Well I have started thinking about my travel breaks, have yet to actually book anything but I have been talking to my friend Amy, she also lives in Birkerod, about travelling together on our long weekend and our first week of spring break. Right now we are thinking Germany or Sweden for the long weekend and maybe Switzerland and Italy for that week of spring break. And something else I'm realizing....its expensive! But, definitely worth it!
Thursday my Danish Language teacher took us on a field trip for class, to a grocery store to practice the food names. I had almost 4 hours to kill because I had a meeting at 6 that night, so I hung out with Alana from my danish class, she's great. We sat at a coffee shop and just talked for over an hour. I love meeting new people :] My meeting at 6 was my very first Sustainability Task Force meeting, it was fantastic! The Task Force is a group of 11 people, faculty, staff and 5 students who had to apply and were chosen by the staff. We were brainstorming what things we want to work on this semester, like Earth Week events and habitat restoration volunteering! I'm so excited to get to work with everybody, we all come from different backgrounds and have different expertise so I think we will definitely get some great things accomplished. After the meeting I was walking with two guys from the task force to the train station and we went into a little convenience store and got a bag full of free pastries! Can you imagine the smile on my face...FREE SUGARY GOODNESS!
On Friday I met a bunch of students from Benedicte class at school, they have these cooking groups, they are supposed to go to everyone in the groups house and cook a meal together and socialize. So when I got home on Friday afternoon the house was filled with pre-teens lol. So I met 5 of Benedicte's classmates and I tried my best to entertain them seeing as I was the token American in the room! I think the best part of being around them was that I heard one of the boys say "take a chill pill" I could not stop laughing! I asked the kids if any of them had ever been to America, one of the boys had and so we were talking about where he went. I said I was from Washington and he goes "oh i've been there, when we went to albany!" I was like uhhhh you're talking about DC, I live in Washington State, which is on the other side of the country from there. Every time I say I live in Washington to a Dane, they always think of Washington DC? Washington State is bigger then DC, and in my opinion better :]
I did not end up staying to eat dinner at my house with all Benedicte's friends, I went over to my friend Sierra's house for dinner, she lives really close. Sierra did all the cooking and I did all the laughing when she made mistakes, like dropping potatoes out of the wok that she was trying to "toss" them in with seasoning. Then we danced around the house to music from her laptop lol. A very successful Friday night in my opinion :]
Saturday was basically a lazy morning, in which I pretended to do some homework when really I was watching tv online and scoping out prices for plane and train tickets :] I went on a walk with Thomas, Christina and Benedicte in the afternoon, it was really long but soooooo beautiful. We walked to a huge lake a few kilometers away and then walked around it on some trails. The sun was setting and it cast a gorgeous orange glow on the trees on the other side of the lake. I can't wait until summer comes so I can walk around the lake more and not be frozen :]
Sunday was awesome! I met my friend Lindsey, who lives about ten minutes away, and we took a train to Malmo in Sweden to spend the day! Navigating and understanding train stations is not something I am very good at, we almost missed our train! We were quite confused and saw this train with its doors open so we just wandered on to it. We asked a random guy on the train if it was going to Sweden, he responded with "Uhh I think so, i'm not really sure", that was comforting! We stayed on the train anyway and lucky for us it was going to Malmo!
I've also decided that unlike most Danes, I like Sweden :] Unfortunately we went on a Sunday which meant that many places were closed or opened later in the day, but this did give us the opportunity to just wander around and get lost, we are really good at that :] We saw this cool building called the turning torso, which was built curving around, it looks awesome! Then we walked around and found this pretty castle that had a museum inside, it looked pretty sweet so we'll have to go back another time! After that we spend some more time wandering around. We found this beautiful old windmill, it looked like something out of a story book, quite enchanting :] We walked through a garden by a small river, I can't wait to go back in the spring to see the flowers bloom and the trees have leaves! I felt like I was in Paris, walking along the banks of a river, tall trees and flowers all around me.
We made our way over to "Malmo City" which is where their main shopping streets are, so like all college girls in a foreign country we shopped :] Lindsey bought some shoes, lace up wedge booties with some serious height! We went very american for lunch and ate at mcdonalds :\ I know, I know but it was cheap and we could actually understand what I was ordering! Right when I am starting to have the faintest of grasps on the Danish language, I end up in a country where I can even attempt to pronounce the street names! Now the most important test for whether or not I like the country....the coffee! Basically I wish I could go to Sweden everytime I wanted a good cup of coffee :] We went to this coffee place called "Espresso House" and I couldn't be more in love! I mean better than Starbucks in my opinion, and much better than Denmark's "Baresso" We got better coffee and more coffee for a cheaper price than at Baresso! Just thinking about that delicious mocha latte makes me smile :]]
We made our way back to the Malmo train station to head home. I had to use the bathroom so badly and guess what...they make you pay to use the toilet in train stations, guess what else...i didn't have any Swedish Kroner...so basically no bathroom for Alyssa. We had to ask a security guard to tell us which train to take, then where we could find the track. We followed the guards directions to a lower level but still couldn't find the track, and I still had to pee! That is when we discovered that lots of coffee, plus fast food, plus exhaustedness equals crazy Alyssa and Lindsey. Phrases like "where is the stupid 1b" and "stupid Sweden making you pay to pee, who does that" were uttered while laughing! We eventually found the track and got on our train and made it back to Kobenhavn central station! We also realized that we didn't know where to go in that station either! Being lost and confused is kind of our forte :] We missed our train home, so we had to wait 20 minutes for the next one, so we thought okay lets go into a store and waste time. So Lindsay and I are looking at scarves and rings, being american and singing along to Rhianna, and we decide to go see how long till the train comes. We find a reader board and it says half a minute till our train leaves and we still needed to get to our platform! We take off running towards Spor 9, almost knocking people over as we sprinted down the stairs. We reach the train with our arms waving, crying "Wait, Wait!" I hit the door open button with my fist and we jump in right before it leaves! So much excitement in one day :]
Now i'm watching Grease with Benedicte and singing along to the music :]
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