It’s been a full week since I’ve arrived in Copenhagen, and I don’t think I’ve done more things in a single week since I can remember. Thankfully, I have managed to write down pretty much everything that’s happened so far, so my jet-lagged brain didn’t lose it all.

I’m living in a residential community in Christianshaven, which means that I am both in a beautiful part of the city surrounded by canals and colorful buildings and am only two metro stops away from DIS.

In fact, our location meant that on our very first night in Copenhagen my roommates and I visited Nyhavn. We arrived on the same day as the city’s Pride Parade, which meant everything was extra colorful and celebratory, including this famous harbor. It was beautiful and felt unreal, although the jet-lag might have aided the sense of unreality. On our way home, we ran into the cutest outdoor food market and stopped to get a drink and look out at the water.

I spent the first couple of days here wandering around the city and discovering increasingly beautiful buildings on every corner. Living in an RC meant that we didn’t have a ton of structured activities before classes started, which meant that my roommates and I got to explore as much as we wanted.

The main snag of my week happened when I first tried to go grocery shopping. Navigating foreign grocery stores is hard, especially when all the labels are in another language! I went alone at first, and couldn’t find everything I needed to stock my kitchen. I also got caught in a rainstorm on the way home, and didn’t have enough space in my reusable bag for all of my groceries. It was a whole disaster, one that I thankfully rectified later in the week by a trip to a different grocery store with my roommate.

Probably the most significant thing I’ve done since arriving in Copenhagen was also the most nerve wracking: I traveled alone on the Metro to see Hozier in concert! I met up with a bunch of DIS students that had arranged to meet on Facebook and they were all great. Navigating a concert venue in Danish was an experience, but the concert was one of the best I’ve ever been to and we met an incredibly nice couple from the Faroe Islands.

All in all, this week has been a whirlwind of exploring, meeting new people, climbing to the tops of things, and somehow already homework. I’m having the best time, and I’ve got to cut this short so I can go climb to the top of a church in our neighborhood with my roommates.

I have two days to pack for a semester abroad.
It’s freaking me out a little.

This isn’t my fault, really. After spending the summer working in my college town, I’ve decided to go to the Iowa State Fair with my Iowan roommate rather than spend a week at home in the Chicago suburbs packing. I couldn’t control when the fair was, and I’ve heard there’s a cow made of butter! Obviously, I had no other choice. So, I can’t pack until I’m home from the fair.

I’ve been thinking of it as starting my adventure early. If this whole semester is going to be about soaking up as much culture as I possibly can, why not start by learning what it really means to live in rural Iowa, for practice?

Anyway, this inability to complete any physical tasks to prepare for my departure has left me frantically Googling things like “do Danes wear shorts” while lying awake after midnight, because my friend who goes to college in Mexico has informed me that if you wear shorts there you’re indelibly marked as a tourist.
I would rather not come off as a tourist.
That’s why I’ve made some goals for my last week in the US:

1. Figure out if Danes wear shorts
2. Finish level one of Danish on Duolingo (a commitment that has taken me since February)
3. Try to start bullet journaling again, so I have physical evidence of my time abroad at the end of it (or maybe try starting a blog, because that would kind of force me to keep up with journaling!)

Yeah. That’s about it on the goals for now. I’m trying not to be in panic mode, I’m trying to figure out how to pack my room in Iowa and somehow not have to go through the unpack-and-repack part of my 2ish days in Illinois, I’m trying to not freak out. (Wait, I already said that?)
It’s fine. It’ll all be fine. I’m really ready for a great adventure.
At the end of my hectic week of state fairs and packing, I will be rewarded by arrival into a city that looks like it came out of a storybook (at least in pictures). I’m excited to find out more about my new home and do all the orientation things. Weirdly, the thing I’m most excited about is taking one of the self-guided walking tours of the city DIS sent us. I guess I know little enough about Copenhagen that I can’t imagine many of the other orientation activities, but I’ve seen enough pictures to imagine a tour, and I’m pumped! I have no doubt that once I land, all the little details will figure themselves out. I’ve already looked at a map of the metro, and it seems way less confusing than the El.
Shoot. I need to find access to a printer to print those important documents that came attached to that one email. I guess now I have four goals?

(Since the time of writing, I’ve learned that Danes do wear shorts, and that the main inhibiting factor there is that it will get too cold very soon into the semester.)