FOR NARNIA!!!!

:) Well, Introcamp is over. I am back at my counselor's house for the week, and then Friday, off to Barcelona! What a crazy month it has been. SO much going on! Introcamp was amazing. It was awesome to get to be around all of the other exchange students. There's something about being in a foreign country together that just makes you instant friends. Pretty crazy. We had tons of fun. I feel like I also learned a lot in the Danish classes, which is good. Lots of grammar and stuff, so things that aren't very useful now, but once I get started speaking and with more vocab, they will click into place. There were a group of us who hung out together, and we found a sweet hang-out room where nobody else went. We called it Narnia, and we all had nick-names. Pretty awesome. When I wasn't hanging out with the Narnians, I mostly stuck around the Brasilians, which was AMAZING! :) They adopted me. I am now officially an Honorary Brasilian. Sophia even gave me my very own Brasilian flag. I told them all I would come see them some time in the next several years. I even learned a couple Brasilian songs. Very cool. Other than that, the week was just amazing in general. Even the teachers were cool. ;) On Saturday night, we had a dance, and the teachers played a few songs for us. They are all super talented. The dance was fun, and then a few of us hung out with the teachers and ate cake and talked about life. It was sad to leave them all on Sunday morning, but we have another national get-together in October, so it won't be so bad. I'm also planning (tentatively) on having one or maybe two of the closer exchange students come visit me around my birthday. So I'll survive. On another note, my Danish makeover is this week! Wednesday! Very very exciting. :) I'll post pics and whatnot as soon as I can. Might be next week sometime after Spain and everything because I left my cord under Julie's bed, and it may have been eaten by the Dust Buffaloes under there. :P I got a letter and a package from home today! Mostly practical things, no surprises, but still AMAZING to hear from home in a physical/non-digital way. :) Love to all, and I'll try to keep y'all updated.

Ah... IntroCamp

Well... I'm safe and sound here at IntroCamp. It's pretty fun. We had a couple of icebreaker activities, and then dinner. Mmmm... dinner... rice and chicken, and then AMAZING ice cream with raspberries and peaches for dessert. Did I mention I love Denmark? Okay, but here's the FUN story of the day. The story of how I got to IntroCamp. I got up this morning around seven, chilled around the house, packed (after searching high and low for my train ticket) and watched a little TV. Then, we drove to the train station, I got on the train, so far so good. I think when things started to go south was the moment I sat down on the train next to Alex Fallon. :) Now, don't get me wrong, she's a great girl. But I think she's got a travel curse. :) She's the one I mentioned who had all the trouble with boarding passes etc, etc. I think it took her like.. over 50 hours to get to Denmark. Anyway, we were sitting next to each other. We were supposed to get off the train at Randers. But we had to switch seats in the middle of the ride, and we kind of left our luggage there, just figuring we'd get it later. Not a good idea. Trains aren't like planes. You have to be speedy. It was a bad sign when the man with the food cart came out. When we got to Randers, we tried to get our bags, but we got boxed in with the food cart and the people, and we couldn't get our bags, and... we ended up staying on the train. By accident. Oops. :P So we had to take the train all the way to Århus. Fun. When we got there, Sophia (a Brasilian girl who was stuck with us, sadly for her) watched the bags while Alex and I went upstairs and bought us all a ticket to Bjerringbro. We sat around, ate some candy, drank a Cocio, and then got on the train to Bjerringbro. But our tickets said something like "To Bjerringbro via Langå" so we thought maybe we were supposed to switch trains at Langå. When we arrived in Langå we argued for a bit and decided to just stay on the train. But when it started moving again, it was moving back in the direction we came from. (Or so we thought) So we freaked out thinking we were headed back to Århus, and hopped off at the next station, a small town called Ulstrup. Bad idea. Turns out, Langå is at the top of the V shaped track from Århus to Bjerringbro. We were about 8 km from Bjerringbro, and we should have stayed on the train. Oops again. We're not good at the whole traveling thing... So we got to Ulstrup and called the Rotary people to see if we could just be picked up there. So they said "Yes, we'll send someone to get you." Two hours later, they called and asked where we were. "Still here in Ulstrup...." "Oh dear. I'll call you back.." Then a van showed up, and we finally arrived here in Bjerringbro. It was a crazy crazy day. We were several hours late. Haha. But.... We're here! So I shall never travel with Alex again. Haha. It turned out to be kind of fun, actually. Like a mini-adventure. And everyone was safe, and we were together. So... whatever. :) Let's just not do it again. We'll see what excitement ensues in the next week or so! Should be lots. ;) I'll keep you posted.

Quite a Week

Well, it has been quite a week. Lots of school, lots of Danish, lots of... life. Haha. On the flip side of the coin, lots of homesickness, lots of nightmares, lots of... life. :) I did come up with an evil plan this week to force the girls in my class to hang out with me. I told them they can give me a "Full Danish Makeover". It's kind of terrifying, but I'm pretty excited too. Also, my eighteenth birthday is coming up, so people have been asking me what I want and I'm like.. oh, you know.. little things.. peanut butter, razors, chapstick... :) Things like that are what I really appreciate right now. Haha. In all honesty, I don't need much. I love it here, and I'm pretty content. But I digress.. I seem to recall having a specific purpose in writing this, but now I can't remember it. Tomorrow is my first school party, Sunday I leave for language camp. We've set a date when I come back for my makeover, and then I will go for a long weekend in Barcelona. :) It's going to be crazy and busy and whatnot, but also very exciting. Though I've had so much excitement in the past two months, I don't know what to do with myself. I've also been on like eighteen planes. Blah. Haha. I think that I will be happy once things settle down. I can start actually attending class, get to know my classmates, get down some sort of rhythm in my life. That will be nice. I'll let you know if that ever happens. :P Ah, life, how exciting you are. And yet so tiring. My goodness, is this what adults feel like? I am so sorry....

Oops..

Well, it's been almost a week since I last posted. My bad. I've been busy and tired, and I don't honestly have much to write about. I guess this weekend I went to my first little Rotary get-together. That was all right. The first part, we just got some presentations about rules that had been previously drilled into our brains while in America. :P So we know them pretty well now. But then all of us exchange students (past and present) who were at the meeting went downstairs to a little lounge area, and we all just got to hang out for like an hour and a half or so. It was nice to get to hang out with other people who know how exhausting life is. Haha. Other than that, I have been pretty busy with school and Danish lessons, and my Danish lessons homework, and learning to dance. (Lanciers. Youtube. GO!) There is not a whole lot to write about at the moment. Things are pretty smooth. It's pretty busy right now though. I am moving around a lot what with people being out of town and stuff. On Sunday, I will take the train to Bjerringbro for Introcamp. That should be fun. I will get to meet all of the exchange students that are staying in Denmark this year. I spose I could tell y'all about school? I think the last post was my first day of school, so it's been about a week. Basically, the schedule changes. I think it is the same every week (I haven't had two full weeks in a row yet, so I'm not positive) but each day changes. We also get out at different times. For example on Monday through Thursday, I have six classes, but on Fridays I only have five, so I get out at 1:20 instead of 2:15. I haven't actually experienced that yet because I have Danish classes, but it's gonna be cool. :) There is a party this Friday at the school. It's kind of an introduction party for the First Years, but Lars (the Second Year class Pres) invited us Exchangers to come anyway. I figure, there will be free pizza (free beer too, but... ick) and I will get to possibly meet some people. Even if they are First Years. ;) So I'll probably go to that. Oh! :) So... about a five minute walk from the bus stop that I go to after school, there is a SuperBest. And in the SuperBest, there is a "Wall of America". So on days when we are feeling really crappy and homesick, we can just go there and spend 54,95 on a jar of peanut butter, and then life will be good again. Woo! Too bad it's incredibly expensive. But oh well. So yeah, that's how things are going around here. I'll try to update more often. Maybe. But once a week is pretty decent. I don't have all THAT much to say at this point. If something exciting happens, I'll let you know. :)

An Exciting Day!

Okay, I am typing this on my word program, and I'll post it later as I am currently without internet. But I couldn't let this day finish without telling you guys about it! :D It was pretty much amazing. As you know, today was my first day of school. It was super confusing at first, but I got the hang of it. All of my classes are, of course, in Danish, so it's rather terrifying. But I got the hang of that too. Haha. I have decided that I just need to put everything else on the back burner and learn Danish as quickly as possible because that will make my life infinitely better/easier/less stressful. By the end of the school day, I was about ready to collapse and my head was going to explode. Listeniing to people speak another language all around you all day is super exhausting, and it causes the hugest headaches like... ever. So tomorrow, I will pack my ibuprofen in my bookbag, and then i'll be good to go! Haha. So school went well. And after school, the other American (Alex) and I went across the street and had a frikadeller sandwich (Mmm...) and compared headache stories. That was fun. I also navigated the bus system all by myself for the first time. I was pretty much terrified the whole time that I would get off at the wrong stop and then be lost, or that I would miss my stop. It was pretty scary. But I made it! When I got home, I grabbed some ice cream, flopped down on the couch, and passed out. (Unintentionally...) I meant to take a twenty minute power nap, but I ended up not waking up until like two hours later when my host dad told me we needed to leave soon for the Rotary meeting. So I got up, cleaned up, put on a nice shirt, and we were off to the meeting. The meeting was about like school. A lot of meeting people, names I will never remember, lots of people speaking Danish to each other, me saying a few words about myself in English... Lovely. It was actually pretty cool. After the meeting, we came home, and I ate some bread. Tasty, tasty, bred. Then my two host sisters invited me to go with them to see one of their friends in the neighborhood. So I went with them, met their friend and her family, who, it turns out, go to a Baptist Church in Hjørring. I mentioned that I hadn’t had a chance to check out the local churches as of yet, and they invited me to their Baptist youth group called M.A.C. (Mad About Christ) (That is, of course, “mad” in the good sense of the word, not as in “angry”…) So now I have a youth group to go to during the school year! Woooooo!!! I don’t think they have started yet, but they will be soon. I’m really excited. And then I came home, ate some more bread, and came downstairs to write this. And then I discovered that we don’t have internet at the moment. It can be rather patchy at times, so I’ll try again in the morning. Tomorrow is a whole new day of school with whole new classes and whole new challenges. (Such as learning traditional Danish dances.) Did I mention that? We exchange students have been put into special dance classes with the first years so that we can learn a traditional Danish dance that they do at school dances here in Denmark. Super cool. It’s like Pride and Prejudice but cooler because it’s not on TV. :P The name is slipping my mind at the moment, but I’ll let you know what it is called next time, and maybe you can Youtube it. Or maybe tomorrow, I’ll take my video camera. Haha. We’ll see. Anyway, it’s a very traditional dance in five parts. Today we learned the first part and saw the second. It’s cool. Can’t wait to teach you guys at home. ;) But, as I said, tomorrow is a new day with new challenges, and I need to be well rested to meet them. So, I will catch y’all later!

A Long Weekend and Some New Digs

Well... It's been a while since I updated the blog. Sorry about that. I had an incredibly busy few days, and then I didn't have internet for a little while. Saturday, I went with my counselor's family to a birthday party. Of course, everyone there spoke Danish so I was a little bit uncomfortable at first. (Imagine that, haha..) But then I went in the kitchen where they put me to work doing dishes and cooking bacon. I also helped serve the food. Good times. It was a lot of fun. Then Sunday we had a little lunch and all of my host families came. That was fun. We had a kids' table and an adult table, so while the adults were having a little meeting, we got bored at the kids' table. So, naturally, we tore and folded our napkins and made pretty flowers out of them. :) Yay! It was fun. Then I came home with my new host family. That was fun too. We took a little tour of the town of Bjergby and then we came home, unpacked my stuff, and had dinner. Very tasty soup and bread. Monday, I went to Danish class (bleh. difficult. fun, but difficult.) at one o'clock, came home around three, hung out with the girls, and did my homework. Woo! Then we had dinner, and the girls and I went for a walk around town. It was cool. Oh! I had a snack today that I thought I'd tell you about. It was very tasty. Interesting. And tasty. I had a bowl of banana/pear yogurt with some like... cocoa puffs in it. Sounds odd, but it was SUPER GOOD! :) Try it sometime. Haha. Blah. I have written this blog entry over like three days with no internet and various pauses for... eatiing.. sleping... things like that. Anyway, I had a meeting at the school today with the counselor to get my schedule sorted out. (I had to choose between Physics, Math or.. Art... Is that even a decision????) :) I picked art. Duh. Anyway, school starts tomorrow. I have NO CLUE what the heck I'm doing, but I'll update you later on as to... How I made out. :) Love to all.

A Rather Uneventful Couple of Days

Okay, I am going to sum up the last couple of days in like a quick little thing... Basically, I didn't do very much. :) But that's okay! It was good for me to rest and stuff. So.. cool. But today ends that! Haha. I started Danish classes at the Gynmasium! :) Very very exciting stuff. Learned about a glottal stop. Yeah... I can't explain that. Too difficult. But it was COOL! Because then I started hearing it in conversations! Like... there's one in my last name! Petersen. Pe'tersen. Right there. Cool, huh? Okay, probably not. You can't hear it. But I was excited. And there's MORE TOMORROW!!! **insert GLEE here** (The emotion, not the television show. Though I would mind if that were here too...) I also get to go pick out a bike tomorrow morning. And then I can ride my bike to school. Like a real Danish teenager!! Sorry if this isn't quite as thrilling for you as it is for me... Anyway, if anything really exciting happens, I'll let you know. Um... OH! I have no pictures yet. On my blog. Or facebook. Turns out, I only packed half of my card reader. Oops. I seem to be quite absentminded. But I think I have something here that will do the trick, but the REAL trick is finding that something. So I'll get pictures up ASAP. Promise. Okay, I think that's all I have for today... Love to all. G'night.

Danish Word of the Day

I am going to post daily (or I will try) a "Danish Word of the Day" so that you can all learn Danish as I learn Danish! :) Sound good? I will probably not post each one in its own post because that would be annoying. I will do this one post to tell you what it's about, and then I will just comment on it from there. We'll see how long this lasts... I give it less than a week. Haha.

Back to blogging sooner than expected...

Well, we had a slight computer malfunction issue. Okay, it was totally my fault. When mom said "Will this converter work?" I guess I didn't look hard enough... My computer cord has three little doodads, and my converter only has room for two. My bad. But it's all sorted now. I was expecting to have to wait until my parents mailed me a new something, but it worked out. Enough rambling about computer things. Where did I last write? Hmm... Ah. Let's start with this:
Previously Unknown Use for a Rotary Jacket #1: Great pillow for airport-floor-naps.
Discovered: Early Sunday morning at the Frankfurt airport.
Oh, also... a random word of advice.. If you are ever in the Copenhagen airport, and you have to go from Terminal to Terminal... take the bus. Do not walk. Practically no one else does, and it will take you the better part of an hour to get there. And when you're carrying forty pounds of.. stuff on your back? With straps that cut off your circulation? Not so fun. Now, let us begin with the part of my blog that might make sense. Sunday after my nap. We ate a lovely dinner. And after dinner, we looked for Nebraska on a Danish Atlas. Surprise, surprise, there it was, smack dab in the middle of the country. But even more surprising, Crookston, Ainsworth, and Valentine were all also on there. Hmm.. Then it was time for bed. Monday, I slept until almost noon. Oops... I had toast with strawberry rhubarb jam and lemon tea for breakfast. Then we went to register me. Afterward, we went to look for a bike for me. Apparently, the Rotary Club here in Hjørring will pay for a bike for me. Very exciting. :) And then there was today. Tuesday. I woke up all on my own at around 645. Very strange. But I got up and had a nice breakfast. Then I came upstairs to read my bible. Around 1030, we drove 20 minutes or so to a town called Løkken on the beach. It was very beautiful. We went to a shop where they make candy, and we got to watch them make it. It was really really cool. Very interesting. After that, we bought some bread, walked up the beach a ways, and back to the car. We saw some people who were doing some sort of windsurfing type thing that.. wasn't windsurfing. Windsurfing is when the sail is like on a boat, and it is attached to the board. These people were surfing, but with big kites attached to them like parachutes. I have no idea what it's called, but it looked terrifying. (Maybe I should try it sometime...) After that, we drove home, I took a little nap, and we walked into the city to find me an adapter. A success, as you can see. We are having company for dinner tonight, so I will go and help with that now. On Thursday, another student and I will start special Danish classes at the school. Regular school starts next Wednesday. On the 22nd, we will take a bus to Bjerringbro for Inbound Orientation and a weeklong intensive Danish course. I am very excited to get started! I'll keep you posted on my progress. :)

Day One. Exhaustion.

Well, I am here. I have arrived safely and soundly and with a surprisingly small amount of airport trouble in Hjørring, Denmark. The past 30 hours or so have been pretty intense. Ellie dropped me off at security on Saturday morning, and I boarded my plane to Chicago. I was honestly expecting to be alone all the way to Frankfurt, but when I got to my gate in Chicago, I was practically mobbed and kidnapped by a group of other Rotary Exchangers. From there, I followed along like a lost puppy as we navigated our way across the Atlantic (that was the easy part), through the Frankfurt airport, through none of us having boarding passes and all of us needing them, and finally to Copenhagen and beyond. I was one of the lucky ones. I got my boarding passes for all my flights with relatively no trouble, and my luggage was there waiting when I arrived in Aalborg. Some of the others? Not quite so lucky. Basically, it was an epic day. I had a lovely drive home, a lovely nap, a lovely dinner, a lovely walk around the city, and some very lovely Gelato. So far, so great. I am not so concerned about my lack of knowledge about the language anymore, because I'm not the only one. So there is one of my worries gone. I'll keep you all updated when I can. But for now, it is almost 10 o'clock here, and I am exhausted. So good night, and sweet dreams.