After a long and lonely day and night of traveling to Copenhagen, skies grey and sprinkling but not quite raining, I arrived at Bispebjerg Kollegium where I will be living for the next four months. I have a single room with a mini-kitchenette and an in-room bathroom with a shower basically on top of the toilet. The bathroom pretty much floods whenever I take a shower. We met our SRAs (like RAs but way more casual and WAY less informative/comforting when it comes to settling in), went to our individual rooms, and spent the day alone and homesick. Sunday sucked, to say the least. I must have called home at least three times just to hear my parents’ voices which naturally only made me feel more alone.

I slept through the night, sort of, if you call waking up three times sleeping through. Woke up at 8am in order to meet the rest of the Kollegium and two of our SRAs promptly at 9am so they could take us to our first day of Orientation in Central Copenhagen. Because there were 50 of us traveling at once, Bo and Buster took us on the S train that runs right outside my window. “But don’t remember anything we tell you because you will never again get to school this way.” When I asked the name of the stop where we’d be getting off, I was told “it doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you.” Normally, we would take the 6A bus directly to school. It’s about 25 minutes. The train excursion took 45. And I have no idea what trains we took.

Nevertheless, we made it. We had our Opening Ceremony in Cirkusbygningen, Copenhagen’s old circus building, where we were greeted with an interpretive/acrobatic dance by Christel Stjernebjerg performed to electronic music by Mike Sheridan. Here’s a panoramic view of only half of Spring 2015 DIS students, there are 1200 total:

Throughout the afternoon, we were shown DIS buildings, picked up our textbooks, wandered if we wanted. I found Humac (with help from my Dad), the closest thing to an Apple Store in Copenhagen so that I could have internet in my room. (Thanks Macbook  Air for not having a built in ethernet port…) All is good now, obviously, or I couldn’t be writing this!

Day three started with another meeting about housing and living in Denmark — adapting, assimilating, cultural immersion, etc. Then the rest of the day was free. Some of us adventured away from DIS to Nyhavn to see the colorful houses on the harbor port and then to see the famous statue of the Little Mermaid, Den lille Havfrue. Stopped in for a warm drink and some recharging before finding the 6A bus that would take us back to Bisbepjerg. The weather alternated between snow and rain all day, but stayed warm enough for everything to just become wet and cold. Including me and all the clothes I was wearing.

My current internal questions:
1. What is the protocol with eating on the go? Can I eat an apple on the bus on my way to school in the mornings?
2. Why did the pre-discussions about getting a Danish cell phone number have to be so complicated? Getting my number and my middle-school-esque Samsung phone was possibly the easiest thing I did yesterday. More on the challenges of tech later.
3. Where do I live exactly? What can I do around here?
4. Since it is dark here all the time, why doesn’t my room have more than one light?
5. Why is it so hard to find a useful map of the city, the buses, the metro? Thank goodness for Google maps!