A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead walk into a bar…

…or to be fair they might have stumbled. As I informed you of you last week one of my very best friends the amazing M is visiting me these days. More specifically she arrived last Friday and is flying back to Denmark on Monday. One of M’s other best friends H is also studying here in San Diego at SDSU – I met her through M back in Denmark and we have also become really good friends over here. Lucky for M we travelled to the same place and she got to visit two of her best friends! Naturally H and I agreed to share her – civil as we are (fighting for her undivided attention would simply have been way to exhausting). Since M didn’t arrive until pretty late un friday we didn’t go out then.. but I’ll tell you that we more than made up for it on Saturday! One of the Danish guys K had a birthday party… that started at 3pm in the afternoon! He had arranged for both beach volleyball and crochet (both games converted into drinking games of course) as well as the classic (and here in PB also mandatory) drinking game flip-a-cup. In case you’re not familiar with the flip-a-cup game it goes a little something like this video (these are not friends of mine, but a random video from YouTube). They guy on the left demonstrates the perfect flip-a-cup performance:

Needless to say we didn’t go home in a completely sober state that afternoon… I was especially surprised to find out how challenging a game of beer-crochet could be! But come nightfall we were ready to celebrate K in the famous PB party manner!

During the week H and I arranged a lot of other stuff to show M San Diego at its best. We had some fabulous brunches at some of the very best breakfast places like The Olive Cafe, The Eggery and The Green Flash (which is right on the board walk). Of course we had to go to Sea World  (THE most famous place in all of San Diego!). It’s a good idea to arrive there early to get a chance to see all of their amazing shows (I ❤ Shamu!). But  I do have to warn you about one thing.. the shows have these very touching Disney-like soundtracks which are very likely to make you cry! Just so you know… Not that I did… a lot.

Of course we also did all the mandatory things like the Point Loma viewpoint, surfing, shopping, Sushi Monday at Surfside Sushi, Taco Tuesday, Thursday night happy hour (the $1 bar) at Beachcomber and driving around in the gold convertible! Now the thing is that M happens to be a redhead. She has very bright beautiful red hair, which always gets a lot of attention. H happens to be a (natural!) blonde with bright, golden, very pretty Scandinavian hair. And I happen to be a brunette. We all happen to have very long hair. I can tell you that when you combine all three of us we are a “A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead-joke” just waiting to happen. People do notice. But being the Scandinavian version of Charlie’s Angels isn’t all bad. It’s also kinda fun! And now we are going to LA for the weekend and staying in Venice Beach! Hopefully the famous board walk there can handle a few more weirdos… And tonight we get to be part of the audience at the shooting of the brand new TBS show called Men at Work, which I’m sure will be a big hit show (it is SO incredibly funny!!!). I just can’t wait…

The thing about surprises…

…Is that they are only a good thing when they have a positive message. This past week has just been full of surprises… And they all been the good kind! Last weekend we actually had a good ol’ fashioned surprise party! (Now, I know we have a LOT of birthday parties all the time, but birthdays just keep coming up, so what to do?) It was for our friend and room-mate T. It was his birthday on Wednesday this week so we decided to throw him a surprise-party last Saturday! He had no clue whatsoever… I’ve never thrown a surprise-party before, but I’m telling you it’s such an awesome concept. I’ve rarely seen anyone that overwhelmed. TOTALLY worth the trouble of throwing the party. We were no less than 30 Danes waiting for him when he got home. The second he turned on the light we all yelled SURPRISE (like it is often done at surprise parties…) really loud. If it had been his 70th birthday he probably would have had a heart attack. So I would like to emphasize that this is probably not a good way to celebrate you grandfathers next big birthday! But T seemed very touched though and all of our guest had a great time partying aaaall night looooong. So big success.

Last week we had two midterms. And the other surprise this week were my grades from these midterms… I got an A- on one and a B+ on the other one! Right after both exams I a had a feeling that they hadn’t gone too well. I knew I could have studied more diligently… But SURPRISE! I passed! We (my room-mates and I that is) don’t even need to get good grades while we’re here, since we only get credit for passing the courses transferred onto our Danish transcript. This fact makes it a bit easier not to stress too much about exams over here. These exams were the second ones I have done in both courses, so by now I have a pretty good idea of how much effort I need to put into studying to be able to get a reasonably respectable grade. And luckily that effort doesn’t require me downsizing time spent on surfing, sailing, tanning, partying and just having fun in general. Life. Is. GOOD…

Surfing USA

So I’ve taken up surfing. The sport seems to be mandatory here in California, so I figured it’d give it a shot. And of course the title “surfer chick” doesn’t sound to bad either! So a while ago now I tried it. K’s sister’s boyfriend’s sister’s boyfriend (yes that is not a grammatical mistake) is from here in San Diego (and lucky for us a surf instructor!) and he gave us a 3 hour surf lesson (connections are the best!). It. Was. AWESOME! I absolutely loved it. I’d done it twice before during my round-the-world trip in 2009 – once in Australia and once in South Africa. Even though that felt like so long ago, I guess it was like riding a bike. Not to brag (I just can’t help it cause I was so proud!), but I stopped counting how many times I’d gotten up on the board when I passed 7 (that was my Australian record…) So the first time felt like quite the success. I had to get a board. K’s sister’s boyfriend’s sister’s boyfriend told us that the best place to buy the foam surfboards (the beginner ones, we don’t want to flatter ourselves) is at Cosco. It’s this giant mega superstore that apparently has EVERYTHING – including a $100.000 diamond necklace!! You have to be a member though (again, it’s all about the connections!) – but luckily my family and I have a friend here in San Diego that was nice enough to take us there. So K and I got surfboards. Unfortunately the weather turned bad right after, and then it was a full moon (which apparently means the waves act weird? something to do with the tide I guess..)

Anyway it took me a few weeks to get an opportunity to use the board, but eventually I did. And lately I’ve been getting out whenever I feel I have the time. Some days are not so good. The waves might be acting weird or I just simply might have a day where I’m not doing my best. And them some days are crazy fun! This week I decided to go out in the water by myself because none of the others had time. The first thing I saw when I got down to the beach was perfect even waves. They were rolling in in predictable intervals and they weren’t too big. My kinda waves! I paddled out and when I had almost gotten to where the other people were catching waves I saw a dark shadow in the wave in front of me. My heart skipped a beat as my first thought was “SHARK!”, but then a beautiful looking dolphin jumped out of the wave, turning and playing. It was such a moving sight and I was instantly filled with certainty that this would be a very good day. And it was. I got up about 9 out of 10 times (success!). I hope I’ll get more of these days, cause in that moment, just a few minutes after seeing a dolphin up close, when I was standing up on the board riding a wave almost all the way to the beach, I felt pretty damn happy.

Little Denmark

I got a package from Denmark! It’s incredible how actual physical mail can get me so excited, but in today’s digital world it it’s actually a quite rare and special occasion. The package was from my wonderful Mom and the occasion was the Danish celebration of “Fastelavn” (Not that she needs an occasion to send me awesome presents, yay!). The Fastelavn carnival is a traditional celebration in the earth’s northern hemisphere that takes place between winter and spring about 50 days before Easter. The traditions of Fastelavn consist of hitting a hanging barrel with bat until it breaks and candy falls out of it that all the kids then grab. A very (very!) long time ago it was a widespread popular belief that a town could escape the plague, if a black cat was killed at Fastelavn, so they put a real live cat in the barrel! But that was ages ago. Today the black cat has become the symbol of Fastelavn. Cardboard cats are also placed on the traditional “Fastelavn birch rod” that kids use to wake up their parents on the morning of Fastelavn. The rod is covered with candy and colourful decorations. It was a version of the birch rod that I got in my package. The best part of the present was the salty licorice – God I’ve missed that! It’s absolutely impossible to get a hold of here in the US. But salty licorice is actually one of the only Danish things I’ve really been missing while staying here (besides my family and friends obviously! I miss them so much…). I’ve travelling for a long period before where I actually experienced that feeling of longing for something familiar when everything around you is new and exciting (it’s weird, but true). But not here. Maybe it’s because I’m living with 5 Danish friends from home. That definitely makes everything feel more familiar and secure. And maybe it’s the amount of friendly Danish students also living here that we have become really good friends with. According to the Facebook group Danes in San Diego Spring 2012 there are 44 of us living here this semester. Of these 44 I actually know 26. In my opinion that’s quite a lot of Danes! As I mentioned in a previous blog it kinda feels like “Little Denmark” around here. We’re going the classes with Danish people. We’re going to private parties with Danish people. We’re going to clubs and bars with Danish people. We’re playing volleyball and surfing with Danish people. We’re pretty much hanging out with Danish people all the time! Now, don’t get me wrong, I love all these wonderful people. It makes me feel like I’m a part of something. It really gives you that awesome feeling of community. I think the video below describes that feeling pretty well (except for the weed part of course… it’s a great song, enjoy!). But I still haven’t had that feeling of having a genuine and authentic local experience. But very much looking forward to feeling like a true Cali girl!

Running, lifting, jumping, pulling…

So we are living in California. And the weather isn’t too bad as you might have heard. But warm weather comes with responsibilities. If you thought California lifestyle was all about chilling and tanning… you were wrong! Man, it’s hard work to be a Cali girl! Back home in Denmark it is no problem at all coming up with excuses for not exercising… it’s too cold/rainy/snowy/dark outside is probably the most common one. Of course we have fitness centres and sports facilities (after all we are civilized people), but they are expensive and you have to go outside in the cold/rain/snow/dark to get there… But here in sunny California those excuses are non existent. AND with the warm weather comes the requirement to wear little clothing (there is a reason that the summer-edition of your body is called “bathing suit shape” in Denmark – it is rarely a constant condition). Suddenly it makes sense why we keep seeing all these people roller-blading/jogging/working out everywhere… it’s because they have to. And as they say, when in Rome do as the Romans. So we go and we do. In the last few weeks I have been running more times than during my entire lifetime before coming here. We run down on the board walk by the beach (like any other self-respecting Californian!) which actually makes running much more pleasant. It’s a 3 mile run which suits me pretty well. In addition to running we have free access to the fitness centre at San Diego State University. And when something is free you have to do it (it’s like samples in the supermarket – you have to try it cause it’s free). So we work out. And again I have been to this fitness centre more times than all the other fitness centres I have ever been in combined. Besides running I have gone surfing once for three hours – what an awesome way to work out! It was the most fun sport I have ever tried. And you don’t even notice how hard you are working! They day after my arms were so sore, even getting my jacket on was a huge challenge. Also I have started sailing the hobie cat once a week at the Mission Bay Aquatic Center, who offer sailing lessons once a week for the whole semester. It hasn’t been much of a workout yet, but I still believe I get active-points for it! For us Danes living here in San Diego it is slowly becoming a tradition to play volleyball at the beach every Friday around noon and it is so much fun. Again a great way to get a bit of exercise without noticing it. The video below is from today’s games and can give you an idea of how good we’re getting (or at least how good some people are getting!) I prefer not to comment on my own talent… But hey, it’s all about having fun right! An fun we are definitely having. All this exercising is really creating a lot of feel-good-ness (yes I just made up that word). The whole thing about those endorphins is very true.

Sometimes I get a good feeling

This extremely catchy tune has pretty much become the theme song for our stay here in San Diego. At the moment you here it practically EVERYWHERE. I’m convinced that before the end of this month I’ll will have become pretty tired of this song, but right now I absolutely love it! It just says it all. It is inevitable that San Diego city along with San Diego State University has a certain reputation (even though this naturally has nothing to do with my reasons for coming here). According to College Prowler, SDSU gets a B+ in party skills. Check out the website, it has a lot of great tips about the San Diego night life – where to go and what to do. Apparently SDSU “has the biggest college nightlife scene in San Diego, and one of the largest in California.” I did not know that before I went here, I promise. Still, this fact has unavoidably effected our stay here (even though considering that we have four boys in the house we haven’t been out a lot!). Even though everyone says that Garnet Ave is THE place to go out we have become rather fond of the Thursday-night-place-to-be in South Mission called Beachcomber (beware of loud noise on the website when you open this link). This tiny and yet very spatial bar keeps the genius tradition of $1 drinks from 9-11PM on Thursdays – a tradition that tends to attract quite a crowd. If you’re there at 8.45 you’ll get it within minutes. If you’re there at 9.00 prepare yourself for about an hours wait in the line. Another proud tradition of the Pacific/Mission Beach night-life is Taco Tuesdays. The idea of this concept is a combination of happy hour and extremely cheap Tacos. Some places like PB Bar & Grill the offer is $2 tacos and $3 margaritas and other places like the Cabo Cantina it’s all-you-can-eat tacos for $5 and two-for-one drinks. But there are a bunch of places around PB that have special offers on Taco Tuesday. A great place to read reviews about anything in San Diego is yelp.com! We’ve also had a private party at our fabulous apartment! We celebrated one of the guy’s birthday last weekend with a bunch of the other Danish students that are also studying here (there a quite a lot of us, it’s almost like “little Denmark”!) Such a fun night! It is a Danish (or actually just Jutlandic, but I happen to be living with 5 people from Jutland) tradition to throw cinnamon at people when they turn 25. So we did. A. Lot. Of. Cinnamon! But he took it well. Maybe because we gave him a guitar. Anyway it almost felt like the best of Danish summertime when we were all cramped outside on our tiny tiny balcony singing (or rather screaming) classic Danish songs completely out of tune (but with a lot of passion) while ST was playing his guitar. Happy times in San Diego!

Bachelor pads and gold convertibles

We have a home! And not just any home… a home with a giant fridge that has one of those icecube-machine thingies! Now how awesome is that! As you might have guessed by now, our new place is pretty fabulous. It’s a three bedroom, three bathroom (yay!), two floor apartment in Pacific Beach (because off course cool people like us need to be in the middle of all the action…) that’s about 50 meters from the water! We can’t really see the water from our (two!) balconies, but we know it’s right there! Both before and after we arrived here in San Diego everyone informed us that PB (as us locals call it) was the place to stay and so far everyone has been right! PB is a casual, laid back place, where girls roller-blading in nothing but bikinis and very tanned guys carrying around surfboards are not uncommon sights (it’s just like on TV!). Finally having a place to live has really made us all relax more and taken away a great deal of the stress that comes with moving to a foreign country and trying to establish a life there. We have been so lucky to find a place that could fit all six of us. We used Craigslist to search for places to rent and that’s also where we found this absolutely perfect place. The only downside to it is that upstairs it’s pretty dark. The windows are toned, which means if you want natural light you have to open the windows. Thanks to the lovely California weather we’ve been having, this hasn’t been much of a problem. I guess the toned windows are part of the whole modern theme the apartment has going on – abstract paintings, black furniture, leather couches, giant flat screen TV. You might even call the place a regular bachelor pad! But no worries, my friend K and I bought a plant. It’s an orchid (so it doesn’t mess up the modern style). We got it at our trip to IKEA (the most perfect way to cure homesickness if you’re a Scandinavian btw!). But people need to be aware that there are girls living here too. At least our car is pretty girly! Oh yeah, we bought a car! But not just any car… the gold convertible kind! You heard me. We find it to be very California. I must admit I wasn’t completely convinced in the beginning. But then we went for a ride. I’m telling you there’s something about driving in a convertible car with the top down, the sun in your face and the wind in your hair that simply feel very liberating. Even though the wind is making your hair whip your face it doesn’t matter. When I was in the back seat of that fabulous gold car with my head leaned back and looking at the scattered white clouds, I felt pretty damn good. So if you happen to see a couple of fine young people cruisin’ around PB and Mission Beach in this gold convertible with surfboards sticking out from the back seat looking very very cool, then it just might be us…

Welcome to sunny San Diego!

At this moment I have been in San Diego for 16 days, 16 hours and 16 minutes. Already so much has happened. First week of California dreamin’ was spent staying at the Ocean Beach International Hostel, where we were first greeted by a sleepy looking young receptionist and a slight smell in the air of something you can smoke that isn’t tobacco. When eating the free Monday dinner consisting of Spaghetti with tomato sauce and a hint of a meat-like taste (a lovely meal by the way, who doesn’t enjoy a free meal) we were approached by our first local friend (or almost local meaning from Los Angeles). Your classic friendly “surfer dude” completely unaware of how tired from a long flight his new friends were, just looking for a casual conversation and trying to welcome these pale looking foreigners. We instantly felt welcome at this cozy little hostel lost in a time bubble of peace, love and harmony. The only downside to the OBI Hostel was it’s location – we all ended up spending quite a lot of cash on taxi rides with chatty drivers forth and back between Ocean Beach and Pacific Beach where we were looking for a place to rent for the semester. I’m glad we stayed at Ocean Beach though. It was a welcoming and laid back place to begin our stay here in sunny California.

One very early morning when I couldn’t sleep any longer due to the infamous jet-lag, I decided to take a walk on the beach. On bare feet i walked the short route from the hostel to the beach through a ghost like town, cold and vaguely misty. When I got to the beach I was surprised by how loud the waves were. I grew up by the sea in Denmark, but it was only ever that loud whenever there was a serious storm. I stood there for just a minute simply enjoying the sound of the waves that slowly seemed more and more mellow as my ears got used to it. Eventually it even seemed soothing. When I took a deep breath and felt the fresh, salty sea breeze I could actually physically feel that in this moment I was truly happy. Everything was good and for just a few minutes, while the sun went up and created little patches of gold in the clouded sky, I stopped worrying about finding a place to rent, a car and crashing courses

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