All of my good friends here live with host families. There are several living options at DIS including host family, Danish roommate, shared housing, Kollegium and Hojskole. A Danish roommate is someone under 30 who simply hosts you but it's not as intense as a family. Shared housing means you live with other DIS students in an apartment in Copenhagen. Kollegium and Hojskole are the closest thing to dorm living that there is. Basically, when you live in anything but a host family, you can really do whatever you want since you're pretty much on your own watch. As a member of a host family, you really become a complete part of that family.
From day one, Helle, Sofie and Cecelie (plus Stine and Louise even they don't live in the house) have welcomed me into their home and family. With that comes a certain level of obligation and committment to being a part of the family as well. It's not a big deal if I'm going to miss dinner or spend the night at someone's house, I just need to make sure I let Helle know so she doesn't plan on me when she makes dinner. I've found that some of the people who live in other housing options don't really understand our predicament--especially for me, trains only leave Norroport (our train station near school) to come out to Borup once an hour. And the latest train leaves there at about 12:30am. Luckily though, my friends are in similar situations and we can all relate to each other. We all talk about our host families a lot and share stories since we all have different family structures, siblings etc. We been going to each of our houses for dinner to meet our different families.
First we went to Jesse's house last weekend but not for dinner...just dessert. He lives with his host parents Karsten and Maj-Britt. I'm hoping we can get back to his house for dinner because Maj-Britt is an unbelievable cook. She made us homemade carrotcake with chocolate icing and these crazy pastries with nutella on the inside. Jesse also told us about the bacon wrapped green beans he helped make recently....I think I could go for that!
I spent that night at Claire's house....she lives with her host mom Pia and her host sister Freya who is 9. She has another host sister, Zette, who is 18. She also lives with Herman, her host dog who looks remarkably like Wishbone the dog from the PBS show of the same name. We're still planning on heading over there for dinner.
Last Tuesday night we went to Mary's house for dinner and to plan our weekend trip to Berlin (more details on that to come later in the week probably). Claire and Mary live in the same town, Farum, but they live on opposite ends--it's about a 50 minute walk between them. Mary lives with her host parents, Michael and Dorthe, and her host siblings Simone (15) and Thomas (11).
So the week lead up to an evening/day in the countryside of Denmark. Mary, Claire and Kaitlin came over yesterday after classes were done for dinner and to spend the night. I asked Helle to make one of my favorite meals that she makes: frickadeller and potatos. Frickadeller is like the Danish national meal apparently. They're shaped like meatballs but they're made of pork and sort of meatloaf-ish with other ingredients in them....then there's a side dish of potatos and a sort of a pesto sauce but it's different than that. I'm going to force Helle to give me the recipe so I can make it when I get home. She claims it's easy...I'll be the judge of that!
Anyway Claire had never had frickadeller before and Kaitlin's family only gets the store-bought kind. We watched The X-Factor, Denmark's version of American Idol and hung out at the house. Then today Cecelie drove us to Roskilde, a much larger town, about 20 minutes away from Borup. There is a lot of shopping, a walking street and some cultural sites including the Roskilde Cathedral, which is where all of the kings and queens of Denmark are buried. The weather started off pretty nice, but got kind of cold and windy towards the end of the day. Regardless, we took part in the free ice cream that some place was giving out. We don't really know why they were....but it was DELICIOUS nonetheless. Here are some pictures of the cathedral and coast of Roskilde. Next weekend I'm going to Berlin so I'll be sure to update after that!
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