From Rapids to Running

From entering the Vancouver Airport in Canada to attending my first classes in Copenhagen, Denmark has been a time of tumult.  I don’t even need to take a step to see new sights and experience new things, yet I am traveling hither and yon. My first night in Denmark I succumbed to exhaustion immediately after dinner having been awake for over thirty hours on about three hours of sleep.  I still haven’t caught up. My host showed myself and three other DIS students, two of whom she is also hosting, around the kommune we are living in, Frederikssund, on Sunday and then Monday we dove into orientation with DIS.

From our opening ceremony in the grand old Cirkusbygningen (the circus building) to the DIS library and other DIS buildings which are placed along multiple streets I spun about Copenhagen trying to get my bearings.  I was very glad for all the DIS people stationed about to help direct us from place to place. It took me half the day to find the street signs, which are tucked up discreetly on the sides of buildings. Then it was back the next day and I was a little less confused, ah but the third day, by the third day I knew where I was going.  By the fourth taking the S-train to Vesterport and walking to DIS was practically routine. I had gone from rapids to running, at least in my commute.

My classes all look as wonderful as I had imagined, though we will see if that pans out since it is only the second week.  I am making time to explore here and there and allowing myself to get just a little bit lost so I can find interesting things and get to know the area.  As long as I can get back to my starting point I am okay with wandering in the wrong direction for non-urgent errands. We had our Jumpstart event on Sunday where we met with other DIS homestay students and host families from Frederikssund and I met up with one of the other students to take a walk in Copenhagen and see what we could see today.  It was fun to have someone else to share explorations with.

It wasn’t until I came here that I realized that I had truly been living in the New World.  Here in the Old World there are buildings that have stood for centuries built of brick with roofs of tiles or lovely greened copper and there are cobblestone streets.  It is the first time I have looked at a city and thought it pretty. The architecture is almost like stepping back into an older time when art was built into everything, of course I have very little appreciation for “modern art” so maybe it still is.  

I made my way to the nearest pool on Friday and ended my week in the embrace of water.  The Frederikssund Swimming Hall has a designated area for shoes in the dressing rooms and the water doesn’t reek of chlorine which is a lovely novelty for me.  Bit by bit I am exploring and settling in but it requires conscious effort to stay out of my comfort zone. Every time I go one place it becomes easier to go back and I have to remind myself to go to other places too.  I am from a rural area back in the Pacific Northwest of America so I am learning to live in a city on top of living in Denmark. The clock tower rings every quarter hour here, I repeat, every fifteen minutes.  

The rapids are still churning between homework, summer internship applications, classes, adjusting to a new way of life, and trying to learn about this new place I am in but I am starting to catch my breath.  I can almost see the semester stretching out before me full of clear running stretches, idle pools, and periodic rapids. So I am taking up my metaphorical paddle and looking forward to the semester to come. The river of life beckons.