Thursday was the first day of classes with DIS. My schedule is pretty interesting because I only have classes on Mondays and Thursdays, but it is stacked from 10am to 6pm. When I was picking my classes for this semester, I had a lot of freedom because I saved arts & science requirements at Syracuse for my time abroad so that I did not have to figure out how to get any credits specifically for my major & minor. Because of this, I was able to pick classes that seemed interesting to me and are not that relevant to my prior education. I am taking:
1. Sustainable Food Production and Consumption
2. Danish Language and Culture
3. Danish Design
4. Strategies for Urban Livability
On Thursday I started with Sustainable Food Production and Consumption, which is my core course here at DIS. That means that it is my main focus class and I will travel with them for 2 weeks throughout the semester. The first trip is in a couple of week and it is to Aarhus and Odense, two cities in Denmark. The second trip is in April and we are going to Delta Ebra and Barcelona, Spain.
This class is all about sustainable agriculture in Denmark and looking into how the world needs to change in order to feed the 10 billion people we are estimated to have by 2050.
When we visit Aarhus and Odense, these are some of the places we will be going to:
- regenerative farm
- conventional pig production farm
- sustainable fine dining restaurant
- biodynamic farm
- foraging kitchen
- svanholm: organic dairy production and community
- hansen is: organic dairy and vegan ice cream production
On our trip to Spain, we will be going to focusing on:
- soil regeneration
- natural vineyard
- food systems and supermarkets
- cultured meat
- urban food systems logistics
- mediterranean sea as food source
We were also told to bring a bathing suit to Spain because we will be visiting a tuna fish farm and swimming with the tuna…
The class is definitely a mix of students who are environmental science majors, and people like me who are taking it because it seemed like an interesting topic. The style of the class is very group-oriented which is good because we get to talk to new people each class and the teacher, Camilla, does a good job of putting people from different majors together.
Side note: In Denmark they refer to their teachers by their first names, which is definitely hard to get used to when coming from the US where we call them Professor (last name) or even Doctor (last name).
On the first day of class, Camilla brought us coffee and a vegan cheese and cracker to try. (It looks gross but it was actually pretty good)
My next class was Danish Language and Culture. I have been practicing Danish for a few weeks on the Duolingo App, so I know how to write a decent amount. But the pronunciation in Danish is VERY difficult. They use the same alphabet but they add three more vowels: ø æ å and they pronounce most letters differently than we do in English.
My teacher, Janne, is very nice and seems to be a great teacher. She definitely understands how hard Danish is to learn. She splits class time 50/50 between language and culture. It took the full first half of class to learn how to say “hi, my name is__” and “what is your name?”
Hej! Jeg hedder Julia. Hvad hedder du?
The difficult part is the “hedder” because it has sounds that we don’t make in English. For the double d sound you have to put your tongue behind your bottom teeth and then make a “th” sound.
I really like the people in my class and the classroom is set up where we are all sitting around one large table so it has a good community feel to it. Janne gave us these Danish candies to try.
I have about an hour and a half between when Danish Language ends and my Danish Design class starts, so I went to Pauldans Cafe. I got a goat cheese sandwich and it was super good.
My Danish Design class is in a cool building and our classroom has yellow walls. My teacher’s name is Thomas and he has a background in Architecture and worked as a designer for Lego at some point. (I didn’t realize Lego was a danish brand until I got here!)
The first thing we did in class was make a lego representation of ourselves which was….interesting. He was super vague on the instructions and placed 3 massive bins of legos at the front of the room for us to use. For mine I said that I was surfing because that’s something that I love to do, and I put cities in the background and some mountains and nature on the other because I am someone who loves to be in all different environments.
My partner did a more metaphorical approach and made hers shaped like a heart. She said that valentines day is her favorite holiday because she likes to surprise her friends with stuff, and she likes to approach everyone she meets with a loving attitude.
From this assignment it was very easy to tell who in the room was a design or architecture student based on their lego creations. One guy somehow created an entire elephant enclosure.
This class only meets once a week, so it is a 3 hour long class. Most weeks we will be visiting places like furniture showrooms or museums for the first half of class and then talking about what we saw for the second half.
On Monday I had my Strategies for Urban Livability class for the first time. Like Danish Design, it meets once a week and is a 3 hour class. We learned about what makes the “perfect city block” in this picture, and how Copenhagen meets a lot of that criteria.
The perfect city block has buildings on the outside and open space in the middle for gardens, courtyards, and parks. It has public transportation on the outside allowing people to easily move around without cars, utilizes rooftop space for restaurant space, gardens, or solar panels, and the buildings aren’t taller than 4-5 stories because it is important that people are able to see into the top floor and see other people. There were a lot of other criteria but it was really interesting to learn about it and how Copenhagen meets certain criteria.
Then we went on a walking tour for the last hour of class that was led by my teacher. She stopped to explain different parts of the city, such as how the garbage cans were all made square so that pizza boxes were able to fit inside, that the cobblestone was not always in the city but was brought back to slow down cars and bicyclists, and how the drain grates have significantly smaller holes so that they are easy to bike over. She also explained that courtyard walls are all painted light colors in the city because they will reflect light into the building windows which is important in a city that does not get a lot of sunlight. A lot of the street lights in Copenhagen are hanging in the middle of the street rather than the usual street light poles, which she explained is important because it allows them to hang closer to the ground and provide more coverage with each light while also using less energy to light up more space.
Overall my classes seem to be very interesting a cover a lot of different topics that I otherwise would not have learned about during my time abroad. I feel like they will all teach me about different aspects of Danish culture which is a really unique experience!
