LEGOLAND!!!

When I win the Superbowl in a few years, I won't state the classic "I'm going to Disneyworld" speil, instead "I'm going to Legoland." OK, that may be a bit of an overstatement, but not by much. Legoland is AWESOME! It doesn't have a ton of rides and most of them are geared towards kids, but the legos make up for all of that.

Here's a little info to preface my post: "The Lego Group had a very humble beginning in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a carpenter from Billund, Denmark. Christiansen began creating wooden toys in 1932; the company began calling itself "Lego" two years later in 1934. The company expanded to producing plastic toys in 1940. In 1949, Lego began producing the now-famous interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". (Wikipedia)

Yesterday, 4 of us from class drove an hour-and-a-half to Billund, Denmark to join the fun. I really wasn't sure what to expect, but the park completely blew me away. The amount of lego-made things is staggering. And we aren't talking those modern big blocks that try and pose at legos, no, I'm talking everything made out of individual, original small legos. There was so much awesome stuff that I took 330 pictures in 6 hours. I don't think we stopped smiling the entire time we were there. You can't help but to be a kid in this park, it's infectious. If you can't enjoy a place like this then you have something wrong with you, EVERYTHING IS LEGOS. Heck, even the trash cans were shaped like legos. They even have lego pits in the lines of the rides for you to play with while you're waiting.

To check it out for yourself, see the link in the title box for the 330 pictures I took. Side note: everything in these pictures is made of legos, including the people, impressive stuff!

I'm off to Berlin first thing tomorrow morning (very first thing, 7am) and so when I return I'll be sure to post on the trip. I'll be without my computer until I get back late Wed. night.

It's Official...as in I bought my tickets today

Berlin, Germany: April 27th - April 30th

Reykjavik, Iceland: June 3rd - June 10th

And yes, that means I will spend my 21st birthday in Iceland, how about that.

Polar Bear Plunge.....almost

Michiel shot this video with his water-proof digital camera. We decided to go swimming on Sunday in approx. 42 degree water on a 48 degree day. Cold, but good times! It was one of those run in for a bit, run out situations. We went in about 5 times. Luckily, the sun was out and there were no clouds in the sky so it felt relatively warm (?) laying on the beach. It was funny to see people walking by in pants and winter jackets, and here we are sitting, wet in just swimsuits on the beach.

P.S. living by a beach is awesome

Beautiful Weather Does Wonders

So I'm sitting here outside on the porch on a fantastic afternoon in Arhus, Denmark and I am sick for the first time while abroad. I woke up three mornings ago with my throat really swollen. It was difficult for me to swallow and I was really stuffed up. I had woken up that night with night sweats for the first time that I can remember. I'm pretty sure I also had a fever because I was getting chills all day. It was nice to take advantage of the free Danish healthcare, even if the doctor could only tell me I had a virus. Really it is an annoying illness more than anything, having to drink constantly to keep my throat from getting dry. Taking Advil and drinking tea has been my medicine. On the bright side, I woke up this morning feeling much better. My throat is still sore, but there is a noticeable difference. So that's good!

The weather the past two days has been fantastic! Yesterday, Michiel (Netherlands) and I went down to the beach for a little while and just hung out on the dock.
I've grown very fond of taking pictures lately and so we just messed around taking a bunch of different shots. Putting the timer on and setting things up. I'm pretty sure I want to take some classes and get better. I'll put that on the agenda when I get back home. Your humble narrator is headed down to the beach now, hope everyone is doing well. Hej hej!

Bus Stop Conversations

While I was waiting for the bus today I struck up a conversation with an Iranian woman living in Denmark. She just completed her PhD studies and is going to return to Iran this summer after spending 5 years in Denmark. I actually initiated the conversation, which for those of you that know me is not exactly my nature. When she was coming to the bus stop I heard her say something in English and so that kind of gave me more confidence to say something. The best conversation starter when you're abroad is "Where are you from?." We talked for about 20 minutes and it was very interesting. I am glad I decided to talk to her. Something she said that struck me the most was "Iranians don't hate Americans, they hate the American government." It was very interesting to hear that from someone who has every reason in the world not to like me. The thoughts she shared about Bush, bin Laden, 9/11 and Iraq, to name a few, were intriguing.

Anyway, that was just a cool experience for me today that I thought I would share. Hope everyone is doing well! Hej hej!

Paris Pictures

The link for all of my pictures from Paris is above in the title area. Enjoy!

Danish Fodbold

Ok, so hopefully many of you understood the title. It's soccer to the lay person. Quite an interesting spelling though. Last night, Michael, Michiel and I went to the Aarhus GF vs. Viborg FF foldbold match. Czech and floorball Michael was able to get us free tickets for the game since his team gets many of them for each game. It was the top league in Denmark, but to be honest they were pretty bad. Mark, I am fairly confident that you could start in this league. Aarhus and Viborg are 10th and 11th respectively in the 12-team league. After the season is over the 11th and 12th teams move down a level, so this was a big game for Aarhus. The game ended in a 0-0 draw and although there wasn't much action to report on the field, the fans certainly provided enough entertainment.

It was the biggest crowd of the season with 14,077 people on hand and the atmosphere was rowdy despite the bad play. We sat in the lower bowl, under the upper bowl where the hooligans sat. I don't think there are really any professional sports fan in the U.S. who cheer like fodbold fans. The closest thing I can think of are college fans. All the cheers, hand gestures, flag waving and dancing really make the game fun. Since we didn't know the words, we joined in the cheers by just making the general sound of the words they were saying, it worked pretty well. Towards the end of the game the Viborg fans started throwing smoke flares onto the track that ringed the field. Security decided to beef things up then and sent out a couple dozen more people to surround the field. Much to our chagrin, no one decided to rush the field.

However, the best thing about the night were the "USA, USA..." chants. Turns out that there is a player on the Arhus team from the U.S. and he played at Wake Forest University. So almost everytime he touched the ball the crowd would chant "USA." Needless to say I enthusiastically joined in. Late in the game came the most unexpected thing from a fan, even toping the USA chants. Right before the US player threw the ball in on our side, a guy behind me started to recite the "I Have a Dream" speech, catching me completely off guard. If you would have asked me before I came what would be the least expected thing to hear in the vastly white Danish population, that one would have been right up there. He actually knew a few lines and then stopped.

Although it was cold and the play wasn't very good, I still had a good time!

It's Freezing in Arhus

The other day I participated in World Freeze Day here in Arhus. It was a worldwide thing organized as just a cool improv event. All those who knew about it here in Arhus gathered at the train station downtown and at the stroke of 6pm froze in place for 5 minutes. There were a lot of people who ended up participating and it was crazy to see so many people just randomly frozen in place. I'm definitely glad I participated as well.

Here's a video of the event: You can see me very clearly for a few seconds; I'm on my knee proposing to a girl in my class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7vr2OnegYo

Also, for more info on the World Freeze Day check out this site: www.worldfreeze.org

Tiger Pride

I found this today on STLtoday.com.

"In other news…

ESPN just released its ratings for the 2007 season of College Gameday. No. 4 Missouri vs. No. 2 Kansas at Arrowhead was the most-viewed pregame EVER, averaging 2,034,000 households. The previous high of 1,913,000 households set on Nov. 18, 2006 when No. 2 Michigan met No. 1 Ohio State."

Wow!