It’s seven o’ clock, and I’ve just completed a ten-hour travel day back from the Arctic Circle. With the airport smell still clinging to me, I walk through the front door to the tenth birthday celebration of the Danish children I live with. All family members and my roommate are joined around the table, food is set, candles are lit, and I’m quickly reminded that I’m not just living in a foreign country, I’ve also become a temporary member of a Danish family. We eat a nice meal made by my host mom and afterwards I help the kids set up their newly gifted sewing machine. It is a lovely night and while I am exhausted, it reminds me that I have a home in a country not my own.
My experience studying abroad in Copenhagen and living in a homestay was full of moments like these. For five months, I became a part of a family with different customs and dynamics than my own. I experienced birthdays and holidays, daily family dinners, sibling rivalries, and so many more hallmarks of family life. While studying abroad had been a dream of mine for years, I rarely envisioned it to mean living with three kids, one host mom, one roommate, and one dog. I’m very grateful it did because the family I lived with and the people I met were instrumental in an experience that was truly transformative for me. While it still came with its challenges, I emerged from my homestay with a more enriched understanding of myself and the world.
When I first landed in Copenhagen, I was nervous about the reality of living in a foreign country and meeting the woman who would become a large part of my new home. My host mom waited for me in arrivals and immediately made it feel as if we’d known each other our whole lives. I learned quickly that she loved to talk and that we were going to get along great. It took a little longer to get to know the kids, but soon my roommate and I were playing video games with them and helping videograph the 14-year-old's scooter tricks for her Instagram account. We jumped on the trampoline when the weather was nice, and I helped the youngest learn to do a back handspring. We went to the beach, went to floor-ball competitions and school performances, watched movies and baked American treats. I truly felt a part of the family.
While I felt at home, there were a few things that contrasted my own experiences with home life in America. They lived nice lives, but their house wasn’t lavish. Every corner was used completely, and they didn’t own multiple televisions or multiple rooms that allowed the family to live apart. The fridge was half the size of an American one and food waste was not tolerated. To them, better didn’t mean bigger, an embodiment of Danish culture that prioritizes a simple way of life where you only take as much as you need. It didn’t feel as if the kids were as concerned with success as I had felt, even at their age. I remember a striking moment when I asked the 14-year-old who spent practically all her time at a skate park if she wanted to become a professional skater. I had assumed that because she loved it, she would want to obtain the highest status within it possible. She responded, “Not everything you do has to be about being the best.”
The relationship I had with my host mom was probably my most special one from my time abroad. She had lived many years in Hong Kong and Dubai and loved to talk about what she’d learned from each place. She cooked food with love and fed my obsession of Danish meatballs (frikadeller) and potato salad (kartofler), a staple in Danish home cuisine. We often sat with cups of tea after dinner and talked about the most random things, often related to ongoing events in the U.S. I was shocked by her awareness of American politics and felt the weight of my own ignorance as an American who hadn’t learned about other countries to the same extent. She really opened my eyes to a different perspective of the world, and I felt for the first time I could sit back and look at America as an outsider. I often left our conversations feeling I understood my own country and upbringing better than before.
There were a few moments in these conversations when obvious cultural differences emerged between us. As a Dane, she had very different interactions and discourse around sensitive topics such as race than I did. In these moments, my initial reaction was to write off her comments as ignorance, but that felt unfair. I knew her to be a genuine person who cares deeply about others and had to accept that our different backgrounds produce different understandings, and this is what comes with living in a culture different than your own. In the same way that we were able to talk casually and lightheartedly, we could also have challenging but productive conversations about our differences. While these moments were difficult, they taught me how to deal with conflict with compassion rather than with anger. I had to push my own judgements aside so that we could come to a common understanding, and I think we were both bettered through the process of it.
While at times this made me feel out-of-place, I took away more of the moments when I resonated with my host family. When the youngest daughter would cry because she didn’t understand her math homework, I would remember the many nights throughout my adolescence when I, too, felt overwhelmed because of homework. When my host mom talked candidly about her struggles as a single mother and balancing needing to take care of herself and her family, I felt like I was watching my mother and mothers everywhere who are always bearing this weight. While studying abroad revealed new perspectives that were at times difficult to manage, I was simultaneously reminded of the common experiences that unite us all.