This week's major highlights included:
Wednesday, September 11: A field study trip with my Environmental Policy in Practice class to the Middelgrunden Off-Shore Wind Farm.
I was really excited about this trip because the offshore wind farms are a huge reason why I chose to study abroad in Denmark. I also did a research project and presentation last semester in my Sustainable Energy Policy and Planning class on Denmark's Energy Strategy 2050, which aims for 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
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| Energy Strategy 2050 Research Poster |
The weather was gorgeous, a little chilly out on the water, but at least it wasn't raining! A guide gave us some information about the history of the wind farm and future projects to expand Denmark's wind potential. The whole trip was around 2 hours, where we got up close and personal to the turbines. My first of many field studies = success!
Wednesday, September 11: First Green House Dinner.
Every Wednesday night, the 23 members of the Green House get together for a group dinner and guest speaker / discussion. Our group signed up at a local food-coop, where we each volunteer for 3 hours working at the coop, and in return we get bags of fresh, organic vegetables every week. We take shifts throughout the semester either picking up the food, doing extra shopping, cooking, cleaning, taking notes during the discussions, writing in the house blog, etc. Unfortunately this week, our house coordinator forgot to order the bags from the coop, so the chefs had to shop at the grocery stores. They ended up cooking a delicious soup with fresh bread from a bakery close by, then they got ice cream and cookies for dessert. After dinner, we discussed volunteer options around the city.
Saturday, September 14: Green House Trip to Svanholm.
Svanholm is like a very selective ecovillage community based around sustainability. They share everything in the community, including their money and savings, and get to keep 20% of their income for personal use. I don't know if I could live in a place like Svanholm, mainly because those living there don't really get to travel. We took a train from Nørreport Station for an hour, then took 2 half hour bus trips. Once we got there, we got a guided tour of the community and farm, where I got to meet the cows and ate the best tomato I've ever had (I'm not even a huge fan of tomatoes but I ate it right off the vine like an apple it was THAT good.) Then we got a delicious lunch of homemade vegetable soup and bread. Our project of the day was to re-paint a house, and our reward was homemade ice cream and apple juice. Yum. I also bought honey and more tomatoes to take home. We got home around 6:30 after another 2 hour commute.
Tuesday, September 17: Pumpkin Bread.
A group of us from the greenhouse made pumpkin oat bread from scratch with real pumpkins and then baked the pumpkin seeds in cinnamon and brown sugar. We made 4 loaves and it was all gone by the next morning. The bread was THAT good I had to include it in this week's highlights.
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| Makayla loves pumpkin bread too |
Wednesday, September 18: I was supposed to have a field study trip with my Scandinavian Classical Music class to see DR VokalEnsemblet Metrokoncert Kor at Koncerthuset, which I was really excited about, but apparently too many tenors got the flu (along with my professor Knud) so the concert was cancelled (and he also cancelled class the next day - not complaining.) Oh well, we still have 3 more field study concerts for this class, and this meant I could go to our greenhouse dinner! The chefs this week made pasta with a vegetable tomato sauce and potatoes on the side.
September 18th also marks our one month anniversary of study abroad. We've been here for a month. A whole month. Unreal.
TOMATOES RULE
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