Friday, April 27, 2012

Most of April




Hej!
These months just pass way too fast! Another month has gone by since my last blog post and I don't even know where the time has gone. Last time I wrote I had just moved into my third host family and now I have been here a month and feel fairly settled in. I think being on exchange with multiple families is great because I have learned how to make myself at home easily as the time has gone and just jump into a life I don't know and work my life into it, which is a great thing. I have also definitely become more comfortable faster as I have more host families.

So since I have lived with my host mom Tina and host brother Benjamin here is what I have been up to:
-1st bike ride in Denmark- quite an accomplishment for me since I haven't ridden a bike for quite a few years back home. it was a bit of a shaky first ride, but it's much better now, also that i have the right size bike helps.

-Rode a horse with my host mom at her riding club- I haven't ridden in a while, so it was a bit of a change and I had to remember again, but it was fun! I even rode a horse called Hollywood Jac, who was related to a horse from California or something along the lines of that I think.


-We had a easter day in language school class where we blew eggs and made gækkebreve which are little riddles you make on cut out paper and the person you send it to has to guess who sent it and if they guess you owe them a chocolate egg but if they don't they owe you one. It's usually more for little kids, but we had fun!

blowing eggs

our finished eggs!



-I went to Ikea for lunch/dinner with Nora, Katharina, and Nok Nahm one day in Odense because Katharina had to go home early from exchange, so we needed one last Ikea time!

Ikea dinner

Most of language class minus Alicia and Jared


-I had påskeferie (easter vacation) for a week here and it was a very busy week since my host mom was working most of it I just found lots of things to do!
       -I went to a young people's place called Walker with nora and ruby, but it was actually fairly awkward because we didn't know many people there and there weren't very many people there, but it was an okay Friday night.
       -Alicia slept over at my house the next day and we just hung out. I also went to my friend Sara's (from my class) gymnastic performance in Brenderup and their team was really good! It's different how many people do gymnastics here. I think maybe 6 or 7 from my class do it if not more.
        -I went to see a movie called Hvidstens Gruppen with my host mom and her boyfriend. It was a movie about the war with Germany and Denmark and was a sad movie because a lot of Danish people died, but I was quite content after the movie because I understood almost all of it and that is without Danish subtitles for me to read and having to listen to some different accents from all over Denmark, so I was fairly pleased with myself. I may have missed some of the emotion part because I was focusing on understanding, but sometimes I would catch myself not even focusing on it and still understanding. It's the little things like this that make me realize how much i have actually learned here!
       - That monday I went to a easter lunch with some friends from my class at Sara's house and it was a nice day with LOTS of food, easter egg hunting (although we couldn't find 2), egg blowing/painting, and then a party later that ended in biking home at 4:30 in the morning, but it was overall very fun!
Our huge easter lunch!

Our painted eggs

       -I went to Interwheel (female version of Rotary) and there was a woman speaking on her time in the army and woman in Afghanistan, which was pretty interesting to hear about.
       -I woke up early to go to Nora's house (i arrived at 6 or something) because no busses run during the holidays, especially from brenderup, so this was when I could go since my host mom was driving to work. I then went back to sleep at Nora's house and slept soundly for a few more hours. Her best friend from Austria was visiting with her mom so the 4 of us went to odense and showed her friend Paulina around and later Alicia came over. Then I slept at Alicia/ my second host familie's house that night since we were going to Germany the next day.

     - We took a short trip to Germany to see some tourist spots. First we went to Danevirke which was an old defense system between Denmark and Germany. Then we drove to the town of Schleswig and saw an old viking town and then went out for lunch. At lunch Brian was trying his best to translate the menu for us, but none of us completely understood, so I was not entirely certain what I was getting, but it turned out to be really good. Then we just took a walk through the town and then had some hot chocolate.
Town of Schleswig

The viking town

my unknown meal










Danevirke- "Now is when you say "wow"-Jette


-The next day I went to my first host familie's house for a easter lunch with some of their friends and their current exchange student (my newbie-Jared). It was very nice and again lots of delicious food. It was nice to be back at their house since I hadn't been back in awhile. The next day we all went to a aquarium/museum like place- I dont know exactly how to describe it, but it was in Kerteminde and we got to learn a bit more about the water life in the area and then see a performance with the seals. we were going to see a performance with the porpuses but it was too windy and cold to stand outside any longer.
     - That evening Benjamin got home from South Africa, so we went and picked him up at the train station. Then Tina drove me to Middelfart to Nora's house for a sleepover with Nora, Katharina, Nok Nahm, and Alicia since it was Katharina's 2nd to last night in Denmark, so it was a bitter sweet night. we had lots of fun and ate LOTS of chips and Austrian/ German chocolate and then watched 2 movies. It just didn't feel real that one of the people I see everyday is going home and I don't know the next time I will see her in person, it's just too weird to imagine and so soon that's gonna be with a lot of people, which I don't even want to think about.

   
- On another note, I thought I lost my camera in Germany for awhile and was literally just about to have my mom send me a new one when Alicia found it between the bookcase and bed in her room, so that was really lucky!
   
-The next Friday I went and slept at my friend Francisco's house from Ecuador and we went out with some of his friends and had a nice time since we hadn't seen each other in awhile and then we went shopping for a bit in Odense and he was so excited to buy a cardigan which I helped him pick out.

-The next day Alicia and I worked at Galla for our school, which is the equivalent to prom. It was some hard work and Alicia and I just hid in the bathroom when it was time to pour red wine since we really didn't want to spill on anyone's dresses/clothes. I loved seeing everyone all dressed up and they all arrive in fun ways, like old cars or horse trailers or ATVs and stuff like that. Then we saw them do the lancier dance which is a very formal partner dance and it was very well done. i am glad I got to see Galla since we weren't the right age to participate, then we got to party with the 3rd years for the rest of the night and it was overall just a fun night.
People dancing the lancier


-The next day I met Alicia's family (uncle and aunt from germany and her aunt from Canada) just briefly before Tina picked me up, but it was so nice to see how happy she was to see them and I thought that's gonna be me in just a few months.

-I had a delicious and large breakfast at Nora's one day when i went early to her house. We had rundstykker (the round bread-which is so  good) and a i had a hindbær snitter which is like shortbread with raspberry jam in the middel and icing and sprinkles on top-one of my favorite pastries here


-I went to a music performance at our school because Mie (2nd host sister), Nok Nahm, Agne, and Jared were all in it, so Nora, Alicia, and I went. It was fun to see!
Mie in the center with a blue shirt and 2 to her left is Nok Nahm

my newbie Jared performing


-Then we had our very last Get together  with all the exchange students in Denmark up on Jutland in Ry. There were 160 of us I think and it was fun to get to meet all the newbies since I had really only met jared. The first night we learned some traditional Danish folk dance which was pretty funny with everyone confused about it, and then watched a movie on Danish vikings.
The rest of the night was spent talking until late in the night since a lot of us hadn't seen each other since october.

The next day we spent around 3 hours making Viking gear and weapons and things like that because the rest of the day was spent Larping (live action role playing-in case you arent familiar) in the forests like vikings, giants, and gods. i was a viking and overall it was pretty interesting and funny to see 160 exchange students all dressed up fighting with duct tape and foam swords. By the end we were all exhausted went back to hang out and talk until dinner. that night we had a disco and again stayed up late talking since who knows when we will see some of these people again. We also had a slideshow of our year here and that was definitely a tear jerker. here's the video, but some people said it doesn't work in the US:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxlFKOv0DDg&feature=youtu.be

and here is a video from the tv station on Jutland of our weekend- they came to film a bit. Start at 7:43 to see our part and watch the background carefully at 8:26-8:29 for a  little head to pop up and wave- that's me!
Awesome exchange student larping
Sunday we went home and I was throughly exhausted and fell asleep on the couch for awhile.
making money pouches

All the exchnage students at the get together- Where's Nina?

An actual intense LARPer and my friend Tara from Vermont

Some Epic Larping going on right there

Monday and tuesday we didn't have school which was nice, so Monday i went for a little bike ride on my own to practice and it all went well with no crashing!

This last wedenesday after language school Jared, Alicia, and I were in the bank speaking English together and let's just say we stand out a bit when we are doing this and then a woman came up to us asking where we were from and what not and it turns out she was traveling around Europe with a group of people and we were just doing good small talk and what not and then of course she hits us up to buy a windchime type thing because that's how they pay for their trip and we couldnt just say we don't have money since we were standing 3 feet from an ATM so we bought one between the 3 of us to give to Brian (our shared host dad) for his birthday. Pshh us naive exchange students getting excited about someone actually being interested where we are from with no alterior motives. ;)

Today was our very last language school class, which is really sad because that was such a fun class for us a Lorea was a great friend to us. We could ask her anything we wanted to know and just tell her anything, which is important to have when in another country. We spent the day eating food (I made funfetti cookies from scratch) and watching a Danish movie called "Italiensk for begynder" and it was a sweet movie. Then after that Tina picked me up and we went to a Gallery to see some paintings and there was one really huge, and extremely detailed painting that was amazing!

The weather now is not very nice like in my last post, it was pouring rain today, but we have had a few decent days. It's just very different every day.

I leave for Euro Tour on May 15th for 18 days, so I'll try and do one more post before I leave on that, but no promises since the next weeks are very booked up!

I got my official return date and now it feels real that this will actually end, which is hard to cope with, but I still have over 2 months that I will make amazing!

Farvel for nu,
Nina




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