Great Danes

Two years ago my spunky cousin EMILY at a family dinner said "Anna, lets go to Denmark." So a week and a half later we found ourselves on a plane flying first class, up in the sky, drinking champagne (not really), livin' the life in the fast lane, and we won't change, by the glamorous, oh flousy flousy. I had my nails done to look like the Danish flag and everything!
Grandma and Grandpa Peterson were on a mission in Copenhagen at the time, and let us stay with them. We had SO MUCH FUN playing around and visiting the land of our ancestors. Wherever we went, other tourists would stop us on the street and ask directions. We had to explain time after time how flattered we were that they thought we were Danish, but we too were tourists just like them.

- Did you know that the original Christus (like the one at the visitor's center on Temple Square) came from Denmark?

-Exactly a year earlier, I had visited Copenhagen with my group of girls in Russia. When Emily and I showed up for church on Sunday, many of the members recognized me from the year before and even remembered that my last name was Olsen (because everyone's last name in Denmark is Olsen)! They are the kindest people, and one older woman invited us over for 'tea' that afternoon.

-We visited the temple and did baptisms. It is the prettiest baptisimal font I have ever been in. The room is circular and is completely covered in a mural depicting Christ and many of his followers. It is beautiful and is especially special to the Danes because almost every one of the faces in the mural represents a Dane who has been important in history (ex. Hans Christen Anderson, Eliza Snow...)

- We also tried to flirt with one of the guards of the Royal Palace (yeah, Denmark has the oldest monarchy in the world. They still have a king, queen, prince, princess, ect). When we asked the guard if we could take a picture with him he told us that we had to stand "3 meters away." We told him we were American and had no idea how much a meter was. He straigtened us out pretty quick. He never even cracked a smile!

We visited a gazillion beautiful castles and saw the Crown Jewels of the State (yeah, like the ones on The Prince and Me)

Grandma/pa Peterson were great to get us involved in the missionary work. They were always shoving pass-along cards to us, and told us not to come back home with any left.

We also went to Sweden for a day.

Basically it was the trip of a lifetime, thanks to Em and her crazy ideas! Let's do it again!