I returned from Euro Tour to once again, a completely different Denmark. When I had left it was just spring, the leaves had just started growing and it was still quite cold. But when I got back it was summer, everything was so green, the sun was shining and there was warmth in the air. The days were much longer, with the sun setting at around 10pm, maybe later! Most of my first week back I spent sleeping. It had been such an exciting, busy and tiring 3 weeks that I needed those few days to catch up on sleep, unpack and organise everything.
'Rød Grød Med Fløde' - this is a phrase that all foreigners trying to learn Danish are always asked to say, because it is very difficult to say if you aren't Danish! It is actually just the name of an old traditional Danish strawberry dessert that translates to 'Red Porridge with Cream'. I had been asked to say the name many times, but I had never tried the dessert, so when we saw it in the shops my host mum happily bought it so that I could try it. It is basically just stewed up strawberries with sugar that forms a kind of delicious slop, then you can add cream or milk. I think that it tastes great! Turns out you can actually buy it made out of all different types of fruit, apple, blueberries etc.
On Friday 7th June an exchange student from Taiwan that goes to my school, Liu, had a birthday party. It was great to catch up with the other exchange students from my school after euro tour, as well as meet new people from Liu's classes. It was a strange feeling being outside at a party while it was still light outside at 11pm!
The day before the sailing tour, I went to visit my American friend Alison. There was a celebration in her town for the town's harbour, so we went with two of her Danish friends an another exchange student, Montse from Mexico to see the celebration. There was a concert on, for a famous Danish band from around 20 years ago. It was a nice atmosphere, the band playing while the sun was setting, but the older members of the audience enjoyed the music that was playing more than us. So we went and had an ice cream from a little Italian ice cream shop on the harbour. After this, we went and sat on the beach, the sun had just set, so we sat on some blankets and took in the beautiful view. We even saw some dolphins in the water! The next day we went to the sailing tour together.
After the sailing tour on the Friday afternoon, my host family picked me up and we went on a walk around the city of Aalborg before driving back to Viborg.
On Sunday, 16th June I went and had dinner with my next host family. This was a great opportunity to meet the whole family, including their two young boys who are 8 and 11 years old, as well as seeing their house and where I will live.
The last few afternoons I have spent some quality time with my host family, we had a movie night one night, I learnt how to play guitar hero with my host brother and we watched some youtube videos on the TV, of Princess Mary and some Danish comedians making fun of Danish people with bad English.
I made an Australian dinner for my host family one night. I made a typical meat pie with veggies, including mashed potato; we were lucky that it was warm enough to sit outside on the terrace to eat. They really enjoyed the food and asked me for the recipe so they can make it again.
On Thursday 20th, I drove to work with my host dad, who sometimes works in a town called Roskilde which is close to Copenhagen. He dropped me off so that I could spend the say with Sarah, another exchange student from Australia who I hadn't seen since our Intro Camp in February. The weather was so warm, it actually felt like it could pass as a summers day! We spontaneously decided to catch the train into Copenhagen for the day, because it is only around a 20 minute trip. So we did a bit of shopping, then went to Nyhavn to eat lunch. It was very beautiful in the summer time! After lunch we bought some strawberries and ate them with sorbet and frozen yoghurt, sitting on the edge of the water. It was around 28 degrees, which is crazily warm for Denmark. I saw a field of yellow flowers on the walk back from the train station, and I couldn't resist to run through them, like I had seen so many times before in movies. When we got back to Sarah's place, we were really feeling the heat. It was so strange to be feeling hot, but know it was only around 28 degrees! She lives on the edge of a fjord, so we sat on the edge of the water hanging our legs in, of course the water was still ice cold, so it was nice.
On Saturday afternoon we went to a Garden Party, with some of my host parents close family friends that they had actually grown up with. We cooked some bread on the camp fire, and ate dinner together, then while the parents all caught up together the rest of us went and watched a movie. We drove home at around midnight, but I thought it was so crazy because the sun still hadn't completely set! The sky was still a bit light and it was midnight! Coming from Australia where the sun always sets earlier, it is quite a disorienting feeling!
On Sunday afternoon Mette and Kim invited my next host parents, Heidi and Jesper over for afternoon tea, so that they could meet each other. It was nice getting to see them again before I move in with them in the end of July.
Sunday was also a special day in Denmark, called Sankt Hans Day. A few old Danish traditions have been combined together, one that marks the middle of summer by having a huge fire to chase away bad spirits and the tradition of burning witches at the stake. Communities and towns all over Denmark set up a huge bon fire and set a home made witch that looks a bit like a scarecrow on the top, sometimes with small fire crackers that sound like someone screaming when they burn, then they set it on fire and as a community all watch it burn. It is a bit of a strange tradition, even the Danes admit that, but it does bring the community together for an evening every year.
On the way back from Alison's the next day, I had more goodbyes to say. I met up with Charlotte M (from Honduras) and Pinar (from Turkey), before they travel back to their home countries. We had a late lunch and a Magnum together, relaxed and just chatted.
Wednesday 26th June was the second game of State of Origin, so I invited two other Australian girls over, Elle M. and Maddie W., to watch the game together. All proud Queenslanders. We found a link online to watch it on and then plugged the laptop into the TV so we could watch it, almost like normal, on the TV. It was actually great to watch NRL again, especially to watch Queensland win yet again! We all thought it was a bit strange hearing such Australian accents and so many Australian slang words that we hadn't heard in months! After watching origin, we decided to keep the Australian theme and watched some Summer Heights High and Angry Boys. We had such a great night.
My host cousin Caroline and her family live about one hour away, on a farm. On Sunday 30th June we went and had lunch with them. After lunch, Caroline and I went for a ride on two of her Icelandic horses. Her horses are very well trained, so it was fun to be able to try the special gait called the tölt that they can do. It was a lot of fun riding with Caroline, and the scenery was beautiful, through the forest, by fields of deer that her family owns and through huge fields of wheat.
The area that I live in, called Hald Ege, has a very rich and old history. On Monday 1st July, I went on a tour of the area and heard all about the history from a man from my Rotary Club and his wife, while their two young granddaughters came along as well. There were ruins that can be dated back over 1000 years ago, back to the Viking days, as well as a manor house that is hundreds of years old. I found out that the lake near where I live, named Hald Sø (Hald Lake) was formed by the ice age, from an old glacier, when the ice melted. We had a lovely day, seeing the area and then eating lunch at a very old and traditional Danish restaurant.
On Tuesday I went to work with Mette to see what her work is like. She owns her own business and works as a Cranio Sacral Therapist, which is a type of natural therapy that involves mostly lightly massaging the head. I saw her perform some treatments and I also got to try out a treatment for myself. In the afternoon we went to pick up my host brother Casper from his friend's beach house where he has been staying for the weekend. We had dinner there with them and went for a walk along the beach as the sun was setting. There were so many jellyfish on the beach, in Denmark they are not dangerous, but they are so squishy and not that nice to step on.
I spent the next few days packing and preparing for our summer holiday to Austria, that we will begin on Friday!
