| I have returned in France again
and am staying in e new host family. I will tell you about everything at
the end of the month. Here is how the past few months have gone by; October was quite a difficult month for me. As usual I attended school accpet I just couldnt establish how I was going to make friends considering that I could not speak the language very well. Being that I am American I am well known throughout the school, however being known and having friends are two different things. For some time my only friend was Eliza Brannigan the other American who is from New York. However after a few weeks I slowly started to have a better relationship with those of my class. Although we began to get to know eachother there was still one major issue, our language barriers. Due to the fact that my french was limited and that there english was limited we had difficulties in communicating. Due to their interest in americans they encouraged and helped me to learn, speak, and understand french. November was alittle easier than October. By November I began to understand basic conversations in french which helped me to become more social with those of my class. In November I established who my friends were and we began working on the growth of our friendship. In the beggining of November my friends organized a day in Geneva/Switzerland. After getting permission from the rotary, we planned everything, and were on our way to Geneva. There was about eight of us including the other american exchange student, Eliza whom attended this outing. The day was truly amazing. Geneva was so different from the city in which we are living in. Geneva was like a mini version of a downtown US city. Although quite small, Geneva has a bit of everyhting in it. There were American fast foods, Shopping outlets, a variety of restaurants from various cultures, people in the streets playing music, and on top of all of this we had a great view of lac lemon which seperated France from Switzerland. We basically walked through the streets of Geneva all day and got a touch of how life in Geneva is. In November the rotary organized a Thanksgiving dinner for the american exchange students. Although the food was quite different from an American thanksgiving dinner it was nice that the rotary remember Thanksgiving for us Americans. December was quite an interesting month; In early December my first host family took me and the other American to Europes biggest disco tech, Macumba. The environment of the club was quite different than that of an American club. The club was quite strange from the start but what topped it offwas when we saw people people who may have been grandparents dancing to techno. It was definitly fun to see and experience a night out at europes biggest club. In the middle of December,with permission of the rotary I was given the opportunity to spend my christmas holidays in Denmark. When I first arrived in Denmark I met my aunt at the airport and she took me to the train station because i was going to spend my first week in southern Denmark. There i stayed with one of my dads childhood friends in which I am good friends with his son as well. Unfortunatly he was working, , so we didnt get to spend as much time together as I was hoping for, but however he did manage to make some time for me in which we went to downtown Vejle and walked around the city. After spending a week with him and his family, I took a train to Copenhagen where I would be staying with my cousin. It was really great to see my cousin Veronica again. We spent all of our days together either walking the streets of Copenhagen or even staying in the house and just catching up on everything that has happened in the past few years. Being that Christmas was right around the corner we ended up doing alittle bit of Christmas shopping as well. A few days before Christmas my aunt bought a Christmas tree in which my cousin and I decorated. In denmark they decorate their Christmas trees with real candles along with antique ornaments and little danish flags with in fact is just tradition. When we finished decorating our tree I finally took time to actually look at the tree and realized that the Danish christmas tree is quite different from an American Christmas tree in the sense that the branches were much thinner and the tree itself wasnt as bushy. On Christmas Eve, my cousin, my aunt, and I decided that we were going to go to church. After church we began to prepare ourselves for Christmas. Being that my father is Danish I have grown up celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve, however I was not accustomed to the meal that was prepared. Christmas dinner included duck, potatoes, a type of sweetened potatoes, salad, and a special jelly that you eat the duck with. The dinner not only looked good, but tasted good. After dinner we had a dessert which is actually a game at the same time. The dessert itself is actually rice in a thick creamy sweet sauce. However before the dessert is brought out to the table a big nut is placed into someones bowl and who ever ends up with the nut is the winner. My cousin actually ended up winning but shared her prize with me which was traditional danish candy in which we both enjoyed. After eating dinner we sat around the teee forming a semi circle and opened the gifts one by one. For christlas I was given several books, money, some clothes, and skii wear that I would soon be wearing on my skii trip in sweden. On the 26th of December me, my cousin, and three of her friends were off to Sweden. After a 12 hour drive we finally arrived, and unfortunatly we couldnt skii right away but saved time for the next day and we went ahead and bought our lift tickets and I rented my snowboard. The following day we woke up early and began preparing ourselves for the long day we had ahead of us. Since my cousin and her freinds were quite experienced skiers they went ahead and attacked the slopes, where as I being a beginner was on the baby slope taking my first lesson on snowboarding. After a full lesson on the basics of snow boarding I attacked the baby slope, which I might add is quite flat and actually spent more time on my bottom than I did on the snow. However, after a day and a half of struggling on the baby slope I finally managed to make it down all the way with out falling. After seeing my progress I decided to go for the next level, which was a green slope. You see, all slopes are categorized by the level of difficuly and for the first day and a half I was on a slope that was not even categorized. Either way, I was determined and felt confident enough to try the first level. When I first got to the top of the slope I felt as if I had made the wrong choice and should of just stayed on the baby slope. There was only one way down and eventually ended up making it down safely. After completing the slope I realized that in the end it wasnt as bad as I thought it would be. I continued to work on my tactics and by the final day I had managed to learn the basics of snowboarding. We left Sweden on the 30th of December so that
we could spend new years with our friends and families back in Copenhagen.
For New Years Eve we went to a theater and watched a musical. After the
theater we ate a wonderful New Years Eve dinner which included shrimp
salad, peasent, potatoes, and bread. For the actual New Years my cousin
and I decided that we would stay home and celebrate the New Years with my
aunt. However after midnight, we went to downtown Copenhagen and watched
the fireworks. For the next few days we basically just relaxed, we did
some shopping but pretty much just stayed home and just talked about how
great it was to see |