Hi everybody!

I've been meaning to post a journal here about my experience so far for a while now, so here it is, in the smallest nutshell I could manage! ^_^

I've been here in Denmark over 5 weeks now, and it's going really well! Sometimes I get kind of lonely because it's hard to be so far away from everything familiar. I miss my parents, my university, my boyfriend most of all (who sent me flowers on V-day!!!), and even my country! As another developed nation, Denmark isn't drastically different than the US, but I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore! The differences are in the details - for example, there are very few commercials on TV and virtually none during kids' shows, waiters don't bring the check to you at restaurants, and peanut butter is extremely hard to find. They just don't like it here!

My host family is awesome. The house is nice and cozy and since they have wireless, I've been able to use facebook and Skype to stay in touch, otherwise I would have gone crazy!!! There are the two parents, Anette and Torben, who are fluent in English and very kind to me, and their two kids - Cecilie age 10 and Jonas age 8. Cecilie is just learning English and can speak to me pretty well, while Jonas doesn't know much. Sometimes it's hard because I just want to be able to talk to them! But we have fun anyway. They have a Wii, so we have been playing a TON of Mario Kart!

The only drawback about where I live is that my commute to school takes a full hour... Back at home, I would roll out of bed 10 minutes before class - 5 minutes to get ready and 5 to walk to the business school. But here, I ride a bike 10 minutes to the train station, sit on a train for half an hour, and then walk 10 minutes to class. The good thing about this though is that I'm getting in better shape! Between the increased exercise, Anette's very healthy cooking, and a new regimen of ab exercises, I'm looking and feeling better than ever!

My classes are all business classes - European business strategy, international advertising, international marketing, creative industries, and leadership across cultures. They're much easier than my classes back home, which is really nice, but they're also interesting for the most part. We also have a lot of field trips. Last week, my marketing class went to a microbrewery, where we tried 5 kinds of beer, and this weekend, I'm going to a concert, followed by some clubbing, with my creative industries class!

The Danes are more reserved and modest than Americans, but also extremely friendly. Virtually everyone between the ages of 12 and 60 speaks fluent English, which is great because Danish is a crazy difficult language to learn! There are all these weird vowel sounds, and half the consonants in words aren't even pronounced! But so far, I really love a lot of aspects about Denmark, as I knew I would. It is the epitome of a welfare state, which is a really negative term in the US, but the system here works really well. People pay 60 to 70% taxes here (insane, I know), but they get free healthcare, education, pension, childcare, and a wealth of other services, like an awesome public transportation system and shorter workweeks. Torben once told me that he's never had to worry about money because everyone here is entitled to a comfortable life. Also, 20% of the country's power comes from wind, and society as a whole is a lot more environmentally-conscious. I wish Danish consultants would go to America and help us make some changes! America could never be just like Denmark, but I think we could fix a lot of problems if we emulated them a bit.

Let's see, I'm also going to do quite a bit of traveling while I'm here! Next weekend I'm going to Stockholm with some friends, and then the next weekend I'm going to London. I am very excited to announce that I'm going to meet my awesome dA friend of 3+ years, ~TheAmbassador!!! How cool is that?! We had tried to meet last year when I had a layover in London on the way to India, but it didn't work out. So I can't wait to meet him!!!

Well, that's about it! Denmark's great! I'm trying to get some art done, but it's slow going. I hope you all are doing well!!!

KL