The Small Things--Touching Base After a Month of Pretending to be Danish!

There's so much to talk about here in Denmark, but so little time to blog!  I feel like I skip over a lot of the little things I'm experiencing, but I promise to write more about it in the future.  Some of the ideas are even in my head--I'm just waiting for the right time.

In the meantime, I finally had a weekend without major plans, where I was able to both chain down some travel break reservations and bounce around the vibrance of Copenhagen in the evening, lit with a little neon, dusted with nightlife litter (and the beggars who pick up bottles to get the 1 krone refund), and filled with the sounds of people--alive, laughing, and dancing.  I even went to a bar made out of ice, where we had to wear fur-lined ponchos and a group of Danish women from the mainland approached my boisterous group of Americans to learn about why we're here and make us congo around the ice table.  DIS students were told that Danes are often considered 'cold' because they don't like to approach anyone they don't know.  But skål (cheers) to these women for defying the norm!

My host-mom, Kirsten, gave me a pile of Danish CDs to try after I went to the library on Friday and unsuccessfully attempted to select some music that I might like.  I'm slowly working my way through it, although I haven't been incredibly impressed so far (it's just not my style).  But right now I'm listening to Lars H.U.G., who's pretty good!  He kind of reminds me of Toad the Wet Sprocket with a little more of country and pop sounds and hooks.  I wasn't sure what to expect because Kirsten had said he was "very special," and the last time she used that phrase was in reference to Christiania.  I also need to listen to a little more of Grand Avenue, though, which she claims is kind of like Coldplay (and her sister LOVES them).

Lastly, I feel a need to write about a potentially sensitive topic about national identity and outsider perception.  In my Danish class, there's a lot of effort to learn not just the language, but also the concept of 'Danishness' as it applies in both historical and contemporary cultural contexts.  There are, surprisingly, quite a few articles on the issue (not to mention sometimes conflicting views from my host-family), and I'm not having the easiest time sorting it out.  Plus, everytime we learn about something that is supposedly a staple of Danish culture, I can't help but wonder, "Is this truly universal, or is it just what we're learning?  What do most Danes actually think?"  We hear about how Danes are so homogeneous that they're almost a 'tribe'--does this still hold in the 21st century?

As an American, I've always lacked a sense of a concrete, shared culture with my nationality.  However, I know that someone, somewhere is being taught the ways I supposedly think and act, and either they're completely wrong, or I'm completely clueless about how I fit into American culture.  I learned this week that my host brother Jonas' English class is currently going through a unit about school shootings in America, and I'm at a loss for how I feel about this.  On one hand, it's downright insulting to insinuate that school shootings are a 'part' of American culture.  On the other hand--I doubt that's what they're trying to say by including this unit in the curriculum.   It is, after all, a horrid phenomenon that is increasing worldwide, and it's important to remember these disasters and learn how to locate warning signs.  And maybe I'm wrong about its place within the history of American society!  I mean, I just looked at the Wikipedia article about school shootings and was surprised to see 14 events listed from 2008 to present--most of which I had no idea occurred.  Kirsten said there has only been one event in Denmark that could be called a "school shooting."  Is this a specifically American problem, or is it also due to the fact that we're so much larger?  I'm still just unsure.  I'm not trying to say that the English classes here should only focus on the positive aspects of culture, but I can't help but question the appropriateness of this particular subject.