På Sct. Knuds Gymnasium har vi hvert år udvekslingselever, og her kan I møde tre af dem, der lige nu beriger vores skole med input fra deres hjemlande, Canada, Italien og Tyskland.
Rigtig god læseslyst!
Hi, my name is Alexander Jackson. I am 16 years old, and in 2nd G here at Sct Knuds. I am a Rotary Youth Exchange student from Canada. Rotary is an international humanitarian organisation that also hosts the Rotary Youth exchange that gives hundreds of students around the world an opportunity to live and learn in a foreign country. There are 85 Rotary exchange students in Denmark for the 23-24 exchange year. I come from a small town in British Columbia on Vancouver Island. My town’s population is approximately 45,000. I enjoy hiking and canoeing out in the Canadian wilderness with my friends and Scouts. I have been a part od Scouting for almost 12 years now. I am also a wrestler, and recently competed in Danish nationals for freestyle earning myself the Danskmester title and a gold metal to bring back to Canada. I also enjoy music and have found myself a place to play my clarinet in town at the Odense Skole og Ungdomsorkester.
Many people ask me why I chose to come to Denmark of all the countries that I could choose to go to. My answer is straight-forward and a little funny. When I first found out about Rotary Exchange, I was working towards my Bronze Duke of Edinburgh award and one of my assessors was Danish. The Duke of Edinburgh award is an international award that come in 3 levels: bronze, silver, and gold. It was created by the Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Phillip) to get young people active, involved in their communities’ and personally developed. To earn it you must do volunteering, a physical activity, a skill, and a big outdoor adventure you must plan and complete. For the bronze award, you must complete ~10 months of a dedicated activity in each of the 3 sections. She suggested that I apply for the Rotary Youth Exchange program. Once, I got accepted for the program I was influenced to come here to Denmark. In addition, I also enjoyed how society is organized here where many services are provided and there is good infrastructure for these things. For example, how you can go to the hospital or go to university without question because it is paid by taxes. Or the infrastructure to conveniently and safely get around, such as the bike lanes, litbane, and bus network, in addition to the nation-wide train system.
So far, I love my exchange here in Denmark. I have learned lots about the culture and have enjoyed everyday here. Before coming here, I had never left British Columbia or Alberta, let alone been on an airplane. So, this experience has opened a whole new world to me, and I will cherish these memories for the rest of my life.
Tak fordi du læste med
Alex
Hi, my name is Leonardo, I’m 17 and I come from Italy. I live on one of the major islands of Italy, Sardinia. Probably you have already heard of it for the beautiful beaches, it’s a bit famous in Europe I think. There are a lot of tourists that come from northern Europe, so I’m used to seeing people that are double my height.
Sardinia is a pretty strange place, probably because it is far from the big Boot. Also we come from mixed populations: a bit spanish, a bit north african and italian at the same time. Obviously we talk Italian, but the culture inside is different from the rest of Italy.
I live in the south-east in a city called Iglesias (this name came from the spanish word for “Churches” because in my city there are a LOT of churches for its size), it’s not very big if you confront it with other cities, but there is everything you need! It’s also really nice to explore the historic part, where the Toscans have built the Pisans Walls.
At the Italian school I’m in the Computer Science course. Right now I’m in the fourth out of five years. The system is very different from Denmark’s. I enjoy going to school in Italy but you have to take a lot of tests and it’s in general much more stressful. I’m enjoying the school here, it’s nice to see a different way to learn and teach.
Normally in Italy I have some hobbies, most of them are art related (playing music, drawing, watching good movies, etc…), I’m not really into sports, but I also enjoy going out sometimes with the mountain-bike in the countryside. I like to cook, it’s not really a hobby because I have to eat to survive, but I enjoy making something more elaborate for my family sometimes. You were expecting me to talk about the food or am I wrong?
Of course I had to talk about food, which is one of my favorite things in this world, not only because it’s good to eat, but also because in Italy you talk a lot about it. Probably at a table full of old Italians you can hear mainly food related anecdotes told in local dialect.
A lot of people asked me why I chose Denmark, but I’ve never answered in the same way. Sometimes I said to learn a new language and to improve my English, other times I said it was for the organization of the nation, I also thought about living here to study in a Danish University. All these reasons are real, but the real reasoning why I chose Denmark comes from a challenge with myself. So, to explain my reasoning in the easiest way possible, here is a dialog with me and my conscience:
Conscience:-“Ok, if you live without your family for one year in another nation, you can do anything here in Italy Leo“
Me:-”Alright, but I won’t make it easy, then it could become boring”
Conscience:-”Here’s a list of nations… How about Spain?”
Me:-”It’s nice, but to similar to Italy, especially Sardinia”
Conscience:”How about something out of Europe like the USA or South America?”
Me:-”Too far from home, I couldn’t talk with my friends and family because of the different time, and I would like to go to a place with fewer guns than people. How about somewhere in Europe?”
Conscience:-”England?”
Me:-”Nah, I would understand everything, too easy”;
Conscience:-”How about France?”
Me:-”We don’t talk about France…”;
Conscience:-”Maybe I found the perfect one Leo…”
Me:-”Oh really?”;
Conscience:-”Denmark. It’s in Europe, same clock, polite people, the economy is good and they speak a language that is the fusion of English, German and Latin, so not easy but not even far from your knowledge. There is only one problem, Cold.”
Me:- “Perfect.”
Overall I’m enjoying the stay in Denmark for now, but the winter hasn’t come yet, so the “best” part has to arrive. The people are very nice, the food is different but not bad, going around with your bike has never been so relaxing, I don’t have to worry about getting hit by a car in the middle of the road!
I think I’ve chosen the right place to stay. I hope it gets even better as time goes by.
Længe leve Danmark!
Hi, my name’s Linda and I’m 16 years old. I’m an exchange student from Germany and am currently spending five months in Denmark.
The first question that a lot of people often ask me is: „Why Denmark?“. Let’s put it like that: I’ve always had a thing for Denmark somehow. When everyone else was taking on holidays to Italy and France, my family always went to Denmark. So I’ve been to Denmark well over ten times and the culture just always had a certain grip on me. Additionally, I started learning Danish during Covid – guess I was very bored. It was more for fun though and there were times where I stopped and started again and stopped again. But I think the fact that I kept coming back to it over and over again kind of gives it away that the language somehow fascinated me. I’m a very big fan of language and learning a new one is something I consider as very eye-opening. So when it came to the decision in which country I want to spend my exchange, my choice fell on Denmark pretty quick.
The first few months have been pretty good overall. Of course there were some not so fun moments, but overall I really had a great time. My host family is super sweet and they welcomed me immediately and always made sure I was doing okay. And although I had a bite of a hard time at first in my class, I found a great friend after a few weeks. I always tried to keep myself busy because when you‘re busy, you don‘t have time to think about what isn‘t going so good at the moment. So I joined a softball club in Odense, became part of the musical at school and used every opportunity to do something with my host family. Language-wise, it also was an interesting journey. As I said, I‘ve already had learned a bit Danish and was also very motivated to be able to speak Danish, so I tried to speak as much Danish as possible from the beginning on. That worked semi-well, let‘s put it liked that. Technically being able to speak and understand a language and actually speaking and understanding a language are two completely different things. So we went with a mix of English and Danish – try in Danish first, then in English if I didn‘t understand. But as I started being here for longer, just hearing Danish so much really helped me a lot with getting better at it. So after three months I was only speaking Danish which made a lot of things a lot easier.
While I definitely have to say that there are a lot of countries where I could have experienced a lot more differences, but there were some I noticed. First of all: Food. It‘s not really about what you eat in Denmark, it‘s more when you eat. In Germany, we usually eat hot lunch at about 2 pm. and then bread between 6 and 7 pm. Another thing is for sure school. My school has class from 8 am to 1 pm, just as you get older you sometimes have class until 3 pm, but that‘s pretty rare. We also always have 45 minute-lessons up til we graduate at 19. We also don‘t really use laptops, most of us still write with pen and paper, though iPads are getting more popular. And lastly, of course there are some cultural differences, like holidays, traditional food or ways to celebrate birthdays or christmas. As a German, especially the Danish flags are super weird for me, as we don‘t do that in Germany at all.
As a conclusion I can say that I really enjoyed the time I spent here and I think it totally was the right decision. Is it pretty tiring? Yes. But is the whole experience entirely making up for it? Yes, one hundred percent. The people you get to know and the memories you collect are something you can‘t replace with anything in this world. And I hope that the lessons I learn on my way are something that will forever stay with me.
