Introcamp

October 7th 2016

        Introcamp was amazing I made some really good friends and had a wonderful experience. For the first couple of days, I tried to meet a lot of people but I still was mostly hanging out with friends from Aarhus that I had already been friends with before. Eventually I started making more and better friends, I started to become part of a few groups sort of, one, the first one that I hung out with for the beginning was pretty cool, a guy from Florida who also lives in Aarhus and a girl from Colorado as well as a girl from Canada who started hanging out with them a bit later. The second was a group of most of the Taiwanese guys and the two Thai guys that were there, we weren't usually all together but separated into smaller groups. These groups were who I hung out with for the most part when we had free time and sat with for meals if I wasn't with these groups everybody was pretty chill so I could do whatever and find people.

        The usual schedule was, getting up at 7:30, taking a shower, breakfast started at 8:00, then would have small talk about the day from the people running the camp, after this we had 6 hours of danish lessons with a 10-15 minute break after one and half hours, lunch halfway through and then another short break halfway through the second three hours. This was a long schedule because this much was the same every day. Afterward, we would have a couple hours to hang out with friends which was pretty great, we would do different things, I played a lot of foosball when we had these breaks and it was really fun. In the evening we had really good dinners and had activities almost every day run by the leaders. We had a really fun basketball one night and another time we climbed their amazing climbing tower and cooked marshmallows and it was a really good time. I have some pictures of me climbing below. 

2/4/23

(I never finished editing this blog and gave up on the practice at this point although now I wish I had continued. I don't know if I will start now.) 

(The pictures I was going to put were really cool, maybe I will add them to a future post if I remember.)

First Three Weeks in Denmark (Pre-introcamp)

                        

                 The First Day

       The very fist day, directly after  I arrived my host family took me to the west coast, the opposite way of our home. First to the house of  some relatives where we had a hearty breakfast although in Minnesota time I would normally already have eaten dinner and gone to bed. I was okay with it though seeing that I only had airplane food for the last nine hours. All I was hoping for now was to find a bed because I was almost falling asleep in the car. But this was just the beginning, afterward, we all drove to a beach where I thought they were just showing me the beautiful site. This was wrong, right when we got on the beach they proceeded strip right on the beach, luckily they put on swimsuits so it wasn't too weird, they, of course, offered me a swimsuit as well and because I am an exchange student of course I have to say yes. It turned out to be really fun after you got over how cold it was, the waves were huge and the salt water felt good.

       When we finally got back to the car and I was starting to doze off again, shortly we made another stop to get some raincoats at the same relatives house. We were going mushroom hunting, we were hunting for one specific kind of mushroom that I just could not seem to find, I saw plenty of red these red and white ones but we were supposed to be getting a more tan colored smaller one. I ended up finding a small path with maybe seven small mushrooms, while my host family came back with mostly full bags. ;/, Finally, we were going home. I think I slept for a lot of the ride but once we got home they started dinner and I decided to try and stay up. It was hard but I stayed until around maybe eight danish time, I ended up going to bed almost immediately after dinner, I had been awake for more than twenty-four hours other than my little car naps.

                 Two Weeks Before School

       For the most part of the first weeks I spent adapting to my family at first, I spent of my time the first week going around Aarhus with my host brothers, they showed me a good ice cream spot by the harbor, the train station, where to get really good kebabs, and just all around the downtown area, it's about 10 minute bike ride from my home. These weeks they showed me around the house, and what they expect of me, basic stuff. On Wednesday of the second week my host brothers started school, I was to start Monday. I was lucky because when they were at school I was able to spend most of my time watching the Olympics which is always fun. This was what I did then because I knew almost no one outside of my host family.

       On Friday in the afternoon I had a small tour of the school but I was unable to meet my class unfortunately because they had just gotten out for lunch. This was good because I was able to meet some of my teachers and sort of find my way around the school. Sadly I was unable to go to the school party that night because I hadn't met any of my classmates yet and I was too nervous to go alone. After this on Saturday I went to my second family host sister's 18th birthday, at first, I was pretty nervous because I didn't know anybody and I didn't know too much Danish then. It was tough at first but once I started talking to people, mostly in English, it became easier and the party ended up being really fun, there weren't any people from my school that were there but it was still cool.

        The next Monday I had my first Danish classes which I have been having from 8:30 to 11:15 every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday with a group of about 20 exchange students from multiple programs, six from rotary. After this, I had only one class that afternoon which was Spanish and I met my awesome, amazing Danish class. They are all really nice, I have a group now that I usually sit with but all of them have been willing to help me translate things into or out of Danish and just try to explain whatever is necessary. This is basically how the rest of the week went, I met my counselor and we talked about what was allowed and how I am supposed to behave and all that, his name is Søren and he is a great guy. Here are some pictures :D
                                           

From the plane window flying to Denmark.:                                              My Host Family's                                                                                                         beautiful front walk and doorway:

The view from the window:

                                              The back yard view looking at the house: