Week 4 - Day 31

Last week, I had some calls from *ahem* a certain Finnish friend of mine who was quite intoxicated. It was really good to hear his voice again, and I'm sure I'll meet up with him at some point in time ;) The phone call also served as a crash course in Finnish swearing, perkele!

Another few random quotes...

"The Danes are crazy, and have no style, they tuck their pants into their socks" - Majkl from the Czech Republic

"Io estoy un poco borracho" - Someone.

Anyway, as you probably guessed, not much happened today yet, Windsor later? Yeah sure.


Part 2
When we were at the Windsor pub, I got a call from a Belgian friend who lives in Denmark these days. We met up, had some drinks, and I ended home at 5AM. Sunday will be the day to relax!

Week 4 - Day 30

Oh my! One third of the way already?!

In Egon's Comparative Education class, we finished off our presentations and explained a text with images, but ultimately came to the conclusion that we're all striving for the same ideals in education, however we need to read the fine print! And of course, ideals don't mean they're easy to attain.

After class, we went to Dorien's place again, and had a yummy lasagna! Dorien has an amazing view of Copenhagen at night from her balcony:


Then we started acting like real Danes, drinking half a bottle of rum before heading out, followed by beers on the bus, resulting in a pretty unsober arrival at the Kulør bar. Entrance is 60 kr, coat-checking is 20 kr. What I didn't expect was them telling me to also check my hoody. (because it has a hood...) Which means I was pretty annoyed, but luckily, it's pretty easy to get really plastered there.

I don't remember much of the night, and I've only got these pictures to help me figure out what happened:

Week 4 - Day 29

I was still pretty tired from yesterday, but I managed to be at school in time for our final class of RE. It was pretty interesting to see that Grundtvig, even though he's been dead for over 100 years, still holds quite a bit of influence in the Danish educational & clerical world.

Next week, we're going on a field trip!

After class, we went home, and tonight we went to the Windsor again, where Jolien's 5 (or more?) friends joined us. (They're staying until Sunday) - Fresh Flemish blood, yay!

Week 4 - Day 28

So THAT's what an 11 hour school day feels like!

Well, it's not REALLY 11 hours, but I was at school from 09.00 'till 20.00 regardless. I had a 2 hour break in-between classes. Next week however, I will have no breaks as I'll have three sessions back-to-back. I'm NOT looking forward to it!

Although, in a way, I am. I'm really enjoying Lilian's English class, as it gives me a chance to interact with a lot of Danish students I normally wouldn't encounter.

They are a "test year" for a CLIL-style teaching course, so all their classes are in English, and even though I was already experiencing that in the Erasmus module, it's cool to see it's being used in an actual class, not just a temporary one.

The ages in the group vary immensely, but that's okay, that just adds to the input we can bounce off each other. Buzzgroups are key in Lilian's class, which is something I'm not REALLY used to anymore. (since my English class in Belgium consisted of 5 people last semester, which basically meant we were a constant buzzgroup ;) )



In Lilian's class, we're planning an English event day for a group of 56 8th graders who are coming to Blaagaard/KDAS next week. I'm actually actually really excited to realise that I have some didactical knowledge in me, and I enjoy bouncing ideas off first years. (I know that sounds so cocky, but it's not meant that way, I'm just really psyched that I retained some of the material we saw in Belgium as an automatism!)

Anyway! Like I said, buzzgroups! In our buzzgroups, we had to think of ideas for activities, at first just thinking on our own, and then Lilian gradually gave us tips to finetune our ideas, or come up with new ones. (For example, she gave us a list of "possible audiences" to which we should tune our activity, like "the hyperactive pupil", "the introvert pupil", "Barack Obama", ...) - And then we gathered all of our ideas (on post-its) on a window, and we 'buzzed' some more.



During this four hour class, we took various "brain breaks" to rest our brains, and some groups also did a presentation on American culture, which is of course pretty much the same as we did back in Belgium in our first (UK) and second (USA) year. Although they didn't use the same book, and their themes were quite different from ours.

So yeah, English was interesting, I'm looking forward to next week's session!

During the lunch break, I met up with some of my Visual Culture group, and we decided our first task is ready to be seen by the public, you can find our work here.

After lunch, we had Globalisation & Professional change, which started off with (yet another) change of programme. We started off with Lilian going back to some of the social models we already saw during the first weekend (and in my case this morning too) and we discussed culture, stereotypes etc etc

We were given some nationalities, and were told to find typical things for those people to do. For example, Italians are playboys, they use a lot of body language, ... while the Japanese are very polite, ... etc etc

Then when we looked at it more closely, we ""realised"" that all of these were stereotypes and not applicable to 100% of the population in those countries.

Then we devised questions to ask people from a different culture, with the aim of those questions being to actually find out more about their culture. We based ourselves on Gullestrup's 8 layers of culture. We then interviewed a classmate of whom we knew very little.

After the dinner break, we joined Egon who had invited (another) guest speaker, to talk about a social project she worked with in Turkey. The goal here was to ask questions in a structured manner, so that we ourselves could define what we wanted to learn. That technique was pretty interesting. At the end, we had to reflect (as always) and say how this session made us look "through the window" (comparing) or "in the mirror" (reflective).

So yeah, a very interesting day! Religion tomorrow, finally going to get some Grundtvig & Kierkegaard in!

Week 4 - Day 27

Yoyo!

As I mentioned earlier, Lilian has agreed to let me attend some English classes on the side, and today, we went to Film-X, a project where people can go to make their own short films. This interested me a lot, and the sheer educational use is immense.

Film-X is housed in Det Dansk Filminstitut, which is the national film institution, meaning there is some government funding involved in this amazing project.

Film-X is fully booked every weekday throughout the school year so that shows how popular it is.



They have a few different setups with static cameras. Two green-screen sets, a car set, and an animation set. The green-screen setups were awesome, you could do some really funky stuff there.

My group (Jeanine, Lennart, and some Danish people who'se names I can't remember) used the car set, and made this video:



It was amazing fun! Afterwards, we had a private screening of all our films, and that was fun too!



So for 75kr, we had the following:

- Use of a film set
- Sound booth (which wasn't needed for the car set)
- Editing (using the [very basic] editing programme provided by Film-X)
- Final production



Totally worth the money! I look forward to continuing the English class (tomorrow morning at 8.30)

Week 4 - Day 26

Hej! Today we had our first lesson of "The Multicultural classroom" (taught by Lilian) which was quite interesting, and it adds onto our Diversity class from Semester 5 very well. We will learn a lot of techniques to actually work with cultural diversity in a classroom.

One of those techniques was the "Me-bag" - And the idea is to bring five items to school which have significant meaning to you, put them in a paper bag, then decorate the bag, and then introduce yourself to your peers using the bag and its contents.

This was my me-bag:


The main point to this exercise is that pupils will find differences, but mainly similarities. For example, in our class, almost everyone had a cellphone, and mp3-player and pictures in their bag.

We then had some time to talk about this in our buzz-groups, and we came to the conclusion that you can alter this method in an endless number of ways, but we especially liked the idea of limiting the items inside to three, because then you'd have to make conscious decisions about the three most important items, and you'd be able to give a more thorough explanation for why you chose these items. This is only really suitable for "older" pupils though.(ie. secondary school)

Another idea we had was to show the contents of a bag to the class, and have them guess who the bag belongs to.

After we discussed our ideas with the other groups, we were split into different groups again to discuss multiculturality in our own home communities. It was pretty interesting, especially because a lot of countries are still dealing with "ghetto-forming" in their major cities.

Our conclusion was simple (and obvious) though: We all like to say we believe in multiculturality and we want to make it happen, but the actual application of it is far from perfect.

One point illustrated this feeling perfectly, for us: What school holidays do our schools give their pupils, and do pupils from every culture accept and adhere to these days?

Aaaanyway, since I figure I should do some English while I'm here as well, I figured I'd ask Lilian if I can sit in on some of the "advanced English" classes, and she said sure! I'll be heading out to Copenhagen tomorrow to participate in a movie workshop etc. - I'm looking forward to it!

Week 3 - Day 25

DSRack LAN woohoo!



The LAN was actually surprisingly small, but as it only really featured one game, I guess that's normal.

I arrived just in time to see the lower bracket final between Burning! and H2k, which Burning won with ease (GG BOYS!) and then watched the final between Burning! and local favourites The Imperial. The Imperial de_stroyed Burning, but good games and funtimes were had.

Met up with some people as well, most importantly: MajklGO (LANHUGS), Fetish (BALDY) and Binteh.



After that, I went back to Lotte & Benjamin's place, watched the Matrix Reloaded, and had an amazing chicken, curry & rice dinner. YUM!

Tomorrow, we're meeting Lilian at 9AM for class!

Week 3 - Day 23 & 24

Friday morning, my group showed our Visual Culture project to Sabine, who seemed very happy with our progress so far. We will hopefully have it finished by Monday so I'll finally have something to show you guys on here.

We're using WikiSpaces which means it's so easy to work together from home, which is a big plus here!

After that I went home, packed up my monitor & laptop, and all of the Belgians headed to Jolien's apartment to have a movienight. It was brilliant. The girls cooked entrecôte with baked potatoes which was SOOOOOOO LUSH! And then we watched some films, before we headed out into Copenhagen city centre, where we swore we'd find a new bar! But we ended up in the Windsor again anyway.

The atmosphere there kind of changes on a Friday night apparantly, since a few couples used the dark, cozy pub that had become our favourite, as a setting for a gropefest, which we of course found hilarious! (Pictures on facebook)

We arrived home around 3AM, I went to bed, and slept for like 12 or more hours. I'm going to finish the rest of the day by doing some work for school, and maybe organise my finances a bit.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I'll be going to DSRack LAN where I'll hopefully catch the finals!

Week 3 - Day 22

Danish cooking, woohoo!

I nearly overslept, so I didn't have time for breakfast, so I had to eat some nasty sausage from the shop near Skovlunde station, ewww! (But it was my own fault for clicking off my alarm clock 10 times)

We walked to the old KDAS buildings in Skovlunde, which are apparently only 10 years old, but they stopped using them after the merge with Blaagaard. The cooking facility was VERY impressive though.

We got a brief overview of cooking habits in Denmark, as well as an insight in consumer food culture. (Apparantly, SEX A DAY is good.)

We then formed groups, and all of us prepared two of the courses. Bruno and myself thought it'd be funny to do a Piet Huysentruyt-style cooking commentary, so we joined the same group.



We were in charge of preparing the salad, as well as one of the desserts. Our salad consisted of white cabbage, oranges and raisins, and a lemon&sugar dressing. I was told it tasted quite nice.



We also helped in manually whipping the cream, until we found more kitchen utensils.

Some of the others baked bread, made a potato salad, made Danish meatballs, made more salad, etc etc, and one group also baked some pastry in a roll-shape, like this:

It was lush.

And all this for 30 Kroner! Goodtimes!

Movienight at Jolien's tomorrow!

PS: My attempts at launching the "Wear your polo shirt inside out" fashion trend were unsuccesful! :(

Week 3 - Day 21

Hiyoooooooooo~

Today we our last Danish class for approx. 3 weeks, but it was fun, we learned our ABCs ;) The whole group is really starting to gel together and we're having a looooooooooot of fun, so that's good!

Afterwards, our visual culture group got together and we worked and worked and worked and then slaved some more, but the result should be good (and more importantly, it'll be visible soon!)

On my way home I encountered a REALLY annoying beggar though. First I gave him some money, then that wasn't enough, then he went away, came back, asked for more, went away, came back, and then he felt too good to accept a half-smoked cigarette. Yeah. I'm getting sick of beggars really fast. *mutter*

I have some more VisCult work to do, but I'm REALLY looking forward to the "Danish Cooking Event" in Skovlunde tomorrow! Can't wait!

Week 3 - Day 20

Sooooooooooooooooooo today we went to Christiania (and actually quite a few of us showed up!)

To get there, we had to take the metro, which is completely automatic here. So we sat in front where the driver would normally be, and this looks quite neat:



The actual subway stations are very high-tech as well, they're made so it's impossible to get on the track, the doors synch up with the doors of the actual carriages.

We noticed the snow here has an actual snowflake-shape!



We visited the Frederikskirke, which is a protestant church. It looks pretty odd, yet amazing.





And of course every protestant church needs some disco lights...



Afterwards we visited Christiania, which is a weird part of Copenhagen where certain rules of society are kind of bent. You're not allowed to take pictures as to not capture the illegal activities going on there. But it looks odd. It's like a hippy commune in the middle of a big city. We had a few (CHEAP!) drinks there (I personally loved the hot chocolate!) and then headed home.



Hannes and myself managed to score some cheap minced meat (which was apparantly a mixture of veal & pork) so we decided to make hamburgers with a jacket potato. We both had about 500g of meat to devour, so as you can imagine we were quite stuffed!



Not stuffed enough to leave the carrot+cheese cake Annette baked alone though! ;)



Another Danish class tomorrow!

Week 3 - Day 19

Got up soooo early for Danish class again today. It's getting pretty hard now, so some studying is in order.

Went to do some shopping, and managed to score some really cheap minced meat, yay! Hamburgers tomorrow? Effin' Yes!

Did my laundry, vacuumed my room, no need to cook, so I'm going to enjoy a nice, relaxing day today! Off to Christiania tomorrow!

Week 2 - Day 18

Cultural day, woohoo!!

We got up at some ungodly hour, showered, and headed straight into Kobenhavn city.

The reason we left so early, was because we wanted to see the changing of the guards.



It's basically one big song and dance. ;)

Afterwards, we had a stroll through Kastellet, one of the best preserved fortifications in Europe. It was pretty neat.



This is all pretty close to the Little Mermaid, so we decided we couldn't just leave her all alone. She's *REALLY* small! She told me she'd be moving to Beijing in April. As you can see below, we had a little tête à tête.



We then went back to the Frederikskirke, which is completely built from marble (on the outside), and was equally impressive inside. (albeit less in-your-face than most European churches)



Afterwards, we went for a short walk through Nyhavn, which looks better when NOT engorged in a snowstorm.



We also saw some guy diving in the ice water. I'm getting kind of scared from when we go "Viking Bathing".



And that concluded our cultural trip of the day! Back to school tomorrow!

Week 2 - Day 17

RUGBY! The sport of MEN!

The N.Irish told us they were going to watch a Rugby match at "The Dubliner" (an Irish pub in Copenhagen) today, and we gladly tagged along.

We arrived early enough to watch the end of the Wales vs. Scotland game, in which Wales made a pretty amazing comeback.

Although the Irish pub is pretty expensive, I was overjoyed to have a browse through their menu, only to discover... MAGNERS and CURRY! Two things I haven't touched since I came back from my gap year in the UK!!

A pint of Magners was 56 Kroner, which is -admittedly- not THAT bad considering it's a pint and not some tiny drink, but still. It hurts when you know you paid 200 Kroner for an afternoon at the pub. (But seriously, pub lunch, effin' yes!)

The girls (and Hannes & Greg) had agreed to go see "Valentine's Day" at the cinema with some of the other Erasmus students, but Bruno and myself didn't really fancy seeing a chick-flick, so we decided to go warm the bench at the Windsor for when the others were done watching their movie.

When the rest arrived, we were pretty shocked to find out they managed to persuade most of them to join us. (Shocked in a good way, of course!)

After proving the point that Belgian chocolates are indeed the best in the world (Even the Swiss agreed!) we decided to teach Claire some Flemish, which led to some pretty funny stuff occurring, but you'll have to check facebook for that!

Tomorrow = Culture Day! Getting up at 08.30 on a Sunday, ergh!

Week 2 - Day 16

The day started off with a "Comparative Education" lesson by Egon. We grouped up per nation and created an overview of how we feel we can make sure every pupil actually learns something in our classes. Ours looked like this:



We then started presenting them to each other, but ran out of time.

After class, we went home to Dorien's place and the girls cooked spaghetti for us. After the delicious meal, we spent some time watching classic Belgian television on YouTube (Neveneffecten, Het Eiland, ...) before heading off to Blaagaard again.

We arrived at 10 pm. and the party was just kicking off. The Spanish & German people arrived shortly after, and they had been preparing for the party very well. It's customary to get completely drunk before you arrive at a party here in Denmark, and as they say "When in Rome, drink until you drop" - We got to see a totally different side of some of them, and the cliché "Erasmus Orgasmus" (which is really only said in Torhout) seemed to be pretty much spot-on, since we witnessed quite a few hook-ups.



When we left at 3AM, I was mildly intoxicated from the Cuba Libres and Sex on the Beaches (yummmm) and I apparantly made quite the fool of myself tecktoniking with Elke etc. - Ah well.

When we arrived back in Stenlose at around 5, after having met some pretty drunk teenagers on the nighttrain, I headed off to bed pretty quick. Tomorrow is RUGBYTIME!

Week 2 - Day 15

Hej! Today we had our first religion class, and as an introduction we had a look at the history of religion in Denmark.

I hadn't really thought about it, but to my surprise, Denmark is a mainly protestant country! Of course we also briefly touched on the "Norse mythology" and two major theologists/philosophers: Kierkegaard & Grundtvig, and how their views affected education. This was all pretty interesting, but kind of bland. At the end of the lesson we grouped up with some of our Danish counterparts and discussed the differences between our nations (in regards to religion) - Again, comparative learning! Yay!

After religion class, we met up with some of our fellow students and tutors to plan some activities for the group. Myself and Mikael (one of the tutors) are in the process of planning a trip to a club in Kobenhavn, called RUST.

Some other interesting activities include Viking Bathing, a city trip, and many more!

After this, we were meant to go to the Windsor again, but I came down with a migraine so I went home. Party tomorrow, woohoo!

Week 2 - Day 14

I got my results today!

I got an 8 for TAC, but my other marks were pretty good, so I can finally relax again.

My Visual Culture group and I met up at school today to take some pictures and plan our first project. That went well, but I don't want to give too much away until I can show the finished project.

After that we had Globalisation & Professional Change, with a guest lecture from Markus, which was aimed at making us realise we need to open our minds. Using innovative (and again, comparative) techniques, I think he achieved his goal. Very interesting lesson.

We wrapped up around 20.00 and some of us went to the bodega bar. On the train back, Hannes and me met the first annoying Danish person. He told us the train we were on wouldn't stop at our stop, but go straight to the final station after Veksø (which is the stop before ours) - So we rushed to get off at Veksø, so we could take the next train.

Turns out the guy was lying, and we sat around on a bench at Veksø station, freezing, for 22 minutes. Sigh.

Oh well, first religion class tomorrow!

Week 2 - Day 13

Day 13 of our Danish adventure, and....

I'm still stressing out over my results. I heard it could take until Thursday (rather than Monday) before we get them, and even though I know I can't change them, I'm still stressing pretty much all the time. I bet some of the others are sick of hearing about it by now.

Anyway! Denmark! Today we had our first Danish lesson from our other Danish prof, Lone. Luckily, choral repetition is still the flavour of the month, so we won't run out of new material for the DanishBeat project. We learnt how to count up to 100, learnt how to order a taxi, read the clock, etc.

We also had our first Visual Culture lesson today, taught by Sabine. As we expected, this is a very project-oriented class, so that means I'll have stuff to show you soon (hopefully!)



We were put in yet another group for this class, which I actually really like, as it gives us a chance to interact with everyone.

Sabine looks like she's been taking E-learning lessons in Belgium, as our projects involve a wiki and podcasts, haha. It really does make sense to use these though, and I'm really glad to be involved in this kind of hands-on approach. (Not to mention I use this class as an excuse to take pictures of pretty much... Anything!)



Things are definitely starting to click in my head though. I'm finally realising how much we're actually being taught here. Every class (except MAYBE Danish) has a DIRECT link to teaching back home. Be it ideas or just ready-to-use methods. I am VERY impressed.

Since I'm actually keeping up with my homework for once, I can actually relax and sleep in until like 11AM tomorrow. Yeehaw! I might try my hand at "student cooking" (ie. microwave & oven stuff) just because I can... :D

Week 2 - Day 12

Not much going on today...

Hannes and me did our laundry...







We also did our shopping, and then some Belgians met some Irish at a pub. (Yes, the Windsor again)



AND ALL THIS WHILE ANXIOUSLY WAITING FOR MY RESULTS ARGH MY HEAD FEELS LIKE IT MIGHT EXPLODE!!! Thursday at the latest!!!

Week 1 - Weekend of Day 10 and 11

Hej!

We just got back from a weekend-trip with all the Erasmus students. We stayed in an amazing Danhostel just outside of Copenhagen, where the (free) food was amazing, as were the rooms and the beds and the showers and the seminar rooms, and the ....



Basically, it was VERY impressive. More importantly, it was interesting.

Day 1
The seminar room was arranged in a NATO-style setup, which looked like us Belgians were presiding it.



We started off by looking at two models of society, drawn up by a Dutch expert called Hofstede.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand that concluded the theoretical bit of the seminar weekend. We then started to use various techniques applied in a setting of "comparative learning", which was incredibly interesting.



We started off by pairing up with people we hadn't really talked to before (I was paired with Nicole from Northern Ireland), and then we drew an outline of their body on a biiiiiig sheet of paper. We then answered questions about that person as creatively as possible, on the piece of paper. Answering with drawings is amazing.



We then joined two other pairs, and presented our partner to the whole group. Our group of six consisted of: Austrian Marina, French Karimm, German Jeanine, one of the Spanish Albas, Nicole from NI, and myself.



At this point, we already realised the double meaning, we were really getting to know each other, and were actually learning about stuff we'd normally never ask for.



We then had dinner (which was GORGEOUS) in our groups of six, which led to more chatter, and we all learned how to say "Eet smakelijk" in a few more languages.

Then we went back to the seminar room and presented the similarities and differences of our groups to the rest of the students. (Again, comparative learning!)



We then proceeded to divide ourselves into groups of (approximately) four people for our placements in April. There are only eight of us who are studying to become a teacher in secondary school, so our groups were decided pretty quickly. I'm grouped with Bruno (from Kortrijk), as well as Claire & Nicole from Northern Ireland.

We made a contract detailing the rules and guidelines for our group, and Bruno was nice enough to pose with it:



Then we did an exercise where we expressed educational situations as statues, which was good fun, although it was quite hard not to laugh. By the time we started this exercise, we had come to the conclusion that Claire has a very infectious laugh.

After some after-discussion, we ended a day of seminars (around 23.00), and most of us just lounged around, socialising until about 2AM. Apparently, we're joining the Irish gang at an Irish pub next week to watch the Rugby!

As only 5 out of 6 guys would be spending the night at the hostel, we all shared a (beautiful) room, and luckily only Bruno heard me snore! ;)

Day 2
After a breakfast buffet (yes, you guessed it, we were stuffing our faces all weekend!) we discussed the differences between the different educational systems present in our class, and we also drew a schematic version of our own systems to compare it to the ISCED model. (International Standard Classification of EDucation)

It was very surprising to find out that even now, in the days of ECTS and whatnot, there are still so many differences in our educational systems. A teaching-oriented bachelor takes four years in a lot of countries, and the Germans have to study for at least six years before they can actually teach. (They do however get a Master's degree, since just having a bachelor is impossible)

We then went back to our groups of four to discuss similarities and differences, and then we all shared one (or more) stories from our careers in school. We then rejoined the whole class, and one story per group would be told to everyone. It probably won't surprise anyone that we heard some really interesting (and shocking!) stories.

Lunch was next up on the timetable, so more face-stuffing-goodness!

After lunch, we went for a walk to the beach. Bruno and myself decided to enjoy the snow to its fullest by making (more) snow angels.





Seeing a frozen sea is actually quite a sight. We all decided to go for a walk on the ice, but apparently, two Vikings such as Bruno and myself were too much for the ice to handle. (Yes, this means I fell through the ice, luckily it was only like 10cm. deep)



After the walk, we returned to some more active learning, in our groups of six. We were asked to pick a topic, and do a little play about it. We chose to depict a teacher interacting with "annoying" parents, which sparked quite a bit of discussion, and it's always amazing to see a Spanish girl go "furia" on your ass.

Oh! I almost forgot, it was Karin from Austria's birthday on Sunday, so we had cakes and coffee/tea to celebrate, and we sang our "national" happy birthday songs!

Anyway, after the little plays, we recapped the whole weekend, and we headed home.







Oh, and the Danes either think very highly of dogs, or aren't very impressed by children...



This weekend was nothing short of amazing. We made new friends, learnt a lot, and were made aware of new methods that are applicable and motivating in a classroom setting.

Just brilliant! Thank you Blaagaard/KDAS, Egon & Lilian!