the haze clears

Ahhhh!! 

ok so i had the biggest shock to my system today!

since our last group assignment was so "light",

bridget and i planned a trip to norway during the "study days" we were allocated to work on our next group assignment.

well, it turns out that THIS IS THE BIGGEST GROUP ASSIGNMENT I'VE EVER SEEN.

and since everybody thought this assignment was going to be easy, ALL of us(except 1) are travlling out of denmark!

the room started spinning around me today as i realised the extent of what we needed to do and we wouldn't be together to do it. 

but alas!

human beings were designed to thrive under pressure!

we'll be fine!! 

but in all seriousness,

this week has been an interesting balance between study and travel.

i'm here to study, primarily.

but travel is so encouraged as well by classmates and lecturers. 

so often i'll be sitting in class and thinking 'got to email that person, need to book that flight, must research accomodation for there..'

but i'm getting there!

i'm finding that balance. i think.

so we're going to norway on saturday! 

off to hopefully see the northern lights and maybe do some reindeer sledding

we'll have to see about reindeer sledding.

according to google maps, we have to catch a 2 hour bus for a 15 minute sleigh ride.

not overrrly sure about that one.

well i'd be keen. give me a window and an ipod and i'm set for hours,

but i think bridget would prefer our time spent a little more productive!

we were supposed to see the northern lights up in alta, but it was going to cost wayyy too much.

so now we are just hoping to see them in either oslow or bergen.

that's where we're going.

we are catching a train from oslow on tuesday morning and arrive into bergen later that night.

apparently it's meant to be quite the train ride. 

we've had our fair share of dramas though!

usually i travel with my sister - she's the brains and i'm the encourager.

this time i am the brains. and lack of them. 

i booked a flight up to northern norway, in alta, without checking the price of a return back to aarhus.

when we went to book our flight back to aarhus, it was almost triple what we could afford.

i quickly emailed my family "HELP!!"

but then remembered i remembered it was 4.18am for them and i was on the other side of the world and i needed to figure this out for myself. 

so i emailed scandanavian airlines and cancelled the flight up to alta.

i got a full refund, thankfully. 

theehn.

i accidentally booked the train to bergen for the wrong day.

as it stood, we would be flying out 2 hours after arriving into one of the most beautiful cities in the world. 

"non changeable, $267 ticket" the confirmation almost rudely glared back at me from my email.

AGH! KATE! GET YOUR CRAP TOGETHER!!!

it was late sunday night, and all i could do was stare at the screen, nod, process and pray. 

i went to bed pretty soon after that, powerless to do anything but surrender all my frustration and anxiety to God. 

i trust that He's interested in the big things in my life, as well as the little.

he HAD to have a way to help me out of this one.

i went to sleep actually quite peacefully.

the next morning, 

i stumbled accross 

"those who trust in the Lord cannot be shaken, as the mountains surround jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people" Psalm 125.2 and felt my heart muse restfully. 

i was actually excited to see what was going to happen.

i found our norwegian friend who offered to let us use his phone
:)
i spoke to a lady who in a very polite manner said "well we don't usually allow change of bookings to online tickets, but i'll make an exception."

:)) i was sparkling :))

more than that! 

i was SO happy and excited that i gave our norwegian friend a MASSIVE hug !

he was a bit surprised, actually. i don'tusually come off as the most huggy type.

but ah. 

:))

the lord is good.

but apart from the shock-horror-ohmygoodnessbridgetwhatarewegoingtodo-episode today, 

i'm absolutely LOVING uni.

Penny's are dopping and i'm beginning to see through the haze.
right now, we are learning the Logical Framework Approach, otherwise known as the LFA.
it's a guide for setting up your own non government agency.
just tonight i read up on the gender and sexual based violence for women in the doro refugee camp in south sudan.
my group and i are going to create a hypothetical ngo using the lfa for them.

i'm so overeager in class.
just a few days ago, my lecturer looked over at me during his lecture and said 'slides are uploaded online, you know.' 
i smiled and continued to write down furiously everything he said.
i then went to a social entreprenuership workshop in the city which taught us how to brainstorm ideas for innovatinve social development. i went with my lecturer and the head-of-school in her car. it was kind of weird and one of those 'how-did-i-get-here-again-moments', but it was a really, really cool workshop.

it feels a bit surreal to learn the things you've always wanted to learn but never quite known how to learn them.
i guess that's what drew me into studying social work, but when i looked at our 4 syllabus at the start of my degree, i knew that i wouldn't learn anything like community development in third world countries.
but social work is what i felt i needed to study, and i trusted that the other teachings would come in somehow.
i actually remember a distant relative asking me when i was 7 years old what i wanted to be when i grew up. matter of factly, i told him 'i want to be a missionary in africa.'
he smiled and said 'no, no, no kate, that's not a real job. come on, what do you really want to be?'
embaressed, i said a vetnurse or something. 
but now i'm here. learning what i've always felt on my heart.
who knows where this will lead, but
ah! this is pretty exciting and God will continue to lead me on.

on tuesday, the sun came out to awaken us all to one another, 

it pried everybody from our heat-conserving walk which consists of heads tucked down, hands in pockets, walking quickly to get to wherever your headed.

 . bridget and i were SO excited, we just stood smiling, looking up and around at everyone on the street, standing into the sun, squinting our eyes and letting precious, warm, vitamin d soak into our faces.

im not normally one for "selfies", but this wasn't a moment to be missed. check out the sun on my hair!

it was probably no more than 3C, but it was actually so precious.

that was 2 days ago and i can't even tell you how many people have brought up the 'amazing weather the other day.'

it's definately the little things around here!

later that afternoon, bridget and i  came back from our afternoon walk and i walked into THIS glory! 

my room has never been so brightly lit!!!

(please excuse the mess)

 LOOK AT THAT SUN BEAMING THROUHG.
do you see it beaming???

i usually  shower with the bathroom door open so i can hear my music playing. and when i got out, THIS WAS THERE

AH, 

it was just so cool.

but wednesday morning, a cool and foggy morning greeted me as i opened my curtain to start the day.
but i loved it.

i sat for hours analysing theory and practice in community work.

sometimes when it's hot at home i hate being cooped up in my room studying.

winter is perfect for me right now. 

that was, until midday.

my head got foggy and my legs started tingling. my body's signal to go for a run.

my sister tells me i look like a cream puff.

 i was only meant to take a half hour break, but how could i when i saw mysterious signs like this
what is yellow? is black more adventurous?

and then bumped into horses. i think i may have accidentally run into somebody's back yard.

 but i found my way out and the road kept going. so i kept on running.

and found THESE out the back of our accomodation!

during one of our walks this week, bridget and i made a snowman.

  except it looked more like a snow chicken.

will have to work on this art.

aannnyywayy..

in other news!

i tried a danish hot dog, finally.

but only because it was "kyling", or chicken ... and it was wholemeal grainy bread.
i don't DO the mince. i'm quite the picky eater.
i was the bane of my mums life for YEARS.

as i mentioned in my last blog post, my bike is kinda broken.

last friday, our friend invited us over for dinner so he could take a look at my bike.

uhm, we were invited for dinner...so he could fix my bike?

we are so blessed!

but still being real, since they were guys, i was a tiny bit scared that dinner would be meat and potatoes. 

buuht!  they TOTALLY impressed us with this amazing creation.

 stuffed turkey, potaote wedges and a greek salad, with home-made whisky dressing!

it was SUCH an incredible meal. i had barely eaten all day so i ate like a pregnant mother.
and as a 'thank you' for fixing my bike, bridget and i made lamingtons again.
had a fair few too many of those, too!
but alas, good friends and good food go hand in hand.
the guys were so incredible - one of them arranged with his sister to give bridget a bike to use for her time here .  . .ah!

but unfortunately, our friend couldn't totally fix my bike.
even though i was feeling really disappointed, i knew something was going to come through.
he then said thathe would arrange another for me to use. a second one that his friend had which worked well.

:)
psalm 145.16 "you open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing."

:))

anders also translated our accumulating danish mail that bridget and i had kept pretending didn't exist.
ah!
after all his wonderful kindness and generosity, we gave him an australian chocolate.

 this is anders :)



:))))))

meanwhile, i continue to decorate.

 this time with string and doilies, john mayer and celine dion.

and we continue to eat out at fun places with new friends.

we were supposed to go out to the movies after dinner, but i wasn't feeling the best. so i came home and cooked meat amongst other things.

 i took that picture because i never cook meat, especially not at 11pm.

ever.

we hang out with friends as often as we can . . . here we went to a friend from uni's 'art gallery' exhibition.
actually, she did her prac in india and wasn't allowed to do alot of practical social work, so she spent her time editing photos.
when she came back to aarhus, she visited her favourite cafes and restaurants and asked whether she could put up some of her photos.
and they said yes!

 it was pretty cool.

i either bike or walk to the middle eastern markets now by myself. i've decided that i can always tell whether a middle eastern man is trying to rip me off girl by the price he sells his broccoli. i'm ruined for anything more than 8 danish krowns now. 13 danish krowns is too much, so no i will not buy your apples or figs either.
we barter sometimes :)

we hang out with the guys from our dorms alot. we usually cook dinner together and talk for hours about travel, music, school, masters degrees, danish food, and anything else that springs to mind. bridget and i love to watch what the guys cook - they either cook a whole packet of pasta and put a bit of sauce, salt or butter on top, or they make these INCREDIBLE creations that are completely improvised!

we were meant to go rockclimbing with our canadian friend from church this afternoon, but due to the assignment tidal wave, we had to cancel.

in other living-on-the-other-side-of-the-world-news, 

my sister sometimes texts me what she's doing and what she's listening to.
one particular morning this week, i woke feeling literally the opposite side of the world to her. i checked my phone and got THIS picture of her and she told me that whatever i was doing, i had to also listen to 'simple life' by the weepies. 

it's those little things when your 1000's of km's away from somebody you love that really make the day sparkle. i was so excited to see her face, so excited to hear this olden golden song we used to love that it actually made a highlight in my week so decided it needed to be in my blog too.

she then texted me this: 

ah, leederville. you are in such a different world to me right now.

and one last story!

just tonight,

we were just at a friends apartment using his printer to print off all our tickets in and for norway.

we told him that we arrive back into copenhagen at 10.55pm next thursday night.

our train takes us back to aarhus for 4am on friday morning

 no buses run that early to take us back to our accomodation.

we then have a compulsary class at 9am for our group assignments.

we had no idea what we were going to do for 5 hours, unshowered and unslept. 

our friend right then put us in contact with his friend who lives by the train station. 

 - we can crash at hers until our class starts.

our friends are such blesssings.

God has and continues to provide for us in every possible way, 

covering all my forgetfulness and the incidentals we continue to encounter.

so that's it from me for this week.

i took the hint from a friend who said it took 3 days for her to read my last post!

if i'm going away or can forsee there is lots to write about,

i'll try to separate the blogs.
until next time!

"where can I go from your Spirit? where can I flee from your presence? if I go up to the heavens, you are there;  if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. if I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,  even there your hand will guide me,your right hand will hold me fast."


psalm 139.7