I MADE IT TO DENMARK!

I MADE IT TO DENMARK!  The flight was a little weird because I am so used to flying the 9 or 11 hour flight to Israel where in between dinner and breakfast you have at least 5 hours to sleep. The flight from JFK to Amsterdam was around 6 hours so we had around 2 hours to “sleep” before being woken up or breakfast and off the plane. I spent 3 hours sleeplessly walking around the Amsterdam airport. During that time I found wooden clogs (and I was sooooo tempted to get them but they weren’t sanded inside) and MY PASSPORT WAS STAMPED!!!! The flight from Amsterdam to Copenhagen took an hour and once I got there I felt really nervous. Most of you know I went to Israel for 9 months on Year Course before University of Michigan, so clearly I am used to being gone for long periods of time. However, on Year Course I was going to a country I have been to before, I knew the language and I had friends on the program from Young Judaea. This is a whole new experience for me. I have never been on a program where I know nobody, Danish is way too hard to catch on and I have no connection to the country and region. So back to the airport…I got out of baggage claim and a wave of exhaustion came over me. We had another 2 hours until the bus would arrive to take us to our orientation and I was not making a good impression to the other program participants who were waiting as well. Finally the bus came and we went into the heart of Copenhagen where the DIS building is located to get our book, some money for a metro pass, and an envelope with tons of information for us. After that we waited for our bus to take us to our Kollegium. While waiting, 2 things happened to me. The first was that a family literally had set a dining room table outside in the Frud Platz (the weird courtyard where we were waiting) and it was all set with a home cooked meal! The next thing is that I met Sarah, a girl that I found out is from Teaneck, NJ. Of course we played Jewish Geography and found out she knows my life long Yiddish friend Meena, my really distant cousin Elana and an old camp friend Ruthie (If any of you are reading this, she says Hi). In addition to Sarah, I also became friend with Adam, a guy who is studying at Yale but is from South Africa (and I love hearing his accent!). Finally we got on our buses to the kollegiums and alas we were split up and I knew nobody once more. Once I got on my bus I met Katie (we were already facebook friends so we kinda recognized each other which was nice) and Ari. They are both great girls and it seems that we are going to get really close because we a) live together and b) Katie and I are both in the textiles program. You might be asking “What the hell is this kollegium business?” A kollegium is very similar to a dorm in the sense that it is a building that houses students with a private room and bathroom and every hall has a shared kitchen. However it is different because they don’t house students from just one university instead students from all universities sign up to live in them and most of them live in the same room for 4-5 years at a time. The kollegium that I am living in is in Hvidorve (pronounced: vildor…yeah apparently Danish likes to drop lots of letters and add others that don’t exist which is why I have given up learning Danish) an it is a 25 minute bus ride to the DIS building in central Copenhagen. So I compare Hivdorve to the Queens of NYC. We got to drop our stuff off in our rooms and then went to the grocery store across the street where I nearly had a panic attack. If you know me at all you know I have cholesterol issues and not only can I not read Danish, but they don’t even mention cholesterol in the nutrition facts! So I went around the store trying to figure out what I should do. I ended up sticking with the safe route of rice cakes, granola, marmelade, and I bought 0.5% yogurt. Hopefully I won’t die. We had an hour to “chill out” other wise known as showering before getting dinner (at this point dinner was at 8pm…I hadn’t eaten anything since 10am). So I walk into the shower and the light is broken, but I could care less because I had been up since 7am the day before and I was sweating in sweatpants all day in the humidity of Denmark and all I could think about was a shower. So I did what any person would do; I showered in the dark. After that we had dinner with the person who is supposed to help us with any problems at the kollegium. Her name is Mai. Of course they ordered pizza and I sat there scrapping the cheese off eating more or less slices of bread for dinner. I didn’t care really. In the end I finally crashed around 9:30pm (or should I say 21:30) and it was still light outside.

 

I woke up this morning at 6:30am (thank you jet lag) and couldn’t go back to sleep. It was too hot and humid already so I decided to actually unpack my bags. My room has very nice closet space but I can’t really imagine living here for a year with it all…it seems to small for a year. Anyways, I organized my room, and then continued reading the book I had read on the plane. We were meant to eat our own meals for breakfast and meet downstairs at 8:30am to learn the bus route to the DIS building. It is a fairly easy ride and takes around 25 minutes. We walked from the stop to Frud Platz and waited for a bus to take us to “the opening of the semester”. Copenhagen is really watery and by that I mean there are lots of canals and islands that make up the city. This place was on one of the islands. Once we got our official welcome, we split up into our specific programs. Textiles has only 10 people, while furniture has 60 and architecture has over 100. I am so glad I have a small group. It is going to be easy to get to know everyone and I think we will really bond as a group. 4 of the girls are from Pratt, 1 Corkrill (spelling?) in DC, 1 UCONN, 1 UMASS, 1 Smith, 1 North Carolina State, and myself from UMICH. After the meeting we had an interesting lecture on the morphical history of Copenhagen, which basically means how Copenhagen has changed architecturally over time. Still being jet lagged I had a little subway nap (when you fall asleep and once you realize you are asleep you jerk your head up awake for 2.5 seconds and repeat). This was followed by a boat tour of certain parts of the city to point out the architecture in real life vs. a slide show. Once the boat ride was over, we were free. Ari, Katie and I decided to get our metro passes, get an Ethernet cable for Katie (I got one for free from my neighbor cause I am special) and a few more art supplies that we forgot to purchase before we got here. After walking in the heat we decided to go back to Hvidorve and rest for a bit before going out for drinks and dinner. I am writing this at midnight here in Denmark and it is the first time I have seen darkness in over 3 days.

I will post pictures soon, I am just so tired and do not have a light that works in this room, hence I cannot see what I am doing. Tomorrow I will...I promise.