One week in a Boarding School

Every exchange student with AFS has to do a "mini-exchange" around the middle of their experience, where they go to another family and school, in another part of the country, during 1 week. Usually, they go in chapters, for example, the chapter from Viborg would go to Copenhagen. They went each to different families and attended a normal school. 

In my case, I had the luck of having a much different experience around the danish culture: a boarding school! This happened because one of the members of my host family is the principal of that school, and they talked to AFS in order to give me this opportunity.

What is a Boarding School?

A Boarding School, or in danish, Efterskole, is a school where the students live during the whole lesson period, with people from ages 14 to 18. These students may attend a boarding school after finishing the basic education, the 9th grade, and then proceed to the Gymnasium. An efterskole usually offers a variety of "study lines", focussing on specific sports or performing arts, such as soccer, music, media, cooking, dancing, etc. These schools are famous for having a spirit of friendship and acting as a group, being cooperative and independent. This is why the students have a lot of freedom and enjoy to be there.

My week in FAAE

The school that I attended was called Faaborgegnens Efterskole, or FAAE, located in the south of Fyn. I arrived on a Sunday afternoon, and a teacher directed me to my room, where I met my two roommates, Cung and Sebastian. They were very friendly and helped me a lot throughout the week! We went downstairs where some students were relaxing, playing games and talking in the sofas. Cell phones weren't allowed in the lounge so everyone was socialising. 

I met some new people and we went back to the room, where my roommates explained the rules of the school. Alcohol and smoking weren't allowed, the classes started at 8:30 and ended around 15:00. The students should be in their rooms at 22:00 and the internet connection was closed at 23:00. There was a lot of free time and it was mostly spent with friends, talking and playing games. The school had a lounge with a lot of card/board games, table soccer, air hockey and even a pool table! There were a lot of classrooms, dedicated to specific areas, such as informatics, arts, sports, climbing, etc. The school was very big and clean. The motto of the school was "Jeg er fordi vi er" which means "I am because we are".

Then everyone started going to their rooms, and they hugged each other in the corridors to wish a good night. I was quite surprised, but they explained that it was a habit to hug everyone in the school. I had the chance to notice in the next days that everyone was always hugging the ones they were friends with, anytime. 

The next morning we woke up at 7:00, went for a walk outside and took breakfast. Then, we went to a big room where everyone was sitting and talking. The principal talked to the students and told me to present myself, which I did mostly in danish! Then we sang 2 songs, with the help of a teacher on piano and went to classes. There were different classes and I could choose since I was there only for a week, so I went with Cung to his class, which was English and then to Sebastian's class, called 10+.

The cantine (not a picture from this year)

I was impressed by how free and fun the classes were. In English we did a game with some papers and then read a story with a pair and talked about it. It was very chill because we could go out and sit on the sofas, with there were inside of the classroom as well. We had a lot of time and freedom, which was awesome. In 10+ it was even freer since there was no subject to learn. In this class, they work in projects during the year, and the students learn how to think outside of the box and being open-minded. On this day we did some games about body language and it was very interesting.

School ended at 16:00 and we were free to go out, sleep, socialise, play games, do climbing and much more. Everyone went to other rooms and had fun. It was like this the whole week and every day felt very relaxing. I wasn't there since the beginning so it was harder to make friends than I thought. Not a lot of people were interested in meeting me since they already had their friend groups formed. Anyways, I had to be the one taking the initiative and talk to people, which allowed me to meet some people, the ones who cared, and it was fun as it was. 

On Friday night there were movies until late and we also made some pancakes outside, at night, with a fire. Saturday we slept until late and the day was very free, but I was picked up by my host parents and left the school at 17:00. I think it was a rich experience and it helped me try a little taste of what is a boarding school in Denmark, even tho I know I would experience much more if I had known those people for a whole year and was fully integrated into the culture. 

  

Here is a video made by some students from FAAE this year, they show you around the school, the lounge, the classrooms, the outside and also inside some dorms!