Thursday, March 21, 2013

Change of Plans - Sunday, March 17th

If any of you have talked to a choir member over the last few days, you know that the weather is nothing like we were expecting. It's also nothing like it would usually be at this time of the year over here. With freezing temperatures and flurries in the air, we had to make a few changes to our plans for the day.

Bundled up and braving the cold
The morning started as planned; we sang a few songs at the worship service at Lindelse Church. The service was a litte boring for most students because we had no idea what was being said. Obviously since we are in Denmark, the main language is Danish, so that's what we heard for the service. We tried to sing along to the hymn's, but that didn't go so well.

After service we were supposed to go on a short bus ride and then a walking tour of Rudkobing, but instead we did a long bus tour of the North and South side of Rudkobing. Pastor Trilla was so kind to give us the tour and alot of information about the town. Most of the students didn't enjoy this day becasue of all of the tension on the bus. Friendships are being tested. This is probably due to how confined we are on the bus and how often we are together.

Tranekaer Castle
We were supposed to walk around Tranekaer Castle, but instead we were only able to drive past because of how cold it was outside. We got a little break from each other when we stopped at Tranekaer Church where we got a history lesson of the church from a friend of Trille's. A few students were obviously not interested and fell asleep. This church is very easily seen due to the bright yellow color. After our lesson we took a short walk around the grounds of the church and heard an interesting stroy about a grave there.



Tranekaer Church


Long ago Denmark was alot bigger than it is today, unfortunately there was a huge flood which took out 1/3 of the population. When this happened many bodies were found laying around. One of the bodies was of a baby girl. The people of the town searched for the parents of the girl, but they were never found, so those people decided to make a grave for her on the grounds of the church. They still keep up on the grave to this day.

 

Grave of girl found


Tomb built into the ground
On this tour we learned about the graves in the shape of a ship. Some of the graves dated back to the viking ages and still exist today. These graves are where captains of ships are buried, and are surrounded by rocks in the shape of a ship and are based on the size of the ship in which they commanded. We also got to enter a tomb that bodies were buried in and then removed. There was a very small entrance to the tomb so we had to enter one-by-one and were squished once we got in.

Students at the entrance of a tomb
After our very informative tour, we went back to the church and rehearsed for our evening concert. We then ate and had our concert in front of a packed house. This concert went well but, due to the tension of the day, there wasn't much celebration and praise to each other. We had a reception and then went back to our host families and had the night to ourselves.

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