07 April 2011

'to travel is to live'


As I haven’t posted in over a month i figured i was way overdue for an update, I’ve been procrastinating writing this for a few reasons, I’ve been so busy i haven’t really had time and i have so much to write about i know this is going to take me so long to write. I have taken the day off of school so i figure i don’t really have an excuse not to write today so here goes, make sure you’re comfortable. 

So i guess the best place to start is wayy back at the start of March, beginning i guess with my school Gala. A gala is basically Denmark’s equivalent of our school ball; it’s not quite as dressy though, particularly for my grade as i am in the first of three years of schooling at gymnasium, which is kind of like year 11. It was a really cool night. the differences between the Australian and Danish school system was pretty evident though, for one you could buy beer, which was well taken advantage of by the majority of the students and they were much more relaxed with the dress code, this one guy turned up in a dress as a joke.... it ended up finishing at 4 am so i was pretty tired by the end of it. 
The next day i saw a movie with Gemma, one of the other exchange students and one of the coolest kids out. andd the day after that was the beginning of Fastelavn, which is a Danish holiday that is celebrated kinda like Halloween, all the kids go from house to house dressed in costumes singing this song. Then the people at the house give you money and candy :D. Due to my lack of clothes and costuming ability i went as a rock star...  Eva went as an Egyptian  :)


The next day was Monday, so after class i went back to my friend Malaika's house to watch a Fastelavn celebration. These men on horses had to gallop under this suspended barrel and hit it until there was none of it left. The last one to hit the last piece of the barrel off of the rope was the cat king (cat king as traditionally there was a cat in the barrel and you hit the barrel till the cat ran away symbolising the warding off of evil spirits). I then had dinner at Malaika's and got to try some Fastelavn food and hang out which was really cool :)





During the week i got to take part in a demo, which is basically a protest, about opening the end of the road my school is on which would increase traffic by 40 %, which would be bad because there are 3+ schools on the road. During the week i also caught a cold. -.- on Friday i went out with Ellen and Laura (exchange students) and Malaika to shop in Copenhagen and be tourists, with Malaika being our wonderful guide :P.  Afterwards Laura and i went back to Ellen’s to watch a movie and hang out. 






the rest of the weekend and Monday i didn’t really get out of bed cause i was so sick, but i kind of forced myself to get better by Tuesday because it was the my chemical romance concert :D me Brittany and Mackenzie got there early and met some Swedish people in the line: its closer to come to Copenhagen then to go to Stockholm, we also met up with Malaika inside. It was such an amazing concert, they were so good!





So the rest of the week was mostly recovery from the concert and my illness
Then on Saturday me and my host mum Vicky went to this park called Dyrehave, the place was so beautiful and the trails and wide open spaces and people riding horses everywhere made me miss home a bit. But the place was seriously amazing, i can’t wait to go back in summer when there are leaves on the trees and grass and flowers.



In the evening i went to Ellen’s for a movie night and stayed the night. 
On the Monday i had my first rotary event, it wasn’t really a meeting but rather a speaker organised by my rotary club. As interesting as it was, it's becoming really frustrating that i haven’t been to a proper meeting yet.
The next notable event is probably Friday, my class at school (you stay with the same people for all your classes) had a party at Maya, one of the girls, house. It was lots of fun :). The next night i went to Ellen’s and had dinner with her and a bunch of other exchange students, there was me, Brittany, Ellen, Carol, Fernando and Gustavo. After dinner we headed out to hang out around Copenhagen until the early morning. After we all came back to Ellen’s and hung out for a while and me and Brit slept there the night. 






The next day i caught up with Ane for dinner. Ane was an exchange student that stayed with my family back in Australia about 10 years ago. I finally got to meet her sister and it was great just to catch up and talk with her again. 
after language class on Monday me and Brit went with Ellen to help her pick her gala dress, we also had a bit of a perv at the topless male modal in the Abercrombie shop who was being passed off as a doorman. that shop is crazy, its full of perfume and mirrors it makes you so disoriented, the amount of times i tried to walk through a mirror -.-
Tuesday i when shopping by myself in the big mall here called fields, i needed some clothes and it’s always nice to have some alone time. :)
Thursday arvo i went to the museum Louisiana with my host family and host grandparents to see the Picasso exhibit. It was so amazing! There was this point when i was alone in a room full of Picassos... oh my god it was incredible.

Last weekend was the long awaited rotary get together. We all met in Odense on Friday afternoon. I brought my train tickets in advance, but you can take any train if you have a ticket, you just only have reserved seats on one train. So i was there 2 minutes till my train came when i look across to the next platform to see Gemma and her oldie kitty standing there. So i forfeited my seat, and waited with them for an hour so we could buy Gemma’s tickets and stood up the whole 1and a half hour train journey... but it was lots of fun, we had a lot to chat about. once we got to Odense station we all got herded onto a bus and shipped off to the 'kold skole' where we were assigned classrooms that we had to sleep on the floor with about 20 other kids per room and glass doors. guys always seemed to want to walk past as we were getting changed... anyway we all got changed into gym clothes after dinner and went down to see this little play based on the H. C. Anderson story’s in the gym and the had this little exercise thing that included tunnel ball and a similar thing to tunnel ball but with people instead of balls... which was quite awkward. We all then headed inside and talked all night, i got 2 hours of sleep... the next day we spent two hours at a gym and had a photo session with all the exchange students. at the photo session the Brazilians all started singing and chanting so us Aussies started sing the aeroplane jelly song and 'were all happy little vegemite’s' followed by rounds of kookaburra sits in the old gum tree and the Aussie Aussie Aussie chant. Pretty sure we won XD.








  But other than that spent all our time hanging out and talking and catching up with the other newbies and making friends with the oldies. In the evening we had a formal dinner and a gala which was soooo much fun. 


















Afterwards we all stayed up chatting, i ended up getting an hours sleep on a table in the hallway, because the couch was kind of taken

 But otherwise we just hung out and talked. On Sunday we swapped badges in the morning and then caught the train home... then slept... all day. Then i fell down the stairs when i got up for dinner... so i went back to bed >.>

Since intro camp i managed to find the way to walk from my school to my language class completely by accident in a free period with Malaika







I also went to engineers without borders function with my host mum Vicky, who volunteers for them and went shopping with my school friends when class was cancelled from 10.30 onwards :D

So that’s a rundown of what I’ve been up too for the past month



 I’ll leave you with some pictures of me and Gemma being tools...








and this video of us all being tools

miss you all <3