To You.

This is the end. Nearly.

I arrived in Denmark with 4 other New Zealand companions on the 1st of August 2009 after more than 24 hours worth of flying half way across the planet. I think it could have@ almost the same for everyone at that point; of course you're terrified, excited, ready to take on whatever, but at the same time trying to strip away any expectations that you could have subconciously built for yourself. Then for any New Zealander comming to Europe after a redicilously long flight, you're also looking for a glass of fresh water and a hot shower... but then if you're going to Scandinavian Europe then you'll also feel a little bit unsure about that hot shower after you see the lovely communal ones AFS have waiting for you at arrival camp.
That's about that. Cultural differences. Denmark: The musli(which generally is just dry oats) goes on top of the yogurt, and the jam goes on top of the cheese for breakfast. I've been here for 8 months; I know those things now.
I know when and where my bus goes to drive me home back out to the country,
I know the short cuts,
I know every second hand clothes store in town,
I know that you can't expect to pay much less than 30kroner for a cheese burger,
I know that crossing at a pedesterian crossing when the little man glows red is virturally an unforgivable sin,
I know the importance of bread and butter,
I know Germany is less than a 2 hour drive south and it fails to impress me any longer that we can drive down there after school to 'stock up',
I know it's important to have a key to your bike,
I know that to be served at the post office or bank you need to take a que number and watch for you number to show up on the screen above the respectable counter, I also know that while waiting for your turn you need to stay at least 3 steeps behind the 'descression line' drawn into the floor,
I know that mayonaise may never be put with salami when making traditional open faced sandwiches.
I know that if one wants to get anything done on saturday then it means between the hours of 10 and 2pm,
And I know that the Danish word "hyggeligt" or to 'hygge', an atmosphare created by lighting candels or just being with friends, has something to do with the meaning of life.

I went through so many peptalks and preperations in the leading up to and during this year that I really didn't expect much surprise in how it all, generally, would be. A whole lot of ups and downs and amazing things inbetween forceing you to learn and appreciate, maybe. I also didn't expect twenty five centimetres of cold went snow, again, at my door steep on a March morning. In trying to avoid every possible cliché, I got to a point where I just saw the cold, sad, dark, slow winter as what it was; an unchangable weather pattern and just waiting for the sun to come back again. This was the point where I finally realised where AFS had taken me. With my own two legs I had stumbled round trying to catch bearings with nothing familar in sight. It's far too easy to get your foot stuck in a rabbit hole, but a surpriseingly difficult thing to learn that you actually need losen that foot in order to keep moving. It's at that point when you really can see the beauty and excitement in things and can remember what you're actually doing on the other side of the world for an entire year.

It's funny how now i've finally established the full gravity of creating a little life on the other side of the world, that in a comparativly short time I'll be on my way back to where I came from. I'm finding that part a little uncompreheadable. So now...? I'm doing all I can do; breathing it all in, taking pictures, loving it and laughing it to exhaustion. And all the way back again.

Sylvia.