diet starts on monday.

for my 2 loyal followers, i am sorry that i have not updated sooner! time just flies and it has been pretty busy with work & fun. anyway, morten finally came home on the 12th and i surprised him at the airport, even though it was a bit stressful as his plane was 30 minutes early! we had a nice dinner at home (he would like you to know it was delicious and perfect). i made a roasted pork tenderloin with brussel sprouts and a mushroom risotto. first time doing risotto, and i have to say, it was super easy and fun. having bubbles and great company wasn't bad either ;)

so now that spring is *fingers crossed* around the corner, it is time to buckle down and start on my diet. i keep say "diet starts on monday", but this time i mean it. i can't be wearing my winter coat of fat for as long as i did last year, so it is time to say goodbye to all the sweet treats and fatty delicacies.

please note this is only half of the selection! how can you just walk past??

the past 2 weekends have been uber cold, but also very sunny and it is time to take advantage of it. morten and i headed out for a walk to the bookstore to buy me a "500 cupcakes & muffins" book (yes, i am definitely on the right diet track...). and what better way to celebrate all the options, than to buy our own muffins on the way home. the choice is tough when it comes to lagkagehuset (pronounced: laow-kaaayy-hoos-it -- hey! why all those g's?) we decided on rhubarb muffin & a carrot cake muffin, and headed to the botanical gardens to enjoy them in the sun.

morten is a famous danish muffin model

this was my first time in the botantical gardens, and even though everything was dead and/or frozen over, it was still nice to escape the city in such a beautiful setting. now i can't wait until spring/summer when it all comes back to life again.

from atop a small hill, i take on the wind

saturday evening morten and i got to enjoy one of my christmas presents -- tickets to hear band of horses! this was my 3rd time seeing them play live and it was the best, most likely because now i know most of the songs by heart. we started out the evening with dinner at 2 of morten's friends' apartment. it was so nice and hyggeligt and i really enjoyed feeling part of the conversation and evening. there are times when you feel a bit on the outside when you are a foreigner surrounded by people that know each other, but morten's friends aren't that way :) so after dinner, we headed to the concert, got some beers, found a good spot and enjoyed the music. here are some highlights:

evening kitchen opens the show -- so beautiful

rocking out

the projections coupled with the music are always spot on

after the concert we headed out into the arctic air and biked to a party in nørrebro. it was a great end to the evening and the birthday cake was delicious :)

so on another note, morten and i are getting very excited about looking at apartments in atlanta and will be putting our names down on a waitlist. it's really making this feel more real, which is both exciting and terrifying. it will be a huge change for the both of us, but it is nice to know that we will be doing it together. aaand, we are working on our spring USA trip details, and i think we will be able to squeeze a trip to atlanta into the plan so that we can see the city we will be moving to and get even more excited about it! :)

well, that's all from here. maybe i will sneak in 1 last cookie before the real diet starts tomorrow...

around denmark in 3 days

so it has been quite a while, and so much has happened. morten and i celebrated our 6 month anniversary (cheesy, i know), but it is always nice to sit down to a home-cooked meal made by your danish lovah (and blog editor). dinner was devine -- baked salmon with a light breading with butter, parsley, and garlic, a delicious spinach salad with blue cheese, walnuts, pears, chives, and a homemade honey vinaigrette, and roasted "hasselback" potatoes and jerusalem artichokes. oh, and don't worry, if i wasnt spoiled enough, i got to accompany the meal with a 2003 amarone di valpolicella and top it off with homemade brownie and ice cream. nom nom nom! so good! here is a delightful picture, pre-feast:


smiley wiking

so the next day was our final day together for 10 days, as i was off to a short tour of denmark with the students (hence the blogpost title), while morten was headed to malta (yes, people go there) for a work/vacation, or wacation. our last meal was my very fancy idea of bbq chicken pizza. first time making it and it was pretty delish. just wish there had been some cilantro to really top that baby off.


mmm pizza... nom nom nom...

a little added bonus to my job at dis are study tours -- basically an opportunity to take the students on an academic trip outside of copenhagen. short tours stay inside of denmark, while the long ones head across europe. despite denmark's tiny size, i almost always wind up somewhere new each time i go on a short tour, which makes it pretty exciting and educational for me as well. i won't go into the boring details of tour, but just give you some highlights.

this time i headed out to the great cities of århus and aalborg, both on jutland. our day in århus was primarily academic, but we definitely met some very important people associated with heart valve transplant research. this visit also included pig experiments and surgeries, which i know is controversial, but considering the amazing progress these researchers are making, and the fact that the pig would have wound up as bacon otherwise, i think it is ok to keep up the projects.

speaking of pigs, our dinner that night was an awesome rack of babyback ribs at a local microbrewery. seriously. devine. i love ribs and i could go for a rack right now.

the last city/town brought us to a more cultural side of denmark. aalborg is pretty small, but it is the hometown of jørn utzon, who you may know as the famous dane and architect who designed the sydney opera house. anyway, we visited the utzon center in aalborg, which was built to honor his works, and to provide local architecture students with studio and library space.

the roof of the auditorium at the utzon center

the next day we ventured out to the amazing viking burial ground of lindholm høje. over 700 graves have been found here along the hillside just outside of aalborg. i am sure you all think that vikings are pretty cool, but trust me, after 4 - 5 viking museum visits, things tend to get repetitive and boring. did you know that vikings didn't wear those hats with horns on them? they weren't christian so they didn't realize that raiding monasteries was a bad thing. yada yada yada. anyway, this museum was pretty awesome. it came with all kinds of preserved viking graves and skeletons, including items they were buried with, plus a preserved human body that had been sacrificed into neighboring bogs. i think that is pretty BA. the day we visited the burial site it was insanely windy so photo-taking was definitely difficult, but i did my best.

from the highest part of the burial site

we wrapped up the tour with a very danish lunch buffet packed with fried fish filet & remoulade, leverpostej, little baby briny shrimps, assorted mashed meats, and a selection of cheeses most likely marked illegal in the states. outside of the "kro" (or "inn" in english), they had these sweet deer fenced in...

which i later found out were for eating... what happened to the hunt?

lastly, to wrap up my 3 day danish adventure, the storebælt bridge, which connects the island of fyn with the island of sjælland, which is here copenhagen is located. couldn't help taking a photo. it just looks so picturesque and danish with both the modern bridge design and the classic lighthouse to the side.

almost home...

ok. those are the highlights of my trip wrapped into 1 lil blogplost. i guess i should end this post with a positive note. now that i have a blog, i feel like i can keep secrets here that i can't post on facebook. so please help me out by not posting anything about this on facebook :)

i am happy to say that i have been accepted to the rollins school of public health at emory university in atlanta! i am so excited about it as it was my number 1 pick (tied with UNC), and i really can't believe that i got in! woohoo! i can't wait to celebrate and to receive the packet in the mail so i can read more about the little details. as my roommate fraze said last night, omg! you're going back to college! and that is EXACTLY how i feel :D