Diaries of a Dane: Intro camp!

Sorry that I have been MIA for a few days- have just arrived home from my intro camp which was in Jetland! I had such a busy week... filled with bread, laughs, new people and six hours of danish a day. It was so much fun- but I am so tired right now!

Last Saturday, my host family took a road trip to Jetland to drop me off at my camp. We stopped at things along the way so I got to see a lot more of Denmark (pretty sure i will have seen the whole country by the end of the year because it is so small) Anyway. Our first stop was at Odense where I was lucky enough to visit Hans Christian Andersen's House. This was a part museum that had random bits and pieces from his life. It was so well done and such an amazing thing to see. I loved it! It was really interesting to learn about as well and maybe ill be able to read his fairytales in Danish :) woo. The town of Odense was also beautiful. There was a market on when we arrived which was nice to see and added to the character of the town. The streets were cobble stoned (of course) and were lined with beautiful old buildings of all different colours and super cute houses. So Hans Christian Andersen's house has been ticked off my 'Things to see in Denmark' list.

From there we continued our four hour journey through the countryside. We stopped at two really big bridges. I love the Sydney Harbour Bridge.... but Denmark has got a step up on us and it isn't even a tourist destination. They were absolutely massive and the architecture was pretty cool. One of the bridges even used to be the biggest in the world!

Once we had ventured over the countryside, we arrived at our stop over for the night. My host dad's mums house. They lived in a beautiful farm house tucked away in a small country town. It was beautiful taking a walk around the town at sunset. It had the typical smell of a country town and was so tiny and secluded. That night we also had a Danish traditional christmas dinner. The food was unreal, and I am already looking forward to Christmas so I can eat it again (but i am avoiding the scales for sure)

So after we were all rested, we continued our road trip to Burringbar. Today our sight seeing agenda was mountains.... or a better word for it would be hills. It was cool though. I visited the two highest peaks in Denmark. Was a little surprised when we could drive to the top of the peak. Guess I'm used to the 21km treck to the top of Mt Kousiscko.... Okay so to get an image in your mind, the size of the 'moutain' would be about the size of the peak at the top of River Road. Now imagine that with a big tall building on top just to add some true superiority. The view from the top though was magnificent and I loved looking out over the Danish country side. I had to laugh though at the size of the moutain. Guess I didn't really realise how flat Denmark is.....

Anyway, eventually we arrived at my new home for the next week in the little town of Burringbar. This was also a country town, similiar to camden just lacking in the thai places and hairdressers! Anyway, said goodbye to my host family and met my new roomie for the week! Recognised her from the plane which was cool and we walked up to meet everyone else. I was so surprised at how many people I actually knew there as most of the new exchange students were from Australia! There were about 8 from Brazil, 3 Kiwis and 4 from Argentina and around 4 from Columbia. Needles to say, the Aussie's totally dominated! So we all got settled in and talked about our new experiances and first impressions of Denmark. It was really good to be able to relate to them all as we were all going through the same thing. We then played some icebreaker games and ventured off to bed to mentally prepare ourselves for six hours of Danish in the morning.....

7:30am alarm woke us up on a Monday morning. It was a nice change from the usual 6:30 wake up for school but none the less we were all bright eyed and ready to learn as much Danish as we could.. We got the basics downpat on the first day.... I can now introduce myself, say where I live, my age, my language and what i like and dislike without having to look at a piece of paper- yay team! Six hours though was super long.... and so draining and we all found ourselves exhausted by the end of the day.

We still managed to squeeze in a gym session which we all needed after eating so much bread (danish diet staple food just seems to be bread... something that has made us all want to avoid the scales and hit the gym) We then crashed into bed after a game of hockey in the gym.

The second and third day followed a similiar pattern. We got a little more adventurous with our Danish and conquered the verbs and nouns. This became more difficult when we had to place them in past and present tense- still need to pratice that, But by the end of six hours we were well on the way to mastering this aspect of the strange foreign language. My favourite part was learning this really cool song for the alphabet... It was the anthem of our intro camp- check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f488uJAQgmw (but beware it is addictive and will be stuck in your head for numerous hours)

We did have a surprise one night where the Danish band 'Fair Enough Martin' came and played for us. They did a little gig and their music was so chill. Kind of music you would hear on triple J. So that was really fun and a really nice break for all of us :)

On the fourth day, we had a break which we so desperately needed. So we all piled onto a bus and ventured into Aarhus. We had a tour of the old town which was filled with ancient buildings. Kind of similiar to Soverign Hill but a thousand times better. It was so interesting to see the buildings such as the school and the doctor and shop that still contained all of the origional things that were used in the town.

After our little tour (which went by so quickly) we ventured into the city centre where we were allowed spare time. Aarhus like every Danish city has a church in the street which gave it so much character and made it a beautiful place to spend an afternoon. I ventured off with some of my aussie gals and we went on our first serious danish shopping spree. The sales were really good and we all managed to update our wordrobes so we dont look like complete aussie dags. At the end we had so many bags that it was quite a funny site. I had such a wonderful day though.

That night we got some time to chill out on the couches. We consumed a few too many packets of Danish candy and the most amazing chocolates ever- Toffiees. I am in love with this German goodness (maybe i like them a little too much). It was really fun just laughing with everyone. Don't think i have laughed that hard for the entire time that i have been here actually.

By Friday we were all exhaused yet we continued to plough along with the language. We did some revision which was good and continued to sing size matters (needles to say we now know the danish alphabet- yay team).

On Saturday we had a bit of a relax. Three hours of Danish in the morning and then time to prepare for our class item that night. I love my class! Everyone really bonded well and this made the week more amazing. We came up with the idea of doing 'our impressions of Denmark so far' and did a video. We filmed scenes highlighting the differences that we have noticed. It was hilarious to make!

So we tackled:

-The people and language;

How no one talks to each other on the train

How everyone asks you to say Rul Gul Me Flur

How the word for stop looks like Slut

-The music

We did our own version of Nick and Jay wearing hooded winter jackets. Making a mini music video was the funniest thing

-The party atmosphere

pretty self explanatory

-The food

bread.bread.bread.bread

-The weather

Grace making a snow angel without a winter coat was one of the funnest things i have ever seen

Our video came together quite nicely and was a really good laugh for everyone. Our class had so much fun making it... but editing the movie was a challenge- as imovie was in spanish! So i figure if we pulled that off in an hour and produced a pretty good video using another language- Danish should be a breeze for us all!

After our item shows we had a disco party as a way to end our time at intro camp. It was really fun actually and we were all so tired. Darcy, Grace and I ripped up the dance floor, but sat back down when the Brazillian girls got up and strutted their stuff. Needles to say we were embarrassed of our Aussie ways. But it was so cool and everyone really bonded. We were all so tired and crashed into bed by 12:30am.

Sunday marked our last day at the camp. It was so sad to say goodbye to everyone, especially since we all bonded towards the end of the camp. We have another get together in April though at a waterpark hotel (didn't think they had those over here) and im looking forward to it already :)

So after saying goodbye we all parted our ways. I caught the train home.. around four hours. It was so comftorable and the drive through the country side was super pretty. I was glad to arrive back at my host famalies house though! I even tried out some of my danish skills !

When i arrived home, i went straight to a Festilarn party (danish halloween). My host brother was dressed up as a punk and looked so so good with spiky pink hair. I was so glad that he won best dressed. It was really nice to go to this party, and to see this danish tradition!

After some bread for dinner (of course) i crashed into bed, set my alarm for 6:30am and got a really goodnight sleep.

This week should be good! Birthday celebrations will be in full swing as I'm seeing all of my host families on various days. Then the week after I'm on winter vacation and will be venturing into Copenhagen (so keen!)

Will write soon!

Missing everyone at home so much