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 ❤

“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!

All The Small Things

I didn’t really think about Halloween as an American holiday before but I guess it kind of is. At, least that’s what everyone here has been telling me it is. Halloween wasn’t typically celebrated until about 10 years ago but it’s been working its way into the culture here slowly. However, that means that my roommate, Cathrine, never went trick or treating as a kid or dressed up and she finds the concept very, very odd. So I have told her multiple times that this year, she’s celebrating Halloween in an American fashion with me. This next week is a travel break but as soon as I get back, we’re going pumpkin shopping and carving jack-o-lanterns and going to the Halloween themed Tivoli! So keep a look out for those posts! I’m so excited! I didn’t even realize how much I missed Halloween celebrations back home until I started describing them here. I usually don’t take part in group costumes but I’ve had friends do them, and explaining the concept to here last night, I realized Halloween is actually very fun and I’m excited to share it with her. She has seemed less than thrilled about the idea of finding a costume but has kindly agreed to try things my way for the week haha. And to top it off, the other day she came home with a miniature plastic Jack-o-lantern lantern for me! As a surprise! How sweet is that 🙂 just a small gift made me so happy that we get to celebrate together this year!

I love it ❤

Meeting the Family…

Well it occurs to me now that I haven’t actually posted any pictures of myself or my lovely roommate, Cathrine, so I plan to rectify that today 🙂 Last weekend, Cathrine’s parents were nice enough to invite me to their family day at Tivoli and I hadn’t actually been to the amusement park here before, which made it incredibly exciting on two accounts!

Me and Cathrine 🙂

On the Ferris Wheel!!

Her mom is the nicest person ever and I also met her aunt and grandmother for the first time. Her brother, Casper, and her cousin were also there and I’d been lucky enough to meet them both a couple times before. Her cousin also brought her 3 year old daughter (who was by far the most excited of all of us to be at Tivoli) and she was the most precious thing ever! Being only 3 meant she didn’t speak a word of English because they don’t start learning it until the age of 7 or 8 but she was so adorable and her actions certainly told me where she wanted to go next (like wanting to use her own allowance to buy a ladybug balloon or going on the carousel again).

All the members of Cathrine’s family live in different areas of Denmark now but most aren’t more than an hour or two away by train and they whole family is very close-knit. I love that even when family members move into the city or across the country, everyone is still close enough to remain a tightly-knit family!

As for Tivoli, I thought it was the coolest place. They kept asking me how it compared to American theme parks and continuously said they knew it wasn’t nearly as grand – which I suppose was true in the sense that it wasn’t as big or really on the same scale as, say, Disneyland. But honestly, I thought it suited Copenhagen perfectly. All the booths were multicolored just like their buildings are here and the gardens are green and beautiful like everywhere in Denmark. And the absolute best part for me was the fact that all of the roller coasters were at the same height as the rooftops and I find European rooftops so much more fascinating than American ones. The city really looked beautiful from the top of the rides and I totally felt like I was weaving through the numerous Danish rooftops as the coasters zig zagged across their tracks.

Tivoli is so gorgeous at night

All the lights coming on is really something to see

In short, Tivoli was so much fun! The cotton candy three times the size of my head didn’t hurt either 😉 and to wrap up the perfect afternoon, Casper insisted that he, Cathrine, and I take one of those silly costume photos! Hope you find it as hilarious as I do!

Cathrine and I have gotten very close 😉

All I Did Was Blink!

Everyone that’s ever shared a space with someone else knows that sometimes problems arise. This may be particularly true when you live in an apartment where everything belongs to someone else and you’re really only borrowing everything – dishes, sheets and bedding, pillows, blankets, keys, laundry equipment, etc. Well, I made my first mistake last week. Fortunately, this wasn’t an entirely real issue. I was washing my dishes immediately, like a good roommate, and one second my sponge was scrubbing the bowl and the next, the bowl smacked the edge of the sink and was in two pieces…

I can’t even describe how horrified I was! The bowl slipped in my soapy hands, I blinked, heard a crash, and it was in two large pieces! And it was Cathrine’s bowl. In retrospect, I realize this wasn’t the worst thing that could’ve happened or anything but it was the first thing I’d damaged since I’ve been here and these aren’t my dishes or anything. So I panicked and stared at the two pieces and kept obsessing over the fact that it had been a whole bowl full of cereal not ten minutes before this occasion. I finished washing both pieces and then took them into my room to try to fit them back together. They actually went back together quite nicely but I couldn’t find glue so I tried to put it out of my mind until Cathrine came home.

She laughed when she saw it and absolutely could not have cared less. She was so great about it. So at least this was a good first bump to get over. I felt so badly and was so apologetic and she told me it was a cheap bowl from Ikea and promptly threw the pieces away, telling me not to worry about it. I still want to find another bowl for her though…at the very least because we’re now only down to two bowls!

Unfortunately, Clean Laundry Is a Necessity…

Well after putting it off for a good 3 weeks, I finally figured I should try my hand at laundry here. Now I don’t know if all Danish washing machines work the same way as the ones in my apartment building, but it was a pleasant surprise to find out that mine actually have soap included in the machine and I shouldn’t need my own. Unfortunately, our machines were out this week and I did need to find my own…just my luck.

Not really a big deal at all but soap usually being included wasn’t the only foreign concept to me in this new laundry room. First off, we have to make appointments to use the laundry room. Which is actually a good idea because you definitely avoid the problem of lugging all your dirty clothes downstairs just to realize there aren’t any open machines. However, being that this was my first time doing laundry here, this was yet another factor causing me to put off learning how to actually wash my clothes. Admittedly, I’ve never lived in an apartment building in the US, only on campus, but I don’t think appointments are usually a requirement for the laundry rooms there.

Next up, you can actually select the exact temperature of water you want your clothes washed in! There are like six options! Of course their options are also in Celsius. Cathrine, my Danish Roommate, was walking me through the whole process for the first time and when I told her my three options at home were hot, warm, or cold, she laughed at me. Apparently that was just as weird a concept to her as picking a precise temperature was to me. I finally chose 40 degrees Celsius based on her advice, but I really wasn’t sure.

And finally, she asked me if I used the dryer or “tumbler” as if she expected me to say no. That was when I realized that I actually had seen her hanging her clothes on a rack for the past couple weeks. I told her I pretty much used the dryer for all my clothes and she seemed very surprised but taught me how to use it. The thing about this tumbler is that the time starts off at about 6 minutes and you up it from there for a certain price; I think it’s 2 kroner for 6 minutes or something. Not ideal but understandable and yet another way the Danes promote sustainability in their lifestyles. I think I’ll probably adopt this eco friendly way of drying clothes while I’m here too.

I think my one saving grace in this whole process was that the card machine you use to pay for the laundry is similar to the one I use at school so at least that aspect wasn’t so foreign to me. Cathrine was gone by the time my appointment actually came around but her best friend, Maria, lives in the same apartment complex and was nice enough to help me out 🙂 I think the takeaway from this experience should be that one way or another, I got clean laundry at the end of it!! Yay first times!

Finally Feeling at Home

Living with a Danish roommate has certainly had its perks so far as well as making for some interesting times. It’s been lovely to have a space to myself when I’m finished with school for the day or I’m tired from a long day of making new friends and exploring as many facets of the city as possible. While I know others go home to a house full of fellow students (which can also be nice), I thoroughly enjoy being able to decompress in my quiet apartment. And when my roommate, Cathrine, comes home, we have a great time exchanging stories and I can ask her my million questions for the day. She’s actually been great about explaining parts of Danish culture to me, like the education system, kollegiums, the gap year, when people here learn to bike. She was particularly helpful while I attempted riding her bike for the first time, i.e. she snapchatted pictures of me to her friends, laughed continuously, and showed me pictures of her cousin’s 3 year old daughter who just successfully learned to ride a bike without training wheels. Nice, right? (I was definitely great at riding a bike when I was a kid, I just haven’t ridden one since I was about 10…)

But then I also get to meet her friends, which is a huge plus because it’s a bunch of Danes that are ridiculously easy to meet and already want to talk to me because I’m living with their friend. Of course, the levels of English speaking ability vary and I feel very guilty for coming into a country where I speak absolutely none of the language yet. But they’ve all been extremely nice and understanding and most have started up multiple conversations with me, which I’ve really appreciated. I love getting to know them. And, honestly, nearly everyone I’ve met here in the past two weeks speaks English impeccably well, which is far more than I can say for my Danish speaking abilities, despite the three classes I’ve had so far. Cathrine also likes to show me around her favorite spots, so we went down to the harbor at Islands Brygge with several of her friends last weekend and she convinced me to jump in with everyone else! It was freezing! But you get used to it after being totally submerged and it was actually a blast.

The other thing I love about this program is that most students are placed with roommates that live within the city because so many Danes this age live in little apartments around Copenhagen. So the commute is not bad at all but I still get to get away from campus after my day’s over and have an entirely new place to explore. I love living in Nørrebro. Yesterday, the apartments in my area threw a little street party right below my building and it was a lot of fun to just hang out and listen to some local bands. 

I’ve really enjoyed listening to some Danish music and being able to appreciate so much of it even though I can’t understand the lyrics. Plus, walking around my neighborhood just to see what’s here is amazing. Just look at the pictures! The architecture continues to astound me on a daily basis. So…long story short, I’ve had an incredible experience living with a local thus far 🙂

I love how the top of this building is just sticking out of the roof! And this is a prime example of streetlights here, hanging from a wire.

There’s another little top sticking out of the roof on the right and the main building here is just gorgeous and so unique!