Saturday, January 24, 2009

Week threeeee


Hej!

This past week here has really flown by. Yesterday was the last day of my Denmark Today language and culture course, and it was totally worth it. My teacher always made learning Danish really interesting, by singing us songs and having us make skits and plays. Yesterday for the closing, we had a reception in one of the canteens, which was by far the best food i've had in a while! And a couple of the deserts had "marzipan" in it, which is really popular here, and it was delicious! Somebody told me I had to try it while I was here.



This is a picture of Liga from Latvia, me and Alberto from Italy at the reception.




Last night they had a closing party for us at the Student House downtown too! It was lots of fun and I think everybody I knew from our program showed up!





They had something planned for us almost every night we were here. It made the afternoons a lot more enjoyable! Saturday we had a trip to the big museum downtown, which was pretty cool, but museums arent really my thing. But the statue of the big boy I liked! In the afternoon on Saturday we went skating, and I was surprised to see that it was some people's first time skating! We had to help Alberto, one of the italian guys a lot.. he had a lot of trouble!



On Monday we went to Den Gamle By, the "old town" where they reconstructed some of the old buildings from a long time ago! I have a picture somewhere here of a really big group of us at the old town. The next night was International night at the student house- so many people goes to these, its lots of fun!


We also had Danish cooking lessons on Wednesday, and me and Lana, an Australian girl from my class made Apple Cake, which turned out very delicious! Other groups made salads, fish cakes, cinammon rolls, meatballs, and rye bread! mmm!

We had to perform skits yesterday in front of a couple of the other classes- ours turned out pretty funny. I was a pirate, who had a pet duck, and when my pet duck got stolen away by the princess, I killed her. And then the police came, and he had to figure out who killed the princess. It was super funny, as we are terrible at Danish and all forgot our lines! But it was fun. In the picture we were still trying out costumes- i hadn't discovered the pirate costume by this point!!


The other day I discovered a new mall only about a 5-10 minute walk from my house so I think I will go there today! It is huge!
This is a picture of my whole class at the reception!






I think that is all for now! Will update again soon :)

Friday, January 16, 2009

Second week in Denmark!

Hello everyone! I have been very busy this last week here in Denmark! I have learned a bit more Danish, but it is still a very complicated language! My teacher is awesome though, she gets us to sing songs every class which makes it much more fun to learn! Near the end of today's class, all of the classes got together and we totally did the hokey-pokey... in Danish of course! It was pretty funny.

Last Saturday we went about 30 minutes outside of Aarhus to another city or town called Randers, and we went to a huge indoor tropical zoo called Randers Regnskov tropical zoo. It was so neat, it felt like you were really in a tropical area! It was really warm, and there were trees and animals everywhere! Some of the animals were aloud to roam free, like the monkeys, it was really neat!

There were three huge greenhouses- "south america", "asia", and "africa", and south america was definately the coolest. Tons of animals, and the birds would be even flying over your head! And the monkeys were close enough to touch. I took some really cool pictures here!

On Monday with our group we went on a tour of town hall , and got to climb the stairs all the way to the top of the clock tower! It had such a pretty view, and you could see all of downtown and the harbour from the top!

Most of this week I was pretty sick, along with... mostly every other exchange student, and stayed home from school one of the days, and missed out on learning about Danish politics in the afternoon.. too bad really, because everybody knows how much I love politics.

Other than that, yesterday we went to a place called "Bazar Vest" with our class, which is like a larger version of the city market in saint john, except for they are all international shops. It was fun!
Tonight I hope to go out for a little bit with the other exchange students since i was sick all week and now i am better! And I will leave with some Danish words for everybody in Canada!
"Jeg elsker dig" - I love you!
"Jeg er hikke" - i have the hiccups :)
"Jeg er glad!" - i am happy!
"det er fryser" - it is freezing (typical canadian weather right now!)
Will have another update soon!


Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Jeg kommer fra Canada!

Hello everyone!

I've been here in Aarhus for a week now! It is getting better and better every day! I started Denmark Today on Monday, and it has been very fun so far! It is a language and culture course, and you have the language courses in the morning and some sort of Danish or Aarhus culture thing in the afternoon!
My class in the morning has about 15 or 20 people in it, and it's so cool because the students come from all over the world! There are a couple girls from Australia, a couple from USA, someone from Turkey, Spain, China, Estonia, lots from Italy, Czech and Latvia! Very cool!! Our teacher is very sweet too, she gets us to sing like 2 songs a class so she makes it fun!

See what Danish I've learned so far!:
Jeg hedder Katie. Jeg kommer fra Canda. Jeg taler englesk, Jeg bor i Skovvangsvej. jeg er 20 ar gammel. Jeg studerer biologi!

Haha, it looks easy, but the pronounciation is totally crazy. Jeg hedder is pronounced like "Yai haitha".. sorta. with a crazy accent. very hard for North Americans...!

I've met some friends finally too! There was a "speed meeting" on Tuesday night, which is pretty much like speed dating, minus the dating. For all the exchange students! It was good to get to know others too!


The first day nobody knew anyone, so it was really easy to make friends. Ive made friends with some Italians and americans and of course a few others!


Today we had a tour around the city centre, which was very good so now I know where all the good spots to go are!

My mom is still here too, which is really good, especially because I still don't have any roommates so it's good at night time! She likes to explore the city during the daytime when I am at school! But she's leaving on Saturday morning. The other afternoon when I didnt have class or culture thing we went down to the city centre and took a lot of pictures! Here are some pictures from the last couple of days in AARHUS, DENMARK!! :)










Italian boys (Lorenzo, Matteo, Alberto), and Erica (USA) with dark hair and Liga (Latvia) with blonde!

Some pictures of me around the university!
Seriously, how would you feel paying 52.00 for a big mac.
The blue building is my house! And a picture of my bedroom, with lots of storage space. Also one of me and mom exploring downtown, and a few more pictures from around downtown. Thats all for now!

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Aarhus, Denmark!


I made it here! It is my third day in Aarhus and it has been great so far! It was my first plane ride ever, so I was really nervous, but it got better the more planes I went on! My mom came with me, and is staying for 10 days, which has been really good so far so there is somebody I know with me to go I started in Saint John, and flew to Toronto, then to Frankfurt in Germany, then Copenhagen in Denmark and then finally to Aahrus!




Lots of people came to see me fly off, it was very exciting! We left on New Years Eve at 6pm, so I think we spent 12 midnight either in our time zone, or in Newfoundland's! The pilot announced New years over newfoundland, but they didn't do anything special, which was dissapointing! Half of the people were asleep anyway. Here are a couple of photos from the flight over here!





This is when I was in Saint John, and very very nervous!













At the Toronto airport!










At the Copenhagen airport. Very nice!












Flying over Toronto.. look at the huge jet engines!







Once we arrived in Aahrus, my mentor named Mads met us at the airport to drive us to our hotel! The next morning we went and saw a little bit of the university, and then went to pick up my keys for my new house! Mads took us shopping with another exchange student named Miriam from Germany, and we went to IKEA and the grocery store! The grocery stores here are all very small, and there are so many of them! There are 3 within about a 5 minute walking distance from my house!


Yesterday we took the bus for the first time which was pretty exciting.. we ended up going the opposite direction that we wanted to, but eventually ended up downtown Aarhus! It was really nice, there is a big canal and lots of very expensive shopping!


Today we walked around the university campus for a while, it is so big! So much bigger than UNBSJ!! Here are some pictures from the last couple of days!





By the Canal in downtown Aarhus!
On one of the main streets- look at the vines on the buildings!!
Me and mom in Aarhus :)
That is it for now! Hopefully will post again soon!