January 2017 Update

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Good morning,

My friend from San Diego is visiting me this week and we are heading to Amsterdam as I am writing this. It’s her first time in Europe and we are both very excited about it! We have plans to visit Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich, Zermatt, and Geneva. This will be considered my winter break trip; I haven’t traveled since thanksgiving since I’ve been EXTREMELY busy with school. I wrote 30+ pages for the past few weeks and I am still not done. I’ll officially be done with fall semester half way through this trip :-)

Anyways, some updates about Copenhagen is that it’s been VERY cold! It was -7 Celsius the other day- now that I’ve gotten around to use Celsius, I’m not entirely sure what that is in Fahrenheit. The small waterway in front of my dorm is frozen, which is pretty awesome because I’ve never seen a frozen lake before (even though it’s not exactly a lake)…

Another funny thing that one of my Danish friends recently mentioned is that it’s weird how Americans ask people, “how are you?” all the time, especially in restaurants and grocery stores. He thought it was weird that a stranger would be asking that question to another stranger- he thought it required too detailed of an answer. I told him you could just say, “good, thanks” and move on with your day. He thought it was strange because then the question itself becomes meaningless. The conclusion of this story is…Danes don’t do small talk! He explained to me that when asked that question, he didn’t know where to start…whether or not to answer with how his day actually went but felt weird over-explaining. Oh, cultural differences. So interesting to witness it, especially since it’s something so small that we, Americans, for the most part do so often.

I promise a LOT of pictures and maybe some videos the next time we speak/I update my blog posts ? Talk to you soon!

Hej hej!

Yours,
Taylor