En "Hej!" fra mig

The Danish-language text pauses here (for now, at least).  I've only had two days of "Survival Danish," plus the bits I've picked up from Mom over the years since her DIS experience, which (no offense to Mom or Nitte) doesn't add up to much yet.  But classes start tomorrow, and Danish Language 101 is my first, so who knows?  Maybe I'll be writing bilingual blog entries soon.

I've now been here since early Sunday morning, and we're all so settled in that it feels like longer.  I'm living on Skindergade (pronounced "skin-eh-gell"), which is two blocks from the DIS complex and within five blocks, it seems, of most other places worth getting to on a daily basis.  Given that the 370 or so DIS students who aren't in this particular housing option have to commute at least 20 minutes to get where we already are, it's hard to complain!  The building itself is lovely-- DIS only bought it a few months ago, but it has some character and seriously quirkly layouts to it-- and, again, the location can't be beat.  I'm living in a quad, admittedly, but I think it'll work out.  After some stressing about space-sharing and bonding with the very nice and helpful boys on our floor, we worked out our current set-up, which involves two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchenette and dining area in a downstairs space.  We have to go through each others' bedrooms to get to the latter two places, but everyone seems easygoing and we at least have a couple walls.

Orientation has kept all of us pretty busy, though it's been fun and left me with plenty of time to settle in and socialize.  We gotten tips on interacting with Danes (who don't say "please" or "excuse me" often, apparently), introductions to various DIS resources and policies, multiple walking tours (cobblestones and heeled boots, no matter how new and cute, are a terrible combination), and previews of the program study tours.  My program, European Politics & Society, goes to Jutland (mainland Denmark-- Copenhagen is on an island) and northern Germany in February and spends a week visiting Brussels, the Hague, and Amsterdam in early March.  We had been told previously we'd visit Luxembourg, not the Netherlands, so this was a particularly exciting development!  Also, the program assistant, Tyler, is a former DIS student-- who happens to have studied alongside my friend Desha a few semesters back.  Small world, isn't it?

I did manage to do some grocery shopping yesterday, though.  For the record: anything with the suffix "kød" is not friendly if you're a vegetarian.  On the upside, I did find 0.5% mælk and multi-grain Cheerios, so I can hold fast to my morning cereal ritual.  I am trying new food groups here, of course, though every smørbrød shop I seem to pass disappears when I want to experiment with it.  There was a session this afternoon on vegetarian eating in Denmark, which was both incredibly helpful and filled with girls (and one boy) who were super-friendly and psyched about the possibility of having a potluck of sorts.  Also, I've become an immediate fan of Baresso, the Danish equivalent of Starbucks, which puts cinnamon on its Chai-Cino Classics.  Take that, one-pump-sugar-free-vanilla-Chai-latte!

Today, I had a couple of hours to kill and had left my keys in our locked room, so I spent two hours basically getting lost in the neighborhood on my own.  Navigating the area will take a lot more practice, but I'm starting to get the hang of it.  This city is so charming!  It's small and definitively not touristy or gimmicky, and it looks so different from the other big European cities I've been to.  It's a bit confusing that a single long street can change its name several times, with each kink in the line, but it's fun attempting to pronounce (and remember!) names like Købmagergade (my best estimate at the moment is "kueb-mah-ge-gell").  Danish is my only class tomorrow, and it's done by 11:30, so my friend Jen and I have a plan to register ourselves with the local kommune (which gives us a Danish SSN equivalent and thus access to the state health care system) and then wander around for a good while until we really start to connect all these "gader" (streets) together.  

Until that point, god aften!