looking up.

Today was a better day, and for that I am very thankful. This morning we attended a session with Anders Larsen, one of the DIS staff, about the Danish culture and everyday living in Copenhagen. It was a very informative session and I really learned a lot about how to adapt to life here. It helped calm my overwhelming fears of cooking every day and meeting the Danes, which is known to be somewhat difficult.

After that session we went to our second Survival Danish course. Man, I thought Spanish and Italian were hard, but they are NOTHING compared to the Danish language. It is beautiful when the Danes speak it, but it honestly just sounds like a lot of weird gagging noises when I try and speak it. I learned how to say my name is Kelli: Jeg hedder Kelli. and I come from: Jeg kommer fra South Carolina. NOTE: It is not pronounced ANYTHING like it looks.

After that class, a group of girls from Keops and I went to the Immerse Yourself Fair, where DIS offers many different extracurriculars, from a Danish Cooking Class to Yoga to a Christian Fellowship Organization. Even though a lot of them sounded really interesting, I am selfishly not signing up for much because this is my semester away from all the extracurriculars. I get so bogged down at Elon that I begin to not enjoy any of them, so I am enjoying having the semester to do what I want to do without so many commitments.

Finally, tonight we decided to be BRAVE and go eat in the common kitchen!! I know it sounds simple, but this was a huge hurdle. The kitchen in a kollegium is the "social spot" and the Danes and students that have been here for a while all know each other and hang out in here. It is definitely intimidating to walk into a situation where everyone else knows one another AND in another country. Yet we did it, and I am so glad we did. We ended up meeting a couple Australians and another American girl and a girl from Holland. They were all very nice and welcoming, so that made me feel a lot better about Keops. One Aussie girl, Lauren, actually lives on my floor so she came by my room and we chatted for a while. It was cool to talk to someone not from DIS!

So tomorrow we have our Scavenger Hunt, so I will be posting pictures with that! I hope you all are doing well. I miss everyone from home A LOT. But know that I am thinking of you often. From København---Hej Hej!