New City. New Life. Get Used To It Babe.

The last time you heard from me, I had gone to this crazy-insane music festival and a LOT has happened since then. I've met my new Danish family, said goodbye to my American family :( , met tons of people, and I've been intensely exploring Copenhagen for the past four days.

Last Saturday I said my goodbyes at the train station to all of my Danish family. It was sad leaving, but I was also extremely excited and nervous to meet my new Danish family in just a couple of hours. When we arrived in Køge, Henrik and Jani were waiting on the platform. All I could think was, "These people are strangers. How are they supposed to become my family? ... WEIRD."  Well, I've been living with them for a week now and I can definitely see the potential.

From the left, Rasmus, Jani, Henrik, and Caroline.

My host mom, Jani, is very nice :) She is a hairdresser a couple days during the week, so if I ever need a haircut while I'm here, I know who to go to ;D. My host dad, Henrik, works at a car dealership full-time, so I see him in the morning and when I get back from school. I have two host siblings, Caroline and Rasmus. Caroline is 13 and can speak english pretty darn well. I was surprised. When I arrived at the house she had painted her nails in American flags. It was awesome. Rasmus is 9, he started out being pretty quiet, but now it's evident that he is the clown in the family. He's such a goofball, he's hilarious. This is his first year taking english in school, so I try to speak danish to him when I can. 

The Madsen's are EXTREMELY healthy. They have smoothies every morning for breakfast (which I thoroughly enjoy) and a salad at dinner. They also exercise tons: the gym, running, soccer, cycling, spinning, everything. I get enough exercise just getting to and from the city every day. I have a 45 minute to an hour commute to my classes. It's longer than I expected but I make it work. 

MY ROOM IS AWESOME. Sorry, I just had to put that in shouty capitals because that's what I'm thinking right now. It's about the size of a single dorm room in college, I have a full size bed, a dresser and closet, AND, wait for it........... A GIGANTIC FLATSCREEN TV. I was shocked when I saw it (if you couldn't already tell from my shouty capitals). The funny thing is though, is that I have yet to even turn it on. What's wrong with me??? I cleaned my room just to take some pictures to show you guys, so appreciate them!!! :P

I have plenty of storage. IT'S AWESOME. I don't think I've ever been quite this organized.

My beautiful television =D

My bed.....obviously.

I have this shelf right above my bed, there are pretty flowers. And the piece of paper is a note from the family that I found upon entering my room. It says, "WELCOME SARAH! We hope you will enjoy it! :-)" I think it's cute.

The Madsen's are overall quite clean. Everything has it's place. In the bathroom, which is super clean and spartan, I have a locker where I can put all of my toiletries and I have my own set of towels. More importantly, there is nothing on the counter. When I'm home I keep all my toiletries out on the counter. It's filled with my crap. So now I gotta get used to putting everything away >.< haha. 

There is NOTHING on this counter.....Ahhhhhhh.

This is my locker, and thank goodness I have one, because as I'm sure you can tell, I have lots of toiletries.

Since last Monday, I've been into Copenhagen every day. I've gotten lost countless times.While it's pretty busy like NYC, it's harder to navigate because all the streets twist and turn. They do NOT go by the grid system. Not to mention that all the street names are at least 10 letters long and impossible to pronounce. Even with all of these obstacles, I'm starting to recognize the streets and stores. I suspect that in a short amount of time I will know Copenhagen like the back of my hand.....and then I can laugh inwardly at all the tourists who don't know where to go :P It's the same feeling as being a freshman in college and then becoming a sophomore...you laugh at all the freshman even though you were one of them only a couple months ago.

I really do think that DIS (Danish Institute of Study Abroad) has done a good job in forcing us to get to know the city. For orientation they sent us out to check prices at cafes, restaurants and stores, a scavenger hunt for landmarks, and lots of fairs and activities that you have to navigate yourself. If they had danes showing us students where to go, we would not have gotten to know the city as well. Getting lost was an essential part of learning the streets and alleys. 

Here are some pictures that I took while I was out on excursions:

This is the famous, round tower. Everyone in Copenhagen knows about this landmark. It's actually the tallest building in the city, even though it's tinsy compared to buildings in NYC. Christian IV, who was the king of Denmark-Norway in 1588 until his death, was one of the most active kings to ever reign. He initiated many projects, specifically building beautiful castles, towers, and other buildings. The round tower is unique because inside, in order to get to the top of the tower, you would not walk up a staircase, but walk up a giant ramp. Christian IV did this so that he could be carried to the top of the tower in a horse-drawn carriage. He must've been some lazy dude.

This is the church inside of the round tower.

The ceilings were magnificent. WOW.

We also went to the King's Garden, also created by Christian IV. Many danes come here in the summer when the weather is nice to lounge on the grass and have picnics.

This was interesting. It's some kind of ornament for the trees. Odd, but I like it.

This is Christian IV's summer castle. He built it to get away from the stench of the city. There wasn't exactly a sewage system back then.

When entering this castle, you are greeted by two lions. One with its mouth closed (as in this picture) and one with its mouth open (didn't get that pic =/). The reasoning for one lion having its mouth open was because Christian liked to party hardy. When he left his castle he would put his keys into the lions mouth so that he would be able to find them when he got back at dawn. This man loved partying, building, and most of all, women. He had 23 children, and only 7 of those were his own.

We came across the Queen's Guards, when we were visiting the castle where she lives. It was amazing how close we were able to get. I was technically in her courtyard.

More to come later on, I need to take more pictures >.<

xoxo, 

Sarah =)

Skanderborg Festival

Ok, I know it's been a while (like more than a week >.<). I first have to write about Skanderborg Festival that I went to last Friday, August 10th. A lot happened that day so I have tons to say about it! I promise to make another post soon about what's happened since then.

Upon arriving to visit my aunt last Friday, she informed us that we would not be going to straight to her house, but to a giant music festival! I immediately pictured something like Bamboozle, and while the idea to have several artists playing music at once was consistent, this festival was completely different. Obviously, all the artists were danish and singing danish things....so I couldn't fully appreciate all of the music. BUT, there was this one danish artist, Lukas Graham, he sang in english, and the song has really grown on me. It's called "Drunk In The Morning" haha, need I say more?? Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b2doSKS41c. The festival was also different from Bamboozle because there were people there from every age group. I saw moms there with their infants and young children, to teens, to grandmas and grandpas, and then of course younger adults. It was so interesting to see all the different age groups coming together and enjoying themselves. 

Now for the more interesting bits... When we first arrived at the festival, I was POSITIVE that I was going to get drenched. Why?? you might ask, this is why:

Does this look like a friendly sky to you?? No. No it does not. And yet, by some miracle, it didn't even drizzle.

Since the festival lasted five days, many people also camped out to get the best and craziest experience. This picture was only from one section of the festival. People also brought their own tents, so imagine this picture times 50. SO MANY TENTS.

If you didn't already know, everyone bikes in Denmark. EVERYONE. This is, again, only one section of the festival. There were thousands of bikes. Note to self: put tracking device on bike if I decide to go to a music festival.

Walking up and down the path through the festival, I came across these crazy dudes. I couldn't help but take a picture. They look ridiculous! And at the time I thought that this was as crazy as it would get. WRONG. I witnessed a group of men walking naked towards the music entrance in the picture below. I contemplated taking a picture, but then decided seeing their butts once was all I could handle.

Yes ladies and gents. This is all candy. Can you say yummeh??

This is me and my sister, Tess, trying to be cool. Have we succeeded? We were standing on a stage-like structure that also served as a bar/club. There were tons of danes getting beer and dancing and chatting. The picture below is of this crazy guy who was constantly dancing on a table. I thought he was hilarious and worthy of my blog.

After this we strolled up the main alley to look at food and side shops. I got a red t-shirt with a melting record on it. I thought it was cool :D 

Then this quite embarrassing thing happened... While we were checking out the shops this guy kinda stumbled up to me and started jabbering in danish. It took me a couple seconds to realize he was hitting on me, and I then replied that I don't speak any danish. He was asking me where the entrance to the music area was. Clearly he had been there a while because he was quite drunk already. I started laughing a bit and looked at my mom for some desperate help and she just smirked at me and ran away!! ARG! After that came a wonderful awkward silence and I took it as an opportunity to run away myself. Haha... oh boy....

Finally we decided to leave and go back to my aunts house where I proceeded to crash on my bed.

Till next time =)

xoxo, 

Sarah =P 

Food, Family and Fraud

Hej!

So, I was going to do a post weekly, but via request of some annoying family member (hi daddy <3 ) I guess I can write another one now. It is Friday afternoon and my sister, my mom and I will be leaving in an hour to catch a train to go and visit her sister's family. I'll have to add pictures later because they are all just adorable and pretty. Danish people generally are just beautiful. It's not fair. Everyone here also has a garden. I know that's kind of random, but in every yard I see roses and vegetables and lots of other pretty plants. Why doesn't Jersey have any gardens like these??? Oh yea, DEER. Well, unless you wrap your plants in heinous nets or spray them with coyote pee, it's quite difficult to keep deer away. Rawr.

This week started out kind of rough. I went to check my bank account randomly, and POOF! Where the hell did all my money go?!?! Someone horribly raided and abused my bank account in the form of taking out large sums of money. I have absolutely no idea how anyone could do this since I still have my card physically with me. Whatever. My bank was kind enough to refund me all of my stolen money. So thank goodness for that.

After that whole ordeal, I went to go see Batman: The Dark Knight Rises. BEST. MOVIE. EVER. Ok, maybe not the best movie EVER ever, Titanic won my heart first, but Batman was still pretty damn good. It may have been 165 minutes long, but it went quickly. That's when you know it's a good movie. I highly recommend it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Now, I really can't help but talk about this next topic. Danish food. It's AMAZING, and sooo much better than American food in every way (in my opinion at least). Everything is fresh and not processed. I'm currently living in cowland, and every cow that I've seen is eating GRASS, not corn, GRASS. What a concept. Maybe that's why their food tastes so good. Speaking of cows. If you ever come to Denmark yourself and go to the more rural areas, BEWARE THE BIG FIELDS! Every now and then you will be driving along when all of a sudden, WHAM, you are hit with the lovely stench of cow manure. And it doesn't go away for about 5 minutes ... It's a long 5 minutes. Farmers fertilize their crops with fresh cow waste, and while the crops love it, your nose will not.

Anyway!!! Thanks to google, I will post some pictures of danish cusine. I picked the pictures that were the most accurate to what I have been eating.

This is a typical lunch. Danes eat this super healthy brown grain bread, they call it rye bread (very different from our rye bread). I used to hate it, but it's really grown on me. You can put a variety of meats on it, or cheese, or "lopesti." That is NOT the correct spelling, but that is how you pronounce it. Whatever you do, don't ask what it actually is. Just eat it. It tastes good. I promise ;)

This is another lunch meal. Bread, mayonnaise, cucumber, tomato, and shrimp! These tiny shrimps are quite popular. Very tasty.

Mmmmmmm, danish hot dogs. They look quite different from the average Hebrew National hot dog, but they taste sooooo much better. They are not as salty and they have much more flavor. Once you've had one, you will never think of American hot dogs the same again.

This is a good breakfast/treat sandwich. Jelly with chocolate on top. I loveee this chocolate! It is made special for sandwiches (or a midnight chocolate craving ;) ). They are very thin, rectangular pieces of chocolate, made perfect for stacking on bread.

Now this is an all-time favorite breakfast OR dessert. Depends on what you're cravin'. It's called aebleskiver (and that is the correct spelling). Essentially, they are small pancake balls. You can dip them in sugar, jelly, or nutella. You have to cook them in this really interesting pan that has crater holes in it so that you can get the round shape.

OKAY! I have to run now otherwise I will miss my train!!! Tootles =)

xoxo, 

Sarah

P.S. If you have any questions or comments please don't hesitate to ask!

It smells like Denmark!

Hello again!


My first words just have to be.... IT SMELLS LIKE DENMARK!!!!! (Those of you who know me well will laugh at that =P)


So I survived the trip (...barely). Being awake for 36 hours straight is not fun. You don't want to see me that tired. I hate the world. But, obviously, after some sleep I was much better. Saying goodbye to friends and family was not easy; I miss you all already!!! xoxoxo :-*  Upon arriving in Denmark the sun was actually out, bright and shining. That might sound odd, but it's usually pretty cloudy here. I think that it was just happy to see me =P


The plane had fantastic movies, I must say. I watched The Five-Year Engagement and The Lucky Once.... ohhhh Zac Efron.... The Hunger Games was also one of the many options, but I didn't have enough time to watch it. Anyways! I took some pictures on the plane:

After take-off!

This was so odd, it's actually the 

moon, not the sun.

The view at 7am arriving in Denmark.

The lovely Danish windmills.

And for some long-term news, I found out who my host family is! They live in Køge, which is roughly 30 minutes outside of Copenhagen, so I'll be taking the train in. My host mom's name is Jani, my host dad, Henrik, my host brother, Rasmus (10 yrs old), and my host sister, Caroline (13 yrs old). I'm super excited to meet them. They're all pretty active; running, handball, spinning, and cycling... I think I'm joining the army!!


Even though it's around 3:00 am here in DK, I'm feeling pretty vibrant. Of course it might be from the gigantic party I've been hosting since 6pm. My aunt turned 40 so she threw a gigantic party. Delicious food, free booze, and bad dance moves... who wouldn't want to be there?? 


Myself, my sister Tess, and my cousin Rasmus served as the help this evening. We served food, made sure everyone had a drink in hand at all time, and spent a couple hours in front of the sink doing dishes. It was fantastic *sarcasm*. But through it all, we managed to have a great time. I think the bad dance moves were the best. There was also a make-shift band with some of the guests. They put on wigs and facial hair and rocked out playing songs like Highway To Hell. Here's a picture to help you visualize this:

If there's one thing the Danes know how to do, it's party. They will probably go all night if we don't kick them out soon. I'm leaving that to my aunt. For now, imma snuggle into bed.

More to come!!

xoxo, 

Sarah