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Published: August 30th 2012
Stairview
This is the view from the stairs inside the building leading up to our apartment/flat/thing. The other side of the house looks over the main street in Østerbro, called Østerbrogade (can you guess what "gade" means in Danish? Correct, it means "street"--good job! Now, can you guess how to pronounce it? Nope, you're wrong--it's pronounced "GAHL." Good try though.)Well Heya everybody!
I’ve been in Denmark now for a week and a half, so I figured it’s
quite about time I wrote a blog. So here we go.
I arrived in the Copenhagen airport two Sundays ago, exhausted after fully 25 hours in travel. After retrieving my baggage, I followed a group of other DIS students outside to meet several DIS faculty members who guided me to the nearby Hilton hotel. The hotel was where any students who would be staying with Danish roommates or host families would wait until their host(s) would pick them up. I dropped off my bags in a side room and went into the main conference room, nervous and excited to meet my family…or not. They hadn’t arrived yet. My nerves would have to last a few more minutes. I registered at the registration table (imagine that), and picked up my transportation pass, Danish Resident Card application form, and a host of other important paperwork and items, including a schnazzy black DIS backpack. I registered for my FREE* Danish cell phone (*Free to rent, but I still had to pay for calls and insurance. And I have to give it back at the
DISers
These are some of my friends from the orientation week. Adam, the guy who lives with the family in the apartment above mine, is on the far left end of the semester. Dang!) and number, and waited for a brief orientation. The orientation was a fairly standard “Welcome” presentation, and afterwards I FINALLY got to meet my family.
I’ll tell you right off I was impressed by how good they were/are at English. Nooo language barriers to be had. It’s quite a different experience from Chile, let me tell you. Not worse, not better, just very different. Apples and oranges, spaghetti and cavatelli, Merlot and Chardonnay—you get my drift.
My host dad is named Klaus. He’s the communications director for the Red Cross of Denmark, an avid footballer (soccer player), and a die-hard Chelsea FC fan. His English is also superb and he always tries to keep me in the loop when the family is speaking in Danish.
My host mom is Helle. She teaches at an elementary school, and is simply wonderful. She struggles a bit with her English, but we’ve not had any communication issues thusfar.
Leonore is my younger host sister. She’s sixteen and is, well, a teenage girl, haha. But we get along quite well and she’s a great baker so it all works out.
Sebastian is my twenty-year
old host brother. He recently moved into his own apartment because he’s starting college this year, but he lives pretty nearby so he’s around a lot. He’s softspoken but seems like a pretty cool guy.
We live in an apartment/flat (okay seriously, WHAT is the difference between these two?!) on the third floor of a building in the Østerbro district of Copenhagen (or København in Danish). In The apartment directly above us is another family who is very close friends with mine, and with whom we eat dinner at least once a week. They are made up of four people: Brian and Astrid are husband and wife and are both very, very friendly, unusually extroverted people (unusually for a Dane, that is), and they have two children named Abel and Petrea (Peh-TREY-uh. How cool of a name is that?!). They and my host family actually decided together to host exchange students, so they also have a DIS student living with them. His name is Adam, and he’s a senior architecture student from California. Luckily, he’s really cool and we get along quite well (I say “luckily” because we’ll be seeing a lot of each other due to our families,
haha).
Hmm…what else? Classes? Sure, why not?
Classes are everything I hoped for and MORE. Much, much more :D The only one I'm a little worried about is Psychopharmacology, which is, in all actuality, a medical-school class. The professor's "real job" is as a professor of Psychopharmaocology at the University of Copenhagen Medical School, and he came in with correspondingly high expectations. He's relented a bit, and admitted that he needs to tone down his expectations, but there are students in there who are senior Neuroscience majors who are overwhelmed, so...I'm feeling the same way. But everything else is going splendidly. It turns out I'm actually doing pretty well in Danish (my host family is constantly commenting on how quickly I learn), which feels good since I usually HATE languages. Complexity of Cancer is TOTALLY medically-focused, and instead of learning a ton about the biology of cancer (which I thought we'd be doing), we're going to be learning more about different types of cancer, the treatments used for each, prognoses, and other such things. Plus, our two professors for that class are young, cool oncologists, so they REALLY KNOW what they're talking about. Medical ethics is fascinating, as
I expected it would be, but it's much more of a philosophy course than was expecting. However, I think it's going to be really good to get that experience, especially since I wouldn't otherwise have a chance to take a philosophy course at Carleton (due to all of the Pre-Med, Bio, and Neuroscience requirements). Finally, "Human Health and Disease: A Clinical Approach" is going to be INCREDIBLE. It is what's known as the "core course" of my program (Medical Practice and Policy (or MPP for short)), and…wow.
Just…wow.
First of all, the class is taught IN a hospital. We are going to be gaining some very, very hands-on clinical experience, doing theoretical patient cases in nearly every class (once we get going, of course), visiting labs, going to a clinical lab a couple of times this semester to learn how to put in IVs, do CPR, put in sutures, and even insert catheters into realistic dummies (NOT real patients, don’t worry). We’ll also get a chance to interview and take histories for a number of actual patients, which should be cool. And, of course, on top of all that we’ll be learning a ton about diagnoses and treatments
for various disorders in a variety of systems… :D I’m bouncing off the walls in excitement just WRITING this :D :D :D On top of all this, the professors for this class are three very young, very cool doctors who seem like they should be the cast for a TV show (I don’t mean to say they’re obscenely attractive or anything, just that they happen to look, dress, and act in such a way as to highlight their characters and personalities).
The people in my class are the same that I will be going on my short and long study tours with, and they all seem pretty cool so far, so…hooray for that. I will be going on a short study tour for three days next week to a city in western Denmark called Århus, where we will be visiting another hospital as well as a lab of some type. The long study tour will be from October 20
th-28
th, when we’ll be going to Bratislava, Slovakia, and Vienna, Austria, where we will also be attending a variety of lectures in hospitals. :D I’m such a nerd. But I love it :D
Unfortunately, I haven’t many pictures to share
with you, because I’ve been so busy with classes and my backpack is usually so full there’s no space for the camera, but I’ve included a few.
Hope all is well back in the 'states. Take care, everybody. Talk to you soon!
+Alex
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