Well it's finally the last day of orientation. These past few days have been so much like the first few days of freshman year, it's so weird! There are 900 American college students wandering around the same few streets in Copenhagen wearing the token DIS black backpack we were given and the little booklet with the map of the area and our building locations in front of their face. It's a little bit embarrassing. And hilarious. The streets here are a little harder to navigate because they are kind of windy and the names change a lot at the intersections. So you might be trying to get to Bispetorvet 1-3 (yes that is a real address) but that's not always the name of the road where you are trying to turn quite yet. You might need to look for Alexandersalen which will turn into Bispetorvet in a few km. Needless to say, I've walked in lots of circles.
The part I do like that is very orientation-esque is that everyone just wants to make friends and talk to everyone. It's still at the point where it doesn't feel weird or awkward to just tag along with some randoms you just met or anything like that, most of the kids in my program are super friendly. I like that everyone is so open...it hasn't gotten cliquey yet and I really hope it doesn't ever!
Monday was probably my favorite day so far. We were divided into teams and sent out on kind of a scavenger hunt, which was really more throwing us into the city with a map and telling us to visit 5 locations that were important to the city. The big ones we stopped at were the Royal Palace, The Royal Playhouse/Opera House, and the Parliament. We learned a lot at all three of the locations and they all have interesting stories about why they are in a certain spot in the city etc. I hope to learn a lot more about that in my History of Copenhagen class as well. The Parliament building was really interesting because it basically stole the location that the former Royal Palace used to occupy before it burned down a long long time ago, basically as a symbol that with the new constitutional monarchy including the parliament was replacing the immense power of the king. The Royal Palace didn't really look much like a typical palace for this reason. Apparently they moved in to these Parisian fancy apartments as a temporary place to live while their palace was being re-built, but instead it became their permanent home. It is still beautiful and there are some awesome gardens near the water.
Tuesday we didn't have as much to do except for an etiquette seminar for an hour talking about social norms in the Danish culture. Apparently Danes are very honest and hard working. They only work on average 37 hours a week but when they are at work they are extremely productive and don't really do the whole social chit chat thing. So they still do a lot of work, but they are actually working for all the hours they are at work, which I think is definitely different than in the US. It seems overall that Danes come off as being cold and anti-social but apparently they just usually don't go out of their way to try to talk to people, and have a pretty established set of friends and family that they highly value. But, if they are approached, they are usually extremely helpful and kind, which we have experienced multiple times when asking for directions.
Today we applied for our Danish residence permits. I, of course, am THAT girl who somehow messed up following the directions that they sent to us at least 5 times before we left, though. I knew a long time ago that I was going to need 2 passport sized photos to apply for the permit, and I thought I had successfully gone to CVS, printed out the awkward self-shot that I had taken against a white wall, and made 2 great passport pictures. I found out this morning that I was wrong. Something must have gone wrong and of course, one of my "pictures" that I failed to inspect before leaving was blank. I only had one picture. Great. Luckily, once I got there the rest of the process was pretty painless. The interesting part was navigating my way to a bus station about 20 min away quickly before the immigration people left, where there are photo booths that take your picture specifically for passports. It was exactly what I needed, but alas, 100dkk (about $20) down the drain for these pictures.
Up next today will be my psychology orientation just for my class, and then hopefully getting some homework done (eww I can't believe I already have assignments for my first day) and getting a good night's rest before my first day of classes tomorrow! I can't believe I'm starting classes again already I feel like just yesterday I was listening to Emig bark about debits and credits and Grover turning her ss into zz's like "azzume." Good times. I have some pictures that I'll put up hopefully later tonight.
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