Just My Crazy Danish Life

Okay prepare yourselves for a very long and confusing post about what I've been up to the past month, both before and after Introcamp. Try not to get lost!

Several Fridays ago I had one of my busiest days since I came here. It started with us missing school to go to a sports day the next town over. All the classes competed in various activities such as handicapped soccer, beach volleyball, water polo, and many other activities that I didn't quite understand seeing as I have yet to learn this country's funny little language.

Me and the other exchange student at my school, an oldie from Brazil named Vitoria, had to leave a little early, though, as we were headed to a Danish wedding! Unfortunately, the facility we were at was completely across the town from the train station, so we took an hour long and slightly traumatizing nature walk through the city of Alberstlund, getting lost and having to ask for directions more than one time. I would also like to point out that we were only about 15 km outside of Copenhagen, and yet it was as if we were in the middle of the forest. Much nicer than the urban sprawl you'd  find outside of big cities in the US I must say.

Oh yeah and my class happened to win the sports day, so woohoo for 2w! They won last year, too, and apparently the prize was a free drink from the bar at Introfest. My school literally has class competitions for alcohol, let's just take a moment to acknowledge this. This year we won an ipod speaker I think, so that's a little more family friendly.

So back to the wedding. Although I've never been to a wedding in the US before, it was very similar to what I'd imagine an American wedding would be like. Ceremony in a church (although can you find 1000 year old churches in the US? Just thinking about what those walls have seen is so cool), with a reception at the married couple's house afterwards. Because umm, they were actually already married for several years, they had just never had a ceremony. Isn't that cute?

After the wedding I rushed home to beautify myself, and then went over to my classmate's house because we were going to have our Introfest that night. Introfest is the first of many school dances that we will have throughout the year. Me and several other girls had a very delicious dinner, and then headed over to the school. One major difference from dances back home and dances in Denmark is the alcohol, with the school selling (rather overpriced) beer to the students. At my school we also all got to draw on the first years, and the drawing sort of spread to us all, so I went home covered in Danish phrases that I have no idea what they mean, so I'm just going to hope for the best as to what had been written on me.

Rune, Maya, Trine and me

The next day I went to help my friend, Zoe, from the US make her host family mac and cheese. Making food is so hard here, what with the measurment conversions and different foods. Denmark has delicious cheese, but their cheddar could be improved, and as a result our mac and cheese turned out, well, completely flavorless. It was still so fun to just make American food though. Afterwards, Zoe came back to my house with me and spent the night, and then we headed to Introcamp the day afterwards.

Okay so now we're caught up to Introcamp, so I can just talk about what I've been up to the past 2 weeks. Which is not really that much, just trying to settle into my new life here. On Mondays and Wednesdays I go to language school with 4 other exchange students, two girls from Taiwan, a girl from New York, and a guy from Brazil. It's been really helpful and I've learned quite a lot of Danish! On Monday nights I also have Rotary, so Monday's a busy day for me! Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have soccer practice. Yes, I am playing soccer and I'm oh so good at it too. Really I just joined the team to meet more people and try to avoid coming home morbidly obese. It's actually really fun, the practices are pretty laid back and all the girls on my team are so nice.

Our first day of language school.

From left to right, Cassidy (from New York), me, Kirsten (our teacher, she is so sweet and sincere and I love her), Carol from Taiwan and Ed from Brazil. Blanche, the other girl from Taiwan, hadn't arrived yet because of visa problems I think, but she's here now so it's all good in the hood.

Then last last Thursday, me and my oldie went into Copenhagen to go to Tivoli! It's so beautiful, but I didn't get a chance to go on any of the rides seeing as I'm dirt poor, but maybe some other day when I win the lottery.

Me at the entrance

Looks so fun!

So so beautiful

We came back later to see it at night

Omg just omg

We also ventured to the Little Mermaid. Heads up to anyone coming to Copenhagen she's pretty small and slightly anticlimactic, but if you're like me and don't expect anything that special then she's just great!

Then that Saturday I went to an Innerwheel, which is like Rotary for women, function at the Opera house and Royal Library in Copenhagen. We took a tour of the Opera house which is actually so cool. I didn't really understand that much because of my lack of knowledge towards the Danish language, but apparently the hall itself is made out of maple just like violins and guitars and such, and so it's an instrument in itself! How snazzy. And then off to the Royal Library, which my momma should be happy about seeing as she's a librarian. I don't really know what to say about it, it was kinda just a library with people studying and books and stuff, but cool and modern nonetheless. 

Some snazzy artwork inside the Opera House.

Last Sunday I had my first violin lesson. My teacher is an American that my teacher back home knew and found for me, and so she's very good and I'm happy. I think I'm gonna start playing more violin again, and she also found a orchestra group thing that I can be in on Sundays and meet other musicians my age and stuff. So that's good!

Okay well I think I've overwhelmed you enough with my confusing and frazzled life for now, so vi ses snart!

Alicia

Introcamp

Sorry for my lack of posting the last couple weeks, I've just been so busy! Last week I went up to Bjerringbro in Jutland to go to an Introcamp with 150 other exchange students. Crazy experience, to say the least.

I started off the week with a 4 1/2 hour bus ride with all the other students in my district, district 1470. In these 4 1/2 hours, we proceeded to drive nearly across the country. Across the country! Denmark is so small! It was also nice to finally meet everyone else in my district, because now I have other exchange students to hang out with.

When we got there we found our rooms and then went to the Lecture Hall to go over the schedule for the week. My room had 4 other American girls in it, all of us having to share a bathroom and me having to sleep on the floor. Crowded room but I didn't mind. Going over the schedule, they told us that we'd have 6 hours of Danish lessons a day. Since I had already studied a ton of Danish, the classes were a little boring, but my teacher was attractive enough to make up for what I wasn't learning. Picture Ed Westwick and Chace Crawford combined guys.

There were several different evening experiences throughout the week, including pin trading (there were so many of us, so my blazer is now basically covered!) rock climbing, a concert by a Danish band who was quite good (and very attractive), going into town to spend all our money on candy, and a very depressing movie night highlighting a historical drama about a Danish Nazi resistance group that was executed during WWII.

Cassidy, Hailey, Mick and me wearing our blazers.

My blazer

Why yes I did organize my pins into a map of the world.

Why hello there.

One of the more awkward pictures from my year so far.

Everyone in Nick's room aka the party room.

The 5110 kids stocking up on candy!

We all hung our flags in the windows to show our somewhat overbearing national pride.

At the end of the week we took a day trip to Aarhus, the 2nd biggest city in Denmark. We started off the day with a tour of Aros, a very snazzy modern art museum. At the top there's this giant rainbow walkway with fantastic views of the city. Seeing as there were so many of us, the tours all ended at different times, so it was difficult to find each other to go frolic through the city afterwards. Or so I thought, seeing as everyone went straight to H&M aka the exchange student store, and we all just found each other there.

The rainbow walkway lets you take such amazing pictures of Aarhus.

Me and Hailey at the top of the museum.

My lunch.

The rainbow walkway from the outside.

On our last day, Saturday, all the classes had to do a skit. Our class decided to represent the different cultures in our class, so the Indian girl sang twinkle twinkle little star in a sassy Hindi accent, while the South Americans did one of their many dances, the Americans dressed up like rednecks and sang Big Green Tractor, and the Canadian (joined by 3 Americans including me) said some very interesting Canadian pick up lines (The cleanest of the jokes being, "If you were a maple tree I'd tap that"). The entire talent show was just a crazy experience, with many of the guys wearing bras and dancing to assorted pop songs such as Gangnam style, the new exchange student song.

After the talent show, we had a disco of sorts, which the South Americans completely took over. It was just Latin music and crazy dances, it seems like every single Latin song has a dance that goes along with it, so I spent the night attempting to copy the girls next to me. But honestly I cannot move my hips like a Latina, it's complicated alright. I literally felt like I had been transported to South America, a cultural experience to say the least.

Well this post has gotten pretty long, so I think I'll make another post soon about everything else I've been up to the past couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading!