Zebras, Crocodiles, and Wild Boars. Oh my.
So after reading the title, what do you think this blog post is going to be about?
Hmmm…
Thomas took a weekend trip to Sub-Saharan Africa? That would indubitably be amazing but alas, no.
Thomas traded programming for veterinary medicine? I always wanted to be a vet but still no.
Today’s story takes place on Core Course Week. For those not familiar with CCW, it is a week early in the semester here at DIS in which you spend half the week in Copenhagen and the other half is spent traveling with your class.
For the Game Development Core Course, we spent the first half of the week developing computer games and exploring the design and experience of escape rooms. The second half of the week was spent traveling across Western Denmark to the city of Aarhus where we heard lectures on quantum fields and the use of computer games to aid scientific research and took hundreds of Instagram-worthy pictures in the Aros museum rainbow panorama.
CCW was an accelerator for getting to know my classmates and I enjoyed it tremendously for this reason. No longer were there those awkward experiences in class of not knowing the person sitting next to you’s name. After CCW, I felt closer with the class and I can’t wait to spend an entire travel week in Berlin and Frankfurt with them later in the semester.
Now let’s get back to the exotic animal story.
On the first night of our travel to Western Denmark, our bus stopped for dinner at an all-you-can-eat buffet. As far as all-you-can-eat buffets go, this was a fancy ordeal. There were fifty different types of salad, garlic butter to make your inner carb-monster swoon, and, of all things, zebra/crocodile meatloaf.
I was just as shocked as you, Princess Leia.
Zebra in Denmark? Crocodile in Denmark? Both of them in one meatloaf? I was confused, shocked, appalled, stunned, intrigued, and… hungry.
While thousands of questions grazed in the great plains of my mind, I asked the server for a slice of the zebra/crocodile meatloaf and a slice of the wild boar meatloaf wrapped in bacon.
With a cautious approach, my fork and knife descended on the meatloaves (I hope that’s the plural of meatloaf). I opened my mouth, brought the fork-airplane in for landing, and in a moment of sudden realization, I was not a fan.
It just tasted strange. The consistency was all wrong and in my head, I told myself that zebra and crocodile just were not for me. I quickly made the same conclusion as I moved to the wild pig wrapped in domestic pig combo.
As I reflect on the experience I had in an all-you-can-eat buffet somewhere in the middle of Denmark, I am proud of myself. Don’t get me wrong, I feel guilty for eating the zebra. I’m sure any vegetarian people reading this are shaking their heads in a state of disgust and anger.
I am proud of myself for moving outside of my comfort zone and trying something so new and different. When I made the decision to study abroad, I told myself to try everything because I’d never know what I would be missing out on if I didn’t. While I never imagined in my wildest, craziest, funkiest dreams that I would be eating a zebra/crocodile meatloaf while abroad in Denmark, the opportunity arose and I seized it.
This semester has already been and will continue to be full of surprises. Whether those surprises end up on my dinner plate or on a trip to Italy, I plan to seize them all.
I’ll leave the Python for class tomorrow.
