Week 7 (Mon 27th Feb - Sun 4th March)

Personal Blog

I cannot believe I have been living in Denmark for nearly two months now! The time truly flies here and has made me realise that my decision to do ERASMUS was a wise one.  I was slightly apprehensive at first as my Mum and some of my family were wary of me going and thought that 5-6 months away from home was too long, as well as risky, as I would be missing out on teaching practice in a Northern Ireland school, a year before I expect to graduate.  However I feel that I am coping quite well being away from home; surprisingly, as I have never been away from home and without family for more than a week. I also feel this experience will add more value to my professional and personal development as a teacher, as I am engaging in a different education system and will hopefully take away new ideas that will improve my teaching style and my confidence  in teaching children.  Furthermore, I hope to introduce new activities and teaching strategies I learn about when I go on placement again.

Austrian Dinner

The Austrian girls invited us and the Dutch girls for a kaiserschmarrn dinner; a meal they like to enjoy after they go skiing.  It was very nice and similar to pancakes, although could be described as broken pieces of pancake with optional toppings of sugar and jam.   The conversation was interesting and we enjoyed each others company and exchanging similarities and differences from our cultures.  I think our cultures are very similar in terms of our sense of humour and society norms, for example, table manners.  However, one of the Dutch girls did remark on how thankful we are when we receive things like dinner and said that we don’t seem to be content with saying “thank you” just once.  This surprised me and made me question whether it was because of my family background or Northern Irish culture.  She did say that it’s nice that we are so polite. 

Movie Night

Fionnuala’s boyfriend Ruaidhri arrived on Friday and the both of them stayed in Copenhagen for the weekend, so Trisha and I decided to invite the Austrian, Dutch and Norwegian girls over for a movie night.  We all seem to share the same interests and I feel like we are building friendships with them, which will hopefully grow throughout our time here. It’s refreshing to have different company every so often, as with little class time we don’t really see much of the other students unless we arrange to meet up and sometimes we can feel quite isolated in our room.  Trisha, Fionnuala and I all agree that our experience here is getting better with the arrival of the other students and as we socialise more.