mandag den 7. april 2014

Home Sweet Home

Monday April 7th

Home Sweet Home

After a whole day outside under the merciless sun I woke up with nasty sunburns on neck, ears and arms. We had to get to the bus pretty early, about 9.50. I was too lazy to get up in time so I ended up being in too much of a hurry to take a shower. I put on my clothes, went down to eat breakfast and went upstairs to quickly stuff my bag with all the stuff that belonged to me and went down to the bus afterwards. Then the trip went to Muir Woods. We had to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge to get there so we stopped there so we could take pictures of the bridge and ourselves. Muir Woods was fine I guess, but we just didn't have enough time to look at all of it and soon we were back in the bus again. It is hard to explain the beauty of the forest without pictures, but imagine these giant trees, that are several centuries old, rising high in the skies while a lake as clear as thin air flows through the whole area almost dividing it in two. The next stop was the Steinbeck Museum, but first we had to ride the bus for about two hours. There weren't much to do in the bus so we tried to keep ourselves entertained by conversing. I'm kind of introverted myself so it didn't do anything better for me, but the other students seemed to have fun. The Steinbeck Museum wasn't really my cup of tea to be honest. You were required to have read all of his books to get the full experience. I've only read one of them which narrowed the amount of things worth watching there quite a bit. Into the bus again and off we go to Menlo-Atherton. We arrived at the school, but the potluck wasn't ready yet because the families of the students weren't there yet. So we waited for a couple of minutes and the families started to come. The family I were to live with came a little later and Henry, the guy I were to go to school with, didn't come with them because he was delayed by his rowing training. Eventually he arrived as well and I got to know the Hilton family a little better. Then we drove back to their house and I could finally take my long anticipated, and needed, shower. It was a little boring at first because the boys had to do their homework, but when they were done, I gave them my welcome present consisting of an Easter egg from Royal Copenhagen, some chocolate from Summerbird and some salt liquorice. They loved the egg and the chocolate. The liquorice, however, they were not a fan of. The rest of the day just consisted of fun and games until it was time to go to bed.

fredag den 4. april 2014

Don't pack a pest

Friday April 4th

Don't pack a pest

The inevitable trip to the state was of course doomed to be horrible. First we had to take a bus at 5.40 in the morning from Viby to Billund; then a flight from Billund to Copenhagen where we were informed that our flight was delayed by two hours. Then, when we finally got aboard the plane, we had to fly for about 12 hours which is not nice when a stomach ache suddenly slaps you in the face. The plane had little displays that you were able to watch movies on, which was nice if it wasn't because a lot of the movies that were played had important scenes censored out and that it wasn't possible to restart them, meaning that you had to wait for the movie to end for it to start over. After the plane landed we had to wait even more because we needed to stand in line at the border control. We had to stand in a seemingly stationary line for over an hour while a video about how it is a bad idea to bring food and other living things to the states because it can damage their ecosystem followed by a small informative piece of text about avian flu. I don't know how many times I heard the phrase"don't pack a pest" during that wait time, but it was certainly enough to get tired of. After that nightmare we had to wait for half an hour for a bus which would drive us to our hostel.