Sunday, November 13, 2011

Summer House

Hey Everyone, 

I am now back in Copenhagen!

I went to my host family's summer house a few weekends ago and wanted to write a post about that, but never got around to it. So I'm going to write that now (and then I'll get to all my exciting adventures traveling around Germany and Austria).

Well first of all, the school system here has a week long break in the middle of the Fall semester. The historical reason for this is that long ago the kids had to get off school to help harvest the potatos and it survived and turned into a week long vacation right in the middle of October. During this time, my host family wanted to go to their summer house for some time just to relax. So they left on Tuesday for the summer house (I had to stay at home because I still had school and such). I was able to join them on Thursday and basically left as soon as class was over (and skipped my one class on Friday). 

The summer house is located on the Northern coast of the island that Copenhagen is on. It took me about 2 and a half hours to get there as I had to take regional trains. I got there when it was already dark (7ish) and my host dad picked me up from the train station (in the town 20 min away from the summer house). 

The house is owned by my host dad's parents. My host family goes up there when they can and they often hang out with the grandparents there and just relax. The house was really nice and big with the bed rooms set in the front and the rooms like the kitchen, dining area, and living room set in the back towards the sea with huge windows. It was quite pretty. 

So on that first day I just had dinner with them and hung out. The next day we woke up had some breakfast and then put on hiking boots and the like, and hiked up the coast. Denmark has a law where some amount of meters from the coast cannot be owned by an individual so there are trails along the coast that anyone can use.

There is a military base up at the tip of the coast so we walked through that (you can walk through it unless they are doing drills) to right up against the water. We spent a long time digging under rocks in the shallow water looking for crabs and other oddities. We were able to find a lot of small star fish and eventually found some smaller crabs hiding underneath the rocks. We then hiked back the house and I went into town with my host dad and the two kids to get some fish at a local place for dinner (it was a Friday and the place closes early on Friday so we had to go early). The fish place had all sorts of fish just laid out on ice, it was pretty interesting.

When we got back, I made Oreo Balls with the kids, which was pretty fun for both me and the kids. Then we just hung out till dinner and after dinner the kids wanted to watch Cars on Disney channel. I had seen it so many times that I knew what was going on (and knew a lot of the funny lines) even though the entire thing was in Danish. After that the kids crashed and I just watched TV with my host dad. 

Funny side note, there is a fox that lives behind the house in some brush, whenever my host family or the grandparents are staying at the house they leave out scraps from dinner for the fox and it will usually come into the lawn around midnight. It came out that night but I ran over to see it (from one part of the house to the other) which scared it away... bummer. 

The next morning (Saturday) we woke up and ate some breakfast which included some weird Danish twists on fishy food. Then I played crocket with the kids and my host dad which was pretty fun because the kids got pretty into it. After that we packed up and headed home. 

It was a really nice place to hang out and relax for some time. When I got there my host dad told me that they do nothing whenever they are there, they just relax. Hey sounds like a good time to me.

I also have some pictures of the place (only a few because my camera died really quickly for unexplained reasons) but I can't get them on my computer because my computer tells me that it will have to delete all the data in order to be able to get things off of the storage card. I guess I was supposed to configure the card before I took any pictures, but how was I supposed to know that? Instead I'll just hold onto the storage card and I'll extract the data once I get home. 

Later that day I also got the bike out and rode it to some nearby parts of town and found some really pretty areas. 

The following day I also went with my host family and my host dad's grandparents to a nearby castle that has a huge park around it (I also have a few pictures of that). The weather was really nice and I was able to really talk to my host dad's parents for the first time. His mom was really nice and liked talking to me but his dad didn't really seem all that interested in talking to me, he mostly wanted to hang out with his grandkids. 

After that it was back to school but it was a really nice and relaxing weekend that allowed for some good bonding with my host family.

I promise I will post soon about other adventures. I hope everyone has been doing well and that it hasn't been too cold at home (it is starting to get really cold here all the time).

Talk to you guys soon,
Nick

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