Min Fødselsdag

Yesterday was my birthday! I was woken up by my family singing the Danish birthday song (at about 6:45am) and went downstairs to discover they made a very nice breakfast and had decorated their house with flags. On one of the plates there were some little presents for me and a card from my host family.

 I went to school and was my class sang to me (twice!). The Danish birthday songs, even though they are much longer than ours, are so much more fun. Thank you to all of my classmates who sang to me and wished me a happy birthday. You're all so sweet!

At lunch, I went to go eat with some of my friends and they had some little gifts waiting for me on the table. They gave me some sweet little plants (that are now living on my windowsill) and bought me a cake! Thank you SO much to all of my friends, you are so kind and thoughtful I love you so much!

After school I came home and my family had bought some cake from a local store and we enjoyed it in the sunshine. I've been told that in Denmark if there's good weather on your birthday then you've been a good person for the entire year...I must've done something right, because it was absolutely beautiful yesterday.

After cake we started making dinner. We had mashed potatoes(!!!) which I was so excited about because I LOVE them. My host mom made such a good dinner and I feel so lucky that I got to live with this family.

While dinner was being made, my host father was very busy in the backyard trying to start up the hot tub. They have one which requires a fire to be built, and it takes awhile for it to heat up.

It's definitely worth the effort. At around 9 o'clock we all went out into the hot tub under the stars. It was a beautiful night, with no clouds in the sky and the stars were very bright. From the tub could see the Big Dipper (though they call it something else in Danish) and there was even a shooting star at one point!

All in all, this was one of the best birthdays I've had, and I hope to remember it for the rest of my life. Thank you all who wished me a happy birthday, it was truly a great one.

Danish Word of the Day:

Fødselsdag- birthday

Last Day Being 16...

Tomorrow is my birthday! It's crazy to think that I've already been here a month and a half, time just flies by...

For my last day of being sixteen, I went on a walk with my family at the castle ruin called Kalø by our house. It has a really interesting history; it was founded in 1313 by a Danish King to counter the ongoing rebellions of the Jutlandic nobility and peasantry against the Crown. If you want to know more about the castle, you can read about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal%C3%B8_Castle

It was a little cloudy, but very beautiful. It's about a five minute car drive from our house and is easily within walking or biking distance. We brought some dinner with us and sat on the beach to eat.

We brought along our dog, Ziggi, who ended up wandering off at one point and we had to go find him. There were a lot of cows near the ruins as well just wandering around.

Ziggi

This was the view while we were eating:

Not a bad way to spend my last day being 16, if you ask me.

Danish Word of the Day:

hav- sea

Food Festival

Today one of the Rotarians took Andrea and me to a food festival in Aarhus. It was full of little tents making all sorts of food and handing out samples. I had some really good sausages, tuna, granola (made of seaweed, insects, and chocolate), french onion flavored worms, and pickled herring.

Andrea and I also found this really good ice cream vendor, and I had some vanilla ice cream with nougats and caramel.

It was a really fun day, thank you to Erik and his family for bringing us, I had a lot of fun and ate a lot of good food! Also thank you Andrea for taking so many pictures.😊

Danish Word of the Day:

kål- cabbage

Intro Camp

A week ago all the Rotary exchange students in Denmark went to Bjerringbro for a week long Intro Camp. This included Danish lessons, different activities every night, and a trip to Aarhus.

The day that we got there we were separated into different classes and got to know each other better. I think there were about 156 exchange students from 17 different countries.

It was a lot of fun to see how we differed from each other and how we were similar. I made some new friends and got to learn a little bit about different cultures.

On Wednesday, we took a trip to Aarhus (the second largest city in Denmark) and went to the famous museum ARoS. It had really cool exhibits about the environment and how we value things. It also had an interactive rainbow room at the top where you can literally walk through a rainbow and look over the city.

It was a really cool museum, and I want to go back and spend more time there. After the museum we met up with a few other exchange students who showed us around the city. I'm so happy that I live so close to Aarhus so I'll be able to go back and explore more. It seems like a really nice city.

I'm really glad we went to Intro Camp, and I got to meet the people I did and share these experiences with them. I'm excited to see them all in the future and I wish them all a good exchange.