Week 2: I look like I live in a freezer...

So it's been over a week in Copenhagen! It is going by slow and fast, if that even makes sense. I feel as if I have been here longer. Due to the cold and blizzard conditions, however, I have been limited in exploration. AKA I basically only know how to get to my school. The rest is still a bit of a challenge. Hopefully that will end soon.

Nightlife in Copenhagen can only be described in two words: expensive and late. The city isn't very much alive until from 12-6am. Thus, I have been getting home very late and very cold. The trains run all night on friday and saturday, but only once per hour. Ours, unfortunately, only comes at :02...so if you don't catch the 2:02....you have to wait. Until 3:02. I have already spent many atimes, huddled up, loitering in the 7/11 on the corner near our train station desperately trying to retain any form of warmth while waiting for our train. It is not a fun-filled wait. When all you want to be in is a warm bed. But that warm bed is a 25 minute train ride and one mile, painfully cold walk away. As a result, I have very little desire to go out.

Did I mention, when you are out in the city at night, that not one of us knows where we are going? So we spend usually over 30 minutes walking in the freezing cold place to place, trying to figure out the scene. We still haven't. I see these leggy, blonde, gorgeous danish girls in skirts and I think they are utterly insane.

Did I also mention my awkward reaction when Danish men try to hit on me in Danish...the look on my face must be priceless. I pretty much just nod and try to avoid their desperate attempt to make me play pool with them.

Classes are going well. I haven't done much but I have tons of reading. So any mention of being abroad and it being a joke can be disregarded. I probably have more reading than at Gettysburg.

Today, I had a field trip to the Danish Institute for Human Rights. Wednesdays we do not have class and sometimes have field trips, depending on what classes you are in. Now, I was very much looking forward to this. However, Today it literally blizzard-ed in Copenhagen. I'm talking high winds, more ice than snow...flurries...whipping me in the face, stinging my eyes...I could not even look up. Well, this institute, it is a 40 minute walk from my school. In a blizzard. I also was not wearing a hat today. My hair had ice encrusted to my scalp. You couldn't even tell my hair color. I felt like I was in Antartica. It seemed like some kind of joke.

The field tip was very informative, but basically 4 different lecture topics for 2 hours. I was falling asleep toward the end. I did learn some interesting information though. Such as, did you know that even if you are born in Denmark, you are not considered a Danish citizen unless one or both your parents are Danish? Different from the US. Basically even if you were born and grew up here your entire life, if you break the law or do something stupid...you can be shipped out at any point. Scary. Anyways, I did not want my field trip to end, because of course, the blizzard had gotten worse.

My teacher also did not walk us back, as he had walked us there. Luckily, a girl knew the way to the nearest Metro and we smushed into a metro train packed like sardines. My first time on the metro. So crowded I could not breathe. People were pressed up against the glass, that is how crowded it was.

I finally made it back to near my school. I had to meet up with Jenni who was at a Museum with Britt. Lucky.

We (Jenni and I) still had the interesting task today of going grocery shopping. Now, our Danish host mom was home all day doing nothing. She asked us if we could get her some groceries and gave us a list and some money. I considered this fine until I realized we would be carrying very heavy grocery bags across Copenhagen in a blizzard, taking the train where we would be warm for 25 minutes, then trekking home in 4 inches of snow and wind for about a mile with the heavy grocery bags. Via a blog, this probably does not seem too bad. Buttttt....

Let me tell you, I have never laughed this much since being in Copenhagen. I laughed because if I didn't, I think I would collapse on the ground, curl up and die. In the snow. Laughter was the only thing getting me home at that moment, because all I wanted to do was chuck the grocery bags onto the train tracks and crawl home.

So, before this, we had to navigate the grocery store...with EVERYTHING in Danish...finding stuff such as yeast...which I do not even know where its location is in a US supermarket. We decided to splurge on ourselves at the grocery store and buy ourselves chips and salsa. This purchase would later be my single motivation in getting home from the train station.

So, we take the train, which is packed as well, home with groceries. And our dreaded trek in the snow for a mile begins. Jenni and I each have a very heavy grocery bag as well as all of our school stuff on us (in our school bag). I could not move my uggs very far through unplowed snow that had accumulated so much since this morning. I know this because I shoveled the path from the driveway before I left for school. We were so hopeless, we began to go a little mad..shouting chips and salsa, chips and salsa for about half the way home just so we could get there. I seem dramatic, but I am not kidding in the least. Again, like earlier in the day, I looked like I stepped out of a freezer. Ice all over my body.

Needless to say, I am never complaining about walking the full 10 minutes it takes to go from point A at Gettysburg to point B. Never, ever.

I don't know what else to discuss, so I will end it here.

Hej Hej,

Hilary

PS. The chips were amazing. The salsa tasted/had the consistency as if you were dipping a chip in pasta/red sauce. A bit odd but what can ya do.

Over and out.