At least I understood how to be happy and not worry. At least I learned how to have fun. At least now I love Scandinavian design. At least I fell in love with scarves and skinny jeans  (both of which characterizes Danish fashion during winter). At least I have a whole new outlook on money. And most importantly, at least I’ve learned to let things be.

Not bad for learning all of this in the past four months, huh?

We are in America!
Julie, Lily and I got out of the plane in DC and it suddenly hit hard that we were in fact in the land of America. We were quite excited to see Starbucks and Wendy’s. Everyone’s speaking English and we can actually eavesdrop into other people’s conversations. The moment we pulled out our American phones, we had to re-learn how to use them. “Wait, so where’s the ‘back’/'space’ key again?” It look me five minutes to send a text message because oh #7 is where you can add emoticons and #3 is where you add symbols. I’m sure all of us will come to experience reverse culture-shock in many different ways.

The “So…How was Denmark?” Question
Julie and I contemplated over the one question that we will absolutely dread and hate for the next seven months or so in our lives. “So how was Denmark?” Ahh.. it was.. good! Quite honestly, I don’t know where to start. Should I begin with my experiences with the host family, the academics, the social welfare system, my trips to London/Istanbul/Athens/Rome? You see, I think it’s quite impossible to summarize all of the above in just two minutes. We’d have to sit down and spend some time together. But talking about the weather often seems like a good starting point.

ps- I was reading the Skymall Magazine on the flight back looking at some of the interesting products available for purchase. A BBQ branding iron to personalize your barbeque? Right.. of course that’s a necessary addition…

WARNING: I loved how creative all of the ads are; they absolutely catch people’s attention, but I thought some of the photos were a bit over the top. The ones from France and Germany were particularly graphic and shocking, so please keep that in mind.

The formatting unfortunately is a little messed up and I could not find a way to change it! But I hope you enjoy it : )

Friday
I could not believe how BIG our group was- at least 80 people! Needless to say, this is a very popular weekend trip not just among DIS students, but also for the Danes and Germans during the summer. Our group took an overnight ferry departing at 11:30 p.m. and arrived in Gudhjem, Bornholm at 6 a.m. (ahh). Unless you paid extra for a cabin, everyone slept on their chairs or on the floor.  

Posing by pretty houses in Allinge (on our way to Hammershus)

Inside Hammershus- the largest medieval ruined fortress in Northern Europe

Julie and I were a bit too ambitious thinking we could visit the entire island in two days by bus. We looked over pamphlets on places to go and had everything planned out. But little did we know, the day we visited was a holy day so the buses ran on a very strange schedule. Most people biked their way to favorable destinations, but I have never biked before in my entire life! Anyway, Julie and I decided to hike our way; the coastline was beautiful! But after 3 hours, we realized that we’ve only walked 5 km, which was less than half the distance of our destination. Never mind- change of plan. We took the bus instead and reached Allinge then walked to Hammershus. Hammerhus is the “largest medieval ruined fortress in Northern Europe- above the sea near the Northern tip of the island.” The wind was blowing so hard it was ridiculous! But the ruins were breathtaking. We were warned by the guy at the tourist info office that we had to catch the 3:20 p.m. bus (because of Holy Day) or else the next one is at 7. We waited for an hour, but still no bus. I seriously panicked deep inside : ( We thought the hostel could possibly help since they have a van, but they could only help escort those with bike issues. Oh well, the cab saved us though.

9:30 p.m: ZzzzzZ  Bed time!  

 Saturday
In the morning, Julie and I half-biked and half-walked to the Baltic Sea Glass place. The glass-blowing demonstrations were amazing and the product was so beautiful. This again will go on my things-to-include-in-my-future-home list : ) Then we had lunch at the local smokehouse enjoying delicious smoked herring. It was hard to avoid the small fish bones, but it was very tasty. In the afternoon, we stayed around Gudhjem, took pictures and enjoyed delicous soft-ice/ice-cream!

At Baltic Sea Glass

Beautiful Sea Glass

Delicious smoked herring + potato salad

Julie and I hiking around Gudhjem

Joy’s Learns to Bike
Learning how to bike is a big accomplishment for me! I have always wanted to learn, but didn’t quite get the chance to. So Bornholm is the opportunity! The downfall of course is overcoming fear because I know I will fall. The hardest part was getting started and learning how to pedal. But every time I fall, I learn what not to do. Learning to bike is a mental game- everything comes from whether I believe in myself. And honestly I didn’t at first because I concentrated too much on trying to be perfect. If I tell myself I can’t bike, then I won’t bike. But if I tell myself I can bike, then I will. Anyway, I think I learned fairly quickly. Bornholm is for those who actually knows how to bike because the roads can get pretty windy and steep.(Special thanks to Julie for being so patient and tour leaders Olivia and Louise for their tips)  Hopefully I’ll get to practice some more soon! I’m glad that I overcame the challenge and did something that was outside of my comfort zone.

Practicing near the hostel

** For more pictures of Bornholm Bike Trip, click here.

Danish Graduation Cap

My host sister got her graduation hat today since she will graduate from her gynasium (a.k.a high school) at the end of June. I’m sad that I won’t be able to witness the graduation celebration the Danish way : (  Anyway, it turns out their caps are very different from American standards- not at all like the square academic ones that we normally wear. It’s a white cap with a colored ribbon (the color varies and depends on your level of education — red color represents high school) called “studenterhue” and it looks just like those worn by sailors. Another big difference that I found was that they would wear them around in public for a week after their last exams! People would then go up to the student and congratulate him/her ^^ To celebrate their graduation, the entire class (~30 students) rides on the back of a truck for a tour around Denmark, parties to loud music and makes a visit to each student’s house/family. Let’s say the class spends around 15 minutes at each house, so for 30 students that’s almost 8 hours..?!

Wow! That sounds absolutely crazy!

Other interesting facts:
(This information actually comes from Wikipedia, which is not the most credible source… but my host mom confirms all of this!)

• It’s bad luck to wear the student cap before the completion of the last exam.
• Classmates write in the lining of the white cap.
• The student with the biggest and/or smallest head has to give beer to the whole class.

It turns out that people in Denmark actually say “Sig ‘appelsin,” which literally means “say orange“! Haha I had a good laugh. I asked my host brother just to verify and he said it’s not a common phrase, but it’s there (people just say anything to try and get the other person to laugh). Apparently, people also say “kimchi” in Korea, “patata” (potato) in Spain and “omelett” (omelette) in Sweden for that smile.  Very interesting : )

Happenings of the Day

• The Russian President visits Denmark today. Ahh- no wonder there were Danish flags on the buses again (aside from the Queen’s Birthday one week ago).
• Copenhagen’s Noma Restaurant is announced ast the “Best Restaurant in the World”. Click here for the news article.

Julie and I have had countless discussions on what grades actually mean. Yes our grades from being abroad transfer directly to our school. But our knowlege gained from travelling and staying with a host family such as real-life situations (personal safety, financial matters, planning skills) and mistakes made don’t exactly show up on that transcript.  

 Education has been about letting students learning how to think and learning should be fun. I often hear that “College is one of the best time of your life.” So why are we as students so caught up with grades? Perhaps we fear that future employers will try to dig up our imperfections from college.  But the system of how we are graded is different from professors to professors, class to class and culture to culture. There’s no way for employers to judge how and what an ‘A’ student has learned from college X than from mabye a ‘B’ student from college Y. Was it an esay ‘A’ or a hard ‘B’ that the student earned…? I’m still trying to learn what the Danes’ perspective of education because I don’t hear my host siblings talk about grades much. Overall, they focus on independent thinking, but don’t seem to place emphasis on schoolwork. I could be wrong though.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that grades don’t reflect knowlege and effort and I want to take that with me when I return to Elon (I really hope I do). I’m taking International Law and it has been one of the most difficult subject matters that I have encountered; we talk about very serious international issues [such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimesand], global efforts [such as peacekeeping missions] and things like state sovereingty and Court jurisdiction. I don’t think I’ve done well with my papers because everything was so new to me. Ahh they were frustrating. But it’s been rewarding in a sense that I was able to read treaties, articles and UN Resolutions (basically documents that I wouldn’t read during my free time).

My roommate during freshmen year of college had a sign that said ”Don’t let school get in the way of your education” and I remember being so confused at the time, but  this actually makes sense now…

Quaintness defines Ribe because  it is the oldest town of Denmark founded in the 700s. My host family talked about how this was were the Vikings lived back in the days and how it was occupied by the Germans during World World I. Thank goodness it was sunny! We visited Ribe Cathedral, walked around the town and saw cool houses. Afterwards we stayed at the grandparent’s house at Vadre! From an American point of view, I thought it was really neat that there’s a distinction between calling your grandmother on your mom’s side and grandmother on your dad’s side. So for example, you’d call grandmother on your mom’s side “mor mor,” which literally means “mother’s mother” and call grandmother on your father’s side “far mor,” which literally means “father’s mom”. That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

Welcome to Ribe

Ribe Cathedral

Host mom and brother eating pizza

Alleyway

Sunday
I’m stuffed! I feel like all we’ve done all weekend is eat, eat and eat. But the food was so good! Today, we visited the beach in Western part of Denmark. (Many Germans would come for the beaches) I was surprised to find that people were able to park their cars on the beach (because of limited parking space) Sometimes they would park so close to the water in the summertime that when the tide comes… opps. Then we visited Blåvandshuk- the westermost point of Denmark and saw windmills in a distance. This was also where the Germans occupied and built concretes for defense purposes. My host parents were saying how the languages are slightly focused on German and Danish vs. English and Danish in Copenhagen.

Pork wrapped in dough, boiled potatoes & broccoli salad

Gorgeous view from the lighthouse at Blåvandshuk

Up in the lighthouse with my host brother

Now… back to my international law paper on the International Criminal Court and a fairy tale assignment for my Hans Christian Andersen class.

Would you be so kind,
as to let the sun shine
during our remaining time
and show us Denmark at its prime
so that you’ll blow our mind
before DIS students pack up and leave Copenhagen behind.

Sincerely,

Joy

————————————————————————

Wow, I don’t know what has gotten into me. I don’t normally write poems, but this sort of came to me out of nowhere when I was sitting on the train back home pondering about the weather today. It was rainy and then it snowed all of a sudden and then back to nice weather? Denmark, please make up your mind! We have been ”lucky” to witness the heaviest snow preciptation since amost 15 years ago and now I’d love to see some flowers and butterflies before we leave.

Pretty Please… don’t make me sing Katy Perry’s “You’re hot then you’re cold, You’re yes then you’re no, You’re in then you’re out, You’re up then you’re down…” and the rest of the lyrics don’t apply.

Day 1

So we started out with canoeing down Ronne A. Julie and I got stuck in this tree branch and could not get our way out for the longest time. The wind was blowing really hard too, which did not help with the process. As a starter, I of course don’t even know what to do my paddle. Everyone else had already left : ( Finally, our guide decided to drive us to another more ‘peaceful’ location to get us started.  We canoed for 2 hours straight! LOL  Julie and I were canoeing against the “current” and fighting against the wind, motivating ourselves crying out “Paddle hard” or “Switch your paddle to your left” and trying hard not to crash into the bank.

Hiking to Nimis was my favorite part of the trip. There’s this mind-boggling driftwood struture made completely out of wood and nails by this crazy guy who also declares this place an independent nation (everyone is free to become a citizen. So congratulations, you officially have a dual citizenship ^^). Where did he get this idea? The structure was surprisingly sturdy and fascinating. It’s really hard to describe and the picture is not as amazing than it actually looks (More pictures below).
Day 2
We have two activities lined up for today- (1) abseiling/repelling and (2) orienteering. In terms of orienteering, each little group was given a map, compass and an envelope (missions to complete at the site). The first task we had to guess how far away the lighthouse or the its sea level… I was no help at all since I have no sense of direction and distance (I would totally get lost in the woods). We also had some other pretty exciting tasks like climb down the mountain using the rope provided and go into a cave (I guess this counts as prepping for repelling).

“I’m about to climb down a cliff. I’m about to climb down a cliff. I’m about to climb down a CLIFF.” That’s what I was mentally processing when we were lining up for repelling. The wind was chilling; I was shivering so bad that I coudn’t tell if I was nervous, really cold or both. But I did it!! It really wasn’t bad at all because the harness is there to protect me from falling. Well I only had the guts to climb down the smaller mountain, but not the actual cliff. Nah, that’s good enough for today : ) I’m proud of myself for challening myself and doing things that I wouldn’t have ever done before.

Canoeing with Julie

Peace

Our lovely hostel in Sweden

Soup was exactly what we needed after such an active day!

Wow, that's a lot of rocks...

Hiking to Nimis- the self-proclaimed independent nation

One of our orienteering tasks was to climb down into a cave...

Our other task was to build a rock tower in a cave

Haha~ cold and scared

Yay I did it!

The other cliff that I am not repelling from :p

We stopped by a cafe and enjoyed the view

Ending our trip on a happy note- Hot chocolate & carrot cake.