Outdoor Urinals... um Bonnaroo are you listening??

Yesterday was such a good Friday! We started the day with a bus ride downtown to pay our rent and meet with a clinical psychologist that handles many adoption cases. He had many interesting things to say that really helped up get a better idea for our documentary's focus. You can check out one of the education systems he provides online at Fairstart.net It's a series of courses offered to help children placed outside of their homes deal with issues of attachment.

After our wonderful meeting with Dr. Niels P. Rygaard. We bused back to school for our dreaded meeting with our teacher, Kate. When we got there everything went surprisingly smooth. I just started talking and couldn't stop, but I mean, she was nodding, smiling as much as a Norwegian will, and not saying anything... so I kept going pausing every now and then for Wendy and Christina to add in. She helped us rework some things and get on a better track and then sent us home. She also reminded us that she's been lecturing us 12 weeks, so for the next 3 she will be peacing out. Which means if we need her during that time for questions we're just SOL.
Afterward was this Regatta 2011 or Kapsejladsen, I'm not sure which was the official title, but basically it was this big Danish gathering of 20,000 people under the age of 30 at the University Park in Aarhus. We aren't the only school with a Friday bar. Each university has one. So they basically compete in 2 ways it looked like. First, with a dance routine. Oh my goodness, it was hilarious! If you don't know the song "Call on Me" Youtube it. Their performance was kind of similar. The girls all dressed up as nurses, and one boy wore bright red pants, which were quickly ripped off to reveal his red speedo. Then, as he started dancing with a lot of thrusting the speedo was taken off and he was wearing nothing but a white G-string.

There were about 10 groups competing. After the dances, it was time for the boat race. Here are the rules, listen up! Raft across the pong/river, chug a Royal Beer with one hand on your hip like this. Then you take the empty bottle, hold it down near the ground and run around it 10 times. Jump into your raft, raft back across the pond, and tag your team member in. I'm not sure how many times they did this. I know I saw one girl do it at least 3 times, once falling in. It looked like one crazy Danish game.

So here, at the festival I'm realizing that I will always be able to somewhat pick out a Scandinavian person. I'm finally starting to pick up on their mannerisms, clothing, and just overall appearance. As, we are walking back to our bikes, Christina and I were amazed. We looked over and saw urinals outdoors! It was the strangest thing. Here's a photo of one being used and one by itself, because I didn't have a camera at the time, I found these pictures from Holland. Don't you think Bonnaroo would really benefit from these?! That way the porter potties don't get quite so gross and the lines could be cut down dramatically. I guess shy guys could still use the porter potties, but Idk for some reason after walking away from that festival this was what fascinated me the most.

To get a better idea of what this event is all about... here's some footage of last year's. Kapsejlads 2010

When we got home, it was back to work. We still needed a case for our documentary that would show an adoptive family and be able to represent all of our points through their eyes. Ideally, we wanted a Danish family with more than one child. Hopefully, one would be a teenager and at least one of the child be a different race. So we began our search working the adoption agency websites and forums. Sure enough, I stumbled upon a button Privatlik. Everything is in Danish you know. When I clicked it, I found a list of all sorts of family blogs wanting to share their stories. We started emailing each family that met our criteria and saw that one of them even provided a phone number.

Now usually, this isn't much hope. When we call, we have 3 strikes against us from the moment we introduce ourselves. 1. We are not Danish 2. We are students 3.... the worst, we are journalists. Even so, we called up Morten, a father in Aalborg that has adopted 2 girls from India. One is 11 and the other is 13 now. He says sure of course come over. I was very skeptical. I mean, this guy knows nothing about us and he's just like sure come on over, film my kids. He even seemed interested in our project and our semester program. So, I'm very excited to meet the family next week and start filming!

After getting over the shock of how easily we'd just found our sources, we celebrated Kim and Kristin's birthdays right outside of our dorm and barbecued. It was a nice finish to a great day.