Alright, so I decided that making a full separate blog just for my travel experiences would be a bit much, so I'm going to post about my spring in Denmark here.
There's already so much to say, even though I've been here less than 12 hours. It's hard to sum up what Denmark has been so far... I'm tempted to settle for "just the right amount of different," but that doesn't seem to do it justice.
To start, I was worried yesterday, as I commonly am before long trips. At about 17 weeks, this is the longest I've been gone from the United States and certainly the longest I've been gone from home. Again, the trip is only starting, but I still managed to fill my head with all kinds of concerns: "What if I don't meet anyone friendly?" "What if it turns out I don't like Denmark?" "What if my host family doesn't like me?" etc.
Luckily, those concerns went away one by one, starting in the airport after I said goodbye to my family. I met several other students going to Denmark, and that number easily tripled when I got to Toronto and then doubled from there once I reached Copenhagen. Side note: after weeks if not months of my family trying to figure out how to pronounce "Copenhagen" I've now heard the correct way is with a long A (i.e. CopenHAYgen) not CopenHAWgen as we'd been saying originally. More on that later. At any rate, it quickly became clear that I was not alone and would have no trouble finding other students to talk to, as most everyone I met who was going to DIS was friendly.
Describing Denmark itself remains difficult. I mean, how do you describe an entirely new country that you've never been to, and honestly, that you didn't think you'd be going to even a year ago? First, the airport is astonishingly clean and modern. Maybe it was the jet lag, but I was even in awe of the incredibly nice hardwood floors that I saw after customs - certainly a major step up from the scuffed-up tiles of most American airports. I can't remember the last time I've cleared customs so easily. For better or worse, the weather is similar to Cleveland's - it's cold outside, and it was a little overcast today, but that isn't anything I haven't experienced before. The sun does set awfully early, but that comes with studying in a Northern country in January.
So far, my host family has been fantastic. I am living with a host mother and her daughter, who is just a few years younger than I am. They've both been very welcoming, and have helped me a lot with adapting to Denmark even in this short time. Danish people seem to be a little quieter than Americans, but that turns out to be a good thing - they're happy to chat but they never seem loud or in your face. I have a really nice room, and unfortunately I spent most of my afternoon catching up on lost sleep, but I can at least say that my bed is quite comfortable.
The Danish language has been the one major hurdle since I got here, but my host family speaks outstanding English, so the language barrier is nowhere near the problem it was when I was in Russia last summer. Basically, nothing in Denmark is pronounced the way it is spelled. Fair enough, you might say, but I was surprised to what degree that holds true. For example, I'm living in a town called Køge, which you might pronounce "Ko-gay" or "Ko-geh". First off, the ø is pronounced "oo", and the g is silent. Then the "e" isn't really pronounced much either, so it turns out sounding like "Kooe", with the e providing the slightest of inflections at the end of the word.
More to follow soon - there's four months of adventure ahead!
Cheers!
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