The Return Home

I’ve now officially been home for a month and definitely miss things about Denmark but am also very happy to be back with the family. I already posted about what it was like to spend my final night in Copenhagen but it just felt so weird to get my passport stamped with a København stamp for the final time and board the plane I knew would take me back to the states. Watching Copenhagen grow smaller from the airplane window felt so surreal, like I was just going on another week long trip and would be back in a few days. After all, how could that little apartment with Cat not be my home anymore?

Coming back home is kind of hard to describe. I expected seeing my mom and brother again to be really odd and kind of a big moment. And I was thrilled to see them again but honestly, seeing them walk up to me at baggage claim felt like the most normal thing in the world. It didn’t feel like I’d been thousands and thousands of miles away from them for several months, but like I’d never really left them.

One of the biggest shocks of getting back to the US that I’d never anticipated was the sensation of being in a car. Forget that I hadn’t been behind a wheel in four months (which made me slightly shaky my first time out again), just driving in a car with my friends the next week felt strange to me. By my tally, I’d only driven in a car six times throughout my semester, four cab rides and twice with Cat’s parents. A car just felt so much faster than the bus and I was closer to the ground and the streets themselves were a lot wider than in Copenhagen, meaning I constantly saw way more cars zooming around me through the windows. It sounds crazy since I’ve grown up driving in cars on huge streets but being away for so long really made it feel different. And for me personally, I’d never realized how much I missed the desert landscape. I live in Phoenix and I never missed the cacti or the open sandy patches much when I was actually in Copenhagen but coming home, I just love driving down roads running through the wide empty blocks of the Arizonan desert that hasn’t been developed yet. Living in a completely urban city had definitely affected how much open space I saw on a daily basis.

Other differences have been shopping in our grocery stores again. It’s become incredibly apparent how much larger our shops are compared to anything in Denmark. I constantly complain to my mom about how many more options there are here that I have to choose from as opposed to working with what they have in Copenhagen. And while I’m watching TV, commercials that never seemed strange to me before have really shocked me. For a few days, on any given commercial break, I would see two or three commercials advertising new diets or weight loss strategies. Now it could be that I just couldn’t understand the language of any of the commercials I’ve seen for months but just by watching the visuals on Danish TV, I really don’t think there were nearly as many advertisements for weight loss or being skinny. There are also way more movie trailers or teasers on TV here and marketing is clearly much more intensive here, which is a pretty obvious observation, but never something I’d really taken notice of until I went without it for a while.

Overall, it’s been a little shocking how normal it’s felt to be back home again and the things that have jarred me a little are really surprising and not what I expected to feel weird about. But it’s been really great being home and spending time with my family ❤ Next week, I’m officially heading back to my home university for the spring semester so this week is all packing and nerves and anxiety about fitting back into my second home. I’m sure everyone who’s getting ready for Copenhagen right now is starting to get pretty excited and pretty nervous but you are all honestly about to have some of the best few months of your lives. Just don’t freak out about the amount of hours spent in darkness for the first few weeks, remember to still be active despite the rain and cold, and seriously, take DIS’s advice to work out times to talk to people from home before you head to Denmark. It might sound a little funny and unnecessary but the time change is hard and the last thing you’ll want is to spend too much time trying to keep up with home life or going too long without talking to loved ones and then feeling sad and disconnected. But most importantly, just remember not to freak out. Things will probably get a little overwhelming at times, especially at the beginning, but it will all work out and there’s just no way you could regret the decision to study abroad 🙂 Good luck!!

And here are some pictures of how nice it’s been to be home fore the holidays! Hope you all had an amazing winter break with your family before heading out on your big adventures! Happy New Year!

Me and my baby bro at Zoolights ❤

My best friend from school came to visit me! Hadn’t seen him since June…

How my sister is treated by our brother and her fiance hehe

The 3 siblings seeing the Christmas tree on Christmas morning ❤

The Little One

So the last thing I want to make a separate post about my Copenhagen experience is about one more extracurricular activity. Seriously everyone, you should all get involved in as many extra activities as you have time for because they make the experience so much better and your time in Copenhagen so much better spent. I’ve never mentioned this particular one before because it only took up a very small portion of my time but I actually started it early on in my semester.

At the Activities Fair the second week of the semester, I got in touch with an international school in Hellerup that many DIS students volunteer at each semester as what is called an ‘LAP volunteer’ for one of the international students. As an international school, the language of instruction is English so, although English may not be the first language of your student to tutor, every child is taught in English and knows the language to a certain extent.

So when I got home, I applied and sent in my resume and interviewed later that week so they could make sure I would be a good match with some of the students. I ended up being paired with Dante, a sweet 7^th grade boy with ADHD who needed help expressing himself in his writing and with overall time management and organization. He was actually American but his parents were Australian so he tended to say some very Australian phrases in an American accent, which always a little surprising and amusing for me 🙂

The awesome thing about this volunteer opportunity is that you can give as much or as little time to it as you want. They require at least one hour a week but beyond that you can pick to tutor two kids for an hour a week each or help out with Homework Club for all ages for two hours once a week or combine Homework Club and tutoring a child individually. It’s all up to you. And you can pick which age you’d like to tutor as well.

The International School’s Logo!

I tend to work best with kids around 11 or 12 and Dante ended up being a great match. I mostly just helped him with his homework each session and helped him stick to one method of keeping track of his homework so he wouldn’t keep forgetting to do it. I think a large part of our work together was more about one more person firmly holding him accountable for how often he turned in his homework on time. I think we did really well together the whole semester and we had a lot of fun in my opinion. I kept in close tough with his mother for the four months I was with him to see how he responded to the tutoring and how he talked about it at home. She always implied that he enjoyed the sessions and was very proud of him for remembering to go each week without anyone reminding him right after school ended and he never skipped out! He turned out to be pretty responsible about it.

My student, Dante 🙂

All in all, it was a really good part of my semester. I really loved getting to know Dante one a more personal level throughout all of our sessions together. I thought it was one of the better parts of the LAP program that you get to work with the same student all semester so that you can really build a strong teaching relationship with him or her throughout your few months in Copenhagen. I definitely learned a lot about Dante’s interests and passions outside of school and I think that really helped me understand what he wanted to get out of his schoolwork and understand his feelings toward some of his classes. I highly recommend the LAP program as a volunteer opportunity through DIS but I also just really want to stress to all prospective students to make sure to get involved in the city in one way or another!! Spend your time here wisely and you’ll never regret it 🙂

A Night in the Life of Someone Else

I hadn’t previously gotten a chance to post about this but I definitely wanted to make the time to do one because this was, hands down, one of my favorite experiences abroad, which is really saying something. A few weeks before the end of semester, my Nordic Mythology teacher told us all about how if enough students sign up or show interest, sometimes DIS will get a professional storymaster (I’m not really sure of the official term) to come and do a role playing night with a sort of Scandinavian adventure storyline. So a few girls in the various Nordic Mythology and European Storytelling classes signed up and we went on a Norwegian adventure together over the period of two nights, three hours each.

Now to start off, I have never done any type of role playing game before. And neither had two of the other girls participating in it either, only one of the four of us had, we were all just really into the mythology we’d learned in class and thought it would be an interesting experience at the very least. We’d all seen a few depictions of Dungeons and Dragons games on TV, on shows like The Big Bang Theory and things like that, but never seriously understood how to play. Thankfully, this particular storyteller was accustomed to students whom had never played before and it was really a simplified version of role playing.

What our landscape in Norway looked like

So each of the four of us was assigned a specific character complete with special abilities, brief character histories, personalities, weapons, and other objects we bring on our travels with us. I played a girl I named Aila, a healer with the highest ability to perform magic in the group…although I only had a 17% chance of my magic working so it still wasn’t great odds. The others were traders and fishermen and one was the chief’s daughter. To be honest, it was a blast.

I’m sure many people already know the basis of how to play a role play game but for those who don’t, we just rolled dice to see how we did on every task we embarked on. For instance, we all rolled to see if we made it into a boat we tried jumping into and decided if we made it based on if we rolled a number lower than the percentage of our jumping ability. Not a single one of us made it in without falling in the ocean…

Our storymaster drew out the mountains we tried to climb

On the other hand, we tried to reach our destination by climbing over some very tall mountains (our storyteller informed us we were the only people who had ever played this scenario that had attempted to climb these mountains as it was very dangerous…) and we definitely almost died. However, every time someone was injured I was able to heal them with magic and the one time someone was hanging off the cliff, I was able to conjure wind to fly her to safety. It was very anxiety ridden but so much fun!

We encountered many monsters and the music our storyteller played the whole time really added to the whole experience. It sounds ridiculous but all four of us playing in an almost empty building after most of the other school buildings had closed when it was pitch black in Copenhagen – it was pretty scary at times. Two of the girls actually screamed at one point after our storymaster had narrated the beginning of an attack for us and started playing extremely suspenseful music.

All of our snacking throughout the night and the various props we got to use! (My gemstones, a rock of light, and a mysterious letter leading us on our way)

We definitely almost died trying to cross this bridge

Well at the end of the second night, we didn’t have time to totally finish the scenario because it really wasn’t designed for people to actually finish but we were told we had done better than many groups had before us, we were the only group to attempt scaling the mountains (and we succeeded!), we were the only group to successfully cross a certain bridge without falling off it or destroying it first, and not one of us had died by the time we ended! I call that a big victory! And it really was so much fun. He spent the last half hour we had together explaining how the scenario played out and showed us the map so we could see all the different ways we could have attempted and all the traps along the way that we could have encountered. I never knew how intricate and complex the backgrounds of these games were before the players had even entered the playing world! It was really incredible to see. All in all, I highly recommend this experience to anyone, especially anyone in the Nordic Mythology class, even if it’s something you’ve never tried before or are kind of skeptical about. My professor had promised us we would definitely have fun throughout it and she didn’t disappoint!

“We do not live in landscapes.” – Time Creswell

So a few days ago, I finally experienced the night I never really thought to come and had my last night in Copenhagen. Obviously, I’d been expecting it for months but it felt so so strange when it finally came. The last few days in Copenhagen, I made sure to do some of the last things on my bucket list like going to Sankt Peders Café for the last time for 15 kroner cinnamon rolls the size of your head and going back to Roskilde (where I sailed the Viking ship) for a last look at my favorite little coastal town. Cat even took me to her hometown to see where she grew up and her parents cooked me a traditional Danish Christmas dinner to welcome me! Complete with caramelized potatoes, red cabbage, and rice pudding with cherry sauce. So sweet!

I finally made it to see The Little Mermaid, as touristy as that is, but I also saw the statue of the goddess, Gefion, plowing the land that is now Copenhagen with her bulls (a very famous sight in Nordic Mythology!). And my core course professors invited all their students over to their apartment and made us gløgg and we all had a proper farewell as a class. I went back to the Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibit and my friends and I went ice skating in an amazing outdoor rink in Frederiksburg to kick off winter right ❤ So many goodbyes and so many things to do in the last week– finishing off the Copenhagen bucket list as well as final papers and studying for exams. How to do it all?!

Gefion and Her Bulls!

Ice Skating in Frederiksburg ❤

At the beginning of my semester, my core class, A Sense of Place in European Literature, had us read an article about what the word ‘place’ really means to us and everything the usage of the word entails. In the article, Tim Creswell says, “we do not live in landscapes – we look at them.” And that’s something that has resounded in my head over and over this semester. It’s really rung true. To me, this statement means that we all have our perceptions about what a place will look like when we see it from the outside for the first time. We look at a distant skyline and think it looks so beautiful out there and imagine what it would be like to be inside of it. But the truth is that things never feel the same on the inside as we thought they would from the outside.

I arrived in Copenhagen four months ago with so many expectations and maybe even some preconceived notions about what the city would be like. And to be honest, I can’t really say how much was true and how much was a stereotype. But I can definitely say that the semester has been so different from anything I could have imagined, in some difficult ways and some wonderful, incredible ways. That’s what study abroad is about! Having all these unexpected experiences that shape the people we go home as. For instance, I hadn’t realized how lonely I would feel at times having left all my close friends and family behind. But I also didn’t anticipate making so many friendships that will definitely last longer than just a semester abroad. And more than that, Copenhagen itself is different from what I’d anticipated. I never realized how much I would love all the water in the city, all the canals and the Nørrebro lakes that I pass everyday. I didn’t realize what it would be like to study in so many various cafes and hang out with friends on the cobblestone paths. Copenhagen was just a landscape when I got here, somewhere I’d seen and studied from afar and tried to learn about from the outside. But having spent four months here, I finally see it as more than a distant skyline, but as a second home and as just another place too. It isn’t some magical, mysterious city that is another world away from where I grew up. It’s just another place in the world complete with its own culture and language and aspects to it that make it unique in its own way. And I’ve loved getting to know its nooks and crannies.

So as I sat on my couch on my last night in the city, I chatted with Cat and watched an episode of Friends with her. And I curled up and it felt so much like home, so different than I’d felt on my first evening in Copenhagen when I was too afraid to even sit on the couch because it’s technically in Cat’s room, which also functions as our living room. It felt too surreal to imagine that tomorrow I’d leave that apartment and not come back to it after another week of traveling somewhere else. All week long, I’d been saying goodbye to friends I’d come to love and it was such a strange kind of goodbye, one I’d never experience before. It was one where I honestly didn’t know the next time I’d see those people, couldn’t say I’ll see you when I come back to visit Copenhagen one day like I could to Cat, couldn’t say I’ll see you on break from college like friends from high school, couldn’t say I’ll see when school comes back in session because all my new American friends would rejoin their schools all over the country. So I said goodbye to all these people who I knew I would stay in contact with because our friendships had grown into something more than friendships of convenience and I said goodbye to this city with a heavy heart and made sure to appreciate my last trek over the Nørrebro lakes on the way to the airport. And I’m not sure what to make of my semester now, but I know I had a great time and met people I’ll know forever and formed relationships with citizens of another country that I’ll keep forever. I can honestly say that I’ve loved Copenhagen and I’ve loved my time abroad, I don’t regret anything about it, I want to thank everyone who added their own specialty to my semester abroad and made it an unforgettable experience ❤

Elise while studying for finals…<3

From the first day of the semester to the last, thank you for being my first friend in Copenhagen, Alex

Last Roomie Pic 😦 Love you, Cat! ❤

Lights and Snow for the Holidays <3

The holiday season in Denmark is definitely different from back home in the best way possible in my opinion. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but by the time we all arrived back from our third travel breaks (my trip to Istanbul), downtown Copenhagen was decorated all over with lights and decorations! And it looks beautiful! Because the Danes obviously don’t celebrate our Thanksgiving, they are free to start celebrating and preparing for Christmas right after Halloween ends. Which means a full on two months of holiday cheer 🙂 What could be better?

Downtown Christmas Lights!

All the major streets in downtown are string with different types of lights, some windows are decked out with garlands and lights, and even major streets in the other neighborhoods (like mine, Nørrebro) are strung with decorations! And then of course, there are the Christmas markets at every large square in the area. I’d heard of Christmas markets before coming to Europe but I couldn’t have actually said what they were. Well they are these groups of little booths selling everything from fuzzy slippers to scarves and hats to Christmas decorations and food!! They are quite adorable and I’ve already bought special doughnuts, a cute knit hat, and a scarf from them. (My friend, Elise, also bought me a snow globe from one for my birthday, which was so special for a myriad of reasons.) Most of them also have special aspects like carrousels, little trains kids love riding one, and the one right next to DIS has the biggest Ferris Wheel I’ve ever seen! I love just walking through the markets on my way to class.

Elise and I spent our break between classes checking out the markets!

And then there is the Danish Christmas pastries, specifically aebleskiver, which is so hard to describe. The best description I’ve heard so far is pancake balls but they are even sweeter and come covered in powdered sugar and jam. Cat loves them too. They are delicious and all the markets sell them along with special Danish Christmas wine called gløgg. This is basically just realy, really good mulled wine served with almonds but I love it. My friend and I went to a gløgg competition at the Glass Markets the week before last (the Glass Markets are this very cool place to eat and shop; it’s two large glass buildings filled with booths serving all kinds of food and goods and they have the best samples!). The contest was a great, fun, and festive atmosphere to be around. And my Danish class actually got to try both aebleskiver and gløgg for the first time when we went to Tivoli together for a field study! Once Halloween is over, Tivoli is transformed into a complete Winter Wonderland and it’s gorgeous. More Christmas trees than you can count, lights absolutely everywhere, Christmas scenes on the stage, and a fountain laser light show on the lake set to Nutcracker music every hour!

Obviously, this is one of my more excited posts and I hope you can feel the excitement I’m feeling all throughout my post, which might be a little over the top…but in all honesty, I do love the festive holiday spirit in Europe, it’s definitely different from the US. And from what I can tell, Christmas isn’t very associated with the religious aspects here, so most Danes actually do celebrate Christmas, if only to join in the holiday cheer and beautiful decorations for the season.

And to top off all the holiday cheer I’ve already been feeling, it finally snowed here a couple weekends ago! I’m from Phoenix and go to school in Los Angeles, so seeing snow fall has been a very rare occasion in my life. I absolutely loved being here for it and walking through the snow storm, despite how cold it was and the snow literally flew into my eyes, which stung quite a bit. In summary, it’s been a perfect holiday season so far 🙂

Fødelsdag in Denmark

This was my first birthday this far away from home and celebrating with people I’d known for a few months (although I guess that’s similar to my first semester at college). But the actual day was great and birthdays are a pretty big deal in Denmark and my roommate, Cathrine, was very excited to wish me a happy “fødelsdag” in the morning 🙂 But unfortunately, she had to work late that day, which meant she couldn’t join me and my friends for our small celebration in the evening. So she promised we could celebrate on Wednesday!

Now at this point in the semester, I’m getting pretty near broke in terms of money and I’m really having to budget myself. So the prospect of going out to dinner with Cat, while very exciting and fun, was also a little nerve wracking because it meant another dinner out for a kind of frivolous purpose. But we decided on a restaurant we already had a gift certificate to and she said she wanted to take me to the one in Frederiksburg (also where he cousin lives). Well to make a long story short, it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize we weren’t heading to a restaurant at all and I didn’t actually figure out it was a surprise party/dinner type thing until we were at her cousin’s door. Cat goes “oh hey, this is where Stine lives, we can just go say hi” and I get so confused and am like “but didn’t you say we made a reservation, won’t we be late?” In my defense, Cat did a great job pretending all week, she’d reminded me what time the reservation was several times and asked to see the gift certificate on the way there at least three times.

So we walk up the stairs to her cousin’s apartment and are instantly greeted by Danish flags waving in my face and shouts of “Tillykke med fødelsdagen” (as per Danish tradition; they actually use Danish flags on birthdays a lot, big ones for waving and small ones for cakes). Cat’s brother and cousin and Stine’s baby daughter were all there waiting and the apartment was full of candles and Christmas decorations and to top it all of, they knew how sad I was about missing Thanksgiving back home, especially with it being so near my birthday, and so Stine had made me a full on Thanksgiving dinner! Complete with a whole turkey with stuffing inside, extra stuffing on the side, cranberries, and mashed potatoes, the table was gorgeous and I could not have been more surprised or thrilled.

Casper and Stine 🙂

We had a great evening eating so much food and I shared many Thanksgiving stories and told them about my family’s traditions back home. They told me how weird all this food was to them (Stine said she hadn’t even attempted making yams because she was sure the recipe was wrong once it mentioned marshmallows) and they thought the concept of stuffing was very strange but actually really liked it! They said it definitely wasn’t the last time they would be having it. And after dinner, Cat even surprised me more by proudly displaying a pumpkin pie! She said she’d made it the day before at her friend’s apartment so I wouldn’t notice and had discretely carried it over to Stine’s in the bag I hadn’t bothered to ask about. Apparently, making pumpkin pie in Denmark is much harder than in the states as they actually need to cut up a pumpkin to make it, they have no cans of pumpkin filling here. Such shortcuts are for the Americans I guess…

Cat with her secret pie haha ❤

I was so happy with everything they did and Stine’s three y/o daughter had even made me a beaded necklace that she was so happy to give me at dinner. I was so touched, especially since she can’t really understand me as she hasn’t learned English yet and was so shy around me when I first met her, she’d barely even looked at me. And finally, to conclude the evening, they sang me the Danish version of happy birthday, which apparently includes the birthday person getting to choose a combination of three animal or instrumental sounds that the birthday singers have to make in between verses of the song…it was an experience to be sure! I chose a platypus, an elephant, and a violin. Best thing all night haha. I think it’s a safe bet to say I thoroughly enjoyed my first Danish birthday!!! Thank you so much, Cat! ❤

Also, here’s the video of them singing to me!

Foreign Film and Free Drinks? What More Could You Want?

I realize that I haven’t dedicated much of this blog to the extra curricular activities I’ve picked up at DIS, so this post shall rectify that. I mean, better late than never, right? Obviously I’m a blogger, which has been really fun and also been a great way to connect with other people who enjoy writing and media type activities through our workshops and community events. But one of my favorite extra things at DIS has definitely been Film Club.

Way back at the Activities Fair, I signed up for this club, which can be kind of hard to get into because the club basically consists of them buying you tickets to five different movies and a free drink after every movie during the discussion period. Last Thursday was our last film club meeting, a sad experience indeed, and we all had a great time saying goodbye to each other and hanging out, talking about movies one last time.

Preparing for the movie quiz to kickoff our last get together!!

Throughout the semester, we have seen a Norwegian film, Indonesian documentary, Bolivian documentary, a British film, and concluded with a Lars von Trier classic, Europa. I mean, we obviously couldn’t be allowed to leave Denmark, claiming to be film fanatics, without seeing a Lars von Trier film! And I have to say, I actually quite enjoyed this one. All semester, we’ve gone to theaters such as the one at DIS, makeshift ones in huge dining halls, official ones with the comfiest chairs I’ve ever been in, and this last one in warm, cozy café where we had the room rented out afterwards for the discussion. Sometimes we even get to listen to talk backs from the directors, which is such a cool way gain more insight into the film. We’ve also visited several bars to discuss our movies from sports bars to cafes to very relaxed, classy bars. But this room was the perfect way to end our semester together.

Talk Back from the Norwegian Director

We all got to talk about our favorite movies and say goodbye to the friends we’d made in the club and we even took a movie quiz, which I had low hopes for but my team actually ended up winning…I have to say, I tried my best at decoding the anagram movie titles and coming up with movie titles from picture symbols but one teammate definitely carried us…It was a great time, a very hyggeligt affair 🙂 I highly recommend joining some DIS clubs while you’re studying abroad here, they’re a great way to make new friends, meet more students, and just make sure you have something to get you out of the homework funk of school nights (which can be especially hard to break out of during the winter months when it’s dark by 4pm and freezing outside). Also, not to be biased or anything, but I highly recommend film club too 😉 if you like lovely people, interesting movies, and good discussion, it’s the place for you!

Ordering our last drinks ❤

Different Ways to be Housed in Europe

Well, last week was officially the last travel break in DIS’s program and students returned home to Copenhagen for the final four weeks of our semester. Where in the world did the time go?? In some ways, it feels like I just got here to begin my study abroad experience and in other ways, I am very aware of how long it’s been since I kissed my little brother or hugged my mom or saw my friends from my home university. I know I’m going to miss the home I’ve created in Denmark so much but I won’t be sorry to return to my family for the holidays and I know these next few weeks are just going to fly by.

But actually, that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let’s focus on the last independent travel break. My friend from one of my philosophy classes, Celeste, and I traveled to Istanbul for the week, which was really amazing and such a phenomenal experience. It was independent travel so we just went by ourselves and not with DIS, as other classes have gone to Istanbul this semester as part of the program. And I would like to put out this reminder to people planning their trips to always be as safe as possible and check which places are safe to go. Many people expressed surprise at our decision to go alone and Turkey actually is currently on the US Advisories List of places Americans may want to avoid traveling to. We personally made the call that it would most likely be okay because Istanbul is not one of the cities closest to Syria (Turkey borders Syria) and Celeste has a friend currently studying abroad there and we knew that DIS had found it safe enough to take students to on their scheduled trips. That being said, we definitely exercised caution and were alert at all times.
For the most part, we met extremely nice people. We met several Turks that could easily tell we were tourists and spoke decent enough English that they offered to help us find our way to a new site or guide us through which public transportation route to take. And referring to the title of this article, in order to save money, Celeste and I actually found someone to host us on couchsurfing.com. It was personally my first time using the website and Celeste’s second time but she had had an awesome experience the first time and was excited to try it again. Couchsurfing is really interesting because it’s free and you just have to help your hosts out with things around the house in return for their hospitality. I highly recommend always reading reviews of your potential hosts as there is no actual background check on them and the reviews are the best way to see if the host wants a lot of interaction with you and if it’s an overall safe environment to be in. It’s a great way to meet locals and get an insider’s perspective of the place you’re visiting, as well as immerse yourself in the new culture. For the first couple nights, we definitely felt we had this experience as our hosts explained how to use the public transportation system (Istanbul’s is actually one of the best there is but very complex; they use practically every type of transport from busses to metro to metro busses to underwater trains to ferries and busboats); I don’t think we would’ve had such an easy time navigating the city if not for them. And they explained a lot about the culture to us and introduced us to traditional Turkish food and tea, which was very fun and added to our trip.

Our hosts on the first day!

Rooftop Cafe!!

The not so great part of our experience was that we actually ended up moving to a hostel after spending two nights with our hosts. While they were very nice, at night they would get persistently flirty and we felt that they weren’t listening to our requests for more appropriate behavior. It resulted in a situation in which we felt a little uncomfortable staying with them, so we booked a hostel and politely explained our decision to them. They took it very well and understood that we felt we just needed a different kind of environment. I know this was a very different experience for Celeste than her first one and I know from other people’s accounts that couchsurfing can be a really great way to meet to new people and make friends abroad. I definitely recommend looking into this as a housing option while traveling and just caution everyone to exercise good judgment, always read reviews, and if you feel uncomfortable in the situation, do not hesitate to voice how you feel or change your living situation. People should always feel safe! Couchsurfing can be a great resource, it’s just important to make sure everyone is feeling good about the situation.

I definitely took this as a learning experience and I’m not sorry I did it. I met new people and experience couchsurfing and learned a lot from it. And they definitely helped us to figure out Istanbul in the first few days.

Istanbul in the sunlight ❤

The city night lights

Istanbul is a city of cats ❤

 

Istanbul itself was breathtaking and I loved seeing the mosques and Topkapi Palace and the Basilica Cistern. Taking the ferries was also a great way to view the city by water and everything was just so beautiful. I definitely recommend considering independent travel to places that are culturally different from what we’re used to because study abroad is all about getting out of our comfort zones this is a prime opportunity in our lives to see brand new things experience all that the world has to offer.

Basilica Cistern – an underground water storage area from classical times with mysterious Medusa heads

Hagia Sofia

Galata Tower

Attack and Defense

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the guest speakers that DIS gets to come speak to the students before but I feel really lucky that we have the opportunity to hear such important people speak on current issues. For instance, a few weeks ago the US Ambassador to Denmark came to the school and spoke on diplomacy and the way the US is perceived abroad. I actually found his lecture fascinating and it was just really cool that we got to meet and speak with him and listen to what he had to say because he is, in some respects, responsible for each of us, as we are Americans abroad. Well this past Wednesday, the Danish Chief of Danish Defense, Peter Bartram, also came to give a lecture and he opened my eyes to a lot of ideas I hadn’t previously considered.

I would like to preface this by saying that I am not very politically active personally and I am not as well educated in politics or world affairs as I would like to be and have been trying to be recently. Which was also one of my reasons for attending these past two talks so that I could learn more. Well one of the first things the Chief discussed was what his actual responsibilities are. For instance, because he is the Chief of Danish Defense, he is also in charge of Greenland’s security because Greenland is a part of the kingdom of Denmark. Consequently, Denmark is actually fairly high on the list of NATO countries ranked by size. But this means any threat to Greenland is something this Dane needs to consider which I hadn’t previously thought of. He is also in charge of managing the budget for defense and this has its added challenges, as Denmark is a welfare state. The country absolutely needs to have strict budgets and there have recently been several budget cuts to important departments in an effort to maintain their welfare state, including the budget for security. Bartram listed off just a few expenses different department required to buy military equipment and this just added a whole new dimension to his job that I feel like people can easily forget when they think of what a military officer might need to consider.

Peter Bartram Speaking

I also realized during his speech how relevant the Baltic and Ukraine regions are today for countries so close to them, like Denmark. I think the US government pays attention to them but is currently more focused on issues in the Middle East. However, countries so near these regions constantly need to monitor activity transgressing in regions that are practically at its borders. This is something my literature class has also recently been discussing as we read the book, Purge, in class, an Estonian-Finnish novel by Sofi Oksanen. It was actually an amazing book and was made into a movie in 2012, which was in turn nominated for the Oscars that year in the Best Foreign Film category. Reading about the Soviet occupation of Estonia and the issues that the country still faces today really brought to light how many other countries are having hard times even if they aren’t the countries constantly talked about in the news. It also reminded me how important these issues can be to smaller countries, like Denmark, even if they don’t seem overly pressing to the rest of the world.

And the last rather surprising thing Bartram discussed was that one of the biggest threats Greenland faces today and actually one of challenges he feels obligated to deal with most in the coming years is the melting of the Arctic regions. This was indeed listed on his map of current threats to worry about, basically the only threat surrounding Greenland, but he definitely seemed concerned about how global warming is affecting a region that’s part of the kingdom of Denmark. Perhaps particularly because this is the issue that does not seem to have any possible quick fix to make it better any time soon. The lecture was certainly enlightening in many respects and I feel very lucky to have attended these talks by powerful people in the world, willing to share their experiences with those trying to follow in their footsteps.

Current Threats Facing Denmark