Danish lessons

What happened?
Let’s cut straight to the case: I was a little disappointed by the Danish lessons.
Before I came here, I expected to be drowning in the Danish lessons, so I could communicate with the people on the street, in the shops, at the café. Sadly, this wasn’t the case. After five Danish lessons, I have learned the following:
- how to say my name
- how to say where I come from
- how to say which language I speak
- how to say ‘thank you’ in 7 different ways
- the numbers from 0-100
My impression after the first lesson was pretty optimistic. I was very proud of myself that I could say some Danish words, even if the pronunciation wasn’t always right. After the second lesson, my enthusiasm dropped. We repeated what we’ve learned the week before, and didn’t learn that much more. What frustrated me more, was that I still couldn’t order a simple bread in the store. We expressed our thoughts to Jette, who told Lone. For our last lesson, we all brought a recipe from our home country. Lone had brought some folders from supermarkets. We had to make a poster about our typical food with images from the folders. We also wrote the Danish names for each ingredient on the poster. This was actually meaningful for us.

What can we learn from this experience?
Looking back, I still think I would have loved an intensive language course. After two and a half months, I can now order a bread in the store, but I can still not have a very simple conversation with a Dane. I feel helpless each time I have to say: ‘I’m sorry, I only speak English.’ I would really like to have learned the language during my stay here in Haderslev.

Where can we improve?
I would like to suggest an intensive course in Danish for the following Erasmus students. I think it is part of the whole experience to learn the language of the country from your stay. It helps a lot with the integration. Sadly, I still feel like an outsider. The gap between the Danes and ‘the foreign students’ is still pretty big.