Thursday, December 20, 2012

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.  

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