an extremely long and uninformative post

So here I am, almost a month in and I figured that I was due for an update. Also my dear sister has been pestering me.
Firstly I guess is my trip to Helsingør with Gemma and Makenzie, we wanted to catch up and go shopping as well as visit Kronsborg slot, hamlets castle. Helsingør was really pretty; you can actually take the ferry from Helsingør to Sweden, which is so cool.

 We’re going to go shopping in Sweden one day cause it’s cheaper than Denmark. The town is really nice, so pretty and the shopping was pretty good, even though I didn’t buy anything.

beer in a library, say what?

scary ally we later got locked in

 We passed this one guy that had this amazing moustache…

anyway, the castle was incredible, the inside was closed but we were still able to walk into the courtyard, it was so pretty, like something out of a fairy-tale.

frozen moat :D

army barracks around the castle

i am godzilla!!! (yes you are aloud to walk on it)

realyyy frozen moat

 We also found this house called ‘brohus’ it actually translates into bridge house, but I think Bro House sounds better :P

 after we went and had the most amazing hot chocolate, which was double as good cause we were so cold.

 

It was a great day; however, the big event these past few weeks was intro camp, which went from Sunday the thirtieth of January to Sunday the 6 of February. It was such a great week, we did so many different activity’s and excursions and learnt some basic Danish. It also great to meet all the winter inbounds and catch up again with all the west siders. The train ride there was pretty daunting, a 5 hour ride with about 10 exchange students from brazil and Australia with no rotary officials and only the name of the station ‘Randers’. To top things off we had to change trains part way through because ours was running late so they terminated it. We wouldn’t have had a clue where to go if it wasn’t for this really nice lady who was going the same way and lead us through the station.  It was pretty fun though, we made a lot of noise and jokes and watched movies and chatted

nanny gemma

 and as we went along the train picked up more and more exchange students so we had a group of around 20 when we got to Randers an hour late. Because we were late the bus that was to pick us all up had left with the other students already…. So after another long wait for its return we all got on the bus and headed in to Bjerringbro to our school where we were staying for the week. There we were all sent to our rooms by the at that point anonymous Sune and Andreas, two of our three teachers for the week. I got room 417, which I shared with Shelby, another Aussie. 

me and shelby having a midnight snack :)

The days that followed involved long hours of Danish lessons (Danish grammar is so freaking hard) as well as many fun organised activities and hours of talking, getting to know the other students as well as some of the best cheese I’ve ever tasted :D. My teacher was Camilla,

camilla and I

she was amazing, she is so nice, we all loved her. some of our activities included art (which me, Mel, Laura and Gemma turned into finger-paintings) drama games (we started out as a police riot and ended up with a comic book convention with Stacy’s mum being murdered by a monkey ninja robot despite her best defence that she ‘has got it going on’…) choir (the song I feel for you by prince it’s so stupid, the lyrics ‘it’s mainly a physical thing’ and ‘I love you’ should never be combined)  our surprise entertainment night (it was bowling, I totally guessed it… also, they had AMF bowling balls O.o), Danish movie night (the film ‘flickering lights’ is so stupid, its plot makes no sense… everyone just dies and shit). After the organised activities at night we would all get together in the fire room and chat, drink coffee and play mafia. Mafia is a card game where there’s mafia, doctors, sheriffs and villages the mafia try to kill everyone whilst everyone else discuses and votes on who they want to kill of (with the aim of killing the mafia)… it’s complicated, but lots of fun. 

all the aussies

west siders

all us exchangees

On top of all this fun at the school, we had two excursions to nearby places. One was Viborg to see Viborg cathedral, it’s phenomenal, the walls and roof are painted with different bible stories and the alter glows it’s so beautiful.

 After the cathedral we had half an hour (nowhere near enough time) to have a quick look around the town and, in many people’s cases, buy lollies… there was also this garden that looked suspiciously like Hogwarts… 

castle, whomping willow, forbiden forrest and hagrids hut....

our other excursion was to Århus, a fairly large city (large for Denmark). The main attraction was Aro’s museum which had some… interesting exhibits. It displayed some incredible artistic feats such as ’The Boy’, a huge amazingly lifelike sculpture of a crouching boy.

 It also had an exhibit by and artist, whose name I forget, who has sculpted some confronting and to be frank, disturbing sculptures, including a sculpture of a butchered prostitute, which he made to honour her. She was killed in the 30s I think, and her body was literally ripped limb from limb. The press took a photo of her butchered body and published it on the front page of the paper. The artist thought this was atrocious, and decided to immortalise her in marble. Another was of Michael Jackson giving himself a blow job… yes you read correctly, he had ripped off his head and was… well… anyway it was meant to symbolise the way people like that love themselves etc., and the cherub clinging to his leg was meant to symbolise his past self, his innocence. And yes the sculpture was made before he died; if that makes it less offensive… there was another of the pope and the hips down of a butchered woman… I’m sure you can imagine what he was doing, and another of Jesus, covered in wounds hanging naked from the roof…

so yeh, interesting….

after Aro’s we had several hours free in Århus to shop and what not. Me, Gemma and Laura went shopping and walking, and found Gemma a kebab, but we didn’t buy much. On the way home we stopped at the Queens Summer residence… SWANKY.  

sherlock holms pub :D

queens summer residence

anderas and sune teaching us too make our beds

andreas and sunes bromance

Gudar, king troll

gemma at her finest

brazillan wish bracelets <3

the best class, clearly

The last day we had some Danish lessons where we mostly messed around and chatted, me and Laura gave Camilla her presents. The last night was the big and long awaited banquet and dance; everyone got all dressed up and went down for dinner. After dinner Camilla and my district councillor Thomas pulled me aside and told me that my grandmother had passed away, so unfortunately I wasn’t in much of a dancing mood… the next day we all came home on another long train ride across all of Denmark before getting back to my suburb Hellerup for an early night.

The next day (Monday) I headed off to my first day of school, its soooo different here. For one the lessons are in Danish (shocker) so I don’t understand anything… so I just sit there doing very little, see I’m not quite up to writing essays in Danish yet (also shocker). Also they have these weird short breaks all the time and have short lunchtimes and are aloud out of the school at lunch and the classrooms are impossible to find…. But I’m sure I’ll get used to it. All the people here a quite nice, except my Spanish teacher who expects me to catch up to the other students who have been learning Danish for 6 months when she is teaching me Spanish in Danish…. -.-
I like English class though, there studying of mice and men :) and my media class was pretty cool.

So anyway, I’m now on winter break, I have this week off of school. The last few days have been quite goodJ. 

Saturday I went shopping with Gemma in KBH.  We went shopping and sightseeing and got ourselves nice and lost. We went to a few notable places. One was the Abercrombie store, which is basically a nightclub with clothes. There was incense and mirrors everywhere and they only hire models. Most days they have a topless doorman, but not that day, which made me quite sad :P. another place of interest was where we ate, whilst looking for a kebab joint (to fulfil Gemma’s constant kebab cravings), we came across a store called ‘burgerlicous’, we of course had to eat there. 

my awesome family :)

ahaha love danis humour

movie theatre 

veiw from my school

my school

christiania

We also visited Christiania, which is something you should never do for the first time without someone who has been there before… it was awesome but intimidating, especially when walking past the hash stands on Pusher Street. It was an awesome day though, and that night my family took me out to the movies to see the tourist. The cinema’s here are so amazing, so much leg room!!! And the back seats were two people XD.

Anyway this week my host dad has gone to Seattle and my host mum to Oslo on business trips so me and Eva trekked it across Denmark by train this morning and are now in the snow covered land of Funen, it’s rather beautiful. 

oh and im going to see a mcr concert in march in copenhagen :D

I’ll keep you posted later on what adventures I have to come but until then, knus og kys

Bec