Welcome back to ye ol' blog. It's been a little over a week since I last posted, so I figured it was in due time for an update! Also, I just got back from the park and it's a friday- so I have a bit of free time.(weekend! woot.)
Anyway. So with the help of journaling and planner-ing, I have a pretty easy time remembering what I did. As I was looking over at this stuff, I realized that I've been learning a lot about the school system and social bit here without even really noticing it. That being said, I figured I'd write about it here.
SCHOOL.
Something that I think a lot of us, especially as we get older, like to say we hate. But, even if going to classes for 7 or 8 hours a day isn't really our cup-o'-tea, school is admittedly a place where a lot of socializing and people-finding goes on. As an exchange student, this is definitely the case.
Things I have learned about school:
1. When you go to school here, you stay with the same group of people all day, every day. When you say 'my class' here, it means the 25-or-so students who you are almost always with-- not the people you're graduating with. This has a lot of ups and downs, ups being that you really get to know the people in your class, and you spend a lot of time with them. Downs being you don't get to met as many people, and if you ever were to get 'sick' of someone-- well, you're stuck with them.
2. You change classrooms, all the time. In the US, we have a set schedule for everyday. It's like, at this time, you go to this class, with this teacher, with these people. In denmark, you have to look at your schedule online everyday, because even though your English class may have been in classroom 60 last week, today it's in classroom 15. Also, we have different classes and lengths of classes EVERY day. One monday you might have english for two hours, biology for an hour(1 hour being one 'lesson'), and religion for an hour. Tuesday you might have biology for two hours, gym for 1 hour, danish for two hours, and political science for an hour. You see what I mean? Also, classes get cancelled a lot. Sometimes only a few minutes before the class was supposed to start. If you don't check online a lot, sometimes you end up sitting and talking to your classmates for a while with nothing much to do. Also, we start and end at different times everyday-- and, obviously, having a short day is really really nice.
3.Clubs and activities at schools don't really exist. There aren't any sports teams, or 'german clubs' or 'key club' or any of that stuff. If you want to do activities like those, there are 'centers' of sorts that you can go to. Many of these 'centers' are free to use or at very low cost.(Thanks socialism!;) My school is kind of unusual in the sense that we do actually have a few 'activities'. For example; we have a big school musical, and a school newspaper.
4. Arts and music kind of fizzles out as you get older in Denmark. What I mean by that is, even if you really like art, by the time you're in gymnassium(the kind of school I'm in, which is the school that prepares you for university), you usually stop being involved in those kind of activities. There are also not many class like music or arts at school.
5. (this one applies to a lot of countries, not just denmark) Foreign language, especially english education, is very good, and has a lot of emphasis placed on it. Most kids in my gymnassium are more or less fluent in english, and many also more or less fluent in a third language. I think this is really impressive, and the fact that it's a cultural norm even more so.
6. A lot of people bring lunch to school, just because the cafeteria food is so insanely expensive. This is just a small thing I've noticed.
Alllrighty folks, I'm sure there are things I've left out, but these are the bits of information fresh off the top of my head. SCHOOL. Bam.
To end this post, though, I figure I'd show you a couple more pictures! Here's one of lunch, and one more of my city just because it's so freaking pretty.
with good vibes
-Rowen
:)
It looks amazing.
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