Survived the First Week!

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Hello again everyone!

Glad to see you all like my blog, I finally have some free time today to update! I started writing one the other night and I fell asleep so it got lost somehow. Oh well. I figured I'd let you all know a little about the actual blog, I'm still figuring it out too! But when you send a comment, then it it's public and everyone can see it, when you send me a message it goes to my email only. I'm mostly going to respond to your messages and stuff in here so that way you all can hear!

So Grammy asked if my roomate was Danish, and yes she is very Danish! She is 29, very beautiful and very sweet. She is a social worker for people who are sick out of work, she just finished school last week so this is her first week of "real" work. Since college is free here, she only had to work part time before at like a sort of internship so she could pay for her apartment. Even though Danes work shorter hours than we do, they usually commute up to an hour, so I havent seen her much these past few days because we are both so busy. I'm supposed to spend some time with her this weekend, so I'm hoping we can get closer as time goes by. She has had other American girls live here before so she's really helpful when it comes to helping me find my way around and helping me get settled.

This week has been amazing to say the least. Everyday gets better and better. I went from being completely overwhelmed to feeling really at home. I still get lost every day haha because I've been going all over the city doing different errands and things. Today I finally got my bus/trian/metro pass, so now I can travel anywhere for free, and Suzanne, my roomate, also said she has a bike I can use. Everyone bikes here, they have whole seperate lanes just for bikes. They are so good at it too, you will see women here get on bikes with their hair all done up, look like their about to go on the runway, and wearing high heels! It's amazing, here I'm all geared up like I'm about to go into the White Mountains for 5 days!

So far I have been doing mostly school related things. We just finished our 4 day orientation, so we did all sort of things like take a mini survival Danish launguage class, they took us to the grocery store, showed us the library, took us out to dinner, stuff like that. The whole thing, while boring, was very helpful and was a great opportunity to meet people. I got to meet my professors today and they told us a little bit about what we will be doing throughout the semester, and its A LOT! There are so many little trips we get to go on, I'm really excited. For my ecology class we are going to western Denmark in February to do some sampling near the coasts, and we are also taking a week long trip to a marine lab in Poland. For my Energy and Elemental Cycling class we are going to have an Intensive 5-day research study somewhere in Denmark haha I dont know where yet but they said its a part that most people dont get to see so that sounds awesome. For my Environmental Policy class we will be mostly going on little field trips on Wednesdays because we have that day free. Then on top of all that I have two weeks after going to Poland to go pretty much wherever I want. We have been talking a little bit about going backpacking through Northern Scandinavia because thats an area we will probably be less likely to see in the future, and it would be good to get away from the cities for a while.

In regard to Eileen's question about the viking ship, yes it's a real viking ship! I have to look into it more but Denmark is definetly a viking country, there are all sorts of companies logo's that have viking ship pictures on them.

Last night was when I went out to dinner with my orientation group. We went to a cafe near where I live, which apprently isn't the prettiest part of Copenhagen haha but none the less still very interesting. We met near the cemetary where Han Christian Anderson is buried and some other famous people, it's huge and most people use it as a normal park, kinda weird. But right in front of it is where there were a lot of riots last year. I guess there was this Kolligium, which is kind of like a dorm, for international and Danish youth students that was sold to a church and then torn down. So all the kids living there had to leave and there was a lot of conflict with that. I think about 95 police officers were injured and one student was killed. Most importantly I guess is to not go there on March 1 haha Thats the first time anything like that has happened in Denmark in a very very long time, so it's not something that happens all the time, dont worry.

All in all Copenhagen is starting to feel a lot more like just another city rather than a whole other country, things arent as scary as before, most people are all very nice and I'm a pro with a map now. Sorry for the lack of pictures, I havent had much free time yet, even now I have piles of homework to do! But I dont have any plans for the weekend so I will surely take pictures and maybe I can even take a video, hopefully it will be nice out because it's been raining here the last few days.

It's nice to hear from everyone, love the comments and messages!

Talk to you soon!
Love you, Miss you! <3

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Comments

[Marji]

What a great experience
Hi Amanda I am so glad you are settling in nicely. The people there must all be educated seeing as college is free.........WOW. The history you are getting to see sounds amazing. I really envy you, here in the states if a bldg is 150 yrs old it is historic in other parts of the world it would be too new for that. I have a friend from Poland who said that driving is hard as the streets are so narrow (cars were from invented when alot of the buildings went up) seems logical that bikes would be the best mode of trasportation. I am glad your roommate is helpful and I can't wait to see pictures. Keep bloggong. Love Marji