Unhealthy Thursday!

Unhealthy Thursday is what my host sister has dubbed every Thursday lunchtime. Every Thursday, instead of taking the 5 minute walk from the bus stop, through the various schools that share our school campus, to our section the school, we take a shorter route to a large shed sitting just behind the first school building. This shed is a wood-works shed. 

For a week, I believe, half of the students in my usual class, combined with half of the students from another class, were working in groups of four to build bridges that would be judged for design, creativity, a comparison of a drawing, balsa wood model, and the finished product of the bridge, as well as strength. One of the members from Natacia's group was away, so I was a stand in. I hammered a few nails into the balsa, and screwed a few screws in with the drill (hopefully these screws were helpful), and helped with the power saw by holding the wood still as someone else took charge of the sharp end. 

After working for only an hour or two the bridge was complete, so we walked over to the canteen (or tuckshop, as we Aussies like to call it) to buy some food for lunch, hence the 'unhealthy Thursday'. While sitting down to lunch one of the other groups made their way over to the canteen as well. During this break, one of the group members, Nikolai, asked me the usual questions we tend to get over here, 'where are you from?', 'why are you here?', 'is it very different here in Denmark from Australia?' 'do you live with Natacia?', 'how is school different?' etc. So I was quietly talking to Nicolai, Natacia, and Signe about various aspects of Australian life, and how it's different, when we started talking about schools, and with only the two groups from our lesson in the room, as I was talking, the whole hall fell silent to listen. This was a pretty bizarre experience, as I thought some of the other things I'd already said were more interesting than talking about the fact that I had finished my high school education, and that some of the work that they were doing I had done in younger grades or had only just finished myself, but they must have found that pretty interesting. 

We then got onto the topic of money, and seeing as none of us really knew the conversion rates from Australian Dollars to Danish Krone, we just discussed what coins and notes we each had, and their values in relation to each other. Luckily I had one of every Australian coin in my wallet, except for $2. I took each coin out, in ascending order of value, explained what was on the front, and Nicolai, Natacia, and Signe passed them between each other, thoroughly fascinated. I didn't have any notes to show them, but I explained that the notes come in $5, $10, $20, $50, $100. Once I was finished, Natacia showed me most of the danish coins, except for the 2 krone (coincidence much), and they all had a good laugh at me, when I thought the coins with the holes in them were rather funny.

All too soon, the teacher came over and told us that we had to come back to the classroom as the others had now finished and it was time to test the bridges. Nicolai, still fascinated by the fact that I had finished school, continued to ask questions about things like, "Because you are finished school and going into university, does that mean that you would be able to study at places like Danish universities? Because you've finished high school?" I explained that sometimes Australian university students study abroad, but generally they just study in Australia. He also found it very interesting that my school contained both boarders and day students. Most students found this point very interesting, they also found it very odd that I had attended a school only for girls, yes that means there were no boys. 

We soon made it back to the shed, and commenced the judging of everyone's bridges. Our bridge held the most weight, though overall it came second. We all agree that it should have come first, because the bridge that won broke with only a few people on it. Once the prizes had been awarded we were free to go home.

Something that is very different between Danish school and Australian school is school finishing times. In Australia we finish at the same time every day. In Denmark they don't, and David (another Australian exchange student) has noticed the same thing. My school finished some days at 3:25 and others at 2:15, but most interesting of all, Thursdays finish at 1:05, unless we finish our work early. Today we left at 12:00. Below are some pictures of today.

My Awesome (ugly) clogs- with reinforced toe!

(Not the best photo... they were high heeled too!)

Natacia with the bridge:

(When we judged strength it was placed on blocks)

Me with the bridge:

(It was absolutely freezing in that shed, yet I was the only one still wearing my massive overcoat)

The bizarre landscape... the ground is green, yet the tree's are dead:

(Note: yes I do know that the trees are bare because it's winter)

My First Full Day At School

So day two, and my first full day, of school is now complete. School in Denmark is a completely different environment to school in Australia in many different aspects. Firstly, they stay in the one classroom, and the teachers come to them, a little bit like primary school in Australia. The whole environment is also much more relaxed than my personal schooling life in Australia, with people openly texting and playing on their phones, people playing games or being on Facebook on their laptops. So far only one of the teachers has actually taught a class, all of the other teachers have just come in and been a presence in the room while the students worked, or rather not worked, on set worksheets or questions. Also if a teacher is not able to attend a class for any reason, there are no substitute teachers sent, students either have a spare lesson, or are sent work that they are supposed to work on, but many of them just sit and chat. Danish school is very interesting to observe, however, i can't actually understand anything that they are saying. Luckily for me my host sister, Natacia, will often whisper translations to me, every so often, just so i have an idea of what is going on. Today I was able to participate in two of the classes, Chemistry and Maths. Chemistry was the lesson for which there was no teacher, but the students just worked through questions from the textbook. The topic that they are currently covering is Organic Chemistry, so I got to put some of my recently ended schooling knowledge to use, and helped Natacia with some of the questions, such as working out the name of molecule. I was also able to do work in maths, because luckily for me, numbers are the same and work the same almost everywhere in the world. So I had the joy of working through simultaneous equations, however, both Natacia and I were stuck on a question, so we asked the teacher for help. The teacher came over and started explaining the question to us both, but in Danish. Not wanting to disrupt Natacia's understanding of the question, I just smiled and nodded whenever the teacher looked at me to check my understanding. Eventually Natacia told him that I didn't speak Danish, and he quickly changed to English, he finished explaining the question, then he asked me a little about where I lived, after I mentioned to him that I lived in Australia, he proudly declared that he once had an Australian room mate. School seemed to go a lot slower than Australian school however, mainly because we didn't move around a lot, and i didn't really understand what anyone was saying. Other than that though, school is interesting, and I can't wait for my first English lesson in Danish.

As promised, here are some photo's:

The Scout Leader holding a snake:

My First Day in Denmark

It is now the morning of my second day in Denmark, and it is Freezing. This morning it was raining, not snowing, but the rain was painfully cold as we walked from home to the bus, and the bus to school. Yesterday, after a long sleep in, my host sister and I  ventured into school, but we only stayed for an hour, as we had to go to the shops and get a transport card for me. We then spent a few hours at home, in the warm, before going out for a walk around the town, Dalmose. That evening, after a nice dinner, we had scouts. The scout group that I will be a part of for the next 7 weeks are the 'Green Girl Scouts'. They are very lovely, but very different from scouts in Australia. They start off their meetings with a song, and close with another song, where you must hold hands with the people on either side of you by crossing your arms right arm over left. At scouts the girls were taking a badge, the badge required them to do something that they do not like, so the mother of one of the scouts brought in some snakes that we all got to hold and touch, as well as some of the various bugs and insects that the snakes eat. Some of the littler girls ate some of the bugs, that I think were meal worms. I got to hold one of the snakes, and luckily it stayed very still, so it wasn't too bad.  At the end of the meeting they presented everyone with a badge, and were very kind and also presented me with a badge. They have a very interesting process of presenting badges, and as they are Girl Scouts they salute like Girl Guides, as though they are creating the Scout sign rather than the salute being up near the head, like ours at Scouts. I will post photo's of the snake later. 

Denmark is very different from Australia, it is very cold and the sun doesn't rise until around 8:00 am, and sets very early around 4:30 pm. The days are very cold outside, and even inside a long sleeve shirt and jacket bring warmth. The nights, however, are boiling hot because of all the heating inside the house.

Getting There...

It's now 28 hr after leaving Brisbane, and we're still not in Denmark... Not one of our 3 flights left on time, and our Singapore to England flight had to head back to Singapore only and hour into the trip due to pressurisation issues. Not a great start. The resecheduled flight in Singapore led to missing our flight to Denmark, which led to this flight being a fiasco to organise.  We're tired, sick of sitting around waiting, and really just want to be in Denmark already, what a cracker of a start. However, it's not all bad. This extra time spent on airport floors and lounges has lead to the group getting to know each other a lot better.

Nearly 24 Hours To Go

In just over 24 hours I will be boarding a plane and embarking on this momentous adventure of a life time! Recently finishing my final year of school, the time has come to go out into the world and gain some life experience...Through a Scout exchange to Denmark. With just over 24 hours to go, you would think that I would be totally ready...  bags packed (well they mostly are),  Scout uniform is neatly ironed and hanging ready to be put on for travel (I know where mine is, does that count?), Passport and Tickets are at the ready in the prepared carry on bag (I think I'll just keep them in their safe place... and hopefully remember to take them tomorrow. As for the carry on luggage... well, I have a suitable bag... i suppose). As the final items are making their way into my bag, it is slowly dawning on me that for the next 8 weeks, I won't be calling Australia home.