The snow is here

I've been so teired of this cold wet rainy danish weather , and for the first time in my life, I really really wanted snow....a lot of snow. And last night we got it! It snowed like crazy! REAL snow, and it stuck and it's still here. It was soo nice....But then I had to get on my bike and ride all the way into town to the station for school :( My bikes not really cut out for...well, anything. I got outside this mornning, (still dark and windy and blazing snow) hopped on my bike and got half way out of my naborhood when the break jammed and my back tire wouldn't go around anymore. So I walked it to Fakta, (a grocery store) locked it and walked the rest of the way. As I was walking I was surprised to see how many people were still doing the same thing. Regardless of the weather, everyone was still out just dealing with it. Danes are really earth friendly, aware, healthy people. haha. Seriously, you would never see people out in that kind of weather in Michigan. Even if we got people to ride bikes or walk more, the second that crap weather came they would be back in their cars. Not the Danes. They're hard core.
Walking is a lot slower then biking so I was sure I had missed my train. But nope! When I got to the station there was a crazy amount of people waiting to get on it. The rails were icey so the train haddent been running and the 3 that come before mine were cancled. So when the train finally came it was packed! I was laughing to myself in Køge, the first stop, but no one really gets off at the first few stops and there were just as many people waiting at those ones. By the time we were to the stop before mine it was just redicualous. We were litterly squished angenst each other. You couldn't not let people in when the door open so we just squished more. People were missing there stops becuase it was impossible to move out of the way. I wanted to take a picture (haha) but I was to squished to get my hand in my pocket...hmm fun times.

I think that this year is the earliest I've ever been in the Christmas spirit. It's almost imposible not to be when it's Decemeber in Denmark! There's christmas music playing everywhere, I pass 3 gaint christmas trees on the way to school, and everyone is just so...peppy. Plus all the christmas parties and food traditions around now. They have this little Christmas cookie called a peppernut. It's really just a gingerbread cookie the size of a penut but they are really good, and they're everywhere! We had a Christmas party thing for the Musical last night and we had a peppernut eating contest. haha. My team won! Then today in school the classroom door flew open and a bunch of kids with santa hats and beards came running in screeming christmas songs and chucking hand fulls of peppernuts at us and at the walls and ceiling and then they were gone again in well under 20 seconds....that was crazy...It makes me feel bad for any Danish exchange student living in the US or something. I don't think anyone has more christmas spirit. Tomorrow I'm just going to school for a few hours for a Christmas party then I'm on break! Yay. I'll wait to update again until after Christmas Day...unless something crazy awesome happens first.

Merry Christmas! (again)

December means Christmas!

So when I started thinking today about what my next post would be about I noticed that a lot of little things can happen in 10 days. I think i should start writing stuff down even before I blog, because now that I'm sitting here I know I'm gonna forget some things...

Lets start with Thanksgiving. Obviously mine was a little bit differn't this year. To tell the truth I actually went through the whole school day and much of the evening without it even crossing my mind! It wasn't until Mor got home around 5pm that I realized. she came in the door with a "Happy Thanksgiving!" and I was like ,whaauhooo. Good thing there's a 6 hour time differnece, cuz I was calling home! Thanksgiving is always at my house so I got to talk to everyone. That was really nice:) I called right as people started showing up so I could always here "Hi"s and voices I knew in the backround.

Danes don't celibrate Thanksgiving of corse. So the people here dont have anything stoping them from celibrating christmas as soon as possible. They have a thing here called Christmas lunches. people have them with differnt "groups" in and around christmas. You do them with your families, class, and any sport or club your in, and adults do them with work. They start having them in November and some of them are even after Chritmas (we have a family one on Dec. 29 I think) The day after Thanksgiving, they did the tree lighting in Køge. It was pouring down rain and it was supposed to be at 5 but I think Santa was tired of waiting up in the cherry picker in the freezing rain so it was 12 minutes early...many complaints for that..tsk tsk. (?) An old lady came up to me and started babling about how they should have waited for her to come out of the store. haha.

Town Square the next day. The tree is in the middle.

That night I went to a party with some of the kids from my class and I got a free haircut! There was a girl there who was in beauty school and I agreed to let her cut it. Considering the circumstances (passed midnight at a danish party) It turned out pretty great, and it was free :) and haircuts are expensive here. Then on Saturday I went to Rasmus's house with Simon. We ate dinner there and had a christmas-ish party. It's wierd being in the Christmas spirit so early...

Last weekend I went with Mor and Far to get a Christmas tree. 2 actually (one for inside and one for outside). Christmas trees are differnt here. They're a lot more....whimpy. They're all short and bare, not like the ones we get! I was the one who cut it down, and as I was doing it I started thinking about when I was little, and how my brothers and sister and I would all take turns cutting it a little bit. It seemed to take forever, and when it finally started to fall we would run out of the way. Then all of a sudden I had cut through the whole thing and I stopped it from falling over with one arm...Then we put it in the trunk. haha.

In the USA people go crazy with christmas lights outside thier houses. Here, that pretty rare. But they go decoration crazy on the inside! Last weekend Mor pulled out a a bunch of huge boxes all filled with christmas decorations and now they've been pucked out all over the house. Not that it looks bad. Just very christmasy :) Like I said, it's a little early for me. haha.

Ok. I've got 2 funny stories for you. I'm not sure If they were "you had to be there" type stories but I'm gonna write them down anyway so I have them for me.

#1 I made dinner last night. And after a few weeks of not messing anything up it had to end somewhere. I made black beans and rice as a side for chicken. I missed it and wanted some so I found a recepy on line and made it. But I used some wierd asain rice we had and followed the instructions for white rice. (I'm dumb) They were way over-cooked and then when I mixed it in with the beans and stuff it was just...not the way it was supposed to look. So anyway, when people went to take some it came out in huge solid clumps. Mor asked Far to give her some,...He took one clump, put it on the plate the looked in the bowl and said "Would you like one rice or two rice?" I thought that was soooo funny. But now that I right it it sounds kinda dumb. Maybe you had to be there.

#2 I was walking through the down town area in Solrød to the train station after school today and as I was doing so, a cha-cha line of maybe 60 people came marching out of an office buliding and onto the street. They were all dressed like pirates and they had pirate flags and swords and stuff. I don't know if it was becuase it was Friday or if it was some kinda of weird Christmas party but...ya. They did a big loop around the christmas tree in the town square and I was aproching, ready to pass them, as they came around the other side. But then all of a sudden the lady in the front with a bongo just fell to the ground. And I think she maybe fainted becuase she wasn't really moving very much. As I walked by the fun kinda stopped they all kinda ran into each other and looked toward the front like...what the heck? I was alone and I STILL couldn't help but just bursting out laughing after I had passed by and the whole event regesterd in my head.

So ya, that was that. I'm sure I'm forgetting something but I think this is good enough :)

hohoho! Merry Christmas!

P.S. This cat likes to hang out outside our school. We let him inside on Wednesday! He likes hugs :) haha

Life (almost 4 months in)

Hello. It's 4:00 now. I got home from school a little while ago and I have to leave again at 5:00 to go to my first day of level 3 language school. It's already dark out AND it's rainning so I'm not really looking forward to the bikeride over there. The level 3 class actually started last wednesday but I wasn't there becuase I went to another play rehearsal. And when I got there I was told I had been promoted :) Someone couldn't do it anymore so I actually have a real part now with lines that were already in the script. haha. They said they're gonna make sure to make it clear that I don't come from Denmark. and the performances arn't until April so I've got a lot of time to work on it. I'm there less then once a week right now (only on some wednesdays) so it's not time consumming at all yet.

Oprah was here! I think I said that a while back. She was here with Obama back when they were trying to get the Olympics in Chicago. but what I didn't know is that when she came she did a segment for her show, showing what life was like in Denmark. It was a very simplified portrayl of the way people live here, but fun to watch. We don't get Oprah on TV but they still aired it here.

(P.S I didn't take this)

I've been speaking a lot of english the last few day. On Thursday we had an AFS meeting, on Saturday I went with AFS to Copenhagen, and on Sunday we had an American over for lunch and dinner. So let's go from the start:

The meeting with AFS was nice. It had been a while sence I had seen the others (6 in the Køge area) We had pizza then 2 of the exchange students did a presentation about thier home countries. After that, the meeting was directed tword the host families. Talking about next year allready! So we got to go in the other room. We didn't really know what we should do then...but wait, I had my camara with me! so we did what all AFS exchange students do with a camara, we took pictures of us with the AFS flag :) But when that got a little boring I showed them the blvbvlvlvblllvlvb game. haha. that kept us pretty entertained.

On Saturday AFS went to Tivoli. It's a huge amusment park in Copenhagen. We went to see a show called "the crazy christmas cabaret" It was in english, and it's was really funny. The show was at 3:00 so when it was over it was dark out and Tivoli was lite up like crazy! christmas lights everywhere! It was really cool we walked around in Tivoli for a while then went to McD's :D That was deliciouse. After that we just walked around in Copenhagen and had a really fun time :)

Then on Sunday Anders's (my older host brother) friend from the US was here, He was from Chicago. He was only the 2nd American I've been around in the past 3 months. It was kinda funny. Anyway, It's Monday again and I'm back into the Danish mode. (minus writting this blog post) but I've got to go. I have 4 more hours of school :( Bye.

"special cocktails for ladies with nuts"

Hello. weird title isn't it? Haha. I couldn't think of anything and I read that in my english textbook today. There was a page with signs from all over the world written in english. It was so we could see how much of an international language english is, and also to fix the many many mistakes. A lot of them were really funny but the funniest one by far was the one from a bar in Tokyo that said "special cocktails for ladies with nuts" I think they were trying to say there's nuts in the cocktail. hahaah. that mad me laugh sooo much, so I thought I would share it with you :D
Anyway, I don't have any big event to base this post on but of corse there's always a lot of little things going on that I don't always talk about on here. So I guesse I'll just write about.. stuff...

Last week (or the week before, i can't remember) I had my level 2 language test and I passed! The whole class passed! All 4 of us. haha. It wasn't to hard but it was a step up from the level 1 test I had a few months ago. We had to write an essay, do a listening thing, and do a reading thing. Then I had to talk about one of the three books I had read but they don't tell you which one until you get there. and then the tester just listens to a lame conversation you try to make with another student about a given subject. (we had "shopping") So I passed and will be moving on to level 3 but not right away. Like I said there are only 4 people in our class and you need at least 6 to start a new level. We had some drop outs resently so we have to wait for more people to join before we can start up again. When I got home that night after passing the test we all had icecream and danish cherry wine to celebrate! hah, That was fun.
School is good :) We had a guy come in on Tusday and speak to the whole school about enviromently friendly solutions. He was an inventor I guesse and he showed us a bunch of his ideas. One of them was a car that hooks up to other cars to make a train(? i think?) The next day we split into groups and had to come up with our own ideas. My group came up with the idea of lighting a city with the electricety from lighting....
I got home from school the other day and Far told me I had a part in the musical they're doing with the youth group thing in Køge. I was confussed. It's something I was trying to get into about a month ago but I couldn't go to the audition. But aparently they found a part for me :) So last night I road my bike over to a rehearsal in the pouring rain. It was at a really cool place. I guesse it used to be a train station a long time ago, so it's a long building with graffiti all over it, close to the beach. They do a lot of concerts there I heard. It was a small rehearsal. Just some of the leads I think. I was informed that I have a small part as a foreign exchange student! hah. It will be fun. I haven't seen the script yet but they're writting me in I think. Which is really nice, I've missed theater so much. I've gone more than 3 months without being in a show before of course, but I'm constently around theater at home. constently. It was nice even to just sit in and watch. It was moving slowly becuase they were still blocking the scene but I was happy to be there.
Then when it was over, we went to this back room and there was like, a cafe! It was so cool. And they said once a month there's an open mic thing, and they were doing it that night! There were little tables with candles everywhere, low lighting, and really good live music by people that were just sitting in the audience going up and taking turns. It was just ...cozzy. and there were people I knew! (haha, there's always people I've met before,..everywhere!). It was really nice. Made me wish a played an insterment, really bad. I'm gonna make sure a go to that thing whenever they have it from now on.

What else...We ate goose for dinner the other day. It's a danish tradision to eat goose or duck on November...(?) I can't remeber what day it was. It was good. I've never had goose before. There is a story behind it but I'm not gonna put it on here, I dont want to get it wrong. The simple reason, I've heard, Is becuase they dont like geese, so they eat them. but thats not the real reason...

So my blog has been looking pretty boring lattley becuase I havn't been taking any pictures. I looked at my camara just now to see if there was anything I could share on here but the most resent pics are from Sweden...and the ones I took of my purple big toe after dropping a drawer on it,...but I don't think you want to see those, so i'll just leave this one blank :D But i'll try to take my camara around with me more so I can have some for next time. I need to have pictures of everyday stuff too, not just big events. So watch for another one in about a week, bye!

SG 1p

That my new class :) Solrød Gymnasium, class 1p. I've been with my new class, in my new school for a week now (started with my 2nd Monday today) and I'm really happy with it. It's still new of corse but It's been really great so far and it just get's better the more used to it I get. I take the train to school now which still feels really cool, but I know it's gonna just be annoying later on. But for now I'm just reminded how lucky I am everyday. I get to ride my bike through the town square and get on the "S" train (headed tword Copenhagen). It makes me feel cool. haha.
And in the 2 weeks I had between switching from 10klasse to Solrød (with break, and farming school) my Danish improved a lot, so I started off able to understand a lot more of the lessons then I did when I left 10klasse. That was cool. I have so many differnt subjects now! Some of them are only once a week but still:

Math
Danish
English
Geography
History
Chemistry
Biology
Religion
Social Studies
Media (film)
Gym

It's a lot. I went through half a class once last week not knowing what subject it was! I think I only know 2 of our teachers names too. haha. But I've got all the kids names down, so thats good. They've been really nice so far. They've done a good job at welcoming me and making me feel "in". They all get along well with each other too which I think is really cool. It's a class of 25 and I don't feel like they're broken up into little groups like you would think. Lunch is so cool with my class. hhaha. We're free to leave or do what ever we want. The gymnasium is right in town in Solrød so kids are always going to the stores and stuff during lunch. We have speakers in all the classrooms too, so someone will always plug in their i-pod and play it really high. We've also got a really good cafateria which is open ALL the time :) and I went to a class party on Friday. It was a lot of fun, and good to see them all out of school.
Oh! and if the teacher is sick or busy or something, they don't have subs, your just free for that hour! That happend for my first time today with a lesson we have right before lunch so we had almost 2 hours off! About 7 of us just got on a train (cuz you can do that) and went to a mall type place a few stops north and had Burger King, walked around, and went back just in time for our next class... Thats so cool!
But when I'm in class we work, which is a good thing becuase that what I switched schools for. I have class from 8am to 2, 3, or 4pm which is much more time than I was in school before. And the extra time is a really good thing. I get more social interaction, and with a lot more people and I really think thats helping my Danish. Of corse it is. So the switch was a good thing.

I don't really know what else to write about Gymnasium. It's so differnt from high school. (in almost every way) So if anyone has any questions about it you can just comment and ask :)

Joe Cavanaugh is lucky

Hello :) I've had quite a good time this past week. Really good. Great!

Lets start with farming school; That was quite an experience....

I just want to start this whole thing by saying my danish has improved like CRAZY this past week or so. ( or at least I've noticed how much I've actually learned) I can't believe I can actually communicate and try to make converstaion with people in danish. Sure I have to ask them to repeat a lot but once they do, I understand them. I've got the small talk in the bag! (kind of) but it's just weird. I'm not used to it yet. My communicationn with other people consists of almost all danish!

Ok, anyway, farming school; It was interesting. We worked on the farm, we learned in the classrooms, and we drove tractors :) I got to hang out with the cows and sheep, and I even got to ride a horse one day! That was cool. I've never done that. We learned a lot about farming and how to take care of the animales and stuff. I had a good time. I had to get up really early everyday though. The school was in Rosklide. So I had to ride my bike to Køge station every morning ( about 15 minutes), then take the train to Rosklide station (about 25 minutes), then sit at the station and wait for the bus (about 20 minutes) then take the bus to the school (about 10-15 minutes) The sun didn't come up until after I was at the school everyday. I hadn't used the public transport that much by my self before last week and there were some messups. I ended up missing the train one morning. And I missed the bus once too and I had to walk 5k to the school 2 times! But now I think I know the transportation system quite well so thats a really good thing. I have no pictures from farming school. There was never an good time to whip out a camara...

When friday came along farming school was over and I was on my way to Sweden! WOW that was an awesome trip! I'm so lucky I got to go white water rafting AND caving in Sweden. It was sooo cool. We were only going to a southern part of Sweden so I didn't think it would look much differnt from Denmark, but ohhh it did. We took our bus across the water on a huge ferrie. It was crazy. There was a huge parking lot on the bottom and a mall type thing with stores an resturants on the other levels. When we got to Sweden the first city was quite simmilar to Denmark. But we were soon out in the nature and things were sooo differnt. I can't really say how but it was like nature I havn't seen in real life before. When you go out in the woods in Michigan (where I come from) It's like the same as it is in Denmark. But It was...bigger in Sweden. Big trees and big rocks and everything was coverd in thick green mosses and stuff. And it was always misty and wet. And there were a lot of calm little lakes and stuff. And it's fall! So that just added to how nice it all was. It was really realll reallllly cold...

I've never tried white water rafting before so I didn't know what to expect. But we had to strip down and change into our wet suits out in the woods by the river! It was sooo cold. Just try to imagine it. It was rainning, it was cold enough to see your breath, I was freezing and we were about to get into little boats and splash around in a raging river. So what happend next I wasn't expecting at all... One of the leaders took as down to the edge of the water. He was speeking danish of corse and the water and everything was making to much noise for me to understand. But than all of a sudden kids started jumping into the water! They zipped down the river into a lake a little farther down. I couldn't believe it. I thought the piont was to stay in the boat and stay as dry as we could!? But it was my turn to jump in, and I've learend to not really ask questions, so there I went :) It was soooo much fun. 100% freezing but one of the coolest things I've ever done. After that, being wet and cold didn't matter anymore. (Jumping into a ragging river in October will do that for you) We took the boats out and did the same strip of river for hours. It comes out into a lake, you get out, take your boat, walk up the trail, and get in the river again. The boats were for 2 people so we just switched parteners all the time. The was on time I was with this girl and our boat got turned around backwards! We hit a big wave thing and she fell out! I was half way out (one of my legs) and I slamed my knee agienst a big rock. That hert really bad :( We were both fine but my knee still herts kind of. Just brused though. It was an adventure! but there was more to come...That same day we changed in to dry(ish) clothes and headed over to a cave! We crawled around deep into these dark little holes ( not for clasterfobic people) but it was really cool becuase we found that a lot of them lead to bigger "rooms". I love how Europeans (from what I've seen) don't have to worry about crazy parents sueing them If they set there kids free in a cave in Sweden, or tell them to jump into a ragging river :) I really don't think that trip would have been the same if I went with Americans....

The next day we did some more white water rafting. But it was less the the first day becuase we had to hit the road. I was home by 8:00pm on Sunday and I had to make sure I was ready for my first day at Solrød Gymnasuim! I don't think my first day could have gone any better :) My class is great. They were all really nice and interested in me. We had math and I was able to do the work. I worked together with some other people and I was actually able to discuse the problems in danish. I was lost with some of it but I knew what we were doing. then we had a geogrophy type class were the teacher gave a test (just to see what we knew) becuase they were starting somthing new. I could read almost all the questions and even answer some of them. haha. It was cool. Then we had gym class were we split up into 2 groupd and had a dance off. haHAHAaa. Not something I've done in gym class before. They were all really welcoming and I even got invited to a class party on friday! yay! I can't wait for the rest of the week so I can get a real feel of what its like and let you guys know. But for now I think I've written enough. I've got language school tomorrow so I've got to study. I havn't had time all week! Bye.

Efterårsferie

I hope thats spelled right. It meens Fall Break! I know I mentioned it already. My break was sooo nice:) For the first half we were in a little town in north west Jutland called Blokhus. On the map you see 3 main bodies of land. The three parts of Denmark. The 2 to the right are islands. I live on the east coast of the island on the right side. In english it's called Zealand. The part thats not an island (on the left side) is Jutland, which borders germany in the south (not in this picture. haha) Were we stayed was in the north west part of Jutland.

On the way over we stopped for lunch at one of Mor's friends houses on Fyn, the middle part of Denmark. Is was nice to be able to stop because now I can say I've been there and not just driven through. All in all I think it took us about 4 hours to get to Blokhus (were we stayed) We stayed at a hotel type place but there were a lot of seprate buildings and we had our own kitchen. So we made dinner every night just like at home. The place was right on the beach. The beach was BIG and beautiful with sand duns and people driving cars all over. And the sun set over the ocean every night. It was nice, but freezing cold. You wouldn't think of swimming. But they had a nice indoor pool so we were in there a lot. They had table tennis too and I must say I think I've improved my skills this past week. We did that ALOT. We all played a lot of cards to together too. The trip was great bonding time :) On the way home we got to see Århus, the main city in Jutland. We went to a place called "den gamlle by" It meens, the old town. It's a collection of really old danish buildings that they moved into one area. It's not that exciting if your comming from Køge (it looked like our town. haha) but it was a fun thing to do.

When we got home Simon and I were off to a party that same night. And the next day I finally got to use that canoe thing I won. It was me, Simon, Ramus, and Sigurd. We got up at 10 in the morning and went cannoeing (?) in the freezing rain. Yes it really was freezing rain. We spent most of the time under bridges :D It was cold. But just really dumb fun, you know? And we got free lunch after :)

The rest of the the break we just relaxed, I went to some parties, studied some danish, and slept :)

And today is monday, break is over, and I had such a good day today!!! It started with a long awaited meeting at Solrød Gymnasium. I'm switching to that school! It was so cool walking in and seeing how nice and "un-grade schoolish" it was. There were no little kids, no screeming, no running, and it was fancy and bigger and better! I got a list of my classes and I even met some kids I know that go there. I'm very excited to start but.....I don't start till next monday. This week I'm going to farming school :) It's one of those "bridge building" things with 10 klasse. I decided it's not something I want to miss. How often do you get a chance to spend a week at farming school?! come on! After my meeting at Solrød, Far took me to the farming school and when he dropped me off he said "have fun, it your first and last time to do this." And from there I was sooo happy. After getting to see Solrød and knowing that was ahead for me, and then walking into this "farming school" where I knew no one and nothing about, I just felt good, off to do another random thing in Denmark. I felt refreshed and ready and confident, and I had such a good day. I met new people with ease. And in Danish! I was sooo surprised at myself. It's the most Danish I've ever spoken. In fact I think I said 2 sentences in english the whole day, and I talked a lot! I had a hard time switching over to english at the beginning of this blog! It's by far the most fluent I've ever felt (but still far from it) The hard work is paying off :) I really think I'll learn a lot of Danish this week. Becuase I met these people in Danish we speek in Danish. It's wierd but...english just doesn't seem like an option when I'm with them. It's a really good thing!

Today we got a tour of the farm and school. The kids who go to this school live there! they each have there own rooms too, with a bed, and desk, and belcony, even their own showers. They eat really good there too. The whole place reminded me of a much smaller, much more modurn Hogwarts :) The kids who go there are kind of like family, they eat together, they have a nice big common room, and when they're not in class they "rome the grounds" The main loby felt more like a big living room than anything. I wont talk to much about the school, I'll save it for my next blog. But here's my timeline until I blog again:

- the rest of the school week at the farm school!

- white water rafting in sewden over the weekend!

- my first few days at Solrød Gymnasium!

The next one's gonna be good :)