Trip to Portland

Through out my stay here, I've been considering buying a Macbook pro, and then last week I did. The thought of paying sales tax on this purshase had annoyed me for a while, so I decided to buy it in Portland Oregon instead. After a bit of planning it turned out that I wouldn't be saving a lot of money in the end because of the (quite expensive) price on the train tickets, but Mathias Mørch, Alexander and me decided to go anyway.

The train ride was quite beautiful the first 100 km or so. The tracks is placed right next to the waterline and the view is very nice, expect for the fact that we sat on the wrong side of the train, which meant the some of the view was blocked by the other passengers.
We had heard a lot of things about Portland; it seemed like a great place to be. But when we arrived, it looked more like a city in eastern Germany 40 years ago. Factories by the river looked they they were falling apart, and there weren't a lot of people anywhere expect at a newly opened H&M, which was strange (at least to us), because who cares about a newly opened H&M? :)

We still managed to have a good time enjoying some parts of the city, and eating a great lunch. I am hoping to add some pictures later on, but my faith is in the hands of Alexander, who took all the pictures, so I'm not really getting my hopes up.

Discovering the importance of education

In the times coming up to this stay in Lynnwood I thought about the many things I might experience over here. I thought about some crazy (very unrealistic) things, but I never thought that I would discover the importance of education.

Growing up as a Dane I had the impression that everyone went to school, got an education and eventually started working. School just seemed a natural part of life. Of course, as kids, we heard the stories about African children, who didn't go to school, didn't have toys and maybe didn't even have food. But they (being the adults) might as well have been talking about aliens from another planet. It was all too different to really understand.

Of course as the years passed by I got a better sense of reality. But the "idea" that education is a privilege never really found its spot in my mind. Like, I presume, every other Danish kid, I thought of education as some kind of annoying bug crammed down my throat. I know this sounds harsh, it is bit of an overstatement, but it is true that Danes doesn’t truly appreciate education. And as I wrote before, I never would have imagined that my stay here would change this.

I have no idea when or why this happened; I think it was a combination of many different impressions. It made me realize that I actually want to go the University, not that I have to, but that I want to. And that’s the crucial difference. So even though some things failed and even though none of the “crazy (very unrealistic) things” really happened, at least I got this.

This picture doesn't have anything to do with the subject. Just wanted to add a picture

Barnes & Noble

Thursday we were downtown once again. As a part of our US history class we went to see a museum in Seattle, I don't even remember the name of it, but since it's not why I'm writing this blog, it doesn’t matter.
That day was one of the best of this stay, and it's funny how many small things can matter so much. It's not that the day started of well, because our bus got stuck in traffic causing the trip to take an additional hour. The museum weren’t that great either, but maybe that's because the traffic reduced our visiting time to an hour and making us miss the guided tour.

Then after the visit at the museum the bus driver dropped us of at the Spaceneddle. We formed groups with different goals in mind, and my group walked down to Seattle's Best at Pike Place Market (Yes, Seattle's best is better then Starbucks even though it's all the same corporation). This is where the great part of the day started, we had a great time hanging out at Seattle's Best, and when we walked out the weather was some of the best we've had. Even though it's the beginning of November, the sun was shining and the temperature reached a point where we all wished we had shorts and t-shirts instead of jeans, jackets and scarves.

We decided to go to Barnes & Noble for some cultural input. For some time I’ve wanted to start reading more, and recently I heard about a book called “The boy who harnessed the wind”. You can hear a bit about it by watching these videos; I especially recommend watching the one from the daily show, even if you don't like Jon Stewart.
The Daily Show - William Kamkwamba
TED - William Kamkwamba

Afterwards we went to a place near Pike place where there is a little grass field, and there we lay reading our books in the sun hearing Bob Marley blasting out from my phone. It was really awesome and completely made my day.

The two books i bought at Barnes & Noble

Attending Edmonds Community College

So far I've attended Edmonds Community College for 3 weeks, and to be honest it has been very mixed experience. All the teachers have been very nice and welcoming, but it seems like something went wrong in the preparation for the 2 month stay. In most of the classes are running smoothly except chemistry and physics. And I don't think this would be a problem if we (not to mention any names) didn't handle it like we were in Denmark. We all talk at once, people suddenly talks Danish and the teachers doesn't quite know how to handle it. Students talk to each other and some doesn't even put their laptop screen down when the teacher tells the class to put them down. I really didn't expect this intolerant and disrespectful behavior.

Anyway...This doesn't keep me from having a great time, especially in the weekend spending time with my host family or taking the bus downtown Seattle with my friends.

The only thing I miss from back home is the food, I have a hard time getting used to the extreme amounts of fat and sugar. Take today as an example, I saw a bottle with the writing "Vitamin water" on it, and it really looked like normal bottled water, but it contained 200 calories! But the worst thing is that I'm hit by an overwhelming hunger for Danish licorice, so now I'll start searching for some on the internet...

My first blog

I figured it was time for me to start blogging. Lets se how diligent I'm going to be :)

So far my stay here in Seattle has been great. My host family is very friendly, their house is nice and I'm not missing anything. I've experienced a couple of family get togethers and had a couple of Coronas in the process, so I'm not even missing alcohol.
My host dad is a bit of a car enthusiast (not to much though), which suits me perfectly. I'm hoping he can teach me a thing or two about mechanics.

My host dad's Porche Carrera GT

And even though he and the rest of the family are Catholics, they have nothing against the fact that I'm not religious. I've been to church with them 2 of the 3 past Sundays both services have been "hyggelige" so even though they didn't change my religious believes, I still kind of enjoyed them.

Attending Edmonds Community College is all right. But I’ll cover that and lots of other stuff in the posts to come.