Things I've been doing that I haven't told you about... Part 2!

Part 2 is... Things I've been doing with Lars and Lilly, my awesome "Visiting Family!"

This is what I do most of the time at Lars and Lilly's house - help prepare the delicious food we have for dinner! I didn't even know this picture was being taken haha. I've learned many things from Lilly about how to cook, including the best way to cut vegetables. Now every time I cut onions I use her method; it's so much faster and makes all the slices the same size!

Most people in Denmark don't celebrate Halloween, which is sad, but Lilly and Lars are awesome and know what's up so they had a Halloween theme for Lilly's birthday party! They sure know how to decorate :)

One day Lars and Lilly took me to a small fishing village. Many of the houses there are still  made in the old style, with wooden roofs made of twig like things. It is really good for insulation and keeps the heat in during the winter and the cool air in during the summer, but it isn't so widely used anymore because it is also highly flammable...

The fishing boats!

Me with the boats :)

To the ship!

An old engine.

The same day we went to the fishing village we also passed by an old monastery. We stopped the car for a closer look! 

Apparently back in the day monks were also in charge of punishing people for their wrongdoings... so there are still several torture devices outside of the monastery. I think the idea of this one is you would just be forced to sit there for hours and it would be really uncomfortable... this was probably for petty crimes. 

The pillory and stocks! Lars offered to take a picture of me in it... I was tempted... but not too tempted. 

The monk's garden. Lots of interesting things here... Plants to bewitch the mind, ensnare the senses... even put a stopper to death!

Don't know what use monks have for cows, but you never know...

I also had the treat of getting to visit the Tegners Museum and Statuepark with Lars and Lilly. Tegners was a famous Danish artist, and he built a whole museum to hold many of his statues before he died. The statue park is in a beautiful part of the country!

View of the surrounding area from the statue park. 

Ditto, but on the other side. 

A view of the museum from the statue park!

One of the statues. 

Lars and Lilly also brought me with them one day to see Louisiana, a famous museum of international modern art. The museum is huge and there are several different exhibits featured at any given time. We went to the exhibit about New Nordic Architecture, which was fascinating. There were many models of special buildings around Copenhagen as well as other places in Scandinavia, and we are planning to go on an Architecture hunt at some point and see all the famous buildings with our own eyes! I also got to meet Lilly's father when we went to Louisiana. He was very nice and loves going to the museum! We will probably go back again later this year to see the other exhibits :)

I've also been to Tivoli gardens twice now, once for the summer exhibit, and once for the Halloween exhibit. Next is the Christmas exhibit, which we will probably go to soon! Danes start celebrating Christmas in November, since they don't have to wait for Thanksgiving to be over before they begin the Christmas cheer. Here is a link to the Tivoli webpage if you're interested: http://www.tivoli.dk/

Okay, well that's all I have for now!

Cheers :)

Things I've been doing that I haven't told you about yet... Part 1

Part One of things I've been doing that I haven't told you about yet is.... THE BALLET!

My trumpet teacher told me one day in my lesson that sometimes he is able to get discounted tickets to the Royal Ballet. Was I interested? YES. Funnily enough, he called me the next day to tell me that he could get tickets for that week! He said I could bring a friend as well, so I chose to drag my friend Haley Mae along with me, because she was a dedicated ballerina in High School, and I knew she would appreciate the show. So... we went! And here it is :)

WE WERE REALLY EXCITED

We took the bus to the Opera House. 

This is just what happens when Haley and I get together...

Same with this. Although Haley was extra excited because she's a ballet expert!

Haley in front of the Opera House! 

The inside of the Opera House!

Sparkly balls in the Opera House... do you think they have these in a smaller size so I could put some in my room?

So Haley Mae actually has a video blog on YouTube, and I was lucky enough to be featured in her blog about our trip to the Ballet. I think it is very informative, so I'll give you the link so you can see another representation of this event!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBfB5AogSAw&feature=relmfu

When we got to the ballet, and I was peeking into the orchestra pit, (as usual, the first thing I do when I get to any performance...) I realized that the two trumpet players looked awfully familiar... because THEY ARE MY TEACHERS at the Academy! I'm not quite sure how this slipped my mind before... but now it makes sense that my teachers are able to get discounted tickets... because they are in the performance. The clip of the ballet in this video features a trumpet solo, (I made sure Haley edited it so you can hear the whole thing) and that solo is played by one of my private teachers! 

This is a picture of the Opera House during the day. I actually had a private lesson here once!

This is the place I go to have my trumpet lessons most of the time. It's the old Royal Danish Theater. No big deal...  

As a side note, last week I went to the annual concert at the Royal Danish Academy of Music (where I'm studying), where they celebrated the anniversary of the Academy. It is a tradition for the Queen to be there every year. She loves music and is a huge supporter of the Academy! It was really interesting because after the orchestra was done tuning, everyone became silent but the lights didn't turn off yet, nor did the conductor come on stage. After about a minute of me wondering what was going on, THE QUEEN and her assistants walked in to her special box and everyone stood up when she walked in and didn't sit down again until she was comfortably seated in her chair. She is such a cute elderly woman, and her people adore her! I was planning on staring at her the whole concert (creepy, I know) but my attention was drawn away from her as soon as the orchestra started playing; they performed Mahler 5 and it was PHENOMENAL. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. The third trumpet player was only 16 years old... I think I may have to quit.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this post!

Till next time.

IT'S ORGANIC!!!

Hello, friends. Here is my blog about working on an organic farm in France, and being in Paris for a day. Sorry it's taken me so long to post this... technology hates me and I had to start over three times before it finally worked... Anyway - here it is!

Liz expressing with her face that she forgot our boarding passes...

Excitement abounds in the airport... We are going to France!

We made it to the Metro

The Paris Metro! Ridiculously crowded all the time...

We were originally told to meet the Farmer at the market first thing in the morning, so we could start helping out. However when we got there, the farmer said he didn't need any help until tear down at 2pm, so we had the day to explore the city instead! We stumbled upon this weird looking building and took some pictures of it...

Right by the Eiffel tower there was this huge display of painted bears. This was the description of the purpose of the exhibit, if you're interested. The main point is that the people from all the world's countries are represented by the bears, and they are all holding hands, which means they must like each other. 

Liz with Amerrrca bear...

Me with the Denmark Bear! Apparently Denmark is called the "Fairy Tale Kingdom."

Us doing the Bear pose.

I was like, "Hey, Liz, let's walk towards that building with the gold on top, it looks important." Turns out it's the church that Napoleon commissioned and he's buried in the back of it.

Topiary hugging at it's classiest.

And... we meet the farmer! This is Luc hard at work at the market.

Tomatoes...

 
Me getting excited for vegetables. This is a giant green radish.

Liz and I in the van, preparing ourselves for the long drive ahead!

Snacks for the passengers on the dashboard.

So... for some reason Liz and I thought that the farm we would be working at was right outside of Paris. As it turns out, the farm was actually on the complete opposite side of the country, and a three hour drive from the city, if you don't stop at all... this is us realizing that we're in for a long night.

We stopped for dinner at Luc's mom's house. She didn't speak a word of English, but somehow we managed to get along just fine and help her make dinner. She was so sweet!

We drove for half the night and had to keep stopping on the side of the road so Luc could sleep for a bit before continuing to drive. By the time we got to the farm it was probably past two in the morning, and then we had to unload the truck so the vegetables wouldn't go bad! Luckily this meant that we didn't have to work at all the next day though :)
This is the door to the bedroom Liz and I stayed in.

Artsy pic of the staircase up to our room.

This was a cool wooden painting of a woman guiding us up the staircase.

The old fashioned heater in our room. Unfortunately we didn't get to use it at all...

Our beds!

The toilet! Vintage style...

This was the building we stayed in, with our bedrooms upstairs and the bathroom and the kitchen downstairs. The building used to be a mill before it became a farm house :)

The other houses on the farm.

Fields!

View from the road.

Barn!

There were lots of these covered structures on the farm.

The same field as before, on a sunny day. We were lucky to get a bit of Vitamin D while we were here, because we knew we wouldn't be getting any back in Copenhagen!

Lettuce...

Tomatoes. Yum.

The stream right by our house. The stream actually flowed under our room!

Pile of wooden boxes. We used these to collect and store the veggies.

Liz and I on our first morning on the farm. Sun!

We were given the task of washing this filthy dog. We thought it also could use a haircut, because it's dreadlocks were a bit disgusting...

Me cutting the dog's hair...

One of the perks of living on a farm? Endless supply of vegetables! Aka, delicious salad ;) Lunch was served every day between 2:30 and 3:30pm. We ate so much at lunch that we skipped dinner most nights. If we did eat dinner though, we ate between 8 and 9pm.


The table set for lunch!  Every day during lunch we would listen to the radio. For some reason, the station we listened to never reported anything about France... it only talked about Las Vegas (of all things...) and the upcoming election in the States... Liz and I asked Luc why the French spend so much time listening to stories about Las Vegas, and he said it's because they think it's a crazy place that they can't even fully believe exists, and it's hilarious for them to listen to the stupid people being interviewed... Go America.

After lunch every day, once we cleaned the kitchen, Liz and I were free to do whatever we wanted. Every day we spent some time lounging on these chairs by the river and reading our books. Very relaxing!

On the chairs, reading again!

We also went on a walk a few times. This is the road we would walk down to see other parts of the countryside. The dog led the way... can you see him in the distance?

One day we also went on a bike ride! We stopped along the side of the road to read our books :)

Liz with her bike by a field of cows. The cows in France are all white! And not obese like the cows in America... Surprise surprise. 

One of our favorite characters on the farm - Gerald. He was the one who told us about the bikes and was very concerned with making sure we were taking advantage of our leisure time. Whenever we asked him a question, he would babble away to himself in French and then eventually answer us in broken English... He was very sweet!

Me, Cami, and Liz. Cami was another one of the permanent employees on the Farm. She was really nice and helped us learn how to make farm-sized proportions of food for lunch every day. Farmers eat A LOT.

The dog and cat snuggling in bed to ward of the cold at night :)

 Liz and I on our last night on the farm. We went on a walk to say au revoir to the countryside! 

Liz and I in the train station on our way back to Paris. Liz's face reflects the anxiety she feels because of the stress of working on a farm and dealing with our beloved farm owner Luc, who was a bit of a challenge to work with...

Me saying goodbye to Luc!

Since I don't have any pictures of us doing actual farming (because we were hard at work and couldn't stop to take pictures!) I will just outline the harvests of each day we were on the farm...

Monday: Potatoes!

Tuesday: Beetroot

Wednesday: Beetroot and carrots

Thursday: Spinach and green beans (By far the most boring day)

Also, I think it's important that I mention a few key "Luc Quotes." He really had a lot of good ones...

LUC QUOTES:

"The most important thing is the Harvest!!!"

"EFFICIENCY, EFFICIENCY!"

"I have one thousand hours of work to do, and I am already late!"

"I never sleep enough. A farmer has the hardest job in the world. I am always tired!"

"The organic vegetable is a higher quality than the chemical vegetable. But it takes so much more time to harvest the organic vegetable, and you can't make the price enough because then no one will buy it."

"I am always working."

And did I mention... "THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THE HARVEST!"

So, maybe this gives you a bit of an impression of what this guy was like... Not the most optimistic person ever...

On a lighter note, here is a funny video to watch! It was my inspiration for the title of this blog.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j11eLk_j3fo