And I thought Russian was hard...

 "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head.  If you talk to him in his language that goes to his heart."

Nelson Mandela

My original plan when starting university was to study Russian.  After two semesters of struggling through what I thought was the most difficult language on the planet I gave up.  Little did I know that I would one day wish that I was still learning Russian instead of this crazy language known as Danish.  I had my first Danish class today and let me tell you, it is the craziest thing I have ever seen.  The gist of what I have learned so far is that basically if you have a 6 letter word you just pick like three consonants out of that word and just mumble/not even say the other letters in the word.  Take for example this word, selvfølgelig, this word is pronounced se fo li.  Now if you count that out you have a 12 letter word and you only pronounce 6 letters.  How does that make any sense? Not only is the language incredibly difficult to understand, it also does not help that the course is a 3 week intensive study.  I did not quite believe when they said intensive that they actually meant intensive.  Today was the first day of class tomorrow I am supposed to know, by heart: number 1-20, the alphabet, how to introduce yourself, and how to say your nationality.  One of my classmates asked the teacher if it was ok to start crying right in class or if they should wait until the get home.  On the positive side I am think am feeling way more comfortable in the city and in my apartment.  My roommates are super nice and I don't feel like I need to tiptoe around anymore.  I also think I have a grasp on the metro/train system.  Another positive is that I found Netto, which is the Danish equivalent of Aldi's, so I have now added spaghetti to my diet of mashed potatoes and bread.  Mom you should be so proud of my cooking skills.  Yesterday Kate and I went to the National Museum.  All I can say about it is that it is a museum, basically like any other museum.  However after the museum we saw Christianborg Slot, which is where the parliament currently meets.

 The guards  stand in these awesome little stands when the weather is bad.  I think they totally look like little toy soldiers.

After walking through Christianborg, Kate and I decided to wander.  Now tell me in what other place can you wander and just come across a castle?  This is Rosenborg Slot which houses the crown jewels.  The castle is surrounded by Kongens have or the King's garden, which is just a huge beautiful park.  

I was trying to be artistic in this next photo.  As you can see I am not really an artist.

I just love the colored buildings with the red tile roofs.  

Interesting Denmark Fact:

In her spare time Queen Margrethe II translated the Lord of the Rings trilogy into Danish and drew the illustrations.  How cool is that?