It’s true. I may still find it an absolute pain to type English on Danish keyboards (though admittedly it is mountains easier to type in Danish on Danish keyboards… no Google-copy-pasting the æ, ø, and å), but I feel quite at home here. Crazy that I will be going Home home in just TWO WEEKS AND A FEW HOURS. GET READY, AMERICA.

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The reason I am in such a jittery and CAPITAL mood is that I just finished my oral Danish exam. Man. I was nervous as a cockroach. (Assuming those things are nervous.) I was second out of the class, and we had to have a conversation in Danish with our teacher while another Danish teacher sat taking notes while simultaneously recording our conversation. Gah!!! I’ve been mumbling to myself all morning, and my host dad Jesper and host sister Maria were quizzing me over breakfast. (Hvordan har du i dag?  … Godt, men jeg er træat, fordi i går, holde jeg fest.) Jesper, at least, said he was impressed by my learning as much as I have without them speaking Danish around me at home. I am quite impressed, as well, let me tell you. I’m nervous, though, because I just realized that in the heat of the moment, I forgot to use any advanced vocabulary and sentence structures. I was just trying to have a natural conversation!!!!! Ugh… I’m really sad about it, but I’m hoping my fluency and conversational attitude made up for it. Cross your fingers.

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Earlier this week, I was actually buying Maria a birthday present at a little jewelry boutique and had the longest and first real Danish conversation ever with a real Dane in a real Context and it made me real Happy. Normally, Danes hear my poor Danish pronunciations and immediately switch to English, despite my best efforts to practice out in the real world. This time, however, I was the only person in the store, and I guess the lady must have either just been really nice or really wanted to sell me something. Either way, she succeeded! At both! We talked about how I was getting something for my sister’s birthday (min søsters fødselsdag), what I was looking for, what color (guld, sølv). It was actually fantastic, and I was in a state of euphoria the whole time. I’m pretty sure my eyes were about as wide as my face would allow for the greater part of the conversation, but she never switched to English. Not once! My Danish failed me when I finally decided on a necklace (uh….. that one…). I kicked myself internally, but she pretended not to notice. Then as she was ringing me up, she said, “Danish is hard, huh?” (But in Danish of course. I just can’t remember her exact phrasing.) She is basically my new bestie. I was failed yet again when she said, Hav an god dag, and I forgot how to say, “You too.” So I did the next best thing and ran away. Baby steps. Baby steps.

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Alrighty. Current events. Maria’s birthday was on Tuesday, so she’s a whopping seventeen!!! Can’t believe she’s younger than my brother. That night, instead of joining her birthday dinner, though, I had another Scan|Design event: Thanksgiving dinner! ‘Twas delicious and sustainable and local and I was way too full by the time I got home at midnight. Those Danes really like to take their time at dinner parties, let me tell you. The restaurant was called MadMad MadBodega. I originally thought they were crazy for using the same word three times, with some sort of restaurant stutter, but Tessa enlightened me and we were informed that two of the “Mad”s are actually Mads, which means “food” in Danish. Clever little buggers. Unfortunately, I just discovered that I have not a single picture from the event. We traded our coats for drinks as we walked in the door, and I left my phone in my pocket! You’ll just have to imagine the deliciousness I guess.

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I found another alcohol I liked, too. Some sort of pink Champagne cousin. And we had to participate in a Thanksgiving trivia to decide who got to break the wish bones. There were two, and my team didn’t win either!

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On Wednesday, Jackson and I had quite the adventures in København. First, we went on a field study with my European Art class to see a Japanese art exhibit at the Danish Design Museum. My teacher introduced him to the whole class and kept trying to get him to elaborate on his vast Japanese cultural knowledge.

I found this gem out in the lobby. The chair was cool, too.

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Then we went on a field study with my Danish class. We watched “The Royal Affair,” a fantastic Danish movie about… a royal affair which took place between the Danish queen and the king’s personal physician some two hundred years ago. Apparently some of the affair took place about a ten minutes’ walk from my home in Birkerød at a little hunting cabin! Highly recommend the movie with subtitles!!! Afterwards, we had a tour of the Royal Stables and the reception rooms of Christiansborg Slot, conducted by none other than my Royalty teacher Stephen. Oh, Stephen…

The castle

One of the royal horses! They liked me. And they’re a special Portuguese breed which are born black and turn whiter with age to become more pure and noble. #knowledge

Thrones from the nineteenth century, I believe?

Her majesty the Queen with the Royal silver lions

Okay I thought this part was the coolest. The great hall of Christiansborg is lined with tapestries that were made about fifteen years ago. Normally I find tapestries horribly dull and boring, not least because of their lacking color schemes and solemn themes. But these guys! Wow. So modern and colorful and artsy! I love it! This one is actually depicting the family and characters involved in the Royal Affair!!!

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To wrap up the night, we got some Danish pølsers and headed to Tivoli!

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I gotta use up that silly season pass I bought, after all. It was fantastic. Tivoli is about a thousand times better when you do the rides. They are intensely ridiculous. We stayed away from the big coaster, because I couldn’t handle the loop-de-loops after all the other spinny and stomach-turning rides we went on. Right off the bat, we tried the ride I’ve been eyeing all year: one of those big swings, but it rises up to about the height of an Extreme Scream. Fifteen or twenty stories, maybe? I thought it would just offer a calm view of the park, but I was wrong. That swing was absolute madness. Madness. Madness. MadMad Madness. It was like the Extreme Scream except that instead of a single drop, we were enduring an endless whirlpool in mid-air, with no clue as to when it would stop, and it was raining, so I felt exactly as I’m sure Harry Potter felt during that one really nasty Quidditch match in his third year of school. The brooms helped, too:

Tehe. Just kidding. Those brooms were there for Halloween, and I stole this picture from Tessa went we went about a month ago. For the Christmas season, the chairs were just adorned with lights! And terror!

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There were lots of other rides, including Jackson’s supposed first Ferris Wheel, a children’s carousel (the ride operator got quite the kick out of Jackson), and a water boat game where we had to compete to laser-shoot a bunch of light targets on our journey through a gold and diamond mine. At one point, there was a waterfall in the middle of our path, and they hadn’t warned us, and I had my book and phone with me! This was the result:

It was actually just a trick waterfall, and it turned off right before we went under. Those sneaky Danes…

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Thursday was Thanksgiving, and I somehow landed the job as hostess. And guess what? WE COOKED A TURKEY. A REAL LIVE (not live. it was dead.) TURKEY. FROM FRANCE. The cleaning consisted mostly of me reading from the internet and yelling at Jackson while he responded with questions such as, “What are the giblets? Where? Where are they supposed to be? Which side is the head? There is no inside! Oh, these? Woah, what’s this?” It was pretty great. And it tasted great, too.

That’s my man… (He gave up and let one of the moms cut the turkey after he got past the drumstick.)

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We had Mikayla and Tonia’s host families over too, and we organized it potluck-style. There were also four pies. Pure insanity, I tell you. And only two champagne glasses were broken! And I only broke one of them! Yay!

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The night was actually such a success. We should have taken a group picture, but I didn’t think of it until just now! And Maria had to miss because of work. I was sad, but she was pretty excited for leftovers when she got home.

I made that Apple pie! Crust from scratch, of course!

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I have one more class today, and then I’m going to run home, pack, bring Jackson back to Copenhagen, hang out with Brian from UW who is studying at NTNU with Jackson who is here right now, fly to Belgium, take a train to Lille, France, and sleep. Wow. Here we go….

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Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa