Sunday: I arrived in Copenhagen dazed and confused after not sleeping at all on the overnight flight. My trip started off in an unexpected, unwelcome way when the direct flight I was taking from Seattle to Copenhagen was delayed 2 hours due to engine failure. Usually, that wouldn't really be a big deal, but this time it meant that I would miss the arrival deadline, and thus have to find my own way to the orientation site. The DIS (my school, the Danish Institute for Study Abroad) representative I talked to in Minnesota assured me not to worry and there were other DIS students on my flight, but still, it was not the most promising start.
On board the flight, I sat next to a 20-year-old German guy who thankfully spoke English. It was fun taking to someone my own age, until he mentioned something about a Madrid flight. When I asked him to explain, he told me that it was just in the news that the engine of a plane flying out of Madrid had failed like ours, and they replaced it, but then the new engine blew up, killing 130 people instantly. Great. We were still at the gate, and the plane hadn't started moving yet. He (we never exchanged names on the 9.5 hour flight) proved to be fairly entertaining seat company, until he started making fun of me during my desperate attempts to fall asleep in my airplane seat.
When I arrived in CPH, and breezed through customs, I realized that I was one of 13 of us coming from Seattle. We divided up into two groups to take these massive van cabs to the orientation site. It was actually really cool to meet them all, because we all are from the Seattle area, but like me, everyone goes to college at private universities scattered across the U.S.
The orientation site proved to be highly over-stimulating for my sleep deprived brain, but it didn't last very long, and then my host family came and picked me up. And oh my gosh how I love my host family! I'll explain more about them as I continue this ridiculously long post, but they are: Jesper the Dad (Yes-per), Tinne the mom (Teen-eh), Mette who is 17 (Met-teh), Anne who is 15 (Anne-a), and Ida, the cutest 11-year-old ever (ee-dah). Jesper, Tinne, and Ida picked me up, then took me home to a traditional Danish meal, a quick trip down to the harbor to get ice cream and see their sailboat, and then shuffled me off to bed.
Monday: Jesper drove me into the city because I didn't get my transportation pass until that afternoon. On the way he made a Harry Potter joke, and then later referenced "the Parent Trap." After that I felt a lot better about being in a random international city, living with strangers. We stopped at his office at Copenhagen University (he is sort of a combined mathematician/math historian), and then he helped me find my way to the Black Diamond, the new Danish Royal Library, which was the site of the opening ceremony for the semester.
After the ceremony, I found one of the girls I came in from Seattle with, and walked around for a couple of hours, and found our way back to DIS. Those of us Seattle-type people who arrived late also missed the distribution of the transportation stipends, which are kind of extremely important, so we had to get our money. We then had a two-hour bus tour of Copenhagen. I don't really like bus tours because you can't really take pictures, or see anything if you are cursed with my eyesight, and Angela (the girl from Puyallup, Washington), Caitlin (also from the Seattle area), and I were surrounded by these really loud frat guys who were more interested in discussing their flip-cup plans than listening to the tour guide. I ended up falling asleep by the very end of the tour, and I'm going to need to go back and re-visit almost everything anyway.
It was then time to go home, thus it was also time to figure out how to go about purchasing trasportation passes. This turned into a whole long process, because DIS failed to mention that we would need passport photos for the passes, no one knew where to find them, and everyone was becoming increasingly cranky at 4 in the afternoon, thanks to jet lag. We finally got everything sorted, and I now can ride through up to 6 zones on the bus or S-train by just flashing my pass.
I ride the 150 S bus towards Kokkedal, from Norreport Station, get of at Gammel Holte after about 40 minutes, then walk diagonally through a park towards home. I only got lost once n my first time out by myself, and that was only because the bus stop was on the highway access road that I hadn't seen before, and I was completely disoriented, so I accidentally turned the wrong direction off of the bus, found the wrong diagonal path, and had to call Tinne to rescue me.
Tuesday: Long and painful orientation sessions. 3-hours of orientation stuff, 3 hours of Danish. Brain still jet-lagged. Many yawns ensue from all directions.
Wednesday: This was the first morning of program orientation, as well as th first morning of rain. European Politics and Society had the earliest orientation at 9, and ours lasted the full hour. I had from 10-1:15 free, and so I decided to be touristy for the first time since arriving in Denmark, and went out, camera in hand, to explore. I was alone for the first hour and a half, and then my friend Andy (also from Seattle, imagine that!) came and joined me. I'm having trouble loading the pictures I took, but they are coming soon!
We had another 3-hour Danish lesson that day, which included a trip to the grocery store to find and identify foods in Danish. When I got home, I watched Friends with Ida, which was pretty exciting. A few of the jokes are completely lost on her due to culture barriers, so sometimes I feel a bit awkward when I start cracking up about something, and she (or Anne, or Mette) looks at me like I'm crazy. I got to explain what a ouija board is, so that was entertaining as well.
Thursday: First day of classes! I don't have my first class until 1:15pm on Thursdays, so I finally got to sleep a little. Woohoo! Also, after six total hours of Danish language, I decided it was useless to try to learn it in three and a half months, and my host family agreed with me, so now I'm taking Hans Christian Andersen and the Golden Age. On Mondays and Thursdays I also have Creative Industries: Business, Innovation, Politics, & Culture, as well as Environmental Problem and Policies: A European Perspective. My last class doesn't let out until 5:45, so that will make for a very dark ride home.
Friday: I have Jacob (YA-kob) Buksti for both my 8:30 core course, European Politics: The European Union, and Danish Politics and Society at 1:15. He is this ridiculously brilliant guy who has done all sorts of work in the E.U. I think his courses will be by far the most difficult, but I'll also probably get the most out of them for my major, Comparative/International Political Science.
Friday night, DIS threw the students a welcome party. I'm definitely not in the U.S. any longer. Each student was given an entrance ticket into the nightclub/bar (I don't really know the difference) LUUXE, along with two free drink tickets. This place was super fancy, with this velvety, lace-overlay type wallpaper, and all of these mini-chandeliers on the ceilings, and leather couches and pillows all along the walls with a dance floor in the middle. Apparently all bars in Denmark are non-smoking, which I appreciate. And this place was also really expensive for those who felt the need to move beyond the two free drinks. This one guy tried to order a Long Island ice tea (isn't that a girly drink?) and it cost 250DKK, which is about 50 dollars for a drink! I left with some friends who wanted to find a cheaper bar, but left them before we found it because I didn't know the night bus schedule, was paranoid about it, my feet hurt, I was tired, and apparently really lame.
Saturday/Sunday: I'm tired of writing, and I'm sure you're tired of reading, so I'll wrap this up quickly...Saturday I went on a really dumb, two-hour long walking tour of the "other" Copenhagen, meaning trendy shops, cafes, etc. It was really boring and pointless, but the guide gave us a helpful map (which was really all we needed in the first place, because nothing was open). Then I took a train for the first time, met some Americans from Seattle (!!!) who helped me figure out which train to take to Lynby, met up with Mette to do some shopping, got home, and I haven't left the house since. There were a couple of castle tours that I will definitely go on, but today was not the day. It has been quite the first week, and there is for sure more to come!
Monday: Jesper drove me into the city because I didn't get my transportation pass until that afternoon. On the way he made a Harry Potter joke, and then later referenced "the Parent Trap." After that I felt a lot better about being in a random international city, living with strangers. We stopped at his office at Copenhagen University (he is sort of a combined mathematician/math historian), and then he helped me find my way to the Black Diamond, the new Danish Royal Library, which was the site of the opening ceremony for the semester.
After the ceremony, I found one of the girls I came in from Seattle with, and walked around for a couple of hours, and found our way back to DIS. Those of us Seattle-type people who arrived late also missed the distribution of the transportation stipends, which are kind of extremely important, so we had to get our money. We then had a two-hour bus tour of Copenhagen. I don't really like bus tours because you can't really take pictures, or see anything if you are cursed with my eyesight, and Angela (the girl from Puyallup, Washington), Caitlin (also from the Seattle area), and I were surrounded by these really loud frat guys who were more interested in discussing their flip-cup plans than listening to the tour guide. I ended up falling asleep by the very end of the tour, and I'm going to need to go back and re-visit almost everything anyway.
It was then time to go home, thus it was also time to figure out how to go about purchasing trasportation passes. This turned into a whole long process, because DIS failed to mention that we would need passport photos for the passes, no one knew where to find them, and everyone was becoming increasingly cranky at 4 in the afternoon, thanks to jet lag. We finally got everything sorted, and I now can ride through up to 6 zones on the bus or S-train by just flashing my pass.
I ride the 150 S bus towards Kokkedal, from Norreport Station, get of at Gammel Holte after about 40 minutes, then walk diagonally through a park towards home. I only got lost once n my first time out by myself, and that was only because the bus stop was on the highway access road that I hadn't seen before, and I was completely disoriented, so I accidentally turned the wrong direction off of the bus, found the wrong diagonal path, and had to call Tinne to rescue me.
Tuesday: Long and painful orientation sessions. 3-hours of orientation stuff, 3 hours of Danish. Brain still jet-lagged. Many yawns ensue from all directions.
Wednesday: This was the first morning of program orientation, as well as th first morning of rain. European Politics and Society had the earliest orientation at 9, and ours lasted the full hour. I had from 10-1:15 free, and so I decided to be touristy for the first time since arriving in Denmark, and went out, camera in hand, to explore. I was alone for the first hour and a half, and then my friend Andy (also from Seattle, imagine that!) came and joined me. I'm having trouble loading the pictures I took, but they are coming soon!
We had another 3-hour Danish lesson that day, which included a trip to the grocery store to find and identify foods in Danish. When I got home, I watched Friends with Ida, which was pretty exciting. A few of the jokes are completely lost on her due to culture barriers, so sometimes I feel a bit awkward when I start cracking up about something, and she (or Anne, or Mette) looks at me like I'm crazy. I got to explain what a ouija board is, so that was entertaining as well.
Thursday: First day of classes! I don't have my first class until 1:15pm on Thursdays, so I finally got to sleep a little. Woohoo! Also, after six total hours of Danish language, I decided it was useless to try to learn it in three and a half months, and my host family agreed with me, so now I'm taking Hans Christian Andersen and the Golden Age. On Mondays and Thursdays I also have Creative Industries: Business, Innovation, Politics, & Culture, as well as Environmental Problem and Policies: A European Perspective. My last class doesn't let out until 5:45, so that will make for a very dark ride home.
Friday: I have Jacob (YA-kob) Buksti for both my 8:30 core course, European Politics: The European Union, and Danish Politics and Society at 1:15. He is this ridiculously brilliant guy who has done all sorts of work in the E.U. I think his courses will be by far the most difficult, but I'll also probably get the most out of them for my major, Comparative/International Political Science.
Friday night, DIS threw the students a welcome party. I'm definitely not in the U.S. any longer. Each student was given an entrance ticket into the nightclub/bar (I don't really know the difference) LUUXE, along with two free drink tickets. This place was super fancy, with this velvety, lace-overlay type wallpaper, and all of these mini-chandeliers on the ceilings, and leather couches and pillows all along the walls with a dance floor in the middle. Apparently all bars in Denmark are non-smoking, which I appreciate. And this place was also really expensive for those who felt the need to move beyond the two free drinks. This one guy tried to order a Long Island ice tea (isn't that a girly drink?) and it cost 250DKK, which is about 50 dollars for a drink! I left with some friends who wanted to find a cheaper bar, but left them before we found it because I didn't know the night bus schedule, was paranoid about it, my feet hurt, I was tired, and apparently really lame.
Saturday/Sunday: I'm tired of writing, and I'm sure you're tired of reading, so I'll wrap this up quickly...Saturday I went on a really dumb, two-hour long walking tour of the "other" Copenhagen, meaning trendy shops, cafes, etc. It was really boring and pointless, but the guide gave us a helpful map (which was really all we needed in the first place, because nothing was open). Then I took a train for the first time, met some Americans from Seattle (!!!) who helped me figure out which train to take to Lynby, met up with Mette to do some shopping, got home, and I haven't left the house since. There were a couple of castle tours that I will definitely go on, but today was not the day. It has been quite the first week, and there is for sure more to come!
