When One Door Closes, Another One Opens

I wanted to begin my last post (at least for a while) with a quote that I found while researching John Dewey for a presentation. It is: “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” I thought that quote put a nice bow on my study abroad experience because this semester I learned more from navigating maps, asking for directions, and getting lost while traveling than I did in the classroom. I have confidence that I can go somewhere new, order food and find housing all on my own. My semester has been filled with life lessons, and I learned them because I experimented and tried new things.

Copenhagen has also taught me to revisit my ideas about what true happiness is. Denmark is considered “the happiest place in the world” but the scale of happiness is different. My experiences this semester have led me to think that happiness in Denmark is measured based on smaller moments like spending the night making Christmas decorations with candles lit and music playing while in the States, a person’s happiness depends on how good his or her job is. People here do not live to work; they work to live. Even though my host parents still work almost forty hours a week, they have a different attitude about work, and they always have time for their children. We eat dinner together every night, which is a tradition that is becoming extinct in the States. Being here has taught me to cherish the quieter, smaller moments.

Here are some of my future travel goals. Hopefully, putting it in writing will force me to make these plans happen!

1. Witness something once-in-a-lifetime, like Jokulsarlon, a lake next to a melting glacier in Iceland. (I just read about this on a blog!)

2. Go skydiving in New Zealand.

3. Next itinerary for Europe: Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Paris, Munich, Interlaken, Venice, Barcelona, Lisbon, London, and Edinburgh.

I miss a lot about Copenhagen. I miss my host family. I miss hopping on a bus for twenty minutes and entering a mysterious, enchanting city. Farvel, Copenhagen! I’ll be back!