So far my exchange has been pretty awesome.
Besides the jet lag that lasted a little less than a week and adapting to a different lifestyle, I have been seeing a lot of cool places and meeting tons of people. When Peter and I got to Denmark it happened to be in the beginning of their school’s spring break, so three days after we arrived we drove to Berlin with Peter’s dad, Lars. I thought this trip was really cool–from driving on to huge ferries that can hold trucks and cars to seeing a lot of old buildings, statues and museums. One in particular was the Berlin Wall. After doing my Cold War paper on Germany it was awesome to be able to see this in person. It was much more colorful than I was expecting with all of the graffiti and drawings on it. After we got back from Berlin we had a few more days to relax and that was when Peter showed me around his town of Nævsted, which is actually a similar size to Danville. He showed me all the cobblestone streets with little shops and restaurants and stuff like that. It all looked very “European” to me.
School started Wednesday. I was pretty nervous because I thought everyone would be speaking Danish and I would be a total outcast… Thankfully that wasn’t the case. Peter introduced me to all of his friends, who were really friendly. I was put in this specific program called the IB track [International Baccalaureate] which was all in English, so I can actually understand what I am learning. I realized that everyone in my classes were international students (“boarders”) and that the “boarders” make up about half of the school, which is around 500-600 students. At Herlufsholm all your classes are with the same group of people, so all of my classes are with the Pre-IB students. Also, instead of 5-6 classes you have around 9-11 classes and have each class probably twice a week. It’s much different than what I am used to but it didn’t take long for me to understand it. Overall, the first week was very relaxed. I wasn’t given too much homework so that I could adjust and get my bearings.
Last night was one of Herlufsholm’s many Balls and it was very fun. Because the school is much more formal with all of the uniforms and tradition and stuff, they had this thing that all students had to do. (There’s some Danish word for it). You had all these fancy, formal dances and the whole school did it, which was funny.
I feel like these next 6 weeks are going to fly by. I am going to try and enjoy them as much as I can.
The Athenian School Exchange Blog 