Juleferie

Two weeks off calls for a lot excitement and a lot of naps. Now that is Monday morning and I am sitting in my biology class, I want nothing more than to be curled up in bed taking a nap. However, because I have been forced to stay awake through the next four classes, I will entertain myself by recounting my tales from the break.

Jule (Christmas):It didn't feel like Christmas when I woke up on the 24th to the sun shining, blue skies, and green grass. Regardless, the day passed with the normal anxiousness and boredom as it would in the US. I tried to eat as little as possible to save room for dinner and I played 500 with my host siblings. For dinner we had traditional dansk julemad (Danish Christmas food). We ate duck, flæskesteg, normal potatoes, and mini potatoes in a sugary sauce. For dessert, we ate risalamande and Rasmus found the almond. Dinner was cleaned up and everyone was put into a different room while my host dad lit the candles on the tree. It was terrifying. I kept glancing over and wondering how the room hadn't been engulfed in flames yet. Keeping a very close eye on the tree, my host family and I danced around it while singing Christmas songs. We did four or five and then called it quits to open presents. We finished around 10:30 and by then everyone was exhausted.

The 25th, I woke up and you could say it was a Christmas miracle; a blanket of dense, white snow had covered everything in sight. Snow covered Minnesota is nothing compared to snow covered Denmark. The snow here is much more dense so it sticks to everything. I felt as if I was in a winter wonderland. Unfortunately, before New Years, all the snow was gone.

Awkward family photo.

Christmas tree in the morning and at night with lit candles.

SNE!

Nytår (New Years):I have a hard time celebrating the passing of another day when my time here is so limited but regardless, I had a good New Years. While I do wish I could have spent the night with some of my better friends, I made the most of it. At six, the Danish Queen gave her annual speech wishing everyone a good year. After that, I wished my host parents a good night and they walked over to our neighbors. An hour later, I was in a taxi on my way to Lorenzo's house. I watched while they set off fireworks and eventually we watched this five minute clip called "The 90th Birthday" or something like that. Being the only year that I will get to see it, I was very intrigued but everyone else in the room was talking or quoting the clip. At midnight, we walked down to the lake and the fireworks were magical. Take any image or memory of fourth of July fireworks and throw it out the window. Essentially, the entire lake was lighting off fireworks so just imagine a circle of fireworks firing simultaneously. The circle of glorious explosions lasted for about half an hour and then died down to random bursts of fireworks that continued throughout the night. The pictures I captured do not adequately depict the magic of them so you are going to have to use your imagination.

I stayed at Lorenzo's so the next morning as I was walking through town to the bus stop, it looked like a deserted war zone. Trash and the remnants of fireworks were strewed throughout the streets and at one point, I saw a bike lodged in the high branches of a tree. The sky was a cloudy gray and very few cars passed me in my twenty minutes of walking. It was an extraordinary feeling to be the only one witnessing the destruction the night caused and to be one of the few that were awake before the majority of the country.

Goodbyes:It hasn't actually hit me that on Saturday some of my best friends will be flying home and I don't know the next time I will see them. To make the most of our last few days together, a group of about twenty of us met up in Aarhus for a day of hygge. We spent the day bouncing around the shops in Aarhus, drinking coffee in Baresso, and running around ARoS. While we were "celebrating" a sad occasion, it was one of the happiest days of my exchange. Afterwards, my main group of friends broke off and had a sleepover in Grenå. We spent the night signing each others books and flags, playing paranoia, and eating two minute noodles. Yesterday, we had the Farvel Get Together and the atmosphere of the entire day was surprisingly positive. Essentially, they put us in a room for a six hours with the notion of us finding our own things to do. The first hour or so we were behaved, but as the day wore on, dancing progressed and sliding across the floor on bean bag chairs emerged. Goodbyes were rushed but I am heading up to Aalborg tomorrow so I will have a full day to say make a meaningful goodbye.

Hygge in Baresso.

Americans.

In between the big events, I saw Exodus and The Hobbit, I shot a gun for the first time, I restarted Dexter and am currently working my way through season two, I went ice skating in Aalborg with the most horrible skates, I went to another Julefrokost, and took far too many naps. I enjoyed this break very much and am not looking forward to having to get up before ten for the rest of the week.

Successfully hit a can from 15 feet away!