Today is also the first day of our orientation. We have this big lunch thing (it is 10am right now). City Hall has invited us to have pancakes, which is apparently a really big. The way it was explained to us is that it is the same treatment the World Cup winning team would get if they visited Copenhagen. The last time DIS was invited for pancakes was like 10 years ago. The mayor of Copenhagen will be there and give a welcome speech. (UPDATE: DIS has never been invited before, and they cannot be for another 10 years as per tradition. We ate off of the Royal Danish china with real silver, and they mayor is called Lord Mayor).
Last night I went to try to find internet at my school with a few other people. Yeah, my school does not exist. We didn’t get lost, but we walked around the area like 5 times looking for the street and we never found it. This city is amazing though. A lot of people went out to bars last night, I slept instead. Oh jetlag. I was also up today at 6. I am going to try to stay up tonight until at least 10pm with no naps.
I am getting a bike today, the biking here is so insane! There are WAY more bikes then cars, and they show no mercy. I have yet to be ran over, but I may have gotten one or two dirty looks. Also, people do not lock their bikes? I think back to Sonoma where no one bikes anyways and bikes were always getting stolen. Maybe because everyone already has one, and a used bike is cheap as dirt anyways? (UPDATE: They do lock their bikes, but they lock the wheels instead of the bike to a post or something like we do here.)
In other news, I went grocery shopping by myself today. I do not know what I was expecting, but not really what I experienced. First, EVERYTHING was in Danish, and I get it, this is Denmark, but everything else I have seen that is not a proper noun has the English translation underneath the Danish. But nope, not food! I bought bread with a hot nature man on it, it was between that or the brand called Viking. They had a nice American sized loafs of white bread, but they were obviously not what people bought and I thought I would at least attempt to eat in a way that does not scream “CLOSED MINDED AMERICAN”. I also ran into problems when trying to buy juice (I have developed a sore throat and a runny nose, I am hoping just allergies but thought I would buy orange juice just in case). Well, the box has pictures of oranges but says “appl(something, I forget the rest of the word)”. After much debate I decided to trust the picture, and it is indeed orange juice, but it caused me much distress. I also bought cheese that is called “Tasty Mild” and think that if it has tasty in the name, it must be okay. Shopping for meats and cheese is WAY different then at home. I am afraid I am going to be totally spoiled by living with all these fancy cheeses when I get back to CA and am offered Kraft singles… They also had pineapples! Which I did not buy, but I was relieved because they are tart. It is really embarrassing at check out, because it is all self check-out that talks to you. In the midst of all the nice quiet machines talking in Danish, mines was yelling at me in English for doing things wrong and everyone was staring. My goal is to get good enough at it that I will be able to use the Danish setting so that at least if it yells at me I can play it off.
I am afraid that this may turn into an over-sharing blog about all the mundane details in my life. I am sorry, but I have quite a lot to say. Hopefully soon I will become so immersed in my life here that I will forget to post. ☺
Long ago in another life I spent a night or two in a Swedish...or maybe it was Danish, can't recall for sure now...flat with 3 other girls. The fridge had been stocked for us by our hosts but the hosts had to be out of town so we were in their flat by ourselves. We also played "figure out the food"...got it all correct by using the pictures and the few English words except for one tube. We could NOT figure out what could be in that tube...finally opened it and it was caviar! :-)
ReplyDeleteSounds like you are doing great!!