 10 minutes and once there, I spent the majority of my day sitting in class or in the library. According to the fitness app on my phone, my average step count per day was around 6-7,000 (keep in mind I spent 2-3 hours every day in the pool).

Step count from May 8, 2017- note how flat the city is though that I only climbed 9 flights of stairs all day

While preparing for Copenhagen, I knew I would be walking more, but I completely underestimated how much more. On any given day here, I walk anywhere from 10-30,000 steps- an average of 5-13 miles a day!! Just yesterday I reached a new record person record of 31,311 steps, or 13.7 miles, after wandering the city all day as we showed the first-years around.

I think what surprises me the most about this huge uptake in distance walked per day, is that it doesn’t feel any different from days where I only walked 1 or 2 miles. I would have guessed that walking a half marathon in one day would leave me tired with very sore feet. Instead, I feel no different- if anything I love walking more. I look forward to my 15 minute walk to DIS or the 25 minute walk to Paper Island for food. Just last night, Kathryn and I left the hostel at 9 p.m. to walk 15 minutes out of our way to get waffles and ice cream.

While I expect to take many things away from this trip such as a new cultural experience and a more independent nature, I really hope I also keep up this love of walking! I know it is going to be difficult to find this much time to walk around and explore Lexington when I have class everyday but I think that even finding the time to walk around for 20 minutes will be a positive addition to my daily routine.

Not playing dress up anymore

I grew up in a household with two working parents. Everyday I would watch my parents go off to work in their professional clothing, commute into the city, have business meetings all day, and be in my mind what I considered “true professionals”. Even from a young age, I watched them in admiration- I couldn’t wait for the day that I got to also be a real adult who earned a living and did fun adult things.

The older I got, there were increasingly more occasions where I got to actually wear real working clothes and act like an adult. But every time I put on a suit or a nice dress, I felt like I was simply dressing up; playing a role for a few hours before I changed back into normal clothes. I my mind, I was still a child, waiting for the day that I would get be real “working girl”.

And suddenly, here I am, in Copenhagen, taking the train home from work, tired from a long day of meetings, ready to kick up my feet and relax until more work tomorrow. The business clothes I’m wearing no longer feel like dress up clothing, but just my normal everyday attire. So I guess that means I’m an adult now, right?

Writing this blog almost makes me laugh- I can’t really be an adult, right? I’m only 20! In the US, I can’t even legally drink! But somehow here I am, working a real job, and although it is technically for a class and we are not getting paid, it is for a real company and it is international work experience.

I always imagined the transition between childhood and adulthood to be more gradual. Maybe it was and I just missed it. But I feel like just yesterday I was home with my parents, and today I’m at work in a foreign country.

I realize I still have a year left of college until I am thrown into the real world where I will truly be living on my own. Hopefully by then I will have a job and an apartment and will feel like I have a better grasp on what being an adult is like.

I think one of the main lessons I will take away from  my time in Copenhagen is that being an adult really isn’t all that different from being a child. Even adults still feel lost and confused, they still ask others for help and wonder when they’ll get their lives together. Maybe these feelings will eventually go away, but until then, I’ve learned that if you act confidently, work hard and don’t stress over the little things, everything will work out in the end.

Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togethew today

For the past two Tuesday nights, our class has been attending “host family” dinners with Danish families located around Copenhagen. These dinners gave us a chance to not only have an amazing home cooked meal, but also gain some insight on what the typical family culture is like here in Copenhagen.

Now, while there are many similarities between the family environment here and what I grew up with, one of the main differences I discovered was our views on marriage. In the US, it is the norm (though this of course changes depending on area) that two people will date, marry and then have children. During my first host dinner here though, I learned that in Copenhagen, many couples chose to not marry or marry after they have kids. While many US couples marry because they are in love and see marriage as a way to publicly display that, couples here may chose to marry simply because of tax reasons or for custody reasons.In my mind, this seemed like the exact opposite of the normal US custom to get married but wait a few years to have children.

At first, I thought that this was strange and almost illogical- if you have already have children and know that you’re going to be spending you life together, why don’t you just get married? My host family explained that here, marriage is seen more as a government document, not a declaration of your love for another person.

In the specific family I was with, they had two children around 20 and 25 but the parents only got married 10 years ago. The mother said that they finally chose to “get hitched” when her husband was going on a trip, but the daughter quickly commented that it was also because her mom found a cheap wedding dress on sale. Their ceremony took place in their house with only a few friends and their children. This sounded more like a small get together than the extravagant family weddings I had grown up with.

In the US, the average wedding has around 120 guests and costs weeding nearly $27,000. Now weddings are amazing events to attend and they allow the bride and groom a chance to celebrate their love and party the night away with their friends, but $27,000 for one night of fun is a ton of money! I’m not saying that I don’t expect to have a fun wedding in my future, but I do understand the appeal of a typical Danish wedding and saving my money for another purpose.

Now there are of course many other interesting differences between a Copenhagen family and an American one. I think I found the varying views on marriage particularly interesting because in the US, marriage seems to be such a fundamental part of family culture. Here though, the focus seems be more on growing as a family before attempting to involve the government in their relationships.

 

 

Extraño a copenhague

Maggie, Kathryn and I in Park Güell overlooking Barcelona

This past week, Maggie, Kathryn and I planned, booked and took off on a trip to Barcelona. We knew this was our only weekend to get away and while we had any number of possible places to travel too, Barcelona just seemed to be calling our names. Not only would we be able to experience it’s amazing culture, but the trip would give us a chance to escape the cold temperatures, sharp winds, and freezing rains of Copenhagen. So off we went Friday morning with bags packed full of colorful summer clothing and swim suits.

Overall, it was an amazing trip. We were able to see many of the most famous sites around the city such as the beach, Sagrada Familia, and Park Guell, but the whole time I kept thinking about how much I missed Copenhagen.

Traveling Barcelona was fun, but I always had an uneasy feeling in my gut. While I felt like a complete tourist there, in Copenhagen I feel like I can call myself a temporary resident. I know how to get places without a map, where there are good places to eat, and what the best bars and clubs are the best depending what night it is. More than once I have been able to offer directions or assistance to a confused tourist and I was even able to give a visiting friend a brief tour of the city. Sure, the weather isn’t perfect here and it can be expensive, but something about this Danish city just made me yearn to go back.

I don’t regret going to Barcelona. I know that taking spontaneous trips across Europe is part of the study abroad experience and I did enjoy my brief time there- but I think I am more excited to be going back to my temporary home in Copenhagen. If anything, this weekend trip made me appreciate that I still have nearly 3 full weeks left to learn and experience everything I can in the city before I have to leave for home.

Freedom on Steroids

One day before my freshman year, I was suddenly struck by the notion that I was going to almost complete freedom for the first time in my life once I stated at Washington and Lee. While I still had some obligations, such as class and swim practice, I could stay out as late as I wanted, eat whatever I felt like, or even just up and leave Lexington without anyone to tell me otherwise. *Disclaimer to all reading- I was and have been a very good student and never felt the need to really test the limits of my freedom, but knowing I could has always excited me! 

For the first three years of my college experience, I never thought that I could ever get or want more freedom than what Washington and Lee already gave me. Clearly I was wrong. Today, as my classmates and I were reflecting on our experience in Copenhagen so far, we came to realize that the freedom we have here is so much more than we ever expected- it is almost literally “freedom on steroids.”

While we work each day on our individual projects, our two professors are back on campus teaching another class. That means that we have no adults here to structure our days. We get to make our own work schedules, set our own hours and locations, and travel around the city or even the country as much as we want. Our only real task is to finish our projects by the deadline.

To almost any other college student, this sounds unreal. How can you possibly be trusted to do your work? Why don’t you just leave it for the last minute and go travel for four weeks? How is that even allowed?

My honest answer to all of these questions is that Washington and Lee and its honor system, have been preparing me for this moment since I first set foot on campus. While our class is all under the impression that we want to have fun this trip, our first and foremost goal is to produce the best projects we possible can.

Yes, we can travel as much as we want, but both groups decided on their own (with some advice from our professors) to only take this upcoming weekend off. My group decided to work every week day we are here, and even some weekends, starting at 9:30 a.m. and ending whenever we accomplish our tasks for the day.

Other students at other schools in the same situation might abuse this freedom, but my class seems to view this as the ultimate challenge. We get to prove to everyone that yes, you can leave a group of 8 unchaperoned students in a foreign county for four weeks and have them create and produce amazing projects by the end of it. Washington and Lee has taught us what we have to do to get a task done, so much so that we even when given the gift of freedom on steroids, we still chose to work until the job is done.

 

Maybe change isn’t that bad

I have never liked change. When I say never, I mean since I was a little kid, I have detested even the smallest changes in my life. I have distinct memories of bursting into tears upon seeing my mom after she got a hair cut because I didn’t like the “newness” of it. As I grew up, I stopped crying when faced with new places or big changes, but always had that horrible gut feeling like something wasn’t quite right.

Now this “off” feeling normally happens every single time I travel, whether it is for a two day stay in a hotel during a meet or for a fun vacation. My expectation going into this trip was that I would feel the same way for the first few days; I would be anxious, clam up around others, hesitate to go exploring, and maybe even wish that I was home. Honestly, I was getting nervous about being nervous there, and as the trip grew closer my nerves only increased.But then I arrived in Copenhagen, and instead of feeling anxious, I felt strangely calm.

As I was making my way from the airport to the hostel via train and walking, I kept waiting for the panic to set in. But upon each length of this 20 minute journey, I just felt more and more relaxed. When I finally reached the hostel (after getting momentarily lost in the street) instead of hiding out in my room, my roommate and I went off exploring the city.

I believe our excursion lasted around 4 hours and we estimate that we walked close to 12 miles overall, but never once during our walk did we actually have a destination in mind. Instead, we just went where we felt like-we wondered down Strøget, stopped off for lunch, walked along the harbor, found Nyhavn, and even decided to wander over to Paper Island for coffee.

Exploring the streets of Copenhagen only made me feel more safe and secure here. Maybe it was the wide walkable streets, the impeccable architecture or just the friendly people that we met along the way, but I can’t recall the last time I felt so at home in a place that wasn’t actually my home.

Overall, my first impression of Copenhagen was that this was a place unlike any that I had been to before. While I still have yet to experience most of what this city has to offer, I’m actually looking forward to all these new experiences. And yes, I’m even excited for the new changes and surprises that are bound to happen in this next month. So here’s to learning embrace new experiences and finally realizing that maybe change isn’t that bad after all. Skål!