6 Things I’ve Learned From Living ‘Alone’ In America So Far

1. How being an adult means that you actually have to check your email every day. There are so many informations, deadlines, bills, medical stuff and school work when you are an international student-atlethel! And in this almost grown-up world I live in, every thing goes by email – which I suck at . . .

2. How bad I actually am at being alone, and how much I hate the fact that I’m bad at it. Back home my Mom would always say it’s a good thing to be bored sometimes, and that you got to have the ability to be alone and entertain yourself. I used to love being all by my self in the house, but it might be because I almost never was. Living at home and being in a relationship non-stop for 3 years has really made a mark on me, and even though I’m surrounded by people almost all the time, then it’s just not the same. Of course I don’t regret anything, but I might have wished that having such a serious relationship would have happened to me later in my life than at 16. This was definitely one of the reasons why I wanted to leave Denmark and not be in a relationship anymore; I wanted to become totally independent of having my family and a boyfriend around me 24/7.

3. How much more comfortable it seems american girls are with their bodies. To be honest, I’ve been a little shocked about some very bare outfits, but lately I’ve been getting more and more used to it and now I just admire how a lot of girls, no matter what kind of body type they have, wear whatever they want to without hesitating.

4. How my humor is based on 40% sarcasm, 30%  laughing at other people and 30% laughing at myself. Yes, most of my american friends are of course funny, but they are not as good with self-irony as europeans and I really miss that. The same thing with sarcasm, I feel like it’s only the old people who uses sarcasm – and thank God my roommate too, but she’s 50% european so that’s probably why!

5. How little I used to appreciate my mother’s and father’s home cooking. Cliché – I know! Back home I was all about take-away, and yes Portland has BOMB take-away food, but first of all you can’t afford it every day, and second of all you just get really tired of it when you’ve done it way to0 much – so yeah even my mom’s ‘boring’ Spaghetti sounds so good right now.

6. How making mistakes are good for you. Maybe not the actual mistake, but the ability to accept that you made a mistake, learn from the mistake, recover from the mistake and get back on track even wiser than before; that is something I have learned a lot about in the just two-three months I’ve been here. No matter if it’s in basketball, school, social life or any kind of relationship, I have to remember that I can’t grow without making mistakes.

Luv C.