We are wrapping up our second week of class in Session 2 already! I have learned and experienced so much in this short time. In our first few class meetings, our instructor introduced us to the course and the subject, we did partner presentations on various terrorist groups throughout history, we visited the Royal Danish Arsenal Museum, and we had lots of great discussions. For the presentations, we were all assigned partners and a terrorist organization…on the first day of class! I think some of us (myself included) were definitely thrown off guard a little bit to be assigned a project right away, especially since it was due the next day. I kind of liked it, though, because it got me back in the swing of doing academic work (I’d had a few weeks off since the end of finals).
Our second day of class we had our first field study. Together we all walked to the Royal Danish Arsenal Museum and toured an exhibition called “The Distant War” on Danish involvement in the War in Afghanistan. Danish soldiers who returned home from the war had a lot of input in creating the exhibition, and many of the items in the exhibition were things those soldiers had brought home with them.
It was also really cool that we were allowed to “interact” with the exhibit. Unlike most museums, we were allowed to touch the items that were part of the exhibition. I (and several of my classmates) found that the exhibit really painted a much more vivid picture of what life was like for Danish (and American) soldiers than anything we had seen or heard about the war before. This, to me, was surprising, because most of us – since we are mostly International Studies and Political Science majors – have studied the War in Afghanistan quite a bit already.
We returned from our Study Tour to Norway and London late tonight, so it’s time for me to get to sleep. I’ll write all about my Study Tour in my next post – it was absolutely incredible. I have made some incredible friends in my class and our instructor, Jesper, is both knowledgeable and personable. It’s funny, when our plane landed tonight, all of us were so happy to be “home” in Copenhagen; I think the city already has a place in our hearts (it does in mine, at least). The good thing is, though, it’s a big place, so there’s still so much left to explore in the remaining weeks!
