copenAIDAN

Upon arriving home in Copenhagen from my travels to Germany and Poland last Friday, I turned right back around and left for Brussels the next day! I was supposed to leave on Friday night, but my flight was completely cancelled while I was on my way to the airport (pretty disappointing and a little stressful!). The soonest flight they could put me on didn’t get me to Brussels until 6:30pm on Saturday – a whole day later than planned. However, I still got to do everything I wanted to do, so it actually worked out fine!

I met my Notre Dame friend Paige in Brussels on Saturday evening. Paige is studying at Trinity University in Dublin – it was really fun to see her and catch up on her semester abroad. I was so excited to visit Brussels, because I got to try three things for which Belgium is famous – Belgian chocolate, Belgian waffles, and Belgian beer. They’re also known for their mussels, which Paige tried, but I didn’t – I’m not the biggest fan of seafood, but Paige said they were delicious! For dinner that night, we went to Café Leon, where I had chicken vol au vent. I didn’t even realize that they speak French in Belgium until I arrived there – it felt very cool to finally put my five years of French language learning to use (I was able to navigate the city quite well)! I spoke it at all the restaurants and to people who asked us on the street for directions. 🙂

On Sunday, Paige and I did a 2.5 hour chocolate making workshop – it was heaven and hell at the same time (the chocolate looked and smelled so amazing, but we weren’t allowed to taste it as we went along because we would contaminate the batch 😦 ). At the end of the workshop, we were served some deliciously rich and authentic Belgian hot chocolate and finally got to taste our own chocolates. We made pralines and mendiants – I made one in the shape of an ND (you can kind of see it if you squint).

That afternoon, we walked around Brussels to explore the city – we saw the royal palace, the cathedrals, the royal galleries (where I had a delicious croque monsieur at Mokafe), the Mont des Arts, Grand Place (the main square), and the comic strip walls (super cool and unique – there are lots of comics painted on the sides of random buildings in Brussels). It’s such a beautiful city – I absolutely loved the art nouveau architecture style!

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another country another BOBA TRIP😍 Thank you @8tea5brussels for our delicious taiwanese classic milk teas (aka black milk tea) with yummy bobies! || 📍Brussels, Belgium

A post shared by b o b a (@bobaandme) on Oct 18, 2019 at 2:57pm PDT

I finally got back to Cope on Sunday at midnight after an exhausting full week of travel (Germany, Poland, and Belgium!). On Monday, I was right back at it with a hands-on clinical skills workshop in my Medical Practice & Policy core course. We travelled to a hospital in Gentofte (different from our usual Rigshospitalet), where we learned to suture, insert a Foley catheter, and start an IV line, all taught by some really fun medical residents. I was one of the three students who volunteered to test an IV on someone else – although I was unsuccessful, it was still really fun to learn! Since I’m the MPP class rep, our course assistant Ida sent me home with tons of IV supplies to bring to class next week so that we can continue practicing on each other (now I have a million IV needles sitting on my desk in my apartment – Hope is probably scared that I’ll try to practice on her 🙂 ).

On Tuesday, we went over to Lauren and Claire’s kollegium in Fredericksberg for dinner – it was really fun to catch up with them and hear about their travel weeks! On Wednesday, I had a field study for my Neuroscience of Fear class. We visited the Neurobiology Research Unit at Rigshospitalet to learn about their research initiatives and to see a PET scanner up close. I spent the rest of the day studying for my Neuro of Religion midterm in the Copenhagen library while it rained outside – it felt very hyggelig. That night, I met my host parents for dinner at Nordic Noodle (delicious customizable noodle dishes!) in Carlsberg Byen, a super cool place where the Carlsberg brewery used to be. After dinner, we saw the movie Joker together at Imperial Cinema – it was SUCH a good movie, and the theatre was HUGE (it sat 996 people – I have never been in such a big movie theatre in my life). I love hanging out with my host fam – it’s one of my favorite parts of abroad! 🙂

On Thursday, I studied some more for my midterm at CUB Coffee Bar – I think this has risen to the top of my list of favorite coffee spots in Copenhagen – the coffee was AMAZING. It was in a basement with lots of fur and wooden aesthetic – a very natural hyggelig feeling. Hope and I tried Gasoline Grill (an old converted gas station) for dinner that night, ranked as the city’s best burger in 2018 – it was indeed spectacular.

Today, my Health Economics & Policy class shifted to the second half of the course – the “policy” part. We played a fun “stakeholder” game in which the class divided into four groups and each pitched a policy proposal to the Danish Minister of Health (AKA our classmate Abby). My group (the Danish Health Authority) won with our cost-effective proposal of more sports in schools (hooray for preventative health)!

I can’t believe the semester is halfway over already – time is absolutely flying. We wrote letters to ourselves at the beginning of the semester that were just sent back to us – I’m excited to say that I’ve been doing everything I’ve wanted to and more (tennis, host fam, traveling, biking, shared decision-making research (check out the post I wrote for Johns Hopkins about the Danish mindset and U.S. healthcare here), and LOVING my classes)!

Thanks for reading along – I’m heading off to bed now before I fly to Norway in the morning (so much travel!! ahh!). Follow along next week to hear about my trip to the fjords of Bergen with my friends Lauren & Claire. Au revoir for now!