Glædelig jul

"One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore.  "Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair."

-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas from Copenhagen!

acquaintances to friends and friends to family...

"Never say goodbye, because saying goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting."

-Peter Pan

The past two weeks have been pretty emotional.  Not only did I have a 20 page paper due, I also had to say goodbye to pretty much all of the friends that I have made this semester.  One of the first posts that I wrote in August was titled Convenient Acquaintances.  At that time I introduced Niklas to people as Seonaid's roommate Krys' friend from home.  Which is hilarious since now I would consider him one of my best friends.  These people have gone from being complete strangers to being family in four short months.  I had two really good groups of friends this semester and then also the people that I traveled with.     

First up we have the Dames Who Dine.  This group met every Tuesday for dinner and chocolate milk/peach iced tea.  These ladies are amazing and I am really really going to miss them.  The group was me, Lucy from Australia, Diana from California, Kate from Wisconsin, Alex from Australia, Kaitlin from New Hampshire who isn't in the picture, and Hilary from Maryland who isn't in the picture.

This was our goodbye lunch with Kaitlin.  We found a place that actually serves real American style milkshakes!

This was part of my birthday weekend.  Alex and Lucy had a going away party at their apartment.  I didn't know however that at midnight they would bring out cupcakes for me and sing.

Some of our best nights together involved going to Mexibar, drinking strawberry daiquiris, and of course ending up at King of Pizza for ham and bacon pizza.

These are the two crazy Australians.  Alex and Lucy had never celebrated Halloween before so they went all out as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

This was every week.  Every single one of us would get chocolate milk or iced tea.  We got very strange looks from the checkout people.

None of us have TVs or DVD players so we would always end up crowding around a tiny computer screen watching movies such as Mighty Ducks, Flowers in the Attic, and Hocus Pocus.

Kate and I first met Alex and Lucy on our tour of Copenhagen the second day we were here.  This was after our tour when we tried koldskal, a weird yogurty thing.

My second group of friends I call the Saturday dinner crowd (somehow most of my friend groups revolve around food).  This group had a shared dinner every Saturday night.

Here is Niklas from Germany, Krys from Germany, Seonaid from New Zealand, and Marcos from Brazil.

Another member of the Saturday night dinner crowd, Triin from Estonia.  It was so weird when I was going through my photos to write this post.  This photo was taken the day that I met Triin and now it seems like we have known each other forever.

These lovely ladies are my mentors;  Eva, Line, Mie, and Signe(and Andrew another mentee).  These ladies have been so helpful in answering any questions I have about Denmark and just making me feel welcome here.

This photo makes me so happy.  This was one the first Wednesday night that we were here in Copenhagen and our first night at Studenterhuset, the student bar.  It is so weird to think that at this point I had only known these people for a day.

Besides the normal groups of people that I typically hung out with I also had a few people that I went on trips with.  Somehow navigating a foreign country really brings people together.  Here is Sophie from California, and Keven from Australia, and I at the Berlin Wall.

Jess from Australia was also on the Berlin/Prague trip.

and Niklas.  He has become probably the best friend that I have here in Copenhagen.  Probably because he goes along with all the childish things that I do but you know.  He went home on Wednesday morning for Christmas and even though I know that he will be back for New Years it was still really really sad.

Kate will hate me for including this but this has to be one of the most attractive pictures ever taken of her and Chris from California.  This was on our way to Sweden.

Another traveling group.  I went to Rome with Chris from California and Matt from Canada.  I really can't imagine having gone on this trip with anyone else besides these two.

Again another traveling group.  This was our Finland trip reunion which was two weeks ago.  We loved each other so much that we couldn't bear not getting everyone together again before people started leaving.  In Finland it was Jess, Peter from England/Canada/U.S. (I know I am confused also), Keven, Chris, Krys, Niklas, me and Sophie (not pictured)

Now there are only four of us left.  Tonight I wanted to invite people over for dinner and there were only three of my friends left.  Yesterday my friend Kate sent a comic to the Dames who Dine that was titled, "Confession: I'm totally in friend-love with you" and it is so true.  I want all of these people to come back and stay here forever, but since that isn't going to happen I want them to call me to tell me weird things that happened.  I want to be invited to all of their weddings and maybe even their baby showers, but most of all I just want to stay in touch.  I would love it if in 25 years my kids want to go on exchange somewhere and I can say oh well let me just call this person who I met on my exchange, I bet they can meet you at the airport.  

Parties, Christmas, and birthdays...

"Unfortunately, birthdays only come once a year.  I wish that a wizard would fly in, in a light blue helicopter, and show a movie for  free.  He would wish me a happy birthday and probably, leave as a present 500 ice cream sandwiches."

-Crocodile Gena

My birthday was yesterday and was amazing, but I also had a really good week before my birthday.  My week started with a traditional Danish Christmas dinner with my mentors.  

Christmas dinner in Denmark almost always includes pork.

 We even had a small gift exchange.

I love all the store windows decorated!

 Royal Copenhagen is a famous porcelain and china store.  In the store each year different people are chosen to decorate themed tables for Christmas.  I went on Thursday with my friend Matt to see.  The tables were beautiful but I was very worried the entire time about breaking things.

 It also has snowed a lot in the last week, which is weird for Denmark.  My roommates told me that they usually don't get snow until the end of January.

 You can't really tell but it is really snowing here, yet the Danes are still biking.

On Thursday we were able have a reunion with the people I went to Finland with, we had dinner and then watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  Niklas discovered that you could eat corn at this dinner.  Corn isn't native to Europe so they do not actually eat it a lot, so when we had a bowl of corn on the table for dinner he thought it was the weirdest thing in the world.

 Then on Saturday night my friends Alex and Lucy had a goodbye party since Alex is leaving on Friday (excuse me while I go bawl my eyes out).  It is especially sad because this is the group of girls that I have dinner with every Tuesday night.  We are the Dames who Dine.

 Three of us even have matching dresses!

At midnight they brought out cupcakes for me!

 They were even decorated as adorable bears.

Sunday I woke up to a blizzard! Perfect for my birthday

 I have the most amazing friends in the entire world, and this was the best birthday I have ever had! My friend Krys made me this AMAZING fairy tale castle cake!  And all of my friends contributed to the cake.

 Instead of a party at night we decided to have an afternoon tea, because all the nights this week were busy.  We had tea sandwiches of cucumber, egg salad, and salmon and cream cheese.  We also had scones.

 Krys had to get the top of the cake off in order for us to eat it.

My friends also made me a poster with a photo in the middle.  Can you tell who they are supposed to be?

 My amazing friends dressed up as characters from Peter Pan!!!!! Amazing is just not a good enough adjective to describe them.


They also made me a family tree of my Copenhagen family!  We always joked about what part we would play if we were a family so Niklas mapped it out for me.

 After my party Kate and I went to see Sleeping Beauty the ballet.  It was in the beautiful Royal Theatre.

 If the queen was in attendance this is where she would sit.

My birthday was incredible, at the end I just felt incredibly loved.  I can't believe that these people that I have only known for 5 months could care about me this much! It is an incredible feeling.  Now this week, not as good.  This week I need to write a 15 page paper for my Nordic Mythology class and I need to say goodbye to a lot of my friends.  I just need to keep remembering how I felt yesterday and I might survive this week.