Getting oriented

Today was the first real day of orientation. It started early - I woke up at 7 and ate breakfast with my host sister Sabina, and then at 7:45 Dorte (host mom) drove me to the train station because Sabina had to take her bike so that she could get to school later in the day. Sabina and I got on the train, and I was happy to see that Bronwen was on the same one. There were a lot of DIS students on this train, since the town where it starts (two stops before Holte, where I live) is where the Folkeskjole (I don't know if that's even close to correct) is located. The Folkeskjole is one of the numerous living options there are with DIS, although admittedly it's the one I understand the least. I think it's a little bit like living in student housing, but with the option of shared meals every day. Something like that.

The DIS day started with a welcoming ceremony, which was very nice and included some lovely music. The ceremony took place at the University of Copenhagen's Ceremony Room - a beautiful old room designed for ceremonies like the welcoming one. A highlight was the paintings of Copenhagen University history. Then, I headed out to find my way to the DIS buildings and pretty quickly got lost. I wandered across a large square and was thoroughly confused, but luckily I saw a gaggle of similarly confused- and American-looking girls. We figured out that we'd wandered about a block and a half too far, so we turned around and made our way to the DIS area, where we did a little exploring of the administrative building. We found the library (it's rather smaller than the Mac one - but no surprise there, really!) and then we got our books for our classes - I have a TON for my Nordic Mythology class. The other classes didn't have so many books, which was nice. Most of them have a "compendium" which is a collection of all the articles or book chapters we'll need to read in a nicely bound book. The one for European Storytelling is HUGE, but that shouldn't really surprise me.

Four of the girls I was lost with are also living with host families. We chatted after getting our books sorted out, and we ate lunch together. All but one of us had a lunch from our host family - some made it themselves and others (like me) had had a lunch packed for us. It was fun getting to hear about what their college experiences are like. Hopefully I'll get to see them again. We walked to the train station (Nørreport) together after our first Survival Danish lesson. Two of the girls live in host families that are neighbors and friends. It sounded like they were having a fun time with that - we all seem to be enjoying our host families so far, which is nice to hear. Also, Becky, one of these girls, is going to be doing the Iceland study tour as well! Yay!

At 1:30, we started Survival Danish with our orientation groups. I later learned that these are organized by our Danish classes for the semester, those of us who are taking Danish. So most of the kids in my group are also in my Danish class - except for the ones who aren't taking a language class at all. This class consisted of a trip to the supermarket where we learned how grocery stores work in Denmark (not so different - the one we went to was very like the Whole Foods near Macalester, if a little smaller) and then the words for many basic foods, and then some basic phrases: What's your name? My name is..., Where are you from?, I come from..., What do you study? I study..., Hi! and Bye-bye! (These are very fun to say in Danish - it's Hej! and Hej hej! - which are pronounced Hi! and Hi hi!) I found it much easier to learn these phrases when our teacher just said them to us and had us repeat than it was to read them - I'm sure I'll get used to letters making entirely different sounds, but for now, speaking and hearing are much easier.

After this, the day was over at DIS, so we wandered back to the train station to head home. I had no trouble getting on the correct train, and made it back to Holte without too much trouble. However, once I left the train station, I took a wrong turn and walked for half an hour, carrying my big bag of books, before realizing that I was lost. After a quick call to Erling (host dad), who sent Dorte to pick me up, all was sorted out. Dorte told me I was supposed to take a bus from the station to the house, which I hadn't known until that moment. Oops. I'll have to figure out which bus to take and when it comes for tomorrow.

This evening, Sabina showed me pictures of her sailing trips that she's done - they look like so much fun! I also took my first shower at the Ipsen house. Last night, I asked about time restrictions, and Erling and Dorte said "Oh, three, four minutes is good. Five minutes sometimes is okay." I'm really glad I asked! Water is very expensive in Denmark, I guess, so they prefer to limit the shower times. If you've ever lived with me, or near me, for that matter, you'll know I take absurdly long showers, but my first very short shower wasn't too bad, once Sabina showed me how the shower fixture works.

Peace!