great danes

here are some interesting things i've learned about the danish people and their kingdom...

[] denmark is a welfare society and the kingdom of denmark includes greenland as well. denmark is made up of 460+ islands! there is water everywhere, it's very green, and the people are extremely environmentally aware.

[] danes do not do small talk. especially in the morning. most danes do not like to wake up early in the morning (yay!) and so become very quiet and introverted.

[] danes are very blunt and direct. it's not meant to be rude but that is how they are. it can be misunderstood as rudeness but they don't understand why americans feel the need to sugarcoat anything.

[] there is some crazy obsession with 7-11 here. there is one starbucks in all of denmark, which is in the copenhagen international airport. the next closest one is in germany. and yet, they have 7-11's on almost every corner... its frequency is at the level of starbucks in manhattan.

[] danes have a high tolerance of trust in each other. they lock the wheels of the bike but do not lock the bike frame to anything. they just lean it in the bicycle racks and it never gets stolen. that's strong :)

[] tip is not needed because minimum wage is about $20/hr. thus service is very limited in terms of how often waiters and bartenders come around. danes are very slow and laidback. they like to spend 15 min. reading their menu discussing what everyone is ordering. so when danes go to the u.s. they find our waiters to be very pushy.

[] danes are very comfortable walking around nude in their homes (though my host family doesn't do so, thank goodness) and it is socially acceptable for boys and girls to sleep over each other's homes. my host mother thinks i should have a night out with the boys (my danish brother and friends) and thinks it's totally fine to leave my danish brother and i on our own for a week while they vacation in india. i can't cook but apparently he's very good at ordering pizza :)

[] there is actually a football team in copenhagen (which was odd) but they mostly play handball and soccer so the yankees jeter shirt as a gift was a complete fail. my danish brother had no idea who they were but i reassured him that jeter was the best out there. and apparently south korea is amazing in handball.

dis (the study abroad institute) offers optional study tours and adventure trips for additional costs. some are academic and some are just for fun. but most of them are unaffordable for me. but they sound awesome like skiing for 8 days on the french alpes. however, there are more economic one-day trips. yay! so i have learned that lego was invented in denmark and the original legoland is here! must see.

i have also tried the popular open-face sandwiches of denmark. they are literally open sandwiches. i have also tried wienerbrod which is a danish pastry, very croissant-like. i have yet to try the infamous herring known to denmark.

tomorrow is the last day of orientation and thursday is the first day of classes... but i have no thursday classes!!! woo :)

thinking ahead, i feel terrible about having to miss dinner with the family because of loads of studio work. i hope this will be enough incentive for me to get my work done. i hope two days of no classes will help me better manage my time and reduce the number of all-nighters this semester.