I have been living in Denmark for four weeks so far. I will be an exchange student in University College Sjælland, in Denmark for one year.Before I start talking about my first impressions in Denmark, I want to include a short story of my arrival to Denmark and first four weeks of my stay in Vordingborg.
I got on the plane on the 27th of August to come here. I was not alone when I arrived Copenhagen Aiport; we, four exchange students ( Hatice, Nazlı, Sevim, and me ) from Turkey, were together and we were trying to figure out how to go to Vordingborg by train. We couldn't buy a ticket since the ticket machine was only programmed to Danish Krones, which I found quite worrying without knowing that I had to wait two days for exchanging Euros in Danish Krones as it was Saturday and all of the banks were closed during the weekend. Then, luckily we learnt that we could pay on the train and finally we arrived at Vordingborg at six o'clock in the morning. We were met by our tutors ( Martin and Trine ) at the train station. Then, they showed us our rooms and the school. On Sunday, we met our counsellor, Dorte. She came to see us at the weekend on Sunday, which was very kind of her. The next day, we figured out how to do things at school, such as copying the lecture notes and so-on, with Dorte. We've started English class with Anne Kristine on Friday and after two weeks we've started educational studies with Peter. Now, we are in Peter's class and we've started to a Blog project which I find quite interesting.
To begin with, adapting myself to circumstances of living in a different culture and staying in a different country was not as hard as I expected it to be but, of course, I had some difficulties as soon as I arrived. First problem appeared when we were out in Vordingborg. When we left our home town, it was almost 40 degrees and it was around 15 when we arrived in Vordingborg, which was equal to the tempreature in winter in our hometown. So we were a little bit cold but to our surprise we got used to the weather very soon.
One of the most challenging things I have experienced in Denmark is that documents that were mailled to me in first four weeks were all in Danish. When we went to the city hall to apply for Yellow Cards, we were given a form which is both Danish and English but it was the first and the last document that was in English. Including the welcome letter to Denmark, almost all of the papers that were sent to me were in Danish so I needed fellow student's help to figure out what they were really about. But still it is a good reason to start learning Danish during my stay here.
