21st Birthday

Sorry I have not written in a while. I am currently packing up to go to Copenhagen to meet my family. Then on Thursday we will travel to Stockholm for the weekend before they return home to the US via Iceland.  The reason I have not written is the weather has been incredibly nice and I have not spent much time inside or on the computer and at night there has been a flurry of birthday parties for me to attend including my own so I have not spent much time on the computer recently. For instance, for the last 5 days it has been in the 60-70s F and sunny with few clouds and limited win. In fact this is going to be the weather here for the next week as well so my family will have excellent weather in both cities they are visiting with me. In the nice weather I have spent the day outside going on long runs or bike rides and playing football. Yesterday in fact I traveled all the way to west Aalborg ( about 8-9km away from where I live in East Aalborg) to play football. We were not planning on going so far but a lot of the other small fields were in use due to the nice weather (it was in the 70s yesterday).
My classes are almost all finished I only have one last class next tuesday for energy and the environment. So now it is time to really crank out the project which is due at the end of may. I am going to have some leisure time though in may. In the middle of the month I am traveling to Berlin and I just bought my tickets today for that trip. I will also go to the northern most point in Denmark called Skagen. And then just before my project finishes Lyndsay will be arriving and we will spend the last weekend in May together in Aalborg enjoying the festivities of Carnival before heading off to italy for the first week of june.
My birthday was excellent. I invited a bunch of friends over and cooked some bacon cheese burgers and hot dogs for them which they were all very excited about. After we hung out and had lots of cake because another one of the guys from my collegium also is born on April 11th (In fact I now know 9 people that I share my birthday with). He was turning 25 which is a significant thing in Denmark. They have a tradition that if you turn 25 and you are not married your friends can throw cinnamon on you. And if you turn 30 and are not married then instead of cinnamon they throw pepper... Unfortunately for him he was "cinnamoned" several times. First was during the day after class because he is also an engineer so I witnessed a very thorough cinnamoning. Below is picture to show the scene. To prevent him from running away we used 4 industrial strength zip ties to fasten him to a light pole. After he was doused with water and 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of cinnamon he was cut free and we all had to take off for fear of being hugged by the cinnamon-man. However that was not the last time as later that night after he had showered for the second time that day some guys in my collegium got hold of him and more water and cinnamon... I know one thing I will stay far away from Denmark when I turn 25....

Christian getting "cinnamoned"

Additionally this past week a friend of mine and I organized a game of "the hit" to be played in our collegium. For those of you who don't know the hit is like the game "assassins" except everyone can "kill" everyone. The game started on my birthday and on friday in an epic firefight I was the victor and sole survivor of the game. This was our second collegium wide game and after two successes a third may be underway for mid May.
Also due to the good weather we have been doing a lot of grilling which has been awesome. Although the collegium has a large grill it is too big unless you are cooking for more than 30 people. So instead we are using small charcoal ones that some of the Danes have. One thing that I am very excited to make is something that only a Dane would conceive... A hot dog wrapped in bacon and then grilled... I am definitely making a bunch of these soon. This is like the most un-kosher food I can think of but incredibly awesome- Epic Meal time would be proud... Speaking of Kosher it is now passover however due to the lack of jewish people in Denmark I have yet to see a store selling even Matzah let alone anything else kosher for passover. Hence I will not be following that tradition this spring. I have to run for now because I have a bus and a plane to catch. A very long and detailed post of my adventures this easter holiday will soon follow...