Wonderful Copenhagen

Well, I survived my first week abroad! My classes (Danish Language & Culture, Hans Christian Andersen and the Danish Golden Age, The European Union, Nordic Mythology and The Italian Renaissance) seem pretty interesting so far. I had a LOT of trouble finding spiral notebooks for my classes though since evidently any sort of paper product here in Copenhagen is ridiculously expensive and therefore much less accessible.  I finally found some ugly ones with hot pink skulls across the front, but beggars can't really be choosers so I have five not-so fashionable notebooks.

I'm slowly but surely beginning to settle into life here.  I've been meeting more of the students living in my kollegium as they move in.  There is only one other American in my sub-unit which is a little bit intimidating but I guess it forces me to really get to know the other cultures living here.  I've also mastered the train to and from class, as well as the walk to school, which cuts down my stress level immensely.  

This Friday, DIS held a big party for us at a really fancy club called Luux where we got free entrance and two free drinks.  It was pretty cool to see all the other 600 or so students partying in one club.  After we had had our two free drinks though, we decided we didn't feel like spending 10+ bucks (or 50 kroner) on one drink so we headed out to some local bars.  Some friends and I eventually found a bar called "The Happy Pig" where we met lots of other Americans.

That night, we also had to experience the night bus, which was not very fun. Taking the regular train home to Albertslund generally takes about 25 minutes, but the night bus took at least an hour.  Unfortunately, every night we stay out past 12:00 (or 24:00), we are going to have to take that night bus home.  Luckily, the Danish people were very helpful to us in figuring it out, as they have been with the numerous other confusions we experience daily!

I'm very excited because I just found out that there was some extra space on the Italy study tour that will take place from October 26-November 1.  We're going to go to Rome and Florence and visit places like the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica.  My teachers also announced that I'm going to be traveling to Brussels and The Hague from October 12-18 as required for my political science class, so I have not only lots of time to look forward to in "Wonderful Copenhagen" as they refer to it here but also some other places in Europe that I haven't yet visited!

...And so it begins!

After getting off to somewhat of a rough start (being delayed a few hours, which entailed missing some critical parts of orientation), the crew from the Seattle flight finally made it to Copenhagen!  I was only a little bit jet-lagged and very excited to run into three of my friends, two from Santa Clara and one from high school.  We were all split into various groups depending on where we were living and I headed off to my kollegium in Albertslund (about 25 minutes out of Copenhagen), which was a lot prettier than the pictures I had found of it on the Internet.  We were thrown a pizza party (with free beer!), but that is where our free food ended.  Today I decided that I'm pretty much going to buy the cheapest food possible in order to sustain myself as my money is already seeming to dwindle away on the most basic things.

Today was also the first day we had to ride the metro to Copenagen, which was really confusing to me.  Luckily, a big group of us headed over to the DIS school building together, so I couldn't get too lost.  However, the walk to DIS seemed to have about 50 turns down various streets so I'm going to have to pay better attention to how to get there tomorrow.  The good part about all this was that during this time I got to know a lot of different people and made some new friends who all seemed really friendly and fun!!

We also got a tour of the city today, which was nice.  We got to see things like the statue of the Little Mermaid, the Copenhagen Opera House and the Amalienborg Palace.  Just through simple observation, we have also been amused to learn that Mercedes Benzes and BMWs are the only cars used as taxis.  The most amusing part of the tour was probably when the tour bus left one of my friends and me behind and we had to run down the street yelling after it. 

Tomorrow we're going to take Survival Danish classes and "Coping in Copenhagen" classes starting at 9:00 in the morning, which will be the first classes we ever take at DIS!!