Denmark

10 years ago I was a Rotary exchange student for a year to Copenhagen, Denmark. Probably a key factor in my travel addiction, I left my friends and family behind for a year of my life and lived with 4 different families and was enrolled in a Danish gymnasium (high school).

My first weeks in the strange but sweet Scandinavian country were spent at a language camp with about 40 other new exchange students. It was a nice middle ground before we were all shipped off to our respective host families across the country and we all bonded over the potential terrors we were about to experience and the odd way the Danish language sounded. I became friends with a great and fun group of people, including Karen (also from Canada, a friend I have stayed very close with and travelled with - she even came to visit me in Kenya) and Chad (a Bush/SUV-hating Oregonian soil scientist). This past weekend Chad was in Rochester for a wedding and made the trip over to Toronto to catch up with Karen and I. Despite our infrequent email communication, we haven't seen Chad in the 10 years since we left Denmark. Gosh it was strange to see him again. But so great! It is nice to see that people who you remember being really great and fun are still really great and fun 10 years down the road.

10 years! Where the hell does the time go? The funniest part was when we were kind of doing the "so you went home from Denmark and then what happened..." to fill each other in on what we have been up to for the last 10 years. Funny to realize first of all, what you include in that little blurb, and secondly, how quick it is to pretty much get people up to speed on your life. I mean obviously you skip a hell of a lot of stuff, the nitty-gritty details (mostly the embarassing parts), but really aren't our lives perhaps a little like soap operas, where if you miss a couple of years of Young and the Restless, and you are home from work one day and watch one episode you are pretty much caught up and can follow the story of the show within an hour?

I don't even remember what I was like in Denmark. I wore a lot of bad outfits but I think that had as much to do with being there in 1995/96 than anything else. I also ate a lot of Whopper Juniors. And made too many trips to the Carlsberg brewery and Christiania (perhaps a bit of Chad's influence). I was in my highschool's production of Hair (in Danish). I was one of the only brunettes so they turned us into black women. That was my introduction to H&M on every corner and developed my love for a good falafel. I saw Neil Young, Radiohead, Bad Religion and Rancid. I would bring my visitors to the Museum Erotica - where my 18 year old host-sister worked. One of my host-families had an open marriage and would date other people. I ate pickled herring and stinky cheese. I learned Danish and travelled to something like 10 countries around Europe. I was in an audience with the Pope. These were the days of my life. Where the hell does the time go?