Over (t)here in Denmark

Yes, we have confirmation. It is possible for a shopping mall to be too big. As an obsessive shopper, I doubted that this could ever be accomplished, but Scandinavia's largest, newest shopping center, Field's, is just too big. Chia Ling and I went to check it out on Saturday, and both of us had a headache twenty minutes in. Too many floors, too many stores, too many people. I think we'll stick to our tried-and-true Strøget.

Easter break, or påskeferie, is in two weeks, and my host family is taking me to Jutland, and to Legoland, which I'm very much looking forward to. On my first night here, over dinner, my host father said that if there were any trips that I wanted to take, I only needed to ask. I tentatively mentioned that I'd always wanted to go to Legoland. Two days later, Elin told me that over Easter break, we'd drive over to stay at her parents' house in Århus, and spend the weekend in Legoland!

Every Tuesday evening, a family in our community makes dinner for the other 13 families in the community. Last night was my family's night to make dinner, and we made three monstrous meatloafs, cooked peas and corn, fresh carrots and cucumbers, and baked potatoes. I must have cut over three hundred potatoes! My hands are a bit blistered, even. It was fun to make, and turned out to be very good. We all eat together in what is called the "common house" in English, "fælleshuset" in Danish. The house is quite large, with several sitting rooms with couches, a children's room, a large kitchen and dining room, a game room, a bar and party room, several televisions, a working sauna (that I plan to put to good use), a weight room (ditto), and the enormous washing machine and dryer, used by the whole community, because the houses in the community don't have their own. This common house is open for reservations, so if you wanted to hold a party, you just look at the large calendar hanging near the kitchen and write your name and house number on the day you'd like it. It's pretty much open during the day, but in the evenings and on weekends it's usually reserved.

School is going fine, and my friends are doing all right, too. Oh, but I've lost my train pass. In dollars it's worth about $80, and it's valid for the whole northern part of my island, so this is no small loss. Plus I wanted to save my previous passes, which I keep in the same little card-holder behind the one being used, if that makes sense. This pass is valid until April 6th, and I'll get money for a new one at the beginning of April. Until then, I have a punch ticket that my mom used when she came to visit, but didn't use all ten punches. Some punch tickets are worth more than others, because you can go farther using less punches if you have one of the expensive types. For example, on some tickets, you have to punch three times to go all the way to Copenhagen, and on others, which are more expensive, you only have to punch once. The pass I lost isn't a punch ticket at all, which is why it's so valuable. I can take any train as many times as I like. If I want to go to Copenhagen between now and the beginning of April, I can use the punch ticket she left me, which is a relief, because I really like going to Copenhagen, and do all the time with my friends. There are four punches left on it, which means two trips to Copenhagen (one punch to get there, one punch to come back).

The funny part is, on Monday, Jill got back from her class trip to Rome (I know, I'm jealous, too), and she called me to ask if I wanted to meet, because we hadn't seen each other for quite some time. I was all the way to Hellerup (that's about six stops!) before I realized I had forgotten my punch ticket completely. If a conductor came through then, I'd be fined almost $100. I panicked, and got off at Hellerup, not knowing what to do. I had my bike with me, should I bike home? Should I buy a cheap ticket here? Should I risk going all the way back home without a ticket? I decided to risk it, and made it home without getting caught. I was so jumpy and anxious for the whole ride, people were giving me funny looks. I probably had it written all over my face: "I'm taking the train without a ticket- can you tell?"

The first St. Patrick's Day of my life since about grade 2 that I didn't wear green and wasn't pinched. How depressive.

I now live in a housing community just outside Hillerød, called Leerbjerg Lod. I have a great host family; Allan and Elin are extremely nice, and they have four kids, although only two are still at home. Anna is 20, and studying the outdoors in Norway, and Lasse is 16 and on exchange in the state of New York. I met Lasse about a week before he left, and he'll return about a month after I leave. I'm using his room while staying here. Kasper is 12 and pretty friendly, and Maiken (a girl) is seven and really cute. She and I have gotten to be great friends, even though I've been here only four days.

Like at my first host family, I can either bike to school or take the bus. Today, as I was setting off for home, I didn't realize that my back tire was flat, and when I tried to pedal, the inner tube was caught and twisted into the gears, completely immobilizing the back tire. You can't even walk a bike when the back tire can't turn. So, I carried the bike home. My house is roughly two miles away from my school. And I carried it the whole way. You can imagine what it looked like to passer-bys.

I'm taking the bus from now on.

Ang's and my Danish phrases of the day:

Vi taler ikke dansk, vi kan ikke forstår dig, og nej, vi har ikke nogen små penge = We don't speak Danish, we can't understand you, and no, we have no small change.

Hvad betyder det? = What does that mean?

Hvor er min dansk ordbog? = Where's my Danish dictionary?

Hvor skal vi hen? = Where are we going?

Vil du har en milkshake? = Do you want a milkshake?

Vil du Hula Hoop med mig? = Will you Hula Hoop with me?

Gå ikke over sporet, det kommer toget! = Don't go over the tracks, the train is coming!

Det er ikke nemt at være en frikedelle. = It's not easy to be a meatball. (This is Ang's - go figure.)

Ang, må jeg låne nogen penge? = Ang, can I borrow some money? (This is mine - go figure.)

My school schedule this week has been skewed--something called "mock exams" are currently underway. I arrived at school late yesterday, not realizing I was supposed to be exam-ing with my classmates. I stammered something along the lines of "But, but, but ..." while they stuck me in front of a computer, handed me a short story, and commanded me to write an essay. So write an essay I did.

After we were finished with the exam, we were free to go, and because I had no plans until later that night and had a good book with me, I rode the train to Helsingør and back, which takes about an hour and a half. I went and had dinner with Anni, Maria, and Katrine (Bent is hunting in South Africa).

Today was the math part of mock exams, and I was excused from them, so I have today free. I began packing this morning (I move to my third and last host family on Sunday), and now I'm at the library, returning some overdue books, and Jill and I are meeting in about half an hour. Tonight I have a ticket to go and see a play in Tivoli. Tomorrow is some sort of orientation for next year's Danish outbounds, and all Rotary exchange students are invited.

Oh, how to describe a Rotary get-together in words ... Wild. Rambunctious. At times, utterly uncontrolable (sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing). And unbelievably (and at times, inexplicably) fun.

I had to wake up early Friday because I hadn't packed for the weekend yet. Somehow I managed to cram everything I thought I needed into a relatively small duffel bag and a purse, and that includes a sleeping bag, an air mattress (woe betide the exchange student who forgets a mattress during a get-together. Think no bed and a hard floor.), three changes of clothing, swim suit and towel, etc.

Chia Ling and I made it to Copenhagen at quarter to twelve, and met most of the other exchange students living on Zealand. We took the train at noon, and accumulated more exchange students as we traveled through the rest of Zealand, through Fyn, and up north through Jutland. The huge InterCity trains were much nicer than the local S-trains, but the problem was that you couldn't walk between cars. The cars were completely separate from each other, unlike the regular S-trains, in which you could walk all the way from one end of the train to the other. With these InterCity trains, if you wanted to change cars, you had to wait until the train stopped at a station, then hop out of the car and sprint to the connecting car and hop into it before the doors closed. And though the cars were numbered, they weren't in order, so if you were trying to get to a certain car, it'd most likely take you awhile to find it, and once you've hopped into a car, you're stuck there until the next stop. Halfway through the trip, you'd realize that your luggage is in one car, your jacket in another, and you in a third (or something to that extent). Needless to say, the train staff was soon pretty annoyed with the foreign teenagers running hither and thither at every stop the train made.

After the four-and-a-half hour train ride, we made it to Aalborg, and Karina (the only other teenage girl from Alaska in Denmark) met me at the station to say hello just for a moment. Aalborg is the town where she lives, so it was nice of her to come. We took two buses to Nibe, the small neighboring town where the get-together was to be held. I'm not exactly sure what the place was where we stayed, but it reminded me of a camp. There was an enormous gym where we were to sleep, a dining hall, a small auditorium, and a recreational building that had a pool table, air-hockey, a kitchen, and a swimming pool. We dumped all of our luggage in the gym, which had a make-shift barrier down the middle, supposably to divide the girls from the boys. We ate dinner, then were split into different groups to play some get-to-know-each-other games (which weren't really necessary), and didn't get to bed until around three in the morning.

Breakfast was at eight am on Saturday, and then a group photo outside in the bright sunshine (we recieved free copies of this picture later). We took a bus to a large gym about fifteen minutes away, where we competed in football (Am. soccer), volleyball, and cheerleading competitions (don't ask me why, I suppose they were having trouble thinking of activities for us). After lunch back at "camp", we were again split into groups (this time by nationalities) and were instructed to create a six-minute skit for the entertainment that evening. My group composed verses to the tune of "Yankee Doodle," describing the area of America from which we came. Because there was no one else from Alaska, and a girl named Eva was the only one from Texas, we joined together and composed this ingenius verse:

Both: We come from the largest states/Texas and Alask-ee/People ask us stupid questions about our homeland-ees!
Eva: No, I do not eat large steaks/I'm a vegetarian.
Me: No, I don't live in an igloo/Or go ice-fishing on weekends!

That little ditty took us an hour and a half to compose.
That afternoon, I went for a short swim with Crystal (Washington), Tony (Wisconsin), and Haley (Australia). Afterwards, we were to dress up a bit for the "special" dinner that night, and there was a three-course meal, with speeches made by Rotarians in between each course. Then, the entertainment. There were about eight or nine groups in all. All skits were unique, most were hilarious, and some were obscene (hey, when you put ten Brazilians on a stage, give them six minutes and an audience, you asked for it). Around midnight, when the shows were finally ended, the "discotek" party began. I had a lot of fun for about an hour, but when the party began to get a little too wild, I exited the scene. And I wasn't the only one.

The next morning, I was glad I'd chosen to head for bed when I did. Apparently some people didn't get more than an hour or so of sleep, while I'd gotten about six. The morning was spent packing and saying good-bye. This would be the last Rotary get-together for us oldies, and it's tear-jerking to look at someone you've connected with, and know you're probably never going to see them again. But somehow we made it to the train station and onto the train without a lot of blubbering. The train ride back would have been relaxing, but for one small incident. The train was on the island Fyn, about to stop in a town called Middelfart. Allistair (New Zealand) and Holly (Australia) wanted pictures with them underneath the sign that said "Middelfart," because, hey, the sign said "Middelfart." As the train stopped, we jumped off, I frantically took their pictures, but somehow, as we sprinted back to the train, they made it right as the doors closed, and I was still on the platform. At first, I just waited for them to open the doors for me (they can only be opened from the inside). Then, as seconds passed, I began to panic. I heard the littleph-sht as the doors sealed themselves, and the steps underneath them rose. By then I was banging on the door, franctically motioning for them to open the doors. It was dark inside the car, but I could see their hands banging on the other side, and I could hear their panicked muffled yells. And then the train started to move.
You can imagine my terror. I did not want to be left behind in some town called Middelfart.
I ran with the train, almost in tears, still banging. And, miraculously, it braked with a jerk. A door some ways down the train opened, and I took off towards it. The conductor there was yelling things at me in Danish I'd rather not repeat as I got on the train. I walked numbly through the car, and when my friends saw me still on the train, they gave shouts of relief and happiness, and I was smothered with hugs. Allistair and Holly pushed their way through to me, and apologized. "It's not your fault," I told them. "These things always seem to happen to me."

We got to Copenhagen with no more mishaps, and soon, just like the end of every other trip, it was just Chia Ling and I on our way home.

Last Monday, Jill and I visited the United States Embassy in Copenhagen, to register as being U.S. citizens in Denmark, and I wanted to look into taking the SATs. We didn't even get inside the building -- you need your passport just to get inside the doors. The place looked like a prison or an arsenal, with a ten-feet-high steel fence and armed guards. And once you're past the guards, they examine everything you have on your person. But we returned with our passports on Friday, and once we finally got through the screening process, and were deemed non-threatening, we waited for awhile, filled out some forms, and I received information on the SAT-taking situation.

On Friday night, Ang held a party for exchange students, and I believe the guest list included about thirty people. Both Saturday and yesterday Jill and I spent time in Copenhagen, which is always fun. I've finally been putting my credit card to good use, and have enough to new clothes to wear something new every day this week.

Off-subject, but interesting, whenever it's someone's birthday, it's customary for that person to bring flødeboller to class. Flødeboller, which means "cream balls", is marshmellow cream inside a thin chocolate shell. Personally, I feel we shouldn't have to wait until it's someone's birthday to indulge in these genius confections ...

The weather has been really beautiful lately, with clear skies and bright sunshine, though it's still freezing cold out there. Speaking of sunshine, do you know, I don't think I've seen one Dane wearing sunglasses, no matter how bright it is. Odd.