The local newspaper has published another article, this time about me and my host family. Lots of people come up to me and say that they saw me in the paper or have read about me, or talk to me about things that they have read about; it's a little bit exciting. There was a little mix up from what we said and what the journalist wrote, when she wrote that because my host family has an Australian in the house we now eat kangaroo and crocodile meat, which we definitely don't!
There are a number of new exchange students at my school here, so I am no longer the only one! There is an Australian girl called Kelsey from Victoria, who has also joined the gym so we go together sometimes. Two girls from Italy, Roberta and Federica, a girl from Thailand, Mynd, and a boy from Japan, Miki. We have all met up, and went to have a bubble tea together after school one day which gave us the chance to talk about where we were from and to talk about life in Denmark.
My host brother, Villads, goes to Karate twice a week, so I thought I would go with him to try it one day. It was the first time that I had tried karate and I thought it was pretty fun. It was a bit hard to remember the moves in the sequence that we were learning, but I think by the end of the lesson I got it.
On Friday the 20th September we had the Rotary District Conference. Our district had organised something for the exchange students to participate in, which was also a good opportunity to see each other and talk to some of the 'Newbies'. I caught the train with Victoria (another exchange student from Australia) to Thisted which took around 3 hours. We had some lunch and looked around the town, it turns out it is quite small. We met up with another exchange student that lives there, Annie from Taiwan, she showed us some of the good shops. We met up with all of the other exchange students later on, and caught a bus together to the conference. We ate dinner, had a fair bit of free time and also did some activities; it was a great chance to get to know some of our newbies. The next morning we saw Andrew and Karina again (our guides from Euro Tour), which was great. I had to leave early so was picked up not that long after breakfast.
The reason that I had to leave early was because I was leaving on my school trip, to Ireland! On the Saturday, my class and 2 of our teachers caught the train from Viborg to Copenhagen. The trip took about 4.5 hours, so it was time for dinner once we got there. We stayed overnight at a hostel, before making our way to the airport after breakfast the next morning.
We were all very excited! The flight took around 2 hours from Copenhagen to Dublin. We flew over the ocean for a while and then over England, which was cool to look down and see. When we arrived in Dublin, the weather was nice, it was sunny and over 20'C (warmer than Denmark). At first it felt strange to hear and see English again, it took a little bit of time for me to be used to speaking English to people again, I almost spoke Danish to a few shop keepers and waiters! But after a while I enjoyed it, and of course listening to the Irish accent! Another thing that was interesting to see again was cars driving on the left hand side! At first it felt a little strange, because I am used to being on the right hand side in Denmark now, but it didn't take long until it felt normal again.
We went to our hostel that was close to the centre of Dublin. That evening, a few of the girls from my class and I went and ate dinner together in a nice Irish restaurant. On our walk back, we saw a lot of Irish people celebrating in the streets, there had been the grand final of the very popular Gaelic football, and it was obvious to see that the light blue team won and were celebrating. There were crowds of dressed up football supporters filling pubs and then also filling the street around it. We saw a group of people outside a pub holding the winning cup and lots of fans were getting their photo taken near it or trying to get the chance to touch it.
The next day we did some sight-seeing, we saw The House of Oireachtas- the Irish parliament house, Trinity College and Dublin Castle. We got the chance to sit on the grass in a big round park that was near the castle, it was great to relax for a bit in the perfect sunny weather. We then had free time for the rest of the afternoon, which most of us used to shop, enjoying prices that are like half the price of Danish prices! It was also great to see foods in the shopping centre that we have in Australia and I have missed in Denmark.
The next day we went on a bus tour to Belfast, while the weather was typically Irish and foggy, we could still see enough. We drove through the countryside, stopping at a little town called Drogheda on the way looking in a big and very old church that was called St Peters, visiting Monasterboice (a very old cemetery in the countryside with two high cross statues) and also 2 large stone arrangements that are ancient grave sites, but now are funnily enough, in the middle of a golf course. One of them had a huge stone on top and it is said to be good luck to throw a stone up there and get it to stay. So of course every one started throwing stones around trying to land one on top of the rock, it is not as easy as it may look, but I got one to stay on my second try.
On our last day in Ireland, we went to a museum that was an old town house done up just as it would have been in the olden days. Then in the afternoon we caught a train to a peninsula off Dublin called Howth, where we went on a walk. We walked across sometimes rough and rocky terrain, along small paths through the coastal countryside, overlooking large rocky cliffs that fell away to the blue ocean. It was a very picturesque view, the walk took us on around a 10km loop of the peninsula and back to where we started.
We flew back to Denmark on the Thursday, after an amazing trip. It was raining in Dublin as we flew out, so that made leaving maybe a little more bearable. But we were also welcomed back to Denmark by a chill in the air as the weather had gotten colder while we were gone and was now reaching maximum temperatures of around 12 during the day.
Shortly after getting back from Ireland, I went on a trip with 2 other Australian exchange students, Grace and Maddie, that live on the same island as me in Denmark, to Copenhagen. The trip takes around 4.5 hours on a train and costs about AU$60 (even with a student discount card I have!), which is why we don't get to go there so often. We spent our time seeing the sights of Copenhagen, shopping, catching up with other exchange students that live on the island Sjælland- that Copenhagen is on, some of which we hadn't seen since intro camp, so it was very 'hyggeligt' or 'nice/cosy/full of happiness' (the word hygge doesn't translate properly to English, but is a great word!). We had a great weekend, staying with one of the other Australian girls that lives close to Copenhagen. While shopping in the city, we saw some of the Queen's guards and Danish army marching in the streets.
On the Tuesday, we went to see Macklemore & Ryan Lewis in concert! This was actually the main reason for us to travel to Copenhagen, and was long-awaited, as Grace and I bought the tickets in May. My second host family's daughter Ditte met us in Copenhagen to join us for the concert. We waited for a long time at the concert venue to get a good place, it was called Tap 1 and was actually a big old Carlsberg brewery building they had turned into a venue for concerts and performances. We did wait maybe 5 hours in the line, eating pizza for dinner there on the steps; Macklemore's manager even came out and chatted to people, he told me that my pizza looked weird because it had spinach on top of it. Our long wait paid off however, and when let through the gates into a room that almost looked like a warehouse inside, we grabbed each other's hand and sprinted to the stage, along with a couple of hundred other people. We were positioned only around 4 people back, centre stage; which was a good position in a room with only standing places and around 6000 people. The concert was amazing, Macklemore is a great entertainer and not only played great songs and pumped the crowd up, but had some really good things to say. Naturally, it was so much fun when he played Thrift Shop while dancing around on stage in a huge fur coat throwing old tshirts into the crowd. Then he walked out onto the crowd, with people holding him up, he was right above us.
September has certainly been a good month!
