torsdag den 17. oktober 2013

17th october 2013:
It's now been two weeks since i came battered into the unknown land called the US, and i kind of like it. The USA is very different from Denmark, which i will talk about later, right now i'll focus on what i've experienced in these two weeks, and what i've seen of the american culture and of their landmarks.

First of all: the flight! The flight to here was two hours to amsterdam and then 9 hours or so to SEATAC, the southern airport of seattle. This did not feel like 11 hours total, rather 24 maybe, which was also the total amount of time i was awake that day, atleast in danish time. We arrived at 4pm (16 o' clock) in the afternoon, and went to Edmonds Community College to meet our host parents, and then get transported home by our host parent just two minutes after arrival at the college. That was when i met Romalyn, Jerome, Jaelyn and Jazlyn, a family of four that i until then only have seen as letters on a paper. i used almost all evening talking to them and the other exchange student and his girlfriend, Alex and Tracy from Hong Kong, where we had our initial meeting.

They all seemed nice and they still do, so we talked for quite a bit that first evening. In the morning i was driven to EDCC (edmonds community college), where we had to get our bus passes and just some general information. after this we were driven down to the Alderwood mall, a "medium sized mall" for america atleast, it was probably as big as the biggest danish mall, and my host mom, romalyn, said that it was medium size, it wasn't really that big, this was one of the first encounters i had with the difference in the size over here, but definitely not the last.

Here we saw a lot of different stores, mostly footlocker and some sports shops, and getting our cell phones working (which wasn't cheap at all...). I've been to these shops afterwards and have used way too many money on those shops in alderwood mall, mostly because of the small eating plse called "the blazing onion", which makes the best burgers i've ever tasted, and is generally extremely good, even though the food is not in the least fat free, there's a lot of fat in those burgers, but the place is nice, the food is good, and you have free refill of both fries and soda, which me and my friends used really well, by sitting in there for like 3 hours one day, and have multiple times sat in there for 1 hour plus.

After that we had a whole weekend in front of us, to talk to the family and such, but was mostly used to overcome the extreme jetlag i had in those days, i woke up at 4-5 am both days, after going to bed at 11 pm, so i was staying in bed for some time after that. But other than that it was pretty uneventful.

Started the school out monday morning, and that was also quite uneventful, but will speak of the school system on a later point so will leave it at that. tuesday we were at Alderwood again, just for the sake of it, and was pretty good, bought some new nike shoes from footlocker for 110 bucks, and found a fantastic place to shop clothes, american eagle, which is where half of the clothes i'm wearing right now is from! That was really good and just the style of my whole class (of the boys atleast) exept for one, who just seem to hate shopping clothes or anything for that matter, and is only buying food really.

oh, forgot a thing from the weekend, already our second day in lynnwood we had a day out of lynnwood, in downtown Seattle, with around 12-14 others from the class, where we were on the ride "ride the ducks", which was nothing less than brilliant! the duck driver (captain soslo) was just extremely funny, and was telling puns and jokes about the area, and made all of us say cha-ching each time we passed a starbucks and made us do the harlem shake at the end, with an unicorn mask for a guy from our class, it was just fun!

after that we took to the Pike place market, but we didn't see that much beyond the flying fish show (a special show they have in a fish place in the market), or some of the many souvenirs that you can get from the city of Seattle, both for sports and something like shot glasses with the space needle attraction in the middle. and all other kinds of nice things.

Apart from that we saw niketown and just the astounding parks and alike in downtown Seattle, it's not called the emerald city for nothings, there's many parks, even in the middle of all these gigantic buildings, and they provide a great view of the city of Seattle, which i might put some pictures up of. exept for that we just went home with the 515 bus, and just directly home to bed.

We were in Seattle again that friday, because we had it scheduled with class there, and the other trip was just something we guys (and a few girls) took. This time we were in the space needle to see the magnificent view of Seattle. The only problem was that it rained that exact day, haven't really rained much over here yet, but it rained that day, and that made the view not as good as expected.

Apart from that i've made good friends with Alex, who i'm often playing pool with either here back home or at school, so i actually talk to some of the students from other countries, some which is also his friends. I often meet other student, not only from USA, who i talk to just randomly, i just talked to some random guys at the busstop for like 30 minutes, just because we had some of the same interest, and was just funny to see how easily they will talk to you here in the USA, i could never do that in a bus, it's just common knowledge in denmark that you do not talk with random people on the bus, but you generally do that all the time here in the USA.

will come back to say something more later, but this is what i had to say for now, see ya'll