Dear Friends, Family, and Donors,

As a person whose previous out of country experiences were all in Victoria, Canada I was rife with anticipation and apprehension when I set off on my study abroad experience.  For two years I had been planning this semester abroad studying environmental science of the Arctic, and other environmental science, with the Danish Institute for Study Abroad (DIS).   I was planning a bevy of things I had no experience with from living in a foreign country to flying and I wasn’t sure it would happen until I was there.  My parents dropped me off at the Vancouver Airport in Canada (because it was cheaper than flying out of SeaTac) and I was on my own for a twelve-hour flight including a transfer in the middle of a windy night in Iceland.  Then I was on my own, albeit with a lovely safety net courtesy of DIS, on a continent far, far, away from anything I had known before.

Once in Denmark I found myself in a homestay situation with three of us DIS students living with a grandmother aged woman in suburban Frederikssund within walking distance of Roskilde Fjord.  From there we had an hour long commute by S-train (my first train experience) to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, where we had our classes.  The first two days I was always turning around, failing to find street signs, trying to remember how to get to the DIS buildings which are scattered across a couple of blocks.  By the third day of orientation walking to school was becoming familiar.  Two months later the commute was routine from the pigeons in the park to the clocktower and the crosswalks.

My time in Denmark was amazing.  It wasn’t until I lived there that I truly understood that Europe is the Old World and that I had spent my whole life until then in the New World.  Lovely old architecture surrounded me and I could look out across the city from my classroom on the fourth floor of the F24 building and imagine superheroes leaping across the rooftops.  Copenhagen was the first city I ever liked the appearance of.

DIS is structured with core course classes.  Each student enrolls in one of these plus electives.  The defining feature of the core courses being two multiday field trips.  My core course was “Glaciers and Human Impact: Icelandic Climate Change Case Study.”  Our first field trip was three days in Denmark.  We went to the pumping station that keeps Lammefjord dry and allows farming in the ancient sea bed and later visited one of the farms.  We ate lunch in a Dragsholm Castle, in our socks, because our science excursions are muddy.  Our glaciology professor took us ice skating.  We even visited Faxe Quarry and collected fossils from an ancient coral bed.  Later we saw the clay layer where the dinosaurs died in the cliffs at Stevns Klint.

Some of my electives had fieldtrips in Copenhagen and other parts of Denmark and we traveled by foot, by bus, or by regional train depending on the distance.  I became acquainted with daily life and culture in Denmark as well as the science I came to learn.  It was one of the more educational experiences of my life.  DIS held an activities fair early on and I dropped in to play with a local ultimate frisbee group and became a regular attendee of the local Student Houses’ Tuesday swing dance sessions.  Swing dance was fun because students and nonstudents of all nationalities came together to dance and we left no space to even swing a cat in.

DIS scheduled two travel weeks and different core courses travel on different weeks.  The first week I had off so I traveled on my own.  I ended up deciding to visit Norway and it was one of the best decisions I made.  I flew up to Tromsø and spent a few days in a city that sparkled with golden lights at the foot of aweing mountains.  It was the best cross-country skiing experience of my life.  I also visited Polaria, the world’s northernmost aquarium, where I got to see bearded seals, a species I later studied in my marine mammals class.  Next I flew down to Oslo where I spent a couple of days museum hopping, exploring ship exhibits and the Natural History Museum.  Finally, I took the train from Oslo, through Sweden, and at last back to Denmark.

Shortly thereafter everything came shattering down.  The week before the second travel week, when my class was supposed to go to Iceland for a long anticipated six day-field trip, they sent us home.  All Danish schools were ordered to switch to online learning and DIS of course, was included.  For weeks leading up to that my classmates had been trickling away as universities back in the US had yanked them home, but I always figured I would be fine.  I trusted the Evergreen State College not to yank me back from a country with better medical care and my fieldtrip was to Iceland which was still in decent shape.  I wasn’t expected my carefully built study abroad plans to be destroyed one after another after another by a world pandemic. 

So, I made new plans.  I arranged to stopover in Iceland for the weekend on the way home and squeaked in some touristing in the last chance I had for study abroad excursions.  As I left they were closing the front doors of the buses and only letting people on through the middle doors.  It was worth it.  I was able to see the rift between continental plates, Strokkur geyser, Gullfoss Falls, and soak in geothermally heated hot springs.  I saw the stark Icelandic landscape laid out before me, pure white snow over dark volcanic stone.  I fulfilled a portion of my dreams.

Then it was home, for two trudging months of online classes.

Those first two months though are filled with experiences upon experiences.  I grew as an individual.  I did more than step outside my comfort zone.  Somedays, weeks even, I lived outside my comfort zone and then I dove farther out still and despite how uncomfortable I was at times, I still had fun.  I developed self confidence in new situations, many, many new situations.  So many first experiences from ice skating to studying glaciers to flying all packed into two months.  I learned to live in a culture where I couldn’t always read the ingredients list and only most of the people around me were fluent in my language.  I got good at pointing and interpreting pictures, and recognized the sounds that translate to “this train does not go any further.”  My classes were great with wonderful field trips, and I especially appreciated that my multi-day field trip was focused on culture as well as science, but that was only the tip of the iceberg, the tongue of the glacier, (can you tell I took two glaciology classes).  Learning to navigate in different environments with different languages helped me gain flexibility in interpersonal interactions and cope with unexpected situations.  I gained experience, more than I ever intended to, in making and remaking plans on the fly.  I put in the work needed to create these experiences from hours spent planning to snap decisions to coping with the fallout and the unexpected rewards.  I figured out public transportation in four countries, sometimes the hard way and I had to buy another ticket, and when I built an Iceland tour weekend for myself on the way home I hauled my 50lb duffle with textbooks (thank goodness for backpack straps) and two carry-ons through an icy airport parking lot in search of the bus stop and through public transportation. 

I lived as I have never lived before.  I learned so much, sometimes in unexpected cases like the bearded seals in Tromsø.  I found that I quite like trains.  I was overwhelmed and barely settled in turn and I kept on pushing my boundaries even when it all came crashing down and I had to make new plans and make them fast.  I discovered that flying provides an amazing perspective.  On the way there I flew across northern Canada with the setting sun, saw sea ice and the Greenland Ice Sheet and the shadows cast by clouds on the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland by the light of the full moon and flew through morning into Denmark.  In Denmark I studied the Greenland Ice Sheet and Iceland.  I flew the length of Norway by day and night.  Finally, I flew back from Iceland to Canada in a timeless golden afternoon.  Then I landed and the sun went down on my adventures abroad with blazing glory over a familiar sea.

For your assistance in making this amazing chapter of my life possible, thank you, as many times as there were clouds that windy Icelandic night when I first flew, thank you.

Ælfhild Wiklund, proud study abroad student of Scandinavia.

I spent three days with my core course “Glaciers and Human Impact: Icelandic Climate Change Case Study” a couple of weeks ago exploring Denmark.  It was a wonderful mix of science and culture.  From looking down across Denmark from a megalithic tomb on top of a glacial moraine to eating lunch in a castle it was an astounding trip.

Lammefjord

Lammefjord is reclaimed land, we visited the pumping station and dike that keep the sea at bay out of the old fjord.  We took a sediment core and visited a farm there.  Apparently ever since the salt was washed out by rain the old fjord makes amazing farmland, and when we walked out on it it looked and felt like sea-bottom, complete with shell shards.  They had us jump as a group and feel the ground wobble.  Talk about unstable foundations!  They have to build near old islands where the ground is solid. 

Culture

Our professor really knows how to work the DIS budget, many of our meals were cultural experiences and she provided snacks.  They actually use fancy tour buses with big windows and comfy seats.  We put plastic over our boots or swapped to shoes to keep the mud off the carpeting.  It was mixed social and educational time and cultural experiences. 

We had lunch in Dragsholm Castle, in our socks because our science work was muddy.  Dragsholm Castle looks out over Lammefjord and once housed the man who began the land reclamation process because he wanted more farmland.  We also ate dinner at the Wild Kitchen which focuses on wild ingredients, such as venison.  Both the castle and the kitchen had amazing bread and butter but the castle’s was definitely the best ever.  One of the other places we went was a thin 1km wide strip of land with ocean on both sides to provide a well moderated climate where a vineyard is being developed.  There we got to discuss climate and taste wine (not something we could ever do with a US class). 

I got to go ice-skating for the first time ever which was fun.  I went from sliding backwards by accident to baby penguin steps and eventually sliding with just enough momentum to get over little bumps in the ice.  After ice-skating we went out for cake and tea/coffee (did I mention that my professor did amazing things with the budget?).  I took myself ice-skating for a second time just the other day and progressed from geriatric tortoise speeds to warm newt speeds (I’m not fast enough to compare myself with a warm lizard yet, those critters are fast). 

Ancient Life and Death

We visited Faxe Quarry which is the site of an old coral reef.  We even got to chip out our very own fossils with chisel and hammer so I now have a little tiny snail, a small coral bit, and a miniscule bivalve fossil of my very own!  We went to Stevns Klint and touched the fish clay, a thin, soft, layer of clay that marks the extinction of the dinosaurs.  The cliffs there were fascinating, mostly limestone and chalk with flint deposits.  Because the chalk is so soft it erodes and washes away so there are these bright white cliffs with black cobbled beaches of rounded flint.  Only it’s not just black, the flint is black to nearly white with blue and amber as well, I only pocketed small pieces that won’t affect the mass of my luggage too much, and I picked up a sharp flint shard too so I have a variety now.  Science souvenirs.  It was an amazing experience and I am so glad I am studying Arctic environmental science here with DIS!

I got this far with scholarships, persistence, and hope.  I began planning my study abroad experience with DIS my very first study abroad fair at the Evergreen State College two years ago.  I was meandering the fair and as I walked past the tables for institutions who couldn’t send representatives I saw the DIS booth.  Study abroad in Denmark, and on the cover, one of the subjects was Environmental Science of the Arctic.  I have been studying Arctic environmental science by dribs and drabs since middle school by means of literary research projects when I can pick my topic, though to be fair sometimes I look at Antarctica.  I knew then and there that I wanted to take this opportunity and over the next two years I plotted, planned, and persevered.  I studied their website and researched Denmark and looked at similar opportunities until I was even surer.  Then I waited for the time to arrive.

I tried to apply to DIS before their website would let me and a few months later I tried again, and then my professor kept on putting off writing my letter of recommendation.  Finally, DIS asked if they could process my application without the letter and I said yes.  They accepted me.  My dream began to coalesce.  Enthusiasm reigned, but I knew I wasn’t home free.

Scholarships.  I researched and applied and sat down with my study abroad advisor.  He went over a budget with me and I went into sticker shock.  I teetered.  Could I really do this?  But with encouragement from family, friends, and my study abroad advisor every time I teetered I steadied back on track to aim for my dream of study abroad.  Thank goodness my mother is an excellent listener.  I went further and created a GoFundMe account which has very nearly covered the cost of my plane ticket, it may not be much but every gift has and will help.  I kept applying clear up through December, and I received the very last scholarship I applied for as well as some earlier ones.  But many I did not, and every time I have to remind myself that there are other opportunities, and so it proved.  I persisted, I made lists, I asked DIS questions and made appointments with my study abroad advisor and slowly the finicky ducks of bureaucracy started to fall into line.  Scholarships, determination, perseverance, all were important but they were not the keystone.

Hope.  The keystone to the bridge from my corner of the Pacific North West of America to the nebulous great beyond of Scandinavia is hope.  I couldn’t afford to be entirely pessimistic or dwell on the possibility of failure all the time (though believe you me I had back up plans on back up plans).  I needed to let myself dream and believe that it could become reality and doing so gave me the motivation to move on.  My family and friends were crucial to preserving this keystone by providing encouragement, support, and by demonstrably sharing in this dream for me.

Now as my flight approaches and apprehension wars with anticipation my dreams gather around me for better and worse.  I hold my breath and hope again.  May the good dreams prevail.