Of Mice and Men

As it's Wednesday, I once again am finding myself with too much school work to do and not enough motivation on my day off to do it. So, as I wait for the clock to hit 17:30 so I can stick my quiche in the oven [side note: My host family probably thinks I don't eat anything healthy at all at home, considering the fact that so far, I've made quiche, fish with cream sauce, baked macaroni and cheese, Hamburger Helper (thanks to mom) and lasagna for dinner, in addition to about a million and one different baked goods ranging from muffins, brownies and banana bread (all made from scratch - not to brag or anything) and some peanut butter cookies.] I figured I'd throw up another update. I doubt it will have much of a theme, and it will probably just end up being a few random anecdotes. I'm feeling rather inspired, which probably had something to do with the fact that my current background music is Ave Maria - not exactly by choice, however. I don't know if I've ever mentioned the fact that I have the basement essentially to myself, with the exception of my host dad's work room. Because he's an artist/writer/singer/actor, he's frequently either playing piano or singing in there, and it should be said that he's absolutely amazing. As is the rest of the family. The daughter, mom and dad all sing, and the son, dad and mom play piano. Nothing puts you in a good mood quite like walking upstairs and hearing a 3 part harmony going on in addition to piano music, and I'll stop writing about it now, because words really don't do it justice. But I promise you, they're all wonderfully talented and could put every single artist on the radio and TV to shame.

This past Saturday some friends and I found ourselves at Ice Bar, which is somewhere you really just have to go while you're in Copenhagen. It's exactly what it sounds like - a 

bar made entirely out of ice, and kept constantly at -5 degrees. Everything, from the tables to the walls and cups, is made out of ice, and they give you thermal parkas and gloves so that you can stay (moderately) warm. It's absurdly expensive to actually drink there (although included in the cover charge is one free drink), so once we got in, we realized we were probably the youngest people there. I'm sure it didn't help that we were there around 10:30, and most 20-somethings don't head out until around 11-11:30, but it also didn't help that we weren't 30-40 years old with money to throw away. It was definitely a place worth going to, but I'm not going to be frequenting it in the future. My poor college wallet just can't afford it!

Yesterday morning I went into the kitchen and heard some rustling in the cabinets, and realized immediately it was either a mouse or squirrel. Why my immediate thought was squirrel, I can't really explain - but there was a fair amount of rustling, which sounded like it had to come from an animal larger than a mouse. So I open the cabinet a little to scare it away, and as I'm doing so, it occurs to me that the mouse, which was out in the middle of the day, could very well be rabid and decide to jump on my head if I opened the cabinet. I quickly closed it again, and heard the mouse run away. Or so I thought, because when I opened the cabinet for a second time, there it was, staring me down from atop the box of cookies. I slammed the door shut again, and this time heard it run across the entire kitchen by way of the connecting cabinets. Gross. Later that night I told my host dad about it, and as it turns out, my host mom is terrified of mice. She then proceeded to talk about selling the house throughout all of dinner, and whenever there was a pause in conversation she would say, "aye! En mus!". My host dad set up a mouse trap where the cookies used to be, and left for work. My host mom didn't realize that her husband had already thrown away the cookies, and wanted to get rid of any other food that was on that shelf, so she went into the kitchen, and screamed. Apparently the mouse was upset that his cookies had been removed, and decided to be waiting there to stare down whoever happened to open the cabinet next. I was legitimately worried I would need to call 221 because my host mom had had a heart attack, but she just ran out of the kitchen and seemed to be alright. About an hour later, we were watching TV and heard a loud snap which was clearly the mouse trap, and my host mom did not like this at all. I turned to her and convinced her to leave the mouse alone until her husband came back - I knew there was probably no way she'd be able to handle getting rid of it herself. She agreed, and we continued watching TV. A little while later, I went back into the kitchen to put away some glasses, and heard a lot of rustling in the kitchen - turns out, the mouse wasn't dead. This bothered my host mom even more, and she decided she just had to take care of it - so she put on some plastic gloves, and cowered in the doorway until she convinced herself that the mouse could wait until her husband came home. I went down to my room a little later, and didn't hear anything about the mouse until this afternoon, when I found out that after mouse 1 was removed, the trap was set back up, and in the morning there was a new mouse inside. Mouse 2 was removed, and by the afternoon mouse 3 had been captured too. And with every new mouse, my host mom gets more and more jumpy every time she hears any noise at all. Admittedly, it's really gross that they're in the kitchen, but I'm glad we're getting rid of them. 

Almost every time someone finds out I'm from the US, they say something to me along the lines of, "Good job with Obama!" (Really, I personally worked quite hard to make it happen). People think it's cute when I try to ask for something in Danish with my silly American accent, or when I follow up an all-English interaction with "tak!" They're more than willing to help me when I'm lost, or when there's an announcement on the train/metro and I need it translated so that I can understand. That's why I was taken very much by surprise the other day, when I was actually looked upon with disdain by an older gentleman because of where I'm from. I was standing in the supermarket, when he turned around and said something to me in Danish. I apologized, for about the millionth time that day, for not speaking Danish. He thought about it for a second, and then said, "I just wanted to make sure I wasn't skipping you in line." "No," I said, "It's alright - you were here first." So the man turns around, and about 30 seconds later turns back to me saying, "Where are you from? You don't sound like you're from the UK. Are you a student here?" quite excitedly, I might add. "Oh no," I responded, "I'm not from the UK. I'm from the US." As a response, I got a quite disgusted, "The US?" "Yes, the US." "Oh," he said, again quite disdainfully, and turned around. ... Wait, what? Now, I expected this type of interaction to happen while I'm in France, or maybe some other country. But the people here are warm and friendly, and if anything are excited that someone from the US is interesting in being in Denmark. ("Why come here?" is a question I frequently get.) I told my host parents about it later, and they were just as stunned as I was. All my host mom could say about it was, "Well, I certinaly hope he was just confused!"

I'll probably stick another short update on here later, but right now I need to go watch over dinner. It doesn't matter how long I stay here, I'll never figure out how to use this oven.