SUNDAY FEBRUARY 4th

Woke up around 6:30. Had breakfast. Worked an assignment we have for education about the differences between american and danish education systems. Basically the difference is the amount to which early elementary ed and maternity leave are funded (in Denmark they have a welfare state which means they pay really high taxes and therefore services get covered to a much greater extent). Also interesting there is paid maternity leave here and I think in the US people tend to take unpaid time off.
Went for a run. I went at 9AM and the city was still dead quiet. It was sunny and nice but a bit cold. I went a different way over to the lakes in the center of the city and then around them. There's a cool statue that says "you can't find art in the dictionary."
Headed into DIS for a tour of Frederiksborg Castle. It was so neat. We took the scenic way along the coast to get there. Big fancy millionaire mansions. A few had thatched roofs which was so cool to see. We drove by Karen Blixen's house (writer of Out of Africa aka Isaac Dinneson. Our tour guide was great. It was fun to see more farmland and natural undeveloped Denmark. We saw lots of fields and ponies to the side of the road. We saw a really neat windmill. Hillerod the town where the castle is is very pretty.
The guide took us around the castle. It was really beautiful but cold inside! Furnaces and radiators are wonderful inventions. It was fun to hear stories about the castle and be in a place that has such history. Lots of portraits of royalty on the walls that weren't so exciting. Seeing the shields that had been awarded for different honorable deeds was neat. There was one given to Eisenhower and one given to Churchill for their assistance to Denmark. You can get the Code of the Elephant or the Code of the Dannebrog (danish flag). All the shields are specially designed with symbolic meanings.
When we got back I went to DIS to see a showing of Drommen (We Shall Overcome). The movie is danish but there were english subtitles. A film about a boy who wants justice for having his ear practically ripped off by the overbearing idiot threatening headmaster of his school. The mother loses her job as a nurse in a another school because of her choice to have the school board investigate. The father has depression and is in and out of a mental hospital. Martin Luther King Jr., hippies, civil rights, and peaceful protest all play a part. The boy memorizes King's I have a dream speech and the class sings "we shall overcome." Interesting inclusion of US stuff. The movie was great, well acted, and full of much less music and dramatic effects that Hollywood movies. There is a great character of a music teacher who comes to the school wanted to change the strict, follow the curriculum, danish pride, corporal punishment nature of the school.