Today I was very excited because as I mentioned I got a chance to sleep in a little bit, which is definitely necessary after the hectic schedule that I have been on this first week. I was able to set my alarm at nine, and then I had to get ready because my first task this morning was to somehow make it over to the Hillerod Kommune so that I could get registered for a CPR card. I had looked up the travel plan that I needed to take on rejseplannen.dk – a travel website, that includes train lines and bus numbers to take. I got on my first bus just fine, but then I had to get a second bus at the station. I found it, but I only knew the name of the stop I had to go to but no idea where it was. When I got on, I asked the bus driver to stop at that stop and he said yes, so I figured that everything would be fine. However, once we arrived near the stop, he asked me by pointing if a particular spot was where I had to go. However, I had no idea because I had not been to the Kommune yet. But he said he would go ahead down there to drop me off. Turns out it was where I had to go. Once I went inside the building, it wasn’t really that difficult, since I had all of my paper work filled out and ready to go. It probably only took me a total of about 10 minutes. Then I headed back outside to the bus stop. Now the funny part about this was that I was getting back on the exact same bus, so it was the same driver who dropped me off. When I was getting back on the bus he asked if I had found everything and if all was okay. I said yes and gave a little laugh. Overall, it wasn’t that bad, and it was something that had to be done. I am clearly still getting used to the bus system though. It is a little trickier than the train because you have to know where to get off and when that is, because you have to press a “STOP” button to alert the driver to stop.
Once I arrived backed at the station, I headed over to the train to make my way into the city, since I did have two new classes this afternoon as well. I did get there with about an hour or so, but that was just enough time for me to eat my lunch and do some random things on my To-Do list.
I then went to my Danish Language and Culture class around 1:00. The nice thing about this class was that I knew almost everyone because they were all in my survival Danish classes from orientation. It is also the same professor too, which is nice. It doesn’t seem like it is going to be too bad, however Danish is a very hard language to learn, so the speaking and listening will probably be difficult.
The second class that I had today was my Leadership Across Cultures class. Unfortunately, our actual professor could not be there because he has unexpectedly had to travel to Japan (I think) for business for a few weeks. However, we do have a substitute professor, and she seems very nice. The first class was rather informal, and we simply talked about some of the cultural differences that we had each experienced so far after being in Denmark for about a week.
My class then ended around 4:00 and then I had to figure out what I was going to do for the evening. DIS had planned a welcome party for all students to attend at 8:00-11:00, so I knew I wanted to go to that, however that was 4 hours from that time, and I thought that it wasn’t worth it to take the train all the way home and then return again. It would just feel like a lot of time on the train. So I decided to call my friend Kelli who lives in a Kollegium (like a dormitory of single room, studio apartments) only about 15-20 minutes away from school. She however was already at her Kollegium, so I had to get there myself on yet another bus. She gave me directions, which helped to extent. However, I did get off a stop to early because once again I couldn’t read the sign of where I needed to stop. It wasn’t that bad though because I could see the next stop (the one that I should have got off at) just down the street. I made my way over to her building and she came and let me in. We then just talked for a while, and she introduced me to a bunch of other DIS students who live in her Kollegium. (It must be nice to have so many other students near where you live, however I am still very happy with my choice to stay with a host family. There are definitely pros and cons for each.)
At about 8:30, everyone was ready to go (Taylor also joined up with us at Kelli’s), so we headed over to the bus to get back into town. The club that DIS had rented out for the party was a lot of fun. We were all just dancing and having a good time for a couple of hours. However, I did have to leave at about 11:00 so that I would be able to catch my train and then bus to get home. Kelli had mentioned earlier that I could sleep on her floor, but she didn’t have any blankets or anything and I really wanted to sleep in my bed and take my time getting up in the morning.
So I left the club around 11:00 and caught the train and then the bus with no trouble at all. It was definitely nice to finally get back home after a long day and curl into my bed and get a good night sleep.
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