11th and 12th week in Denmark (Holland, Belgium, and Ribe)

Well quite a bit has happened in the past two weeks, so i apologize again for what I expect to be a pretty long blog.. I'll start with my trip to Holland and work my way up to now :)
Well two Saturdays ago I finished updating my blog around 2 AM and was asleep around 2:30. I woke up at 3:45 AM to go to Holland. It was about a 7 hour drive.  Let's just say I slept like a baby the whole way.  Saturday, Sunday, and part of Monday were spent in Amsterdam. The rest of Monday and Tuesday were spent in Rotterdam, Wednesday was spent in Antwerp, Belgium, and we left Wednesday night, arriving back home at around 4 AM.
My host mom Lise, my host sister Sara, my host Grandmother Mormor (translates to mom's mom), and I all went. When we arrived on Saturday we dropped off Sara and Mormor at their hotel and Lise and I continued on to our campsite.  Mormor had a gift card for a 2 night stay in a hotel so she and Sara stayed there while Lise and I stayed in a camping cabin.  Both the hotel and cabin were in Amsterdam.

our cabin

 We settled in and then went into Amsterdam.  We walked around, went in some shops, and enjoyed the canals.  It rained quite a bit.  There were bicycles EVERYWHERE. I'm glad I wasn't the one driving because I can't imagine having to dodge all the bicycles and pedestrians everywhere. It was actually pretty impressive to watch the bikers. They were riding their bicycles without using their hands, while on the phone, while holding an umbrella, with passengers (on bikes that were obviously not meant for passengers..), in rain or shine. It was remarkable.
Quite a few of the shops we stopped in just so happened to be cheese shops. They wreaked. I don't think I've ever seen so much cheese in my life. They had samples, though, and not just of cheese. They had Dutch Waffles and Dutch chocolate samples too. That was lovely.

Amsterdam was full of very old houses and buildings. It was really interesting just to walk around and observe.

We took a canal tour which was really great. It gave some history and showed famous and popular sights in Amsterdam.

These were all taken from the canal cruise. I think my absolute favorite thing from the whole trip was visiting Anne Frank's house. Obviously WW2 effected the US, but in completely different ways than how it affected these European countries.  It's so interesting to see these kinds of things.  You weren't allowed to take pictures from inside where she hid so I don't have any. But if anyone reading this ever goes to Amsterdam- GO TO ANNE FRANK'S HOUSE. It was truly incredible. Very, very sad, but something I think everyone should see.

It was lovely to see the canals everywhere. The autumn colors especially made it nice.

Amsterdam proper has about 800,000 people living in it. But the metropolitan area has over 2 million.  There some 14,000 tourists on any given day, and there are 5 and a half million tourists a year.  That's how many people live in Denmark.. The canal tour said that there are approximately 600,000 bikes being used in Amsterdam. That's a lot.
Rotterdam is the second largest city in Holland. There are over 600,000 people in Rotterdam proper, and in the whole metropolitan area there are around 1.2 million. So it's pretty big.  Rotterdam was almost completely destroyed in WW2, so everything is very modern and it's a fancy city. This is the apartment we stayed in on Monday and Tuesday night.

and this is the view we had from our balcony

Rotterdam has Europe's biggest port and the world's 3 largest port. We went on a tour on a ship that showed the port and part of the city. It was nice. These are from that trip:

This is probably the coolest bridge I've ever seen.

We went to a market place which was cool and we also went to a big beautiful cathedral. If it hadn't been destroyed in the war and totally rebuilt it would be from the 1600s.

While we were in Rotterdam there were 7 painting stolen from a Rotterdam art museum. You may have even heard about it. They were famous paintings by Picasso, Monet, Gauguin, and Matisse and some others. So that was interesting. Rotterdam was really nice though.

Then we went to Belgium! The houses were soooo cool. All the building looked like royalty was living in them.  They were really nice.  We went into another GINORMOUS cathedral.  We also, of course, ate some Belgian chocolate. It was delicious.  Oh, and don't forget the Belgian Waffles! The difference between Belgian and American waffles: Beglian waffles are made into a dessert by covering them in chocolate or cream. American waffles are eaten for breakfast with syrup, peanut butter, what have you, on them. 

I'm sorry again that this is so long..
The Friday after we got home I went horseback riding for the first time! It was really fun!  The next day we went into Ribe, which is Denmark's oldest city.  It's from the early 8th century. We went in a Viking Museum and saw the old church and walked around and saw the old houses.

My Viking name is Helga.

Of course we took this opportunity to buy matching shirts!

2 viking skeletons

 We saw the COOLEST thing after we went to the Viking museum.  They were excavating old viking ruins. So we got to see a real old viking home. That was awesome.

SOOOOOO COOOL. I can't even handle it. 

That night Rachael and I went to a party of a girl in my class and it was Halloween themed. Halloween isn't very big here.. but slowly it's merging itself into Danish lifestyle. It was hyggeligt :)

This week the autumn colors were so pretty. I've never seen anything like it. We went behind Cathryn house again just so we could look at the leaves. It was so lovely. 

We're really bad at jumping at the same time. But you get the picture. It's been a good two weeks, and today marks 1 quarter of my exchange being over. It's crazy how fast/slow it's gone by. It's a strange phenomenon for sure. Me and my friends are definitely enjoying Danish hygge to the max and enjoying every minute. Most of my time is spent with Rachael and Cathryn who have turned into the best friends imaginable. I tell them everything and they help me so much. It's not as easy as I thought being an exchange student, but these girls certainly make it A LOT easier and certainly much more enjoyable.  

My Danish is coming along. My classmates speak to me in Danish much of the time which is good. It's a really hard language which is a bit discouraging, but it'll come with time. It's starting to get colder and the weather now goes below freezing. It feels so much colder than freezing weather in Nevada..

Well, I hope this wasn't too long, and I'll write again somewhat soon I hope :) haha have a good one!

Med Venlig Hilsen,

Mady