Happy Monday and official end of week one in Denmark! This past week was the craziest rollercoaster ride of my entire life, and that is definitely not an exaggeration.
So many things have happened in the past week, and it's so strange to think that I'm comfortably living in a foreign country, where English is not the dominant language. We have been blessed with what the locals say is the nicest weather they've had in years. It's always so sunny and cool, and I totally did not pack for this weather, because all I brought was long sleeves and jeans (I had to borrow my roommates clothes because my wardrobe was not working). We explored so much this week, and this is just the beginning. We were tourists and went to places like Nyhavn, the King's Garden, and Christiansborg Palace. I also ate a danish food called smørrebrød, which is an open-faced sandwich on top of their famous rye-bread. People mentioned that everything in Denmark is expensive, but compared to Hawaii, this place is relatively close in price. For example, my groceries are probably cheaper here than they are in Hawaii - like I bought a 2kg bag of potatoes for 10dkk, which is approximately $1.5, or a sandwich for 49dkk, which is around $7.5 I also got chosen to be a summer writer for our program, so I'll be writing for the DIS website and possibly taking over the Instagram account!
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We finally got off the plane at 12:30pm local time (past midnight in Hawaii), and we waited at an airport hotel until our bus was ready to pick us up. My Kollegium (dorm) is located in Nimbusparken, which was about a 30 minute drive from the airport. We got all of our necessities, like our student ID cards, laundry tags, and SIM cards, and shown to our rooms. I share a flat (floor) with seven other people, three of whom are also students at the school that I'll be at.
Just as I settled in, my roommate also arrived, and we unpacked and talked. Her name is Maddie, and she's from Ohio. She's super chill and outgoing, and I think it'll be a good experience to live with a roommate. Our local flatmates bought us food from a nearby pizzeria, and we had a pizza party with the people from the room next door. We took a stroll around the neighborhood after dinner, and it's so crazy because the sun was still up at 9:30pm. We went back home to eat ice cream, before sleeping, at around 11:30pm. Corina is going to Denmark for the summer! But before that, I had to catch a nine hour plane ride to JFK Airport in New York, in order to catch my plane to Denmark. I left Hawaii at 3pm, got to New York at 6:30am, and had a 16 hour layover, until my 10:05pm flight (that got delayed another hour). I chatted with my seat neighbor on the plane, who said he moved to NY a year ago to work for Google.
I caught public transportation BY MYSELF to the High Line and it was the cutest little park to take a stroll. It was built on top of an old railroad, so it's basically a floating park with cute benches and chairs and lots of foliage, and there were little Art + Flea type pop-up shops. I met up with a girl named Megan, who was also catching the same flight as me out to Denmark, and we ate pizza for lunch, then walked to Times Square and Central Park. Times Square was way too overhyped - it was just crowded and noisy. Central Park was too big for us to walk all around, so we rested on the grass and people-watched. We caught the subway back to the airport, and because I didn't sleep a wink on the plane ride to New York, I knocked out literally everywhere i sat - at the food court, on the train, while charging my phone. We checked in our baggage and grabbed dinner before going through airport security, and I bought mini dunkin donut holes for the plane ride, and the guy gave me an extra one :') Megan and I met with a lot of other DIS students that were on the same flight as us at the gate, and waited and waited and waited until our flight was finally ready to board. |