My Exchange to Næstved Denmark: 4Months 3-4Weeks: Holidays

Week 20-21: Dec21-Jan3

Holidays are usually something that people really look forward to, this holiday season was really really hard for me. This is the first time I have spent the holidays away from home. I missed all of my family traditions, and just everyone from back home. I tried really hard to stay involved, and still go out and do things during my break. Though there were a few days where I just spent the day in my room and only came out for food. Some days I just didn't want to do anything. The holidays are the hardest part of any exchange. I suppose if it was easy everyone would do it.

Monday, this was the first day of my winter break, so what did I decide to do on my first day, I went for a run, I decided to go get lost and find my way back. I had my phone with me, so, of course I had GPS, but that was a lot of fun. I took a lot of pictures. The next day in the morning my class along with the whole school had a breakfast at school, and sang and ran around the big Christmas tree in the middle of our school. It was a really neat introduction to the Danish way of Christmas. Another thing about Danish Christmas, they do most of the Christmas stuff on the 24th of December. It was really different opening all of the presents late at night as opposed to early in the morning like back home on Christmas morning. Christmas day here in Denmark we didn't really do much of anything, we just hung out at the house and ate food. Then, on Saturday, my host brother, Christopher, my host sister, Thea, and I went to a Julefrokost with their father's side of the family. There were at least 25 people at this get together. The next three days were pretty much when I didn't feel like doing much of anything, so I didn't. The next day I actually went out and did something was New Year's Eve. On New Year's eve I pretty spontaneously decided I wanted to ride into town on my bike and go have a coffee. While I was on my way downtown I got pretty distracted by this fun looking BMX park that no one was at. I stayed there for probably half an hour just riding around, then my oldest host brother, Nikolai, called me and asked me if I wanted to go get fireworks. I rode the rest of the way into town, and met him so we could go get fireworks. At first I was expecting lame fireworks like the ones we have in Oregon, but in fact the exact opposite was true. Almost all of the fireworks I could see would be absolutely illegal in the State of Oregon. It was really cool.
After we finished with fireworks shopping my host brother dropped me back off where I left my bike. by this time it had started to drizzle. I finally got around to sitting down and just relaxing in a cafe with my coffee. When I was heading home it started to rain, this really really sucked combined with it being below freezing outside. I wish it had been cold enough for it to snow, that would have been much more bearable and maybe a little more fun. Then on New Year's day I slept on and off until 14:00(2:00pm). So I didn't really do anything that day. However, on New Year's Day, my LG G4 just randomly shut down as I was going to bed. I haven't been able to get it to fully power on since. It is stuck in what is called a "boot loop" where it just keeps rebooting over and over again. I am still waiting on confirmation from LG to have it sent in and repaired. Not a very great end to my holiday, but oh well, it will get fixed eventually. Until then, expect a few less pictures than usual.

As always, thank you all so much for all of your support and interest, it has helped me through a few tough times while I've been away. I miss all of you guys back home. Keep in touch. :)

Email: hagemanmasonrye@gmail.com

Monday Dec21: Running