Take-offs & Landings

I have been awake for over 36 hours and am feelings more than a little punchy. This post was intended to be a description of my journey from Boston to Newark to Copenhagen to Dragor... but I am, frankly, exhausted. Instead, a montage of stuff I remember finding significant at some point or another:

1:20AM. Atmospheric background music ("slipping through my fingers" by ABBA) plays as Franni and mom sit on the couch, studying two duffle bags full of clothes, electronics and general crap. They run through a list of their contents until they agree that nothing has been forgotten and they can fall asleep.

7 hours later, Franni is still awake, reading "Skinny Legs and All" by Tom Robbins (which she highly recommends). 

6 hours later, Mom flicks one helluva paper football field goal - knocking a fellow Chilli's patron on the head. She, Steve and Franni erupt into hysterics. Franni half-hopes no one from DIS witnessed the unintentional attack.

Franni says good-bye to parents with minimal drama, given the situation. She doesn't look back because she doesn't want to see her mom cry.

Meeting other DIS students, including a girl from Portugal who expat-ed to New Jersey who plans to expat to Denmark so she can expat to someplace else in Europe. I am thankful I have people to come home to.

Plane ride. No sleep. Resenting the fact that Newark, New Jersey is her last view of America the Beautiful, Franni distracts herself by deciding that "Definitely, Maybe" is the perfect in-flight movie and "Reawakening" by Alex Pfeifer-Rosenblum is the perfect in-reverie song (free publicity, AP-R!). Turbulence. Sleep just isn't an option. It is now midnight EST... and 6AM in Denmark.

Landing. Eyes glued to the window, Franni realizes that, from an aerial view, the trees in Denmark look like thick stalks of broccoli. Also, Danish sounds like gibberish. And not the gibberish as a real secret language (gibdigiberdigerishdigish, et al), but like the gibberish when you just made up random-ass noises in order to be obnoxious. Crap, how am I going to learn this friggin' monster tongue? As wheels hit tarmac, my gut falls to my knees: it just became real. I say a quick "shehechianu" under my breath and scramble to get my crap together. I find a letter from mom and try not to start bawling... can't make a good first impression with red, cried-out eyes!

Airport. I make friends. People seem pleasant enough. A new gay boi BFFL quickly finds me, as if attracted by sonar. Fun games of "oh, you're from ___! do you know ___?" ensue (Julianne Tylko and Adam Schlesinger are early winners).

Waiting and waiting and waiting. The other host families pick their kids up at 11:30. Mine arrive at 4pm. The atmosphere is as awkward and jittery as freshmen orientation - minus the booze. On the bright side, I decide to take Danish cooking classes with a girl from Kansas and bond with Gabriel and Ryan from Wes and a few other cool people... including 2 other girls named Frances!! (thereby skyrocketing the number of Frances-es I have met who are under the age of 80 to a rip-roaring... 2)

Host family picks me up. Mom is as beautiful as in her picture. The boys are cute, but can't speak any English! This is mad awksauce. I wonder what the hell I am doing here.

Trine (Tree-neh), 10 year-old Jonathan (Yo-nah-tan, like the Israeli pronounciation), 8 year-old Tobias (Toh-bee-us) and I drive past lots of things I can't pronounce. I learn that my new hometown is not pronounced Drah-gor, but rather Dra-euuer. Apparently, my Danish accent is pretty good and I thank my lucky stars that I have been a shameless mimic for the past 20 years of my life. We go to the main train station in Copenhagen to get me a train pass. I spend 60DKK ($12) on polaroid snapshots. I look like either a mentally retarded serial killer (with all due respect to the mentally retarded... and serial killers) or a really confused and jetlagged American, but I refuse to waste $12 on photos. Besides, these are hilarious and I will post them to the blog as soon as I get access to a scanner. The guy at the desk loves Americans - particularly Bostonians, he says - and gives me the name of some cool bars in the area. Solid.

I am still a little freaked out by the little blonde people who only utter weird foreign phrases and frequently punch each other in the face. Trine keeps pulling the car over to rip them apart. Again, I'm feeling pretty awkward and out-of-place, when all of a sudden Jonathan goes, "sdakfhsldkfh lksdhfldskfhdslkjfh sdfkjhsdfl... OH, SHIT!"

I burst out laughing. Guess I found the right host family after all.

(Fade to black on my first day in Denmark.)