So apparently the Copenhurricane did not end on Monday, rather it decided to shift forms and pound me in a new way – homework! As there are only two weeks between a lot of the travel breaks this semester, the week before the break is usually packed with homework, essays and tests. This week was no exception.
Starting from where I left off…Friday, Saturday and Sunday were all full of family activities. Friday night, my host family visited another family they are very close with and brought me along with them. We had a nice dinner and dessert, and Linea, her friend whose house we were at, and I watched a movie called “In Her Shoes”. It was a pretty good movie and it was very nice to have a relaxing night!
Saturday was my host dad’s birthday. Anyone that knows Danes knows that we were up very early that day – the Danish tradition is to prepare breakfast in the morning and then have the entire family wake up the birthday person singing and waving the Danish flag. So, of course, that is exactly what we did. I spent the rest of the morning doing some homework, because that afternoon we had to decorate and cook for a party. We had the three families we went to Sweden with in the beginning of the fall come over for a Halloween party. The house was filled with spiders, webs, witches, and a variety of other decorations, and of course some good food! We had a good night and rested up for our third day of social activities on Sunday.
Every year in Copenhagen, there is a traditional fox hunt. Yep, a fox hunt. My host mom’s father participated in it for several years, and my family has always gone to watch. The way it works is that at the front there are two individuals with fox tails attached to their jackets (no foxes are harmed in the hunt itself) and the riders follow along behind. The first group of riders is for horses, and the second group is for ponies. The track is located in the middle of the woods, near a very old amusement part that is the oldest in Denmark. The track is filled with a variety of obstacles, so it is a lot of fun to try and beat the horses to the next big ones by trekking through the woods as they continue on their path. Overall, we saw three people fall off (none really hurt – the interesting thing though is that the people behind stop to make sure that there aren’t any more injuries sustained while the rider is getting back up on the horse obviously, but also because the horses must stay in their exact order and the riders must try not to pass anyone). The funniest one is the one that everyone waits for, because the horses must jump over an obstacle and into a pond. There is someone that falls off every year and they always laugh it off as they clean themselves up.
After the horse race, it is traditional to have a big, Danish lunch. So of course, that is what we did. We all came back to our house and had lunch for about 6 hours. There was some interesting food (as always with the Danes, in my opinion at least) and everyone had a lot of fun.
So after such a busy weekend where next to no homework was done, I had three days to write several essays, prepare a presentation and study for an exam. That’s where the next round of the hurricane (figurative) hit. I stayed up way too late every night and spent all of my waking hours on my computer or having my host sister quiz me in Danish for my oral exam. Overall, a very very very stressful and annoying week, (not including the weekend of course), but it was all worth it because immediately after my exam on Thursday, I headed to the airport to pick up a very good friend of mine who came to visit!
A Danish Adventure 