Arriving to Copenhagen

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I have finally settled into my new home for the next 4 months!!

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Saturday, January 14th

     I am pleased to say that my plane ride went very smoothly and I arrived on time at 7am this morning. After the baggage claim, we were greeted by DIS representatives who led us across the street to a giant meeting room inside the Hilton Hotel where we were later separated and shuttled off based on the location of our living accommodations. I am living in a Kollegium dorm that houses 300 single bedrooms, 16 of which are DIS students and the rest being Danish university students. The Kollegium is about a 45 minute commute, 35 minutes by bus and 10 minutes by foot from my DIS classes. I am even hoping to get a bike in a month or two when the weather gets a couple degrees warmer because experiencing the bike culture in Denmark is definitely something I want to try.

      When I got to the Kollegium, the 15 other DIS students and I were greeted with welcoming snacks and a tour given by our SRA (residential assistant). I am very excited because my SRA is nice and full of energy that she wants to put towards organizing culture-enriching activities for the DIS students in our Kollegium to experience. After settling in, the other DIS students and myself were kept busy with welcoming activities until the evening so that we wouldn't be tempted to take a nap and throw off our sleeping schedule. The combination of being so tired from traveling and eating copious amounts of pizza (they ordered me a vegan one :)! ) made me sleep like a rock that night. 

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Sunday, January 15th 

    We started off the day by having breakfast with all the DIS students at my Kollegium. The breakfast was a typical Danish breakfast with lots of bread and spreads options as well as some fruit. We spent the rest the afternoon doing a scavenger hunt where our Kollegium split up into 4 teams and explored our town as well as its stores and transportation. It was entertaining to some groups (including my own group) getting lost but eventually figuring it out as we got used to the transportation system and the cell phone navigation applications. 

     Later that evening I went with some people I met from my Kollegium to Nyhavn. It was beautiful to see the water and buildings at night time as well as trying out one of the nearby restaurants, an Italian restaurant where we got pizza. 

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Monday, January 16th

      Our first collective DIS event was this morning....orientation! We met inside a beautiful building that was once used for large circus performances but now is used for hosting other large events. I really appreciated the speakers at the orientation because their talks gave me motivation and inspiration for how to make the most out of my semester here. The head of DIS made a good point that it is tempting to go to a new place and make it is similar to what one is used to (ie. searching for common American foods at a Danish food store instead of exploring Danish alternatives or traditional foods). However, despite this being the more comfortable route one should instead broaden one's horizons and explore new options. After all part of studying abroad is stepping outside of one's comfort zone!

     Another talk that I got a lot out of was a talk by a Lithuanian woman who moved to Denmark 5 years ago. She said she came to Denmark with so many preconceived ideas of what the country and people would be like. What I thought was such a great tip washer suggest for us DIS students to neglect any cultural assumptions we may have prior to our arrival in Denmark and instead make observations of our own based off of our post-arrival experiences. I thought her connection between cultural assumptions and Denmark being known as the happiest country in the world was very interesting. This title was given to Denmark based on a list of standards; however, there is no true way to fairly quantify an emotion across the world because each country has their own perspectives on what constitutes happiness based on location, standard of living, and many other factors. Just as it is difficult to make assumptions about another country's level of happiness, one shouldn't make assumptions about other characteristics of a country because it can hinder ones ability to truly understand how its people, culture and country work. With that said, I look forward to discovering for myself the Danish culture. 

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