Mental Breaks

I've still been keeping a steady schedule with labs, but over the weekend found sometime for a few mental breaks.

On Friday, the Case Crew went out for dinner on Case's tab.  Craig and his wife, Betsy, joined us for dinner at a pizzeria.  It was one of the first times I've been really full in like a week.  We're planning on a weekly dinner to touch base with one another or maybe just to make sure we don't starve.  The dinner was a lot of fun.  We heard a lot of stories about Craig's college years, which he may regret telling us eventually.

Saturday was a work day, but we had a pasta party for dinner!  Most of our diets include a large portion of pasta, so to mix it up we decided to eat together.

Sunday, a few of us took an extended mental break and walked through a near by park which used to be one of the royal hunting grounds.  We were gone longer than we had anticipated, but it was a nice break.

Yesterday morning, we attended a Welcome session by DTU and met the Dean and an English professor, who gave us an overview of Danish culture from a foreigners point of view.  The English professor, Claire Clausen, is from New Zealand, but has lived in Denmark for over 30 years.  One of the main things she taught us was it's hard to make friends with Danish people for various reason.  It was nice to hear some of these cultural things, like everybody follows the fashion trends so no one stands out, because we don't have DTU students around to ask since it is July and the country is on holiday.

Tomorrow, we will tour a Nordic Sugar processing plant.  We were told that we might get dirty, so I'm not sure exactly all that the tour entails.  I'll be sure to let you know!

Until then,

M.e.

Jacob at liquid/liquid extraction

The distillation column we used.  ~2meters

Joe taking some density measurements

Jess and Joe laughing at Pizza Dinner, Alaina on the end

Betsy and Craig telling stories

My container, 330Z

Libby excited for the Pasta Party, Joe chilling, Jacob still hard at work

Chef Krysta

Our Pasta Party was in Jess's lovely kitchen

Jess avoiding pictures...

still...

Got her.

PASTA!!!

Magnetic darts are a good call especially for all of those without such good aim (myself included)

Found a Transformer

Left, Sidewalk

Middle, Bike path

Right, Road

You follow those rules, or else...

Gate to Dyrehavsbakken (Deer Park Hill) for our hike

Clearly we all needed a mental break

Giant Snail!

Some random tower in someone's backyard

There was a golf coures in the middle of the hunting grounds

Jess getting excited about birds

Krysta.... excited about golf?

There was no room for error on this course with high grass immediately off the fair way.  One of these guys hit just off the fairway, shrugged and put down another ball to shoot again. 

Jess admiring the deer

The antlers are a bit different than our white tailed deer back home. 

They introduce new deer to the park each year and then kill them all before the winter.

A royal country home

It was under construction :(

We noticed we were almost at the water so we kept going

Sweden's over there somewhere. 

Melted giant snail?

Libby (team leader) looking great

Me (2nd in command)

I forgot to go over this before, Jess decided that we were a team and would have ranks, so she arbitrarily assigns us numbers and we move ranks depending on how we make her feel that day.

PLAYGROUND!

Puppy!  So the owner was right there, but this reminds me, people just leave babies in carriages outside while they go into stores or restaurants.  Really crazy.  A lot of trust in their peers here.

The town by the beach had birds painted on all their buildings.  Don't really know why.

A family strolling by in robes.

More Coke.  I think I've had one in every country.

Bakken!  The oldest operating amusement park.  We just walked through since we had already been gone a while and had lab reports to finish.

Libby excited about her freshly picked flowers and this rock.