We left, as is the trend apparently, incredibly early in the morning. It was a two hour drive. However, the program director woke us up on the bus to show us this (and many other slightly interesting, but not really exciting, aspects of the Danish countryside). A suspension bridge, it has the world's second-longest free span (1.6 km). It's also ridiculously expensive to travel across. The toll there and back on the same day is around $70. Crazy. Anyway, she woke us to see it (by blaring the radio over the intercom - very underhanded), so I took this picture, just to justify me having to wake up. Grumble, grumble.
Upon arriving in Odense, the third largest city in Denmark (the largest and the capital of the island of Funen), my group went to visit Børnehuset Verdenshuset, a kindergarten comprised mostly of children from refugee families. Of the 40ish students there, only 4 had both Danish parents. This was a good example of the problem of minorities in Denmark. Most of them come because of war and political persecution in their home country and so they already arrive with a negative view about them - that they are from poor, underdeveloped, unstable countries, leeching off the labor market. Also, they move into government subsidized housing areas because they are cheap, so you get communities of minority populations that consequently result in segregated neighborhoods. Even though it's because of the low-cost housing and the comfort of being near their own culture, this doesn't help to paint a better picture of them in the eyes of the majority.
The school itself was quite an experience. We joined the kids in their gym-like class. We played duck-duck-goose (er...substitute the Danish words for 'duck' and 'goose' - though it's very possible that the words were two other animals as well), dodgeball, etc. - the games that transcend time and country boundaries.
Sadly, I don't have any pictures. Danish laws are very strict about the photography of children. Like in America, you need the permission of parents in most cases. Also, you can't take portrait pictures of children, either. You can only take group shots, etc. where there isn't specifically one child as the focus of the photo. You can take pictures of the facilities and such - I just got lazy. This just means most of my pictures are scenery pictures and pictures of American students acting stupid. I'm sure they'll be up on Facebook sooner or later.
1 comment:
Thanks for writing this.
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