Day 1: Metros

Well, we made it! I'm actually still in disbelief that I'm in Copenhagen and ready to start my abroad experience! The past two days have been so surreal. The official start date of my program isn't until Sunday, but Mikaela, Emily, and I accidently booked too early of a flight (in our defense, the dates were really unclear in the information packet and we found a great deal) so we are kind of on our own for the first two nights and exploring the city. For anyone who didn't know me freshman year, it was probably really good that I had those two at the airport with me, else I would have been a lot more nervous than I was. Anyways, we left Newark around 5:30 pm on Thursday and arrived in Copenhagen just before 7:00 am Denmark time (about 1 in the morning in PA) on Friday morning.  EJ read and studied all of the emergency procedure picture cards on the plane that nobody actually looks at but thankfully, the ride was pretty uneventful. I accidently dropped my pre-departure manual that I had just started reading (it has lots of useful information in it!) during landing though, so I was going to have to make it without my handy language and culture cheat sheet. Aside from a quick 1 hour nap, nobody slept much on the plane, but we decided to tough it out and not nap at all when we got there so that we could get adjusted to the time zone as soon as possible. Needless to say, I'm exhausted and have been up for 28 hours straight right now, so there is a good chance that what I write will make no sense, or I'll just drift off completely.

(I had to go to sleep before I had a chance at finishing this post...except we all woke up again at 1 am ready for dinner..)

After dropping our bags off, we set out to explore the city. First challenge: tackling the metro system. Thankfully, Emily is a frequenter to NYC, so she's used to the subways, but navigating your way through a metro system completely in Danish seemed to be a bit more challenging. There were like 15 different types of tickets to choose from and not surprisingly, we only made it one stop before we were (kindly) asked to leave the metro because we only punched three holes in our group ticket instead of the more obvious five. Thankfully, two very nice ladies on the metro saw how confused and completely out of place we looked and directed us in the right direction. We decided that the first thing we would do when we got back would be to look up the translations for thank you (tak) and sorry (undskyld).

My first reaction when we first stepped out into Copenhagen was just pure amazement. The city is BEAUTIFUL! It is unlike any city I've ever been to in Europe. I love it already!  Everyone here is so nice and they all speak such good English. It's incredible (and makes me feel really stupid and totally un-cultured). The buildings are gorgeous and so colorful. The canal runs right through the city and everything is so clean, cobblestoney, and just nice. Everyone bikes too...Dad, you would love it. The streets also smell like freshly baked bread, which is an added bonus (I probably won't be loving it as much when I move up a jean size...).

Our first mission was to find a coffee shop because the three of us were exhausted, but determined to get through the day. We found a cute little market area with a bunch of pastry shops. I was actually in heaven. There were so many different danishes, croissants, muffins, breads -basically carbohydrate central, which is perfect for me. I got a coffee and a mouth-watering chocolate danish. Of course, this didn't go without incident. While trying to pay the cashier, Emily accidently dropped 50 kroner through the crack between the counter and pastry display. Unfortunately, her desperate attempt at saving it was to no avail as we sadly watched it slip away. The barista must have felt very bad for us after Emily exclaimed, "Oh no! I dropped my 50 dollar bill down there!" so she began to remove the glass casing and pull the counters apart to try to find it for us. It was nowhere to be found though. Thankfully, 50 kroner is actually only worth 8 or 9 dollars (not 50), so butterfingers got over it eventually.

Next, I decided to lead us so that we could find DIS, our school. I'm not the best map reader, so naturally I led us in the completely opposite direction, but we eventually found our way back. Navigating here is pretty difficult when you can't pronounce any of the street names. It's like trying to pronounce seven syllables of consonants with your mouth full of peanut butter. I did however, manage to find a beautiful park, so we stopped to take some pictures there.

Eventually, we began to get the hang of it (okay, Emily did) and we were able to find some really pretty churches, harbors, and squares. We did some window shopping too, but were pretty content just walking through the streets. We had to take a second coffee break (where I bought the smallest and most expensive coffee I will ever buy) before having "dinner" at 2 pm. Emily ordered her first legal drink, an Irish Coffee. It was more like pure whiskey with a little bit of coffee. We decided to make our way back to the hotel around 3 so that we wouldn't have to find the metro station in the dark. It took us so long though that that plan was basically shot by the time we found it. I think our exhaustion made it way more difficult than it needed to be. We managed to get some sleep last night though and are ready for another exciting day exploring (in the rain)!

More to come soon... Tale med dig senere!