Excursion with Bjarke

Monday Bjarke invited me to come to work with him. He had a meeting down in Nykøbing Falster.. which meant I got to visit Ingrid! His dropped me off at Ingrid's and went to his meeting and Ingrid and I caught up. The best part about meeting up is that we get to talk very fast and use slang! It's something I always miss when talking to people who aren't native english speakers.. although.. Ingrid has some insane New Zealand slang that even I don't understand.

After Bjarke's meeting, he decided to take us around Falster and Møn.. 2 other islands right under Sjælland (Zealand). It was so exciting! I've only been to Nykøbing twice before and but I had never explored Falster or Møn. Neither had Ingrid so it was cool to see something new! Ingrid and I are thinking of making a biking trip out of Møn and/or Falster. We went through where Bjarke's grandmother lived and his mom was born. We stopped at beautiful look-outs to take pictures and smell that amazing salt water! It is one of my favorite smells..

We crossed a bridge to Møn and visited Fanefjord Church which was built around 1250. Ingrid and I were standing there open-mouthed looking at the paintings. The vibrant colors and depictions of the devil and various religious scenes are absolutely unbelievable. Just to see what people in 1250 thought the devil looked like.. and how they viewed God and their religion. It was like stepping back into 1250. When the church's walls were whitewashed in 1660, the paintings were covered in a layer of dust. But from 1923-34 the paintings were restored and cleaned. They are still under restoration to make the colors more vibrant and really uncover the layers of dust. Ingrid and I bought pamphlets to read about the church's history. But you should definitely check out this really good website I found about Fanefjords Church at http://www.insula-moenia.dk/fanefjord_church.html Then we drove to the other side of the island to a place called Møns Klint. Its a HUGE cliff over the water.. an impressive and popular tourist attraction. The area around Møns Klint is covered in trails and biking paths for people to explore, but we stuck to the coast. The HUGE cliff is made of white stone and the water it reaches down to is an unbelievable green color.. Ingrid and I couldn't believe we were still in Denmark! It's sad that the pictures don't do it any justice. You can read more about Møns Klint at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B8ns_Klint We had to climb so many stairs to get down to the water and back up.. and so many stairs to get up to the top of the cliff to have the view over the water.. I felt dead afterwards. In fact, I slept for an hour in the car! Monday night the AFS head of Falster and Lolland, Lars and Hanna and their daughter Mathilde who went to New Zealand on exchange, had a dinner for all the exchangies down there.. so I got to surprise all my friends! It was so cool to see everyone and hang out! We had so much fun.. as we always do with other exchangies! I also met a Danish girl who is going to Pennsylvania for exchange next year, and a boy who went to France and a girl who went to Venezuela a couple years ago. So just another opportunity to meet more unbelievably lovely people!

I slept over at Ingrid's and we talked and talked.. something I'm beginning to realize we're pretty good at! Bjarke called me at 7.30 and we hit the road again heading towards Copenhagen. He had 5 mini-meetings up there and I got to live "A day in the life of Bjarke Mayland" and see why he is so stressed when he gets home. PEOPLE ARE JUST SO STUPID. Every second that Bjarke hung up the phone after talking someone through how to set up a computer program or some machine the phone rang violently again. That's the only way I can describe it. After spending an hour and a half fixing some guy's computer.. and we finally started to head home at 2 pm the guy called and said "boooo hooo I broke it again.. can't you come back and fix it?" I can now empathize with Bjarke 100%. People naturally assume he doesn't have a life and that he can just fix their computers for free and answer their calls from 6 am to 11 pm. This weekend we are turning the phone OFF and as Bjarke says "doing ab-so-lute-ly nada".