Merry Christmas Rotary Club of Grande Prairie!
I remember when I went to Spring Training in March 2011 one of the Inbounds at the time said that the year starts out slowly and then speeds up as time goes on. The longer you’re on exchange, the faster it goes. I’m experiencing that in a huge way lately, especially with the Christmas season! In less than a week Christmas will have been and gone. I can’t believe it!
Pic: My younger host brother in my second family. We love Christmas!
The Christmas season started off in the beginning of November for me. My first host mom loves the Christmas season, so she and I spent our first day Christmas shopping on November 13th. Crazy! It was a fantastic day though; we went to a local Christmas market that reminded me a lot of the Farmer’s Market in GP. Super nice and cozy! The same day we went to see a local Choir perform at the biggest church in town, and capped off the evening with a Sushi dinner out with the rest of the family. Fantastic! It was a pretty sad day though, because we all knew that it was my last weekend with the family. Moving families was hard, but not as hard as I had figured it would be. I’d met my second host family a few times and they had been hosting one of the other exchange students at my school so I’d been over to their house a few times. I think this made the transition a lot easier. All the same, the morning that my second host mom came to get me from my first house was a hard one. We all sat around and had coffee for a while before loading up the car and driving off. After some tears and good-bye’s I was ready to move on to the next chapter of my year. My second family has four children, but the two oldest aren’t at home right now. Their oldest daughter, Ida, was an exchange student in Argentina two years ago and is dating a boy from Brazil. During the time that I’m living with them, she’s chosen to travel back to South America and visit both those countries. I was pretty sad about it, because she was my only sister in all three of my families! But such is life. Their other daughter, Hanne, is on exchange this year in Ecuador. They’ve got two sons who are at home, Martin (16) and Peter (13) who keep me company, though. It’s been strange going from two older brothers to two younger brothers, but they’re both awesome and I love spending time with them. I forgot to mention that now I live in a town called Skælskør. In contrast to my super centrally located first house, my second house requires a half hour bus ride to get to school. Skælskør is like a city itself, with a library, banks and stores but it lacks a high school, so all the teenagers who live here take the bus in to Slagelse every morning. I’m definitely not alone; six of the other twenty-one students in my class live in Skælskør as well. 
PIC Beautiful Christmas decorations in Copenhagen!
The week following my big move, I actually spent a lot of time away from home! It was the week of American Thanksgiving and I’ve got to say, I’ve never celebrated Thanksgiving as much as I did this year! My third host family is currently hosting two boys from America that are taking part in a University exchange program for one semester. They invited me, along with five other North American University exchange students, over for the biggest Thanksgiving meal I’ve ever seen! It was an awesome night and it really felt like home. The best part for me though was hearing from the boys living with my third family. According to them I’ve “Won the jackpot” with them. I’m so excited! A lot of my exchange friends around the world have had bad experiences with hose families, but it’s looking like I’ve got three dream families! I’m so blessed it’s crazy! Anyway, after eating myself to death on Thursday (actual Thanksgiving) I was back at my first host family’s house on Saturday to do it all over again! Their oldest son, Simon, married a girl from America years ago so she always does Thanksgiving with them. It was lovely to be back in the house and hang out with everyone again! Again, so much food I didn’t know what to do with myself!
I’m officially experiencing my first Christmas without snow. CRAZY! I never thought that coming somewhere like Denmark would mean I’d have such a mild winter. I guess part of this is because of where I live. The main part of Denmark, Jutland, has had snow for a few weeks and it’s stuck. However, my island, Zealand, has had next to nothing. My new town is especially dry and without snow because we’re literally right on the ocean line. I’m actually missing the snow a lot more than I thought I would! Missing an entire season of snowboarding sucks too, but some friends and I are planning on going to Norway or Sweden sometime for a weekend to hit the slopes. Certainly looking forward to that!
Homesickness, as expected, has hit pretty hard the last few days. I was doing alright until my friends started going home for the holidays. Most of my friends graduated with me last year and are off to university this year. We’re all kind of in the same boat when it comes to these “new lives” expect that they got to go back to GP for Thanksgiving and are back now again for Christmas. The hardest part for me is hearing about my groups of friends all being together again, seeing pictures, etc. I love my friends and family here and I’m looking forward to spending Christmas with them, but it’s definitely a trying time.
My exchange students friends and I have had a good number of adventures this month too. My closest friend here, Jayme, had her 18th birthday a few weeks ago. Her host mom and I were making secrets plans for weeks leading up to it and were able to pull off an entire surprise party just for her. It was a great night, and she was so shocked that she could hardly talk. A few of us also coughed up the $20 that it costs to see a movie here in order to see the new Twilight movie on opening night in Slagelse. That was a night I won’t soon forget, partially because I love my Twilight, and partially because I saw it with a bunch of foreigners. Too funny! Jayme and I also joined a local gym a few weeks ago in hopes of getting our butts back in running shape. We were both runners and dancers/gymnasts B.D. (Before Denmark, as we say!) and are sick of not having much physical activity! The local gym is awesome, lots of great equipment and not too overly expensive. It’s always a gong show when Jayme and I go though, because even though we’re both pretty good with Danish, we talk to each other in English. It’s just not natural for two native English speakers to speak their second languages with each other. Anyway, we get a lot of weird looks and stares when people realize that we’re speaking a foreign language. It’s even better when they think we don’t understand Danish and start talking about us, and then one of us says something to them in Danish. The gym is always an adventure!
PIC above: Jayme and I representing Canada in between the
decorations in the local mall.
I’ll leave it at that for now! Life is crazy, but in a good way. Even through the hard times, I try to keep a good attitude. I constantly remind myself that it’s in the hard times that we grow the more. For me personally, it’s in the hardest times that I realize how much I rely on Jesus to provide for me, and how much He always does! He leaves me speechless on a daily basis.
Much love to you all and have a super blessed Christmas!
xoxo,
Eilee
