More and more culture

Danish lessons for today:

We talked a lot about the hojskolen and how people go there either before or after their undergrad work is done, therefore many times Danish college students are much older than we are in the US. And also, many times students will take a year or two off to travel around the world and experience life elsewhere. Both the hojskolen and traveling are looked highly upon by employers because it means they will be well-rounded employees and have a lot of experience under their belts. We then compared it to the US in that traveling abroad is looked highly upon by employers, but only if it's affiliated with a program. Unless you're applying for a job related to your travels, companies would rather you have experience in their respective industries rather than taking a year or two off to travel on your own. That's the general impression we, as a class agreed on. It's crazy how much you realize about your own culture until your immersed in a place outside the US.

Speaking of immersion, I'm definitely being immersed in this culture. I've forgotten the value of a dollar already; I'm just so used to dividing everything by 5 now. I was talking with my mom the other day about how much groceries are and I really had a hard time relating to US dollars, weird! Also, I've been surrounded by the Danish language for the past month...I don't know if I mentioned this before but all the signs and everything are in Danish, there really isn't a lot translated into English as far as signs and such go. But, it's always exciting when I see a word I know! Slowly but surely, this difficult language is coming to me.

The diet coke is no good here...I've only had maybe three since coming here. It's in a bottle, so that's cool but other than that it doesn't have much going for it. It's pretty flat and difficult to find an ice cold one since the refrigerators are kept at the lowest setting possible (because electricity is so expensive here). Who knows, I may not want another one after living here for another 3 months!

One last thing--gas is incredibly expensive here. The gas stations show around $2 on them, which I interpreted as $2 per gallon, forgetting that Europe is on the metric system. So, that's $2 per liter....and with about 4 liters in a gallon...that adds up to about $8 per gallon. Maybe $3 isn't so bad! That's the reason public transportation and biking are so popular here along with the fact that cars are incredibly to purchase here. I'm pretty sure I mentioned this before but for refreshers, with the taxes imposed on cars here it would cost roughly $50,000 for a car that costs us $15,000 in the states...jeez!