While everyone else was at Oktoberfest..

Happy Monday!  Hanging out in “The Living Room” between classes with an iced latte, updating the blog after finishing my essay that's due tomorrow, and looking forward to cooking class tonight makes for a perfect afternoon.

Although I didn’t do any major traveling this weekend, I kept busy nonetheless. 

Saturday I went to see my visiting family at Dyrehaven, which is basically this huge park with a ton of deer that roam free, will run right across the paths, and seem to have almost no fear of people.  We were going at an interesting time- mating season, which was cool because the males had crazy full sets of antlers (which you never see on the deer around Pennsylvania) but also a little unnerving, as we were told the males would be more possessive over their females and more likely to attack.  Almost as soon as we got there, we saw a huge group right at the edge of the forest.  

Check out the antlers!

As we continued walking through the park, we casually stumbled upon a small castle used by the king as a place to rest back in the day when he would come to the park to go hunting.  The front of the castle offered a picturesque view of wide open green fields surrounded by the forest, and the back provided a perfect view of the sea.  Lucky king.  We stopped for a little bit to rest, enjoy the view, and play on some fallen logs..

Visiting "sister"  :)

The sea; no big deal

The whole family; minus Julia

After the castle, we continued our walk through the park and passed by the oldest amusement park in Denmark, and perhaps even the world.  Unfortunately it was closed for the season (which really disappointed my visiting sister who had been looking forward to "candyfloss," aka cotton candy) but we were still able to walk through.  It looked like it would have been so much fun had it been open, but when we were there it kind of felt like a scene from a movie of an abandoned ghost town- very strange!  

We continued walking (if you haven't gathered, we walked A LOT- we calculated after dinner and we walked close to 7 miles!) and we stopped at the restaurant where our visiting parents had their wedding reception to grab a coffee.  It's clearly a super special place to them, and they still go for dinner every year on their anniversary, so I was so grateful that I got to share it with them for the afternoon.  Plus, I think we were all grateful for the chance to sit down after a full day of walking and exploring, and I know my visiting sisters and I definitely enjoyed our "varm kakao" (hot chocolate).  The days I spend with them seriously put me in the best mood ever!

Yesterday was also a busy day- I channeled by inner-blonde-Danish-5 year old kid and went to Legoland!!  I had signed up for the trip through DIS back in the summer because I heard a trip to Legoland is basically a rite of passage for all Danish children, so of course I wanted to experience it too; however, I wasn't sure what to really expect.  As soon as we arrived, I realized that besides parents, we were the only ones over the age of 7.. and that they REALLY weren't kidding about the legos.  There were legos everywhere from the moment we entered the park.  There were a few really cool rides too, but "Mini-world," the area of the park with miniature lego replicas of landmarks from all around the world, stole the show.  

              

1.5 million legos to recreate Mt. Rushmore

My personal favorite: lego-proposal!

As you can tell.. the detail of everything was ridiculous.  We couldn't help but to envy the talent of the little lego architects, and also that their job is to basically play with legos.  We ended the day by visiting the lego shop.  Because I was never into legos as a child, and because I still have no creative skill whatsoever, I didn't plan on buying anything besides a postcard; however, at the last second, I found the perfect Legoland souvenir- lego-Ron Weasley!!  Yes, I spent the equivalent of $7 on a tiny little keychain, but it was so worth it.  Overall, I'd say the day was a major success as it allowed me to live the life of a small Danish child as well as addressing real childhood (and current) love for Harry Potter.

Like I said, a weekend spent right in Denmark kept me incredibly busy, and I'm pretty exhausted.  In the next few days, I'll be resting up because on Sunday I leave for KOSOVO with Justice & Human Rights for our long study tour.  Today in class, we checked the weather and its supposed to be 80 degrees and sunny!!!  Copenhagen has definitely not prepared me for that.....