Old City, New Home

I am less than two weeks out from my return to a truly amazing city, Copenhagen, Denmark!! A series of events after I studied abroad have led to my penultimate return to the Scandinavian capital city and I could not be more excited about this adventure.

I have been accepted to the University of Copenhagen (Københavns Universitet or KU) to pursue an MSc in Anthropology (in English, one adventure at a time). I have not yet formally picked a focus of my study but I am hoping the courses I take in the fall will solidify that decision a smidge. Somewhere in the realm of Cultural Anthropology, I am sure. I absolutely loved my study abroad program in the fall of 2012 at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad which focused on the integration of Turkish Muslims into Copenhagen. My class schedule this fall lends itself to learning more on that subject. Needless to say I will be nerd-ing out. Hard. 

I have spent the past four years studying Anthropology/Sociology during my Bachelor's degree. A huge focus of this discipline both theoretically and in practice is encountering alterity or otherness/difference. But how much can one truly absorb in the classroom about such an encounter? Despite the fact that I have had concrete experiences with individuals who are different from me socially and culturally, the fact still remains: I have lived in the same home in St. Louis, Missouri from birth until I graduated high school, I then moved cities (but only four hours South) to Memphis, Tennessee where I attended Rhodes College. And that's me up to the present. Despite a lot of traveling the vast portion of my life has been spent in only two cities and in the same region of the United States.

It's high time for a new adventure. Putting these theories into practice is the real challenge of education and I fully intend to put myself out there by not only encountering another culture but embodying it to the best of my ability by living and working in (fairly) new cultural surroundings.

Over the summer I will be taking a Danish language immersion course, then starting my Master's in the beginning of September.

I hope this blog will once again serve for my friends and family to keep up with me as I tackle this new chapter.

Most exciting is that I am flying to Copenhagen without a return ticket. No looming end to the fantasy this time around. I could not be more excited. Let the countdown begin: 10 days.
Vi ses! (See you later--in Danish--whoa!)