The Life of an Exchange Student

It's hard, really - trying to fit study in between parties, dinners and general merriment!

On Friday night my dorm had what is known as a 'Tour de Chambre'. As I live with 12 people, this is a tradition where everyone creates a different drink in their room, with or without a theme, and then all of us go from room to room, together, drinking in each other's rooms. It's a lot of fun, and a great way to get to know your flatmates!! As 10 out of my 11 other flamates are Danish, it is also a good way to break down the language barrier, as alcohol creates fluency in any language!

So we had a big common dinner beforehand (one of my flatmates is a trainee chef, so she created a lovely chicken dish!), and then drew room numbers out of a bowl to determine in which order we travelled our dorm. We then spent the next 8 hours drinking, dancing, chatting and generally partying! We ended up at 2am in the sauna that our complex has, as one of the former flatmates had also joined us, and as he no longer had a room, he had his drink in the sauna!! Irish coffee in a hot place, not necessarily a good idea!!But it was lots of fun, and will certainly be a memory for me from this exchange - 12 drunk Danes in their underwear in a sauna, throwing water on each other and laughing!



We made it to my room around 2:30am, which I had decorated to look like Sex and the City - my drink was a Cosmopolitan. I'm very proud of my cityscape on my wall - see below!!



So, after a 5:30am sleep time on Saturday, I headed out again on Saturday night, to a communal Italian dinner put on at another college - 90 people, so it was crazy, but quite fun!! And the food was quite good - tiramisu is always at its best when cooked by Italians!

And on Sunday, we had Canadian thanksgiving (which is a month earlier than the American version), but still involves the same amount of eating and drinking! We had turkey, beef, chicken, potatoes, carrots, peas, beans, casserole, apple salad and at least 3 types of dessert - it was great!! For 25 people, also, which made it a very large but enjoyable affair.

So after some more classes this week, I am off to Spain on Thursday night! We will spend 4 days in Barcelona, 4 days in Madrid, and 3 days in Granada, so we should get a variety of lovely Spanish experiences! There are 7 of us in our usual Commonwealth travelling party (Aussies, Canadians and English), so we have even been able to get apartments in each city, which are the same price as hostels, but give us much more freedom for meals, bags and the like!!

I'll try and blog while I'm away, but probably won't be able to put up photos til my return :-)