Cold in Copenhagen

Wow, I can't believe it's already Friday! I guess I still have to talk about the rest of orientation! Wednesday morning I got to the train like a pro juuuust on time for the train. When I got there, there were people on the platform, so I stopped to catch my breath when I suddenly realized that there wasn't anyone around. The train had chosen to stop at the other end of the platform, which is at least 100 meters long. So I had to sprint to the end and thankfully they waited for me and I got to Copenhagen on time. We were supposed to be meeting in groups of six at different meeting spots throughout the city for a scavenger hunt, which included six different locations on a map besides the meeting point. My group was supposed to be meeting at the "acrobats" statue. I found the street no problem, but the only statue I saw was a man on a horse...not really what I had in mind when I thought of acrobat. Luckily another girl in my group ended up there too and we wandered back down the street and found everyone else. Turns out the acrobat statue had been removed. Anyway, our first stop was Christiansborg Slot, which was the first place the king lived, but now houses parliament, etc. We were already freezing and it was windy and snowing. They had free coffee for us, which warmed us up. A little.
Next stop was The Black Diamond, which is the Royal Library. The inside was really nice and unbelievably quiet. They had a lot of posters on display about global warming and other political/environmental topics, which we looked at for a while while we warmed up some, joined another group and planned our next move. We had seen the harbor bus going by earlier, though DIS had told us it wouldn't be running this time of year, so we asked someone just to be sure. They said it was, which meant that if we took it we would be saved about a mile of walking, since our next stop was Amalienborg Palace, which is where the Queen Margarethe II lives. So we walked out to the dock, where the schedule said the harbor bus would be there in 5 minutes. So we waited. And waited. And waited. While we waited, a girl in our group asked us riddles, which kept us out there waiting...we would have quit long before then if it wasn't for those riddles. Eventually we gave up and walked toward the Black Diamond. We were waited to cross the street when someone yelled "Here it comes! Run!" So all twelve of us sprinted, laughing down the pier and managed to catch it. We rode to Nyhavn, the most photographed street in Denmark, and from there we only had to walk a few blocks to the palace. We got there just before noon...when we were supposed to be finished with the scavenger hunt. So we won't be winning any prizes, but we DID get to see the changing of the guard, which is so much more impressive than the changing of the guard at Arlington. They march across the whole city every day with a full band! It was so cool! We decided it would be best to forget the rest of the scavenger hunt and get back to DIS, since I don't think any of us could feel our extremeties at that point. I saw one of the girls a few hours later and she still hadn't stopped shaking. It was a shame that we didn't get to finish it, because it was a really cool idea. If only we didn't walk in on the coldest January in like 20 years! The rest of the day was spent exploring and going to a program meeting for our core course. Anyway, I'm going to post about the first two days of class later, because my computer is dying, and I'll try to post pictures too. Hej hej for now!
~Kyla