School

I'm sitting in Biology class right now. Shush, of course I'm paying attention. I'm just very good at multitasking. I thought I'd tell you a bit about my school.

Rightio. So, I go to EG, which stands for Esbjerg Gymnasium. There are about 900 students here, I think. I'm in the second year - they always put exchange students in the second year, so that people actually notice there's someone new - in an Art/Music class, of which I take the Music line.

... And now I'm actually at home, because class finished unexpectedly. That happens a lot, teachers can just decide for themselves when to let students go/cancel/move classes. I've noticed the system here is very egalitarian. Teachers and students all say hi to each other in the halls, we call our teachers by their first names, the principal stands in the canteen greeting everyone as they walk in at 8 o'clock, stuff like that. Classes are left unlocked most of the time, because they really trust the students here. All the lost property is just left on a table under the stairs, for the same reason.

The structure of the school day goes like this:

08:15-09:45 - Module 1
09:45-10:05 - Break
10:05-11:40 - Module 2
11:40-12:05 - Break
12:05-13:40 - Module 3
13:40-13:45 - Break
13:45-15:15 - Module 4

The modules are all 90 minutes long, more or less, so often teachers give us breaks in the middle. During these breaks, some of us go down to the canteen (which is always open), while others go outside to smoke. Smoking is perfectly acceptable at school, provided it's done in the designated areas (i.e. anywhere outside, with the exception of a few balconies). No-one cares that most of the kids are underage.

There's pretty much no such thing as IDing here. Seriously, even if you're obviously about 15, you can just walk into the corner store and buy a packet of cigarettes. Alcohol is the same. You have to be 18 to drink in bars, but only 16 to buy it at the supermarket, and as the age is so low anyway, no-one bothers to check for ID.

The drinking culture here is interesting. Kinda like New Zealand... only it's less of a "you're not cool if you don't drink" and more of a "you're not a true Dane if you don't get absolutely pissed off your face". On Friday night, a girl in my class asked if I was drunk. I said no, and she promptly handed me a bottle and said "you need to drink this." It's not even that they drink a lot because they like drinking alcohol... some of my classmates drank something that they said was disgusting, just because it would get them drunk really quickly.

Okay, I think that about covers my school life... and the part of Danish life that should not be mixed with school. Next time: Patriotism! Look forward to it.

Change of Family

Hey all,

I moved families today. Long story short, I didn't get on with my previous family due to a combination of my host mother trying too hard and me not trying hard enough. So I've moved out of their house and I'm staying with my contact person until we can find me a new family. It's all been very stressful, but I'm glad to be out and it's only gonna get better from here.

In other news, school is fantastic. My class is awesome, I've got great friends and I'm learning quite a bit of Danish. It's all been really fun, aside from occasionally being a little bit bored cause I don't understand the lectures. Fortunately, I do subjects like music and drama, which are pretty easy to understand.

I'll let you know how it goes finding a new family. I'm currently staying in Varde, which is not too convenient for school, but I'll manage. It just means getting up a bit earlier. I've got no idea how long I'll be here for. Could be a week, could be a month. Who knows?

Vi ses!

Finally Here

Hi all!

I'm in Esbjerg, finally. Took me two days of flights and a four-day orientation camp, but at last I'm here. My host family is as awesome as I anticipated. At the moment I'm trying to get everything sorted, but it's REALLY difficult because I don't have my CPR number (kind of like Social Security, I guess). So I can't open a bank account, join the library or even get myself a sim card for my phone.

Contact with home is gonna be no problem, I have free access to the computer. Well actually, in that case, contact with home may turn out to be the biggest problem of all. I'm supposed to limit my internet time, so that I can fully engage here. Don't worry, you'll still hear from me though :) I would never neglect you, my darlings.

HOST FAMILY!!!

Just got my host family! I'm going to be living with the Hundeboells, in Esbjerg, which is on the west coast of Denmark. I'm so excited! My house (and 'tis a hus, not a lejlighed [apartment]) is in a nice little suburb, with red-brick houses... so cute! School looks like it's biking distance away, not sure how flat or otherwise the streets are, so that may turn out to be interesting... :D

I have two brothers. Thomas is 18, Jonas is 27. Pets were specified as "bird and fish." Wonder what kind of bird. My father is an afdelingschef, which Google tells me means "department." wtf? Googlefail. My mother is a skoleleder. That means headmistress. Perhaps she's headmistress of Esbjerg Gymnasium. That would be interesting! xD

Anyways. I'm so excited now!

Edit: More Googlefail. It's my father that's a headmaster. My mother is actually part of a mentoring programme dealing with kids who have bad relationships with adults. Kind of like a big brother thing I guess.

Counting Down...

Less than a month to go! Still waiting on host family and all that, but it's all good, I should know soon. Hopefully.

Anyways, I've been mega-busy for the past little while getting things sorted. As I said this morning, my busyness between now and leaving is an exponential growth graph. And it's only about the day before I leave that it turns into a negative parabola. Yeah, I'm a maths nerd. Or rather, a calc nerd, cause stats makes my brain implode.

So much to do. There's iPods to fix, and suitcases to weigh, and clothes to buy, and friends to farewell. Busy busy busy.

I'll let you know when I have my host family.

Farvel!