På lægehuset

"At the doctor's office"

The curse of the exchange student seems to be a lingering sickness. Most of my exchange student friends have been sick since they arrived, and I am no exception. I had a little bit of a cough but nothing that I could complain about. My room mates had told me for about a week and a half to go to the doctor's office but I just couldn't be bothered because I didn't want to take time out of my busy schedule of meeting new people, exploring the city, going to parties, and class. Finally on February 15th I conceded and made an appointment for Friday the 19th at 11am. During that week I my cough worsened so I was glad to have my appointment.

On Friday morning I took the bus to my doctor's office. The buses here do not say which stop they are at, so you just need to guess or count the stops. I decided to guess and got off five stops too early, but it was actually sunny out so I didn't mind walking a little bit. I figured that it would be easy to find the hospital so it would be okay to walk. I got to "Kongelundsvej 434" (the address of my doctor) but I only saw a house at this address. It turns out the general practioners are not in hospitals, or anything close to a hospital. My doctor was situated in a cosy house with a very friendly receptionist and a welcoming waiting area.




There are three general practioners working out of this office; they just take which ever patient is next. No one is assigned to a specific doctor although you can request a certain doctor if you would like to. I got called into the doctor's office. It was a large room with bright paintings on the wall and the doctor was wearing everyday clothing. She was very kind and explained a little bit about the Danish healthcare system. Everyone is assigned a general practioner when given their CPR number (equivalent to the Canadian SIN). People need to go to this doctor when they are ill (unless it is an emergency) and if the doctor deems it necessary they will send them to a specialist. They also have a telephone line open every day from 8-9am in which patients can call and describe their ailments and the doctors can prescribe over the phone.

The doctor told me that I had a sinus infection and told me what I could buy (over the counter drugs) because they would be cheaper than prescription drugs. I walked to the pharmacist, bought the nasal spray and dissolving tablets (neither of which I have ever used) and went home. I have been using them since Friday and am slowly getting better; I hope that I will be fine for Wednesday when I go to Italy!!

Fastelavn

"Carnival"

On Valentine's Day, myself along with about 40 exchange students dressed up and celebrated "Fastelavn" (or Carnival in English).

It was a difficult task deciding what to be! The majority of the people going are exchange students who have come to Copenhagen with only one or two suitcases so no one really had any costumes - at least we were all in the same boat! People were very creative though! There were several cats, the three blind mice, a football (soccer) player, and what's a party without someone in a toga! I was a tree, simple but easy and pretty much everyone knew what I was!

Chimney sweep, Pippi longstocking, tree, hippie

We started the afternoon off with homemade Danish Fastelavn buns - delicious!! And then we started making masks and "branch bunches of fertility" that was used by children to wake their parents up after Fastelavn. This tradition was supposed to bring good luck and fertility to the mother. After arts and crafts were over we were able to participate in the traditional "slå katten af tønden" (hitting the cat out of the barrel). It sounds a little bit morbid, and it is. Back in the 1400s, Danish farmers would put a black cat in a barrel and beat the barrel until it broke. The cat would come out, flabbergasted of course, and they would beat it to death. It represented good luck and would prevent the plague from coming to the village. We did the G-rated version of slå katten af tønden. We hit a barrel with wooden sticks until it broke and candy (not a cat) came out - it is like a piñata but with a wooden barrel. The person who made the bottom fall down was crowned Queen, and the person who made the last piece of wood come off was crowned King.

Fastelavn buns + arts and crafts = great fun?

Fertility branches

Kill the cat; get the candy!!

It was a really fun time getting to learn about and partake in the Danish tradition of Fastelavn, even if it did feel like I was in kindergarten again!

Jeg har ikke penge

"I have no money"

Copenhagen is the fourth most expensive city in Europe, and that is being reflected in my pocket book. Within the first few weeks I managed to spend close to $900 CDN, but that is to be expected when moving to a new place and needing to buy essentials (food, phone, hair products, transportation, etc.) and pay for accomodations at the hostel I stayed for the first three nights.

It took me a while to get my bank account set up and by the time that I did (and was able to transfer money from my Canadian account) I was out of all of the cash that I had brought and was actually borrowing from friends. I didn't realize how much money is worth until I was broke. Now that I have an account opened, I'm doing just fine - all I have to do is conserve my money to ensure that I will have enough to last me the whole time that I am here and still allow me to do all of the travelling that I want to do. I'm thinking that a job might be a good thing to get, since I don't have a lot of class time at the moment (only on Monday's and Wednesday's) I could easily fit it into my schedule. The fact that I can't speak Danish (beyond telling people where I live, what my name is, how many languages I can speak, and where I am from) might prove to be a little bit of a barrier though.

It took me a while to get used to the currency here. One Canadian dollar is 5.076 Danish kroner, which means that at first glance, everything looks incredibly expensive!! 120 kroner meals sounds expensive, until I do the mental math and realize that it is only $24-ish Canadian dollars. Living here has helped me become good at simple, mental math: constantly dividing by 5; subtracting 12 for the 24 clock that they use; and, subtracting by 6 to figure out what time it is back in Canada so I know whether anyone will be awake to skype!

20, 10, 5, 2, 1, 0.50 Danish coins

And getting used to the money was a little bit difficult as well, but I think that I have it under control now! In Canada our biggest coin is $2, here it is 20kr (about $4 CDN) so I always have a lot of change on me here. In Denmark the bills are 1000, 500, 200, 100, and 50. The coins are 20, 10, 5, 2, 1, and 0.50. And if something at the store costs 180.27kr, for example, they will round it up to 180.50, which at first I didn't like, but then I realized that I was really only loosing like $0.004 CDN so it's not the end of the world!

Brugsanvisning på kiks

"Recipe for cookies"

My Danish language class had a great mix of people:

• 4 Canadians
• 3 Poles
• 2 Americans
• 1 Austrian
• 1 Brazilian
• 1 Colombian
• 1 Russian
• 1 Slovanian

Since we have so many different cultures amongst us, we have decided to have traditional dinners from each country - it's a great way to try new food, and a good excuse to hang out with each other and have fun.

On January 23 it was Angela's (from Colombia) birthday, so we decided to throw a surprise party for her and instead of having our traditional "cultural dinner" we decided that everyone would bring something. I decided to make cookies with Daria (from Russia) - that's simple enough!

I got the recipe and translated everything into Danish and then we went to the grocery store to purchase what we needed...which was everything. Most things were easy to find: margarine, eggs (æg), white sugar (hvidt sukker), salt, brown sugar (farin), vanilla.

Somethings were a little more difficult to find:
- Flour (mel). This were so many types of flour it was hard to decide what kind to buy - we weren't sure what was white flour, what was whole wheat, rye, grains, etc.
- Chocolate chips (chokolade). Apparently chocolate chips are not very common. There were plenty of chocolate bars, but no chips - we ended up getting chocolate flakes which worked just as well.
- Baking soda (bagepulver). This gave us the most trouble for sure - we asked two different people where to find it and neither was really sure. In the end we did find some, only to realize when we got home that it was "med krydderier" which means "with spices", and it was brown instead of the traditional white baking soda. The cookies still turned out fine though - they were just chocolate chip/ginger cookies!

The ingredients - complete with translations and conversions

With all of the ingredients we thought that we were ready to start making the cookies - wrong. In Canada, we measure using cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, etc. In Denmark they use grams, so we had to convert everything to grams and then use a scale to measure everything.

Finally, after everything was mixed together, we went to put them in the oven. I don't know why Canada does this: we measure the temperature in celsius, but when it comes to baking, we measure in fahrenheit. I was really confused as to why there was no 350 degrees on the oven until I realized that I needed to convert it to celsius.

Before

After

In the end of our baking fiasco, the cookies turned out just fine. They were a bit harder than when I make them back in Canada, but they had a bit of a ginger taste which made up for the hardness.

We brought the cookies to the party and put them with the rest of the food from all over the world. It was a delicious, fun night, and the surprise was a success!

Første dag i klassen

"First day of class"

After 1 month in København I finally started class today! Real class, not the Danish language class which I was taking more for basic and general knowledge of the language and not for actual credit. I am currently enrolled in two classes: Social inequalities in health from different perspectives, and Medical anthropology - both of which are on Monday and Wednesday.

Class here starts on the quarter of the hour, so I had class at 13.15. I met Sylvia (another public health student who I knew from my home university) at Nørreport Station at 12.45 and we went and found our campus and classroom. It's in the CSS (Center for Sundhed og Samfund, or the Center for Health and Society in English) which is on the City campus. I live about 8.5km away but I bought a bike and I am planning on joining the Danish trend of cycling everywhere.

I had never been to CSS before but it wasn't too hard to find. It is a beautiful campus right acros from Botanisk Have (Botanical Garden) which will be even more amazing once the weather gets better. After a quick exploration of the building we went to class and waited outside along with the other 40-ish girls and 1 boy. At 13.15 we went into the classroom which is big enough to seat only 36 people so we had to borrow some chairs from another classroom. Luckily I got there early enough to snag a seat. It was intimidating to be seated in a class (circle style) with over 40 other people, most of whom are Danish master students.

The courtyard in CSS.

In any new situation there is always those nervous butterflies: will I find the class difficult? Will the other students be frustrated that I am the reason that the class is in English instead of their native Danish? However my professor, Signild Vallgårda, seems like an amazing person and made me feel comfortable right away. She had us go around and introduce ourselves (name, country of origin, background studies, and why we wanted to take this class). There are 2 Canadians in the class and 1 girl from the Netherlands, and everyone seems very friendly - I don't think anyone minds taking the class in English because of us. We got into small groups and discussed the social categories in health and then discussed them for the first hour of class. In the second hour Dr. Vallgårda lectured. The material is so interesting and nothing like Western offers so I feel very lucky to be able to be here learning this in my undergrad!


After class another student showed Sylvia and I where the kantine and bookstore are. We already have 101 pages to read. It is a lot of outside work but there is only one essay at the end of the class - no exams and no assignments. It's a nice change from all of the work that I have to do at my home university, but a little bit intimidating to have 100% of my mark come from one essay.