The First Week

During my first week here at CBS I enrolled in a "Danish Crash Course"(DCC). It wasn't too expensive, maybe $300 and another $100 for the evening social events. This is definitely worth while in my opinion. In the DCC a language teacher teaches you the basics of Danish. You really can't learn all that much language in a week but I still think I learned a valuable amount. The real value in this class is meeting other exchange students who are just as new and unfamiliar with Denmark as you are. The creators of the DCC also setup social events at night for you to participate in if you want to signup and pay for it. This is even more worth your time than the DCC itself. The most notable events were the canal tour and the bar and club events. On the canal tour you get to see a good deal of Copenhagen from the water and see a lot of interesting places that you'll likely want to visit again on foot. There were two nights that people signed up for the social events went out, once to a bar and once to a club. I won't get into too much detail but it is definitely a different atmosphere and pace from the scene back home in Hawaii. These events were great to meet other exchange students and the exchange crew (volunteers who help exchange students adjust) and get to see some social activities popular in Denmark. People drink a lot in Denmark. It doesn't take much to figure that out seeing as how they have beer in the cafeterias on campus.

Here are some random useful hints: Bring extra passport photos, if you're planning on getting a monthly train pass you need one and you also need two for your residence permit. Bring a suit and dress shoes or a nice dress, you'll need it. Make sure you have good walking shoes, you'll likely be walking a lot. If you plan to use your credit card in Denmark you need to get a PIN code for it. Yes, your credit card, for some reason you need a pin to use it here and I had to get my dad to pretend he was me and call my credit card company and get it for me. Call your phone company to get your SIM unlocked before you go, they won't let you do it once you're overseas, well at least Verizon won't. If you like drinking coffee in the morning I would bring instant coffee from back home, while it isn't as good as fresh, you won't go broke buying coffe every morning. I have yet to find a place that sells regular drip coffee. Mostly everywhere sells expresso drinks but if you buy those regularly, like I said, you'll be broke before you know it. Also, I haven't seen a coffee machine in the stores and my apartment only has an expresso machine.

Being from Hawaii I don't really have much winter clothes but if you have any you should plan to bring it. We went down to the beach one night and it was freezing. Luckily I had a good windbreaker because without it I would have been miserable, the wind went straight through my jeans and sneakers and my face was frozen. Weather here is very unpredictable. In the morning it might look gloomy and cold but by the time you're on your way home in the afternoon it might be sunny and making your wish you wore shorts in the morning. I'm sure I'll make an update sooner or later on how cold it gets. I'm still in the process of finding warm clothes for the looming winter ahead.

Ask for student discount when you're buying stuff at cafes and bars, some places give 10% off and that 10% goes along way when everything is so expensive.

Another friendly bit of advice, if you don't like to cook make sure you bring LOTS of money to eat out and if you don't know how to cook, there's no better time than before coming to Denmark.

Here are a few pictures:

Most of the first week was very glum and overcast so I was very happy to see the sunshine again. This is right off a metro stop near one of the CBS buildings.

This is the royal palace from the canal tour perspective.

There are these painted elephant statues all over the city. I took a pictures of most of the ones I came across but I don't want to upload them all so here are just a few of them.

This is the opera house. If you're into architecture there are tons of very very cool buildings here in Copenhagen.

There are these archaic looking statues all over the city and this is one of my favorites so far.

 Some old church.

 Another statue

 I forgot to explain that these elephants were painted by artists and are going up for auction to raise money to help save the elephants in Asia or something along those lines.

This is the little mermaid statue. Not really that special in my opinion but it's a huge tourist attraction.

This was the only sitting elephant I took a picture of but there's supposed to be others like it, I just haven't seen them yet.