Introcamp

I have officially been here a whole entire month. Time has gone SO fast. I can honestly say that I am in love with this country. The people are SO nice and the lifestyle is truly amazing! I think how lucky I am to be here every single day. My exchange, so far, has been so enriching and positive. I already can feel myself seeing the world differently. Before I left, I thought that life would be so much more different in Europe…But now that I am here, I have realized that no matter where you are in the world, life goes on. I am used to daily life here. People who have not really traveled have such grand visions of European life and people. Now that I live here, I can say that there IS a daily life. Not everyday is an exciting European adventure. But it is this daily life that I have grown to love. It was a bit shocking to me that life (despite being culturally different) is still life all over the world. People are people, everywhere. It is this realization that has really made me love the world. I know I have only been here a month, but I can say with certainty that I will travel for the rest of my life. I feel like being here has opened so many doors while also opening my eyes. I hope everybody can understand what I mean with this strangely deep paragraph :p

So, on a lighter note, I just came back from “Introcamp”. Introcamp is basically where all the Rotary students in Denmark (students in their host countries are called “inbounds”) meet up and live together for a whole week. I left on the 22nd of September and returned the 29th. It was SO MUCH FUN. We all lived in a giant boarding school. We had Danish classes for about 6 hours on a normal day. We traveled to Århus and Viborg. Every night we had “evening activities” which were pretty fun. A band also came to play a surprise concert for us. You should check them out.  I have a feeling they will be quite famous one day. They are called: The Striving Vines. They are really really good and it was an amazing show.

I met so many AMAZING people and made so many new friends. This one girl, Andrea, became my best friend. We were literally inseparable all week. When we said goodbye we both got really sad and even cried a little. I miss her so much already but we are already planning a weekend together! I am counting down the days!!!!!

The few things about introcamp that I will remember are: the starvation, the sickness, and the exhaustion. These things may sound negative, but introcamp was definitely one of the best weeks of my life. I will explain each subject.

The Starvation: We had three meals a day. Breakfast at 7:30, lunch at 12, dinner at 6. NOTHING in between. At all. We basically starved between meals. I have seriously never been so hungry. For those on my facebook, you will notice most of the pictures include food. I have never been a person with a big appetite, but I seriously turned into a food crazy pig last week. I ate SO much at meals and thought about nothing but food in between. I think back and think that I was quite pathetic. Andrea and I starved together.

The Sickness: I swear to god, the plague was at introcamp. Everybody got this mankilling cold virus thing. It got me my second day at camp. Only this morning have I started to feel better. Everybody was SO sick. The teachers had to buy cough drops for the students because we were literally dying. This cold spread so fast and it was so vicious. I was miserably sick during most of the week.

The Exhaustion: Everybody stayed up very late during the week. We were just busy talking and relaxing. This combined with that killer cold that I mentioned equaled…EXHAUSTION. We had 15 minutes break from classes every hour. I slept every single break. I slept on my desk, on the floor, and on the couch. Kids were passing out everywhere. We had an hour break between lunch and classes. I spent that hour curled up in my bed sleeping. I also slept during the hour before dinner or after dinner. Everybody needed naps. We were way too tired.

Don’t get me wrong, the week was GREAT. I even kind of miss it. So many silly things happened. Like when Andrea and I walked into a room searching for food and didn’t see a whole table of people in the room watching our desperate search. Or when I discovered a HUGE spider in the shower and refused to use my shower for days. Or when Andrea and I thought we were going to miss the bus home. This little story actually deserves its own paragraph.

So. Andrea and I were wandering around Århus after spending almost an hour and a half inside of a Mcdonalds dying from happiness. (I ordered my burger like this: “Can I have BURGER?!” Because I completely forgot that Danes are like fluent in English. The worker promptly replied (thinking I was stupid) “Of course! What would you like on it?!” That experience was embarrassing.”) Anyway, we were meandering around the city, fat and happy, when we walked into a cute clothing store.Here, Andrea discovered she NEEDED this shirt. Now, earlier in the day the teachers told us the bus was leaving at 4. If we were not there at 4, we would need to find our own transportation back to the school. Andrea gets in line to buy this shirt at like 3:50. We think we know where we are and that the line will go fast. Time passes. We haven’t moved in line. I get nervous and force her to abandon the shirt. We begin to try and get to the busses when we realize we are lost! We ask somebody and we get on the right path. Then, we can see the busses…But we can’t cross the street! It is 3:59. We call our teacher and beg her not to leave because “We can’t cross the streeeeeetttt!!!!!!” When we finally arrive, we see that only 5 people have arrived on time…It was depressing.

Well, right now I am in old history class in school. I am going to wrap this post up because it is quite long. I will post more quite soon.

thanks for readingggg!!! ❤

-Emma

  Andrea and I in line at McDonalds. We are SO happy.

Me with a BUNCH of junk food in my purse. I later sold the Doritos and the pop tarts  to starving desperate students.

This is me eating the remains of a cake that the exchange students found on an abandoned tray in the hallway. It was ALL over the floor and everybody. We were starving to death.