Over (t)here in Denmark

Sniffle! My mom checked our answering machine at home for messages, and handed me the phone! Ang and Jill, I GOT YOUR MESSAGES! All three of them! I started to cry when I heard their voices, and once I heard Ang say "I know you're crying, Maggie." She knows me too well.

Dude, distance sucks. But Epcot does not. Epcot is very, very cool.

Shall blog more at home, when internet is free.

I'm getting so sick of airports! From Europe to Alaska, from Alaska to Florida, in less than three days. Not cool. But Florida has been hot and sunny! We did the Magic Kingdom today, and my sister has her competition early tomorrow.

In Denmark, I was used to tuning out all Danish, and would tune into anyone speaking English, even if they were across the room. Now, I tune into everyone, because they all speak English!

It's great to be back where you can use your hands to eat, and where my parents pay for everything.

I guess I'll have to change my title to Over There in Denmark now. It's so great to be home! Just amazing. My flight to Juneau arrived about twenty minutes early, so I walked through to the lounge, expecting at least a few people there to be waiting for me. But there was no one! Then I recognized Brittany sitting there reading. Just Brittany. I started to cry. I couldn't believe I was looking at her. She was there! In person! Not just words on a computer, or a voice through a telephone. There! I said "Hi." (I couldn't think of anything else to say.) She looked up and jumped about a foot in the air! My family arrived about ten minutes later, and my sisters are so tall. Jenny, 14, is now as tall as I am, and Stephanie, 11, isn't far behind! After the airport, we went straight to Safeway to stock up on root beer, Honey Bunches of Oats, and other American luxuries I had missed for so long.

When we finally got to our house, I was ecstatic. My family and friends followed me through the house, as I slowly went through each room, seeing what was the same and noticing differences. We live in a duplex, and about a year before I left, I lived in the apartment below. Once I learned I was leaving, my parents decided to start renting it out again, so I was roomless for some time, but my mom and best friends transformed our attic into a room for me, and I love it!

My mom thought it was pretty funny when I answered our phone in Danish. It's so wonderful to have everything in English again!

For now, I've got to get back to unpacking and packing again. My family and I leave for Florida tonight. Ugh. More airplanes. NOOOO.

But I'm not sure I'll continue bloggin' ... My life here in Alaska just isn't as eventful as my life was in Denmark. We'll see how it goes. Hope you've enjoyed reading! I've had fun writing ... and if ever you get the chance, be sure to visit Denmark or Alaska, ok?

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go ...

Next time I blog, it'll be 7000 miles from here!

Hey, it's 1 am Friday night, and I'm over at Ang's now. I just wanted to say that I had fun today, visiting Mette at home, and then visiting my first host family again. And Denmark won the game tonight, 2-0! YES!

It sounds like they're having fun downstairs, so I'll blog more details tomorrow. I leave the day after tomorrow.

My friends are the best. Today was the last day of exams, so there was an assembly, and afterwards all classes met to receive their final grades. When we met up, the girls in my class presented me with a red baseball cap that says Danmark, and on it were pictures from this year that they had made into pins! How sweet was that? Pics of us painted like bees, us making æbleskiver in December, us at Lanciers. They had taken the time to make them into pins because they knew about my Rotary jacket. And because they're just the best Danish girls anyone could ask for.

Three days!

Hey, forgot to mention that Euro 2004, the soccer/football (I never know what to call it! I call it football, but that might confuse readers. I'll just go American, and call it soccer, ok?) tournament started on the 12th of June. Sixteen countries are competing, and the host country is Portugal this year. Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark (woo-hoo!), England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, along with Portugal, are the teams in the quarter finals. Denmark played Italy on Monday, 0-0, and they play Bulgaria on Friday. It's so great to have a country to root for, a country that I feel patriotic towards.

Lots to update here ... first of all, I need to link all of you people to my good friend Jess. Jess rules. She keeps an amazing blog, and was a lot of fun to have on Euro-Tour. Her blog is much more insightful than mine is, actually.

I've been quite busy these past couple days. On Thursday I gave a speech in Danish to my Rotary club about my year in Denmark, and I think it went quite well. Instead of the usual bottle of wine, they presented me with a bouquet of lovely, happy pink roses, lilies and daisies, which I like a lot more than wine! On Thursday night I spent the night at Angela's in Copenhagen, and then on Friday night we went to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Wow, I give that two thumbs way, way up. Ang and I find that Daniel Radcliffe boy quite attractive, it's a wonder we paid any attention to the storyline at all.

On Saturday my host family and I went to Tivoli (this makes my tenth or eleventh time--it never gets old) and the weather was great, so we had a good time. Kaspar and I went on the Demon (rollar coaster with three loops) twice, and I went on the Tower twice. I aquired a couple Tivoli pins (when you're an exchange student, you are always on the look-out for more pins to add to your Rotary blazer--mine is quite full now!), and a really nice Tivoli poster. We stayed until midnight, to see the light show on the lake and then the fireworks.

I went to the Espersens' one last time on Sunday, and their children and three grandchildren were there as well. It was really hot outside on Sunday, so we played in the garden all afternoon, swinging in the hammock and jumping rope. We took a walk to the castle gardens and listened to a band play for a little while, too.

Tonight I went over and had dinner at Julia's house. Julia is my Rotary club's next outbound exchange student--in less than a month she's headed for southern Australia for a year. She's a really sweet girl, and I wish I had met her earlier--we've gotten along great in the short span of time I've known her. I only just met her on Thursday night at the Rotary meeting. The next inbound, after me, is a girl from Oregon called Megan, and she's scheduled to stay with Julia's family for the winter months. After meeting them, I'm sure she'll have a good time there because they seem like a really great family.

I can't believe I leave in five days. That's just ... inconceivable. I remember talking to Benjy, one of the oldies from last year. He was from Australia, and so he left back in January. I remember talking to him, and he was saying the same things. "I can't believe it's been year, and I leave in a week." It seemed like it would be forever until I could say those words myself. The first couple months on exchange seem to never end, and then once January hits, boom boom boom, it's June. "What? What happened? June? It's June already?" It just flies by. It's been eleven months since I've seen my family or best friends at home. Eleven months. Denmark, and exchange, has been unforgettable. Of course I've shared with my family and friend many aspects of it, and I've tried to communicate part of my life onto this blog, but there are some parts no one will be able to understand except for other exchange students. I've made wonderful friends from all over the globe, and I hope to see some of them again one day. My traveling days have only just begun. But for now, as sad as I am to leave, I'm so happy to be going home. Home! I love that word. I've missed that word, the true meaning of that word.

Five days!

Sorry about not blogging in a couple days. I was suffering from sleep deprivation, as was everyone else on Euro-Tour, so I've been sleeping quite a bit these past couple days. I now have eight days until I leave for home, and many things planned before I go.

I hope those audblogs were sufficient info about how Euro-Tour went. I had a lot of fun doing those, and was glad I got some of my friends on them, too. My favorite cities were Prague and Paris. A couple places, like Berlin and Brussels, I don't feel the need to visit again. They were nice, but now I've already seen them. Cities like Prague, Paris and Vienna I definitely want to go back and explore more of.