Day at (Danish) School

School in Denmark was very different from school in Canada. If I had to sum it up in one word, I would say it had more...freedom. One thing that was very interesting was how each class had it's own culture (along with their own couch). Since everyone in the class has known each other for many years, they're totally comfortable in their group. This made it a little more uncomfortable for us, foreigners, to fit in as we did not share the same bonds with these people. It was surprising for me to find out how many authors I've read that were Danish. I never really pay attention to where authors are from, but now I realize how much their own background history can impact a story. One of the most famous Danish authors is Hans Christian Andersen. He wrote The Little Mermaid. I probably should have connected the dots here, since the Little Mermaid  ​is one of the main tourist attractions in Denmark...but oh well. My host family's culture is very different from my own family's, but it's easy to get used to. They don't that much in front me, I think the language difference is definitely a barrier in this case, but otherwise it doesn't make too much of a difference. There haven't been too many cultural misunderstandings  because the Danish students know a lot about our culture, presumably from TV, movies, and other medias. They did have some stereotypes of us though, they talked a lot about comparing us to high school musical and that was funny and not really offensive. Everyone is quite shut off here, detached in a way that north americans rarely are. I think Canadians especially can just start talking to anyone and a in a few minutes it's not even awkward. We also talk all the time, and the Danish just don't appreciate the art of small talk. This is good in a way, since this eliminates conversation about nothings like weather and such but it bad because it makes it hard to approach them and strike up a conversation. A thing that I found extremely fascinating was when we actually went to one of their classes. The whole set up was so casual, it was amazing. The students called their teachers by their first names and they openly swore in class. Our classes would never allow that! Also their projects were a lot different than what we did. They were watching a movie, Frankenstein, and since I had never watched, the class was pretty engaging. The project they did was "to build a frankenstein out of celebrities." Pretty weird, right? They had to choose qualities of different people, like David Beckham's foot and Ed Sheeran's voice. It was surprising how all their favourite celebrities were also our favourite celebrities. I would have thought there would have been more differences. I think that class was probably the best part of the school day. Otherwise, today was pretty boring even though it was nothing like regular school, it was just another day at school. That's all for today.