Kaz.I.Danmark

I officially love my life in København.  I got back from London yesterday, after racing and finishing SECOND in our division at Head of the River – this was after quite literally the longest race warm up and race course I have ever experienced.  After a full hours warm up rowing against the stream, and a massive boat back-up near the start line, we raced a full 6.84KM, nearly thirty minutes of full pressure intensity.  Halfway through, I couldn’t bring myself to tell my rowers we still had three and a half thousand meters left to go, and apparently it didn’t end up mattering, since (selfølgelig) my girls kicked major ass without a complaint, and ended up walking through five boats – one men’s boat – and finishing only behind Cambridge.

Besides having an incredible race, I finally appreciate that I got to spend four days in London with some of the coolest girls I’ve met in Denmark.  I hadn’t realized it at first, but connecting with natives in a country you’re visiting is so much more fulfilling than with international students, since you’re making connections to a place as well as people.  Simply said, if I came back to Denmark after my year abroad, I would have someones to come back to as well.  One rower in particular has proven a somewhat rogue soulmate, and has the ability to ignore the premise of stereotypes and has actual conversations with me.  Not to mention, she makes me laugh like I laugh with my friends back home, which is something I missed and needed more than I thought I did.  It’s funny how you can find genuine friends in the most unexpected of places.  Thank God for rowing.

Fortunately, I still have plenty of people that are more entertainment than anything – case in point, my Danish class.  I guess when you have a class as randomly selected as a language course in a foreign country, you can’t help but get a pretty eclectic group of people.  It’s getting distracting how weird people are – it’s like a study in awkward situations, and I just sit back and enjoy.  One girl has the tendency to be obnoxious whenever she opens her mouth, since she’s “that girl” that either a) knows everything about whatever subject you’re talking about, even if it’s a language she doesn’t speak and b) hasn’t got a clue everyone can’t stand her.  She was given a simple task of writing a letter to a prospective blind-date, describing how she might be look so they can find her at said location at said time.  She proceeded to write what must have been close to ten paragraphs, describing in painful detail every physical nuance of her fictional character, and drew a picture complete with crayon and labels.  I literally had to put my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing and saying something very unkind, which I assume (from the wandering and cynical eyes of everyone else) was what many of the other students did as well.  Meanwhile, she sat smugly and chatted with the teacher, as if she had cemented her place as her favorite.  It was, in a word, hysterical.

The other students are like watching a badly made sitcom, with stereotypical characters such as:

- The girl who wears leopard print camisole dresses, stiletto platform heels and forties-esque bouffant hair and asks not once, but twice, how to say “piercer and tattoo artist” in Danish

- The bestie Spaniards with Fabio hair that seriously need to rethink their shaving methods

- The “I’m here in vacation and I think I’ll take this Danish class “for fun” but actually it’s because I don’t have any friends here” girl

… and last, but certainly not least …

- The “That’s What She Said” guy

All that’s missing is a TV set and a live studio audience.  Thankfully, the teacher is refreshingly kind and helpful, and has new and more inventive ways of engaging us during class (easier said than done when it’s a three hour course); today, she put on a blindfold and asked us to direct her in Danish around obstacles she had set up around the room.  This was after she dressed up as a helpless old lady, complete with a cane and a scarf that looked like furniture upholstery.  Nevertheless, it was effective, and I can actually use words like til venstre, til højre, lindud and drej in sentences now.

Right now, life is good.  Awkward, and strange, and nothing like I expect, but good.  Very good.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 4:58 PM and is filed under Embarrassment, Language, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.