Liv efter Trump

Mit liv efter den amerikanske valg har været interessent. Jeg er ikke så glad med min ny president. Det er en gang helt af frygt og usikkerhed. Imidlertid, jeg har fantastiske venner og har havde en god gang med musicalen!

I haven’t written anything on here for a little while, and I confess that has mainly to do with two things – the musical and the election of our new president.

I did not intend to stop giving weekly updates on here, but the election of the president in my home country has been of much greater concern. I have continued writing with the newspaper and about the election on here, but my ordinary life was pushed into the background. This election has affected me in ways I did not know it would, and I am extremely concerned about the state of my nation. However, I am learning to deal with it, and I just need my immune system to cooperate as well.

So, here I will write about the best way to deal with the election of Donald Trump, as an exchange student from the US that is highly interested in politics:

It’s important to hang out with your friends, especially the ones that understand you are a mess because of the election and will love you anyways. I was lucky enough that my friend Sarah from Canada was willing to deal with my mess of a self the day after I found out. She’s been helping me out with getting over this a lot, and even went out of her way to FaceTime me during her school break to make sure I was doing alright at home (let’s just say I needed her to check on me).

Cooper (from Australia) also came down from Fredericia two days after to see Haderslev and hang out! It was really nice getting to see him again, though it is sad because he is leaving Denmark pretty soon. We drank coffee again, and even got this cool picture of him with the sunset!

 

Realizing the world is heading in a dark direction is not fun at all, but I am surrounded by a bunch of wonderful people in my life and couldn’t be more lucky. They have helped me greatly through this time.

I have talked and wrote a lot about the election. For me, this helps a lot, because writing is sort of a therapy. I really have no choice about talking about the election a lot, as one out of every two times a boy my discovers my nationality “Grab her by the p****!” is brought up. (Yes, my friends, that is what the United States is associated with now. You cannot tell me that Donald Trump has given the world a positive impression of my country.) This leads to lots of thoughtful political discussions and me endlessly explaining how the United States managed to elect Donald Trump. I also have written a lot about it, as you can tell.

Soon you will see my response in the newspaper in my faith column for how to respond to the election, which is an article that I believe is worth reading no matter your religious beliefs. I was surprised by how many people read my blogs about before and after the election. I am hoping that I can somehow have a future with political writing, as I have discovered for me it is quite fulfilling and fun to provide perspective.

The third thing I have been doing is staying busy, which was not that hard with musical! Last week was performance week for the musical, so we spent a lot of time preparing for it, and also celebrating afterwards. I’ve never been in a choir before, so this was new for me, but also a lot of fun. I got to met a lot of really great people as well as sing a lot of great songs!

Our play was based off a Midsummer Night’s Dream, but in old Danish instead of old English. We sang modern songs in English, such as “Neutron Start Collision”, “I Want Y0u to Want Me,” and featured here, “Troublemaker”!

My fellow students at Haka are so talented and it was a lot fun working with them and getting to know them all! I am very blessed to have gotten to know them and am quite glad I joined musical.

With where my life will head next, I do not know. I am going to concentrate on opening the best opportunities for myself and having the best exchange year possible. I am excited to see what it brings next.

Jeg er så glad at være i Danmark og har den bedste værtsfamilier, venner, og klasse jeg kun har spurgte for. I er den bedste, og jeg vil forsætte at repræsentere min land, selvom det er ikke særlig godt nu. Jeg håber for en bedre fremtid.

It is Time to Go High After a Trumping Low

I went to sleep last night uncertain of what was going to happen, knowing that I would need sleep no matter what happened. I woke up and since then I feel like I have been stuck in a bad dream.

I am a high school graduate of a small town in rural Minnesota and currently a Rotary Youth Exchange Student in Denmark. I have aspirations to become a political journalist. I am proud to come from a caring family and a state that voted for Hillary. I am horrified that Trump was elected.

I confess, my reaction was not pretty. I am overcoming a cold, so I spent the first half hour coughing and crying up a storm. How my country could elect a completely unqualified sexist, racist, homophobic, and bully of a man breaks my heart. It’s going to take a long time to process all of this and completely recover, but it is important we must.

“When they go low, we go high.” It is more important now than ever that we go high. I don’t know the damage that a Donald Trump presidency will create, but it’s not going to be pretty. It’s going to be especially horrifying for any minorities and women.

We can’t predict what will happen for sure. However, it is likely that much of the progress our nation has made with deals will go back.

My friend Kyle from Minnesota in Belgium stated it best: “And as far as the election goes… Trump isn’t the only thing we need to look out for.. Washington is now under complete right-wing control, Trump has been appointing the worst of the worst, monsters, I’d say. And on top of that he pans on immediately pulling out of the Paris Climate Change agreement, tearing up the Iranian Nuclear Deal (which was a great accomplishment towards world peace), and repealing Obama care, which was a really good step in the right direction towards national health care. Four years… an absolute disaster.”

Whether you agree with these stances or not, we still will have to deal with a lot more sexism, racism, poor treatment of disabled people, and homophobia. It’s going to be a dark time.

We can control how we respond. I have no doubt that Donald Trump will say horrible things about women, disabled people, immigrants, LBGT members, and people of color. I am guessing his policies will reflect that. It is up to us to normalize the correct treatment of women. We need to stand up for the disabled and fight for their rights. It’s vital to stop racism and homophobia. Macklemore summed it up pretty well in FDT with this little bit here:

Party in the streets when Hillary wins,
If she don’t, my girl’s half Canadian
Actually nah, I’m not gonna stay with them 
I got an eagle on my arm, I’m a patriot
I’ma stay right here, I ain’t livin’ in fear
With my people who are Muslims, Mexican and queer
And we ain’t gonna let you f*ck up four years
Ain’t gonna let you f*ck up for years

To my fellow American exchange students, it’s time to tell and show people about the true American values of inclusion and acceptance. To the rest of the world, it is necessary  to bond together against the hate that Donald Trump will bring. To my fellow Americans, it is okay to mourn, but we have work of inclusion to do tomorrow. Love trumps hate, and we need to show that love to everyone, regardless of what they believe politically.

We can’t let Donald Trump stop what we accomplish individually or as a country. I may be a mess today but I am ready to put up one hell of a fight for love and multiculturalism for the next four years. Part of America went low, but it is time for the rest of the world and everyone to go high.

Tre Måned, Dansk, og Holbæk

Det har været tre måned nu, så spændene! Min dansk er bedre nu, men jeg stadig behøver at forbedre meget. Jeg er syg som jeg skriver denne, men den har været godt. Jeg har den bedste mennsker in mit liv nu og er så glad for dem.

It’s now been three months in the happiest country in the world. This is supposed to be the toughest part of exchange, but even if is is the toughest part, I am still way happier than I ever was in Minnesota.

I would not consider myself homesick. I can say this with confidence as I am currently sick, and that is supposed to be the hardest part of being away from home. The past few week has been a bit tougher because of that, but a “rough” week in Denmark is much happier than a normal week back home.

I do miss a few things, mainly cheese being in almost every meal. I also miss having a dog to go on walks with, as I only have host kitties. Sometimes I want to go on a walk outside with a dog, but it turns out I cannot take Rasmus or Jersey on little cat leashes on walks. I cannot say that I miss American M&M’s or mac and cheese anymore thanks to the extremely generous package sent by my parents. I greatly miss Puffs’ tissues with my current sniffly state.

Besides being told that it would be tough at the three month point, I was also told that I would be able to understand a fair amount. This actually turned out to be true. When people talk, I can usually get an idea of what they are talking about. If I am familiar with the subject, I can understand it all. If I am unfamiliar with it, I usually can tell what it is, but I do not enough Danish to understand everything. It’s so satisfying being able to tell my Danish friends “Det forstår jeg” more and more.

Learning a language is definitely a tiring, tedious process. However, it’s also extremely satisfying. I am noticing that I go through a cycle where I alternate between feeling like I am getting nowhere, then a little bit where I realize that I am actually making significant progress. I am just finishing up on the feeling as I made progress part and starting to go into the feel like I am getting nowhere phase. Just to clarify, I know I am getting somewhere, it just feels like I am not sometimes.

Speaking Danish is still a challenge, and my pronunciation still needs a lot of work. However, I am much better off than I was a month ago, and usually can come up with a way to say something in Danish if it is not too hard.

I also should probably update you guys on some of the activities I have been up to! Not this past weekend, but the weekend before I was at a Rotary Exchange Meetup in Holbæk, which is in the middle of the Sjælland, the big island that has København (Copenhagen).

It was nothing short of absolutely crazy. Here are the pictures.

My Australian friend, Cooper, carved his first pumpkin with my assistance. He finds this tradition very strange, and it should be known that he is still a true Australian that loves coffee, vegemite, and finds Americans weird.

I played this game here, air balloon soccer, and actually scored the first goal despite being the only girl on the field!

Our sleeping conditions were a bit tight you could say. I now have fallen asleep in conditions I could not have previously.

We also did not get a lot of sleep. This lead to my Jared (from Canada) falling asleep in a very interesting place, before I got him a pillow. He has quite the talent for falling asleep in places that I thought were impossible.

Saturday night’s events started with a costume party (and ends with the whole shin sleeping incident). Here we have England’s babies, featured as a chimney sweeper, the Flash, and a cow.

Other than that, I have been doing a lot of fun things with my friends here in Denmark, and been witnessing the election chaos. I might write something about that later as tomorrow is the big night and there is a special event that I will go to, american candy bag in hand (thank you mom and dad!)

Tak for en fantastisk tre måned mine danske venner og udvekslingstudent venner. I er den bedste mennsker i verden. Jeg har aldrig været så glad, og glæder mig for den næste otte måned.

 

I am an American Abroad During This Election

Jeg er på den anden side af verden, men jeg hører meget om min land. Det er meget interessent at være i Danmark nu.

I didn’t realize that being an exchange student during a presidential election year would be such a big deal, but it turns out it is, and has affected me in many ways. It is quite impressive how much Danes know about our election, and quite horrifying seeing the election situation itself.

I always heard that other countries pay much more attention to our elections than we pay to theirs, but I had no idea just how much they cared. It turns out that the result of the United States election will have a big impact on European countries, and Danes like to stay politically aware and involved, so they know quite a lot.

I also happen to be a very political person, and have voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries and the election (yes, you heard that right, in the primaries too). I read New York Times political articles for fun, or really any political articles that are written well and not full of lies. At this point I am highly leaning towards becoming a journalist that – you guessed it – writes about politics.

Danes are so interested in the election, and I love talking about politics. It the perfect situation to be in as an exchange student. I always have a topic, no matter what, when talking to new people.

It is also interesting seeing just how much they care about the election. On the bus last week, I overheard – and understood!! – a conversation about the election. The average Danish teenager is more educated on American politics than the average American teenager, and so political conversations are usually good.

Their political education level, in fact, is to the point where they have to research a lot about the candidates and present about them in English. My class and another English class recently did a presentation of the candidates session/debate. I know that in the US no high school language class would ever do an indepth research project on a country’s election and present it all in a language besides English, so this was very interesting to see.

My classmates did thorough, accurate portrayals of the candidates that I was very impressed with. I was supposed to act as the monitor for the debate at the end, but we ran out of time, though we might do it another time. It was really special getting to be part of that experience and I hope we can actually have the debate!

There is another aspect to being an American abroad, and that is watching a nightmarish election unfold. It’s hard having to explain to well educated Europeans why exactly there are people who really are voting for Trump. I have learned to explain conservative culture quite well, as well as talk about the white working class. It’s forced me to really understand my own culture even better than I would have otherwise.

Trump is an embarrassment to the United States. It’s horrifying that an unqualified, sexist, racist, homophobic, and unsafely temperamental man has made it to the Republican nominee position. Danes over here are terrified of a war if Trump is elected president, and I join them in that fear. Trump says that the media is drawing the public’s attention away from the real issues of the election by focusing on sexism and racism, but even if you take out the fact that Trump is sexist and racist, he is still a failure of a businessman who has no clue how to lead our country in foreign policy.

Even though Clinton will most likely be elected, it is still a stressful and disgusting event to take place. It’s entertaining for the world to see Donald Trump’s antics, but it’s a whole lot less funny when he is actually on the ballot that you send in (I did not color in his circle, I will mention).  It has been great talking about politics, but nothing will compare to the relief of Clinton winning (I hope).

Jeg er klar for tirsdag aften, venner. Glæder mig at være færdig med det alle. Imidlertid, I skal ikke være bange at snakke med mig om politik, fordi jeg elsker at snakke om det. Jeg håber Gud vil være med den USA og verden på tirsdag.