Peanut butter and a day in the life of Tanel

So far, judging by the prices I've seen in the city, it has seemed to me that Danes have way too much money. I was actually surprised when I found out that my host family does not use money for toilet-paper. (Otherwise I would've stuffed my pockets full of it and claimed that I had a bad case of diarrhea.) And then, while having a walk 'round my neighborhood, I saw it: a small, greyish-beige store in the middle of nowhere with dirty glass-doors, horrible interior design, shop-assistants with empty eyes and faces that could make small children cry, suspicious security-guards and, first and foremost, cheap-as-hell prices! This was it, I had found the Danish Säästumarket.

While in Estonia, a cheap chocolate-bar would actually taste cheap, a cheap choc'-bar in Denmark tastes, I kid you not, good! This truly shows how developed the country is. A cheap chocolate-bar that doesn't taste like poo mixed with sugar? No wonder they have so many immigrants! They're all in it for the food! I think our president could learn a thing or two from this. Or at least the owner of Säästumarket™.

I should stop rambling and tell you something about my life here. Actually that's what Mrs Eero (whose name I HAVE to mention in each of my posts for some reason) wants me to do. So here goes, for those of you who give a damn: A day in the life of Tanel (The Denmark Edition).

In the morning I wake up at 7:10, giving me just enough time to grab a shower and load up on food. My favourite breakfast here is not some fancy Danish national dish, as one would expect, it's actually yoghurt with cereal. But since we're in Denmark and nothing here makes much sense to me, there must be something different regarding my food of choice. The Danish way of saying 'yoghurt' is 'yughoort'. Yes, all you need to do is switch o and u, and lo and behold! you can now speak Danish.

I get to school at about 8:00 where I am usually greeted by a few of my class-members. During lessons, when everybody is typing on their fancy, top-o'-the-line laptops, I sit around trying to look like I understand something. The problem is that I can only comprehend simple sentences and small parts of long sentences. I can't well tell the teacher to slow down because I don't know how to say that in Danish and it would look weird. My host family has told me that they're not sure how much Danish I really know and therefore they can't talk about their secrets in front of me. I told them that I don't know anything at all and then proceeded to write down their secrets in my notebook.

The students at my school are really nice. Somebody threw a piece of paper (and just narrowly missed) at me when I was in my host's class for a lesson, but I just assumed it was the Danish way of saying 'Hello'. Unfortunately, when I tried to throw some paper at an old lady standing at the bus stop, she started to beat me with her walking-stick. I had to run away, because you can never be too safe 'round elderly people, especially when they're armed with wooden sticks and bad breath all the time.

The peculiarities of Denmark don't stop there. For one thing, I've noticed that Danish students address their teachers by first name. If I tried that in my school, I'd be expelled and burned at the stake. Apparently students like to be friends with teachers in Denmark, which really sounds like a reasonable thing to do, because why would you want to spend 7 hours a day with people you don't really like trying to shove knowledge into that tired head of yours like sausages to a fat man's mouth. For education? Who needs education when you can become a thief or a vagrant.

One of the things that "grinds my gears" here is that all students use laptops during lessons. I know I mentioned this before, but I feel that I need to elaborate on this subject a bit more. The main reason for using laptops in every lesson, is that it's much easier to upload a file to lectio.dk (the Danish version of E-kool) than to print something out or make students write in their notebooks. The students in my class are smart and I've only seen a few of them doing unecessary things during lessons, like visiting Facebook or playing poker online, but I've heard that many of the students in other classes get distracted by having a laptop in front of them. What happened to the old way of writing things down? I'm no saint and I must say that I like how simple it is to fix your mistakes in a Word document, but I sure as hell won't be able to remember what the heck it is I am studying if all I do is push buttons and look at a shining box of light sitting in front of me. This is modernisation in effect. Notebooks and textbooks replaced by laptops, stores and malls replaced by eBay and Amazon, friends replaced by Facebook contacts, real communication by instant messaging services, toilets by plastic bags, free time by FarmVille. Okay, I admit that I might be taking things too far right now, but you have to admit that Real Men don't use laptops to take down notes; they use their fingernails to carve notes into stone tablets.

Since lessons only last 90 minutes and there are usually four different lessons each day, I get home at around two o'clock. I eat a lot and I do whatever it is I want to do. Seriously, my host family gives me too much freedom. It's like I'm freedom's slave. I eat as many peanut butter sammies, nutella sammies, apples, oranges etc as I want - at this rate I will be the size of Mt Rushmore by the end of three months.
My mother told me that I better practise ironing my clothes before I leave, but they take care of that too! Take that, chores. I at least keep my room in order, so that it may look presentable when someone stumbles in accidentally. I keep my clothes in the closet (amazing, isn't it), my books on a table (bet you didn't see that one coming) and my dirty clothes inside a wicker basket, which I will transport to the laundry-room as soon as mushrooms start growing on it.

I've been 'round the city a couple-a times. I don't know what to tell you about that, though, because nothing of interest happened. While "cruising" the city with "my homies" (whatever that means), I stumbled upon a comic book store. Yes, by now you should have noticed that I am a geek. I also found some interesting, well... , nothing, to be honest. I walked 'round and 'round the city until I ended up outside it and had find my way back. I got back in one piece, with my wallet still in my pocket and no knives in my stomach. I guess you could call that a succesful outing.

Some of the students in my class have been talking about throwing me a party, so they could get to know me better. I love being an exchange-student. It's like I'm Spiderman, without, you know, the mask, the superpowers, the suit... or like SpongeBob, without the... sponge?

I don't know what else to write, I've drained myself completely and it's now 12:55 PM. I hope you enjoyed even a little bit of this gigantic blog-entry, and I look forward to posting some more (one day). God help you if you managed to read all of this.



Good night guys, I really miss you my old bed.