Sigh. Another day waiting for a student voice on this Denmark blog! As we travel tomorrow, we’ll have some thoughts about our trip overall, but for now, here’s a brief rundown of our day.

After all this time traveling and being out of school, it was easy to forget that our Danish hosts are still in session! Today, we returned to class with them and presented a few final stories of American life to various groups at the school. As a special mid-day treat, one of the history teachers took us down to the old Cold War bunker under the school where we learned that Denmark only hoped to have to use the bunker for two weeks at a time at which point any escalation will have ended with victory—or defeat. The highlight for many of the students was using a manual typewriter for the first time, though.

Today also marked the last time we’d have dinner with our hosts for quite some time as we board the bus to the airport at 7am tomorrow. We shared some pizza, played rival Kahoots, and enjoyed each other’s company hanging out to the warring tones of Bad Bunny and Luke Combs. The Danish students from last year’s visit got to come, too.

Overall, it has been a pleasure getting to know Denmark and the people of Haderslev and the school. The highlights of the trip are hard to pinpoint because I think for many of us they play in the quiet movements between the major melodies. Nevertheless, we’ve come away from the trip with something richer than the pictures below can capture: memories shared with people we now care about who also care about us, and hope and conviction that our paths are tied together as we amble geographically apart, but never truly separated.