Day 4 - January 4

I forgot to mention that the day before, Benny made a roast with mushrooms on the side, and I actually tried some. I’ve never really liked mushrooms, but I thought I should be polite and take some…the flavor was actually good, but the texture? Yech, still mushroom-y. But maybe it will be like onions – I used to hate the texture of onions and could not eat them, but now if I don’t love them, I at least enjoy them.

We had to leave fairly early to move in. The waiting room was absolutely packed. Met two Canadians and a girl from Amsterdam. (Subsequently discovered that apparently half the international students are Canadian but have yet to meet another American other than the other two from BU). I had to get to my Danish course, so I hurriedly dropped off my stuff, but I learned that it was a co-ed apartment. Doesn’t bother me, but is a little bit of a new concept since, of course, most dorms in America are super against having opposite sexes in the same room. My flatmates are: Ditka, another new girl from Slovenia; Lisa, an international student from Germany who has been here since the fall; and Bo, a Dane. So far, they’re all quite friendly!

There are a large number of us international students (and more coming who aren’t doing the Danish course), and the instructor’s way of dividing us into our individual classes was rather unique. He would point to people and say “You two….you three…you two…and you.” And just go up and down the rows picking and choosing.

The course is very intensive. Not a lot of grammar and focused on speaking. Which is good, and I’m learning a lot, but, on the other hand, because the spoken language is really completely different from the written, I can’t pronounce a lot of things I see. So if, for instance, I want to order something at a restaurant, I’ll have no idea how to say it. And maybe with repetition I’ll learn, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of method to the madness that is Danish. The course is fun, though, and we’ve formed a sort of group from within our class. I’ve met some people outside of it, but mostly I’ve been hanging out with the class, so I’m very grateful that I chose to take it. Nationalities in the class: Russian, Polish, Canadian, Colombian, Brazilian, Austrian, and Slovenian.

After class, we went to the city center to go to the International Office for some questions, and also for an orientation. On the way back, I split from the group who was going to move in another girl because I needed to move in myself. However, I had my first minor crisis. I could not find the metro station. There’s a gigantic station, and I went down several stairs, but they were the wrong ones…all I could find was something called the S train and the actual train station. Luckily, I finally managed to find the Metro, which is just a little behind the huge station, without having to ask anyone and make a fool of myself.


I survived my first shopping trip, and managed to find everything without having to ask. Even though I was warned ahead of time and I’ve been noticing prices for the last couple of days, I was still agape at the prices…$3 for one of those cup of noodles! I’m pretty sure those are 50 cents at home…Also, getting used to the kroner is hard, because it’s the strangest thing seeing “100” something for a movie, and seeing numbers in the thousands for everyday (well, relatively everyday) items. My debit card wasn’t going through, though, so I don’t know if they froze my card even though I’m on record as being in Denmark or if something else happened. Not sure which one I want it to be, but I have no internet, so I can’t check. Luckily, I had already withdrawn cash. And, now I can make tea, which is always a good thing. I have breakfast foods and peanut butter and jelly and bread…that’s pretty much it, cost me $30. I couldn’t find any cans of soup, so I’ll go back tomorrow to look for dinner stuff. For cereals, I found several recognizable things, but the weird thing is, they have different types of cocoa krispies…there’s cocoa krispies crunch and cocoa krispies balls…very strange.

Right before I went shopping, I needed to get dinner. Knowing things were expensive, I decided to go to the KFC, figuring it would be cheapest of the fast foods without going to Burger King. Still, I felt like a fat American…and even with three chicken strips, no sides (I really went to KFC because I wanted macaroni, but it appears that macaroni and cheese does not exist outside of America, which is, perhaps, the saddest thing to discover), and a small (and their small is actually small…none of our huge small nonsense) drink, it cost $8. I’m just going to have to adjust to a much higher cost of living (and I thought Boston was expensive!).

Things that are different: Their milk is measured in .5%...so there’s .5%, 1.5%, 3.5% (I don’t know if there’s a 2.5% because I didn’t see that one).

Light switches are backward. When it looks like it’s flipped on, it’s off, and vice versa. Also, there are only two plugs in the entirety of my room. Looks like I’ll need to find a Danish extension cord.