Holidays, Hamburg and Frolicking

Hello! I am checking in for another exciting update of my hectic, tiring, overwhelming and amazing life as an exchange student. I will tell you of my awesome holiday in South Eastern Denmark with my 'sweet as' host family and our day trip to Copenhagen, my class trip to Hamburg GERMANY and what I have been up to day to day. So here it is.

In the last few days of the Easter holidays my family and I drove to Nysted which is a small town on the island of Lolland to visit Nanna and Laerke's grandparents. Although we drove the width of Denmark, it only took us 3 hours. We crossed a few million bridges too. Shows how small this place really is . . here I was thinking New Zealand was small. We were staying in Hans and Helga's summer house which was only 3km from their house and right next to the sea. It was such a cute house which resembled a good old New Zealand whare! We spent the few days we had in Nysted eating scrumptious food, walking along the waterfront, playing mini golf(or rather losing mini golf!) and looking around the area. We were lucky as the weather was quite nice most days, a bit 'frisk' though! Here are some pics.

Nysted waterfront

Nanna, Laerke and I at a farm we visited.

Me, Laerke and Nanna on Hans and Helga's farm

Our whare!

Helga, Nanna, me and Laerke by the seaside and a castle behind us (casually!)

It was so nice to visit Hans and Helga, they were so kind to me even though i seemed to make a complete idiot of myself the entire time what with locking myself in the bathroom, unintentionally throwing ice cream across the room and many other cringe worthy moments. It wasn't the end of our holiday as we left Nysted as we were going to spend a day in Copenhagen on our way home!

I am in love with this city, the architecture makes me want to melt so I will let the photos speak for themselves . . .

A cool bridge, google it as I cannot remember where it is!

Nyhavn Canal

Amalienborg Palace where the Danish Monarchy resides (yes including Mary!)

The changing of the guard at Amalienborg

Christiania flag. A free, hippie, 'happy' place if you get my drift . .

It has such a different atmosphere to Copenhagen, I loved it!

The incredible Opera House. Te Papa should be like this, a bold statement of simple design done well.

My favourite photo of bikes in Nyhavn Canal

Danish innovation at it's finest

The bridge from Zealand to Funen, 20km long!

A sign I found amusing whilst looking for a place to eat in Christianshavn Canal

I had such a great few days with the family so tusind tak!!

Then it was Easter Sunday. In Denmark they celebrate Easter over the whole holiday perios thus Easter Sunday wasn't a huge deal. The 'Paaskeharen' gave us a cool easter egg hunt which was cute! Easter didn't feel like Easter as it feels like it should only be January and yet it is already April! I would love this year to slow down so I can catch my breath.

I even (tried) to make Hot Cross Buns! A bit odd tasting but a good try.

Taste of New Zealand

Us on our easter egg hunt!

I hope you all had a good Easter in New Zealand!!

Now just quickly before my fingers fall off from this typing marathon, I had a lovely end to my week last week when my class asked me to go to Hamburg with them on their class trip for the day! So naturally I said "um . . . YES PLEASE!". So we all headed down to Germany on a bus which took about 3 hours, it still throws my mind how we can drive to different countries but i love it! We were supposed to answer some questions about the city but as they were in German I was excused from it so I just walked around and shopped all day! Here are some snaps.

Me and Catherine on the bus

Tehehe our bus name 'blew' my mind

Me and Amalie eating our Berline!

Hamburg was so pretty . .

I am now known as Kurt.

Yes I did have a hamburger in Hamburg! No toy in Happy meal, not happy

Our class ventured to the dodgy area of Hamburg. We were disgusted haha

Hahaha wow I am cool!

Had such a great time with my class, they really are a cool bunch of kids so thanks 2k! I hope we can hop the border together again.

I'll leave you with a candid pic of me and my crazy friend Ellie when we plus catherine were having a blast on the waterfront by my house.

Until next time faithful followers!

Farvel . . .

I am Indeed Alive.

Yes I am sincerely sorry - I keep forgetting to blog! It is so hard to keep track of time here as there is always so much going on and half the time I don't understand as it's in Danish. So here is a quick (ish) update of what I have been up to over the last few weeks.

About a month ago I had my last day at Vejle Sprogskole (Language school) so now i am on my own which is GREAT. We had a really nice last day with Pavlova (a New Zealand tradition to all of those Aussies who think otherwise), a 'Secret Easter Bunny' and just general silliness as we all knew we wouldn't see each other for a while. It is safe to say not too much work was done that day but it was a good day all the same. Here are some pics of our last day:

Catherine and I with our amazing easter gifts. Got to love Disney Princesses!

All of our amazing wrapped pressies!

I actually was very sad to leave language school as there was such a nice group of people there and i suppose it was helpful learning a bit of Danish (just kidding Rotary it was FANTASTISK). I now just have to force myself to speak Danish at home so i can be fluent by August (my plan, ambitious yet I am hoping achievable! I have started having Danish only days with my family which is difficult but 'good for me in the long run' as my Mother says.

I had a day trip to Odense (one of Denmark's biggest cities) to see Simon, a Danish guy who cam to Wellington on his exchange. it was really nice to see him again and he showed me around the city which was really cool. Sadly, being teenagers, we hadn't thought ahead about the fact that it was a Sunday and everything was closed (yes I know, even by new Zealand standards that's old fashioned!). So we just strolled through the streets and saw the outside of things such as HC Andersen's house. It was sunny too which was so foreign at that time it almost scared me! Here are some pics.

Only in Denmark - a machine counting the number of bikes passing through per day, month and year!

Some interesting trees. Remind me of the whomping willow in Harry Potter

Me outside HC Andersen's house.

The next two weeks following Odense I was on holiday. The first week was because my class went to Berlin on a school trip and I wasn't able to go with them (I know tragic right?) and then the second week we had Easter holidays. So during the first week on holiday I was actually quite the busy bee. I went to the gym a few times and did some much needed exercise (I can still feel the effects of the cross trainer on my thigh muscles). Over the next few days I was indulged in my love of Danish design, modern art and furniture - Trapholt and IKEA baby! Min mor, Gitte, kindly took the day off work and took me to Trapholt design museum in Kolding which is only 20 minutes away from my house. It was my dream to be honest, I loved every minute of it! There was an exhibition on Danish furniture, chairs in particular, which to the normal human being would deem very boring but to me the strange lover of design and furniture, it was amazing! Plus it had the best gift shop ever seen by man. I could have mental with the visa but I practiced self control and only bought a few nice things for myself and pressies for others. Some pics from Trapholt:

Me at Trapholt with Kolding Fjord behind me

Chairs! I love them ALL

My favourite chair of all.

The latest chairs in the Museum

Then the next day was IKEA!!! For those of you who know me, Ikea is heaven for me. My dream is to own Ikea, and I shall! I went with Catherine, a fellow exchangee, to the Ikea in Odense aka the biggest Ikea in EUROPE. My host Dad Ib drove us there as he had work to do so e had the whole day to roam the heavenly aisles of the world famous enterprise (which is not even Danish!). I'll let the photos speak for themselves to show you what I got up to there . . .

Me having fun in the lamp section!

We had lunch there and we had the famous Swedish meatballs mmm. I love the senile old man food trolley.

Love.

Me entering IKEA. A tad excited.

The front of IKEA with the Swedish and Danish flags side by side awww.

IKEA was sooo much fun and I didn't even spend that much money! It's even cheap here in the land of GST being 25%!. I plan to visit Ikea many more times so I can buy enough furniture to furnish my future home :)

I have more to tell you of what I did during my holidays but to be honest I have already exposed you to too much of my word vomit so next time I will fill you in on our family holiday to Nysted and Copenhagen!

I will leave you with a pic of me with my new bike Rotary kindly gave me :)

I am a true Dane now.

Jeg håber I havde en god påske

Lucy

København and various other experiences

So my Mother has been nagging me to update my blog for the past 2 weeks and so I have thought to finally do it (not to please her but to keep you kids informed about what I have been up to).

A few weeks ago from the 5-7th of March, we had our first of only two Rotary 'get2gethers' this year. We were all very excited as it was in København (for those small minded people who don't know what that is, it is the Danish capital otherwise know as Copenhagen). It was a social fit weekend so we weren't there to see the sights, we were there to pump some much needed iron. Although a bit of a 'downer' to be spending the entire time in København inside a gym - it was a great opportunity to meet up with all of the other new exchange students.

We left school after only attending one class (mine was sport, how ironic) and then headed for the train station. Trains here are amazing, they are seldom late, they have spaceship like doors into the toilets and best of all there is a food trolley that brings to mind a scene from Harry Potter 'Anything from the trolleys dears?'. Great movie. But anyway, we piled onto the train only to find a whole lot of other crazy exchange students already on the train making lots of noise (that's how we are usually found). It was only a 2 and a half hour journey which took us over two bridges and past a wind turbine farm - in the SEA. A few of us wanted to see a little of Copenhagen before we meet at Fitness DK so we got off at Copenhagen Central Station and were immediately lost. I had been given directions by my lovely host Dad Ib, but knowing me I went the wrong way. We ended up in the sex area of KBH and were all very scared that we would be taken hostage or taken advantage of! We eventually asked for directions at a hotel but we were still a bit scared! We didn't have much time after our little excursion to 'Erotic Corner' so we just looked at a few shops and then had to go. As we arrived in Ørestad, station 60 or so exchange students walked over to our meeting point in Field's Department store at Fitness DK, our gym for the weekend. We were all given gorgeous black or purple shirts with 'Rotary Get2Gether' on the back and were offered healthy snacks and water. We signed up for different classes such as spinning (which is actually biking not spinning in circles as I had imagined), body pump, yoga and many others. A few of my friends and I decided to do our own thing and go on the tredmills etc which was really fun yet very tiring.

Me with a Danish icon waiting for our train in Fredericia

Tivoli - It was closed :(

Ørestad Gymnasium where we were staying. Not too shabby.

After such a tiring evening we all walked over to where we were staying over the next day and a half. Ørestad Gymnasium was a school yet resembled a high end modern art gallery. It was a piece of art in itself, the minimalistic staircase swooped up into a tight curl. It truly was amazing. It puts Marsden and its roofless auditorium to shame. Our bedroom was their gym, so all of the 220 exchange students grabbed a section of wall and spread their stuff. It was nice as we met the oldies or exchange students who arrived 6 months ago. There were loads of them and only few newbies so we were somewhat ambushed.

On Saturday we woke to the most extravagant of breakfasts, American style pancakes (that made the previous visit to the gym worthless) with bacon and eggs :). We headed to the gym for our last session of the weekend and everyone was quite sore from the previous night. I signed up for a yoga class which deemed very difficult and not at all relaxing! Our instructor was in fact a ninja so that made it look a lot easier than is was.

Yes this is me balancing on my head. Painful is all I can say.

After yoga me and a few others were a bit naughty and cleverly escaped the tight grasp of Rotarians and snuck into the shopping mall that was connected to Fitness DK. We had the best time in H&M! Sadly I didn't buy anything so there was no proof of our rebellion but that doesn't matter - we did it hehe. We had to sneak back in which was the hardest part, we did that unnoticed too - we have mad skills I have to say.

That night there was a party as a last 'horrah' mostly for the oldies as it was their last Get2Gether. It was a 'Hollywood' theme so there were some great costumes but myself and some others felt like doing something different, so we went in our pajamas and heels and said we were from the movie 'The Sleepover'. Genius or what?

Charlie, Ellie and I

Charlie, Stacey, me and Ellie 'sleeping' with attitude.

It was a really fun night with lots of 'action' for some (the way you want to interpret this is up to you hehe). We were partying until the wee hours of the morning, we were still wide awake at about 3am so we decided to explore the gymnasium (even though we weren't supposed to!). We found a way to get to the second floor and so a group of about five of us took our sleeping bags and snuck up the stairs and found a perfect place to sleep. But after we had only been there for 5 minutes, two Rotarians emerged. How had they found us? Shadows is all they said. Darn! It would have been really fun but the Rotarians were cool with it, they thought it was quite funny how secretive we thought we had been! So we traipsed back downstairs and took our trough of chicken they had put out for all of the hungry teenagers and slept on the floor underneath the stairs. We had 3 hours sleep that night. Not fun the next morning.

We said our goodbyes and then headed with all of our gear to the station. A few of us were going to look around København again as we had more time. We put our suitcases into storage at the main station and headed out into the 'big smoke'. We knew which way NOT to go so we headed in the opposite direction for the main shopping street called Strøget. It was so beautiful, all of the old buildings lined the busy shopping street and it was gorgeous! I love traditional Danish architecture. Here are some pics.

Me 'candid' on Strøget

Look how gorgeous the buildings are! And there I am ruining everything . .

Same . .

My friend we found whilst shopping . .

Me with the main train station behind.

After a long day and having spent plenty of money it was time to go home. We got back on the train and headed back to what it is now dubbed 'Fred'. It had been a great weekend but I was exhausted after having only 7 hours sleep over 2 nights. Thats what happens when over 220 exchange students are put in the same building for a few nights . .

I will write again soon (and this time I mean in the next few days!) about language school and my trip to Odense. Stay tuned.

Farvel,

Knus Lucy/Noose/Kirsty or whatever you call me :)