Goddag til min Aussie venner og familie! Hvordan goer det?

Things here are going very well! I've just hit the big 3 month mark a couple of days ago, but only feels like i've been here for about a week! I'm just having a brilliant time here, and while I miss some things from home (beaches, warm weather, mangoes, tim tams, friends and my record player, but not in that order particually), mostly I have enough things here to keep me more than amused.


I've fallen in love with a danish liver spread called Lever Postej (post-eye):

From Wikipedia:

In Denmark the liver is formed into a paste to which herbs, salt, pepper and other desired seasoning are added. It is then put into a loaf pan and baked in an oven.

The leverpostej is sliced or spread on buttered Danish dark rye bread (rugbrød) and eaten as an open faced sandwich. It might also be topped with any of a variety of pickled items, such as beets, løj, or cucumbers. It is also traditional to place a slice of the saltkød on top of the leverpostejmad.

It's probably the Danish equivalent of Vegemite, and it certainly took a bit of getting used to, but now i love it!

Earlier this month, I had my second Rotary camp, a Viking camp in a city called Roskilde, about 3 hours from here. All the rotary exchange students (new and old) met for a weekend of hammer throwing, viking ship building and danish folk dancing, which was all very very fun.

Everyone (except me, i seem to be lost in the back row somewhere):



Matt (Newcastle, Australia) undertaking a typical Viking pasttime, log throwing:



Camilla (Argentina) with a danish troll:



Some attractive vikings found in the museum:



On a replica viking ship:



Alistair (Canberra, Australia) with a viking-sized icecream, the Grand Danois:



And me with my hair-twin:



This month I also went with the Silkeborg exchange students to visit the resting place of the first king, and ancestor of Prince Frederik, King Gorm. His bones have been moved around a lot in the past 1000 years, but they currently rest in Jelling inside a modest church. The Danes take their Royalty very seriously, and actually have the oldest continuous Royal family in the world.

The Jelling Stone has runes on it dating from 1000 AD, raised by Gorm the Old for his wife.



Soetkin (Belgium) and Julia (Italy) in the church where Gorm's bones lay:



Most of the silkeborg exchange students with a statue of H.C. Andersen:




On the same trip we also visited Odense, and saw the exact place where Hans Christian Andersen was born inside the H.C. Andersen museum which was very cool.

Other events in the recent few weeks include purchasing tickets to the Skanderborg festival, as unfortunately i wasn't allowed to go to the bigger Roskilde festival. However, Skanderborg festival involves 5 days of camping in a town just 10 minutes from Ry, with big names like Eric Clapton, Franz Ferdinand and the Kings of Leon playing. It's not til August, but tickets sell out every year. It's called Danmark's Smukkeste Festival, (Denmark most beautiful festival) so I'm looking forward to it a lot!

I've also recently been out rowing and I can really see spring on the way now. Apparently in the next two weeks, all the beech trees around here will get their leaves back and the whole countryside will turn much greener. The weather this week has been very very nice, I was even able to wear shorts and a t-shirt on the weekend! This Thursday, it's going to reach 17 degrees! I helped Freddy mow the lawn on the weekend, and managed to get the tiniest bit of sun on my arms and face.

On the 4th of May, I am going to be moving families, which is both very sad and very exciting. I'm looking forward to my next family, but I'm going to miss this one a lot. On the 10 til the 12th of May, I'm going to be on a trip to Norway with my language school for whitewater rafting! We are travelling by ferry up to Norway, which I'm sure will be very very cold. And then, the weekend after that is Eurotour! Beyond that is school holidays until mid-August.

Mange knus, Daniel

Shining sun, sweet songs and upcoming sight-seeing!

Denmark finally warms up! The sun has begun to emerge from behind the layers of winter and flowers are coming up, daylight savings has begun and people on the street are starting to smile a little more. I received my first "God morgen" from a person on the street the other day, a sure sign that spring is in the air. All of Easter's late snow has melted away and we are reaching temperatures that exceed an epic high of 10 degrees quite often.

Earlier this month, Soetkin(Belgium) and I read that a band called "String Swing" was playing in Rambelys, the same bar that I played with Soren's school rock band in in February. The band was really great, and I intend to go back to the bar to see some more bands, as they have several on every week.

I have been spending time in Aarhus with other exchange students (udvikslingstudent, i Dansk) from around the world. Last week we went to see a band called "Alphabeat", who actually attended Silkeborg Gymnasium a few years ago, and are now getting quite a name for themselves.

You can listen to one of their songs here:



It's very catchy, happy pop music in English and we had a great time in what is apparently one of Denmark's best clubs, Train.

The gang:



and the band:



There has also been a couple of exchange student parties for various birthdays (fodseldag) and here is a couple of photos from these:

From right to left, me, Soetkin (Belgium), Marion (France) and Steph (Costa Rica)


Soetkin, Hannah(USA), Deirdre (USA), Marion, Alice (USA), Nikki (China) and Steph


On Friday night, I went to my first proper Danish party with my classmates. There was money left over from the trip to Paris, so Asbjern hosted a party where we ate curry and chocolate cake and had a very nice time. It's always good to see my classmates outside of the school environment, and Danes are very friendly people when they have had a drink or two.

This week, Silkeborg Gymnasium is holding a Spring Concert with a David Bowie theme, so all the music classes are performing items. Our class is playing "Space Oddity", and I'm on the string synthesizer.
Next week, the language school has organised a trip for the students to Odense, a city on the island between Zealand and Jutland, the two main parts of Denmark.
Next month, I'm trying to get myself onto a white water rafting trip to Norway for a weekend (the 10th til the 12th of May) with the language school. I will also be changing host families around that time, to another family in the pretty town of Ry. It will be difficult to leave this family, but my next family will also be pretty fun. They have a daughter who will be returning from Chile while I am staying, as well as a 20 year old son who went on exchange to India, and two little girls.

On the 18th of May, Eurotour begins! Three weeks on a tour around many of Europe's most beautiful cities with a bus load of crazy exchange students.

After Eurotour, I will have finished my year of school. (because in Europe, the end of the school year comes in July.) I will have almost three months of holidays before I return to school in mid August! Life is indeed great. Also, if anyone was considering a trip to Europe/Denmark this year, June to Mid-August I will have no school to skip and no other current plans! Most of the exchange students at my school will be leaving to go home in June/July so I'm going to be saying goodbye to a lot of great friends who I'll miss a lot, but will hopefully remain in touch with to exploit spare beds from in my inevitable later years of travel.

My language skill seem to be developing alright, I can understand quite a bit and have finally perfected saying "Ry". Don't be deceived by the apparent innocence of its' spelling. Its not pronounced like Rye at all, but has a very strange foreign sound to it. The R sound comes from the depths of your throat and has to be fired out across your mouth and then moulded into a "y" as it comes of your tongue. Your tongue then has to try and make the "o" and the "i" sounds almost simultaneously. It was very much a big moment when I learnt I could pronounce it.

Several weeks ago, I ordered some cds from Amazon in the US, and thought I had found a nice cheap way of buying cds. I ordered Jack Johnson, "sleep through the static," the soundtrack to "Across the Universe", a cd by a French guy called Tete and Blue King Brown's first single. However, when i went to pick them up this afternoon, I found that Danish importation taxes has doubled the price of my cds! Needless to say, I won't be importing cds into Denmark like that anymore!

Love to all, Daniel.