My best tips (so far)

Since I’ve been living here for a whole two weeks, I thought it could be useful to do a rundown of my packing list and my essentials for anyone who’s interested.

Essentials: My biggest essential is my winter coat. That thing is a life saver. I initially thought I would be ok with just my hoodie but I was brutally wrong. I don’t know where I was but I walked out with my “regular” attire up until that point (top: long sleeve, long underwear, hoodie; bottom: long underwear, pants) and I was absolutely freezing. The wind definitely messed with me more than I thought it would. But that’s why my winter coat is so helpful: it cuts the wind down which is the main reason I get so cold. My winter coat is from London Fog and it’s really helpful because it’s two jackets in one, an outer and inner shell. Definitely my coolest piece of clothing aside from my Sponge Bob Boating License shirt. I would highly recommend that one. The only bad thing about it is that it makes my torso look like a box. And my legs are really skinny too so that doesn’t help me much when I look like a box on two sticks. I don’t have any pictures but it’s probably about as funny as you think it looks.

Long underwear is my next essential. Those are so helpful. It’s basically spandex but especially for my legs, they help to keep me really warm. It doesn’t really make sense since it’s just a thin layer of clothing, but it really helps to cut the wind down I think because there’s no space between the spandex and my skin so the wind isn’t able to make me as cold. It’s not as much of a big deal for my torso because I have a huge coat to cover that, but it really helps to keep my legs warm, especially since my legs are, like I said, very skinny.

Moisturizer or moisturizing face wash. Copenhagen has such little moisture in the air that my skin wasn’t used to it. I’m so glad I have some moisturizer to help my skin.

Boots. I’m not sure what the material is but my boots are absolutely amazing. They keep my piggies warm and I only need a regular pair of socks to walk around in comfortably.

Non essentials: I brought just way too many T-Shirts. I truly don’t know what I was thinking. I have an obscene amount of T-shirts that will never see the light of Copenhagen day because it’s just way too cold to go out with just a shirt on. I would’ve brought maybe five or ten shirts to split between pajamas, exercise, and then going out but I think more than that is excessive, especially for someone from Hawaii.

Hand warmers aren’t nearly as useful as I thought they would be. I brought a huge amount of leftover hand warmers and they really haven’t been that helpful. I just shove my hands in my pockets and walk around like that.

Heavy socks aren’t that useful either. I brought boots which really help to cut the wind down on my feet. They’re waterproof too which is great since it rains occasionally here. But big warm socks I think would be uncomfortable. I’m glad I didn’t bring many of those.

Also, really cool but I got to meet people from three four different countries: Austria, Spain, Russia, and super super cool Luxembourg. I never thought I’d ever meet someone from Luxembourg. My roommate is from Canada which is super cool as well, and I’ve met someone from Brazil and Scotland. So amazing that all these different nationalities are here. Kinda weird I guess for the Europeans to be traveling to Copenhagen since they can travel here literally whenever they want. But it's still very cool to meet all of them like I’m not going to complain. Definitely a plus that I’m from Hawaii and get to say I was born and raised on an island. But I think aside from that, I’m pretty unremarkable, especially since everyone here speaks multiple languages. Really wish I stuck with Japanese but it would be slightly irrelevant here since most people speak European languages rather than Asian ones. To be completely honest, it’s absolutely embarrassing that I only speak one language.

Also, I actually ventured out in the cold and got to check out two of the buildings of the CBS campus! They're beautiful! I got lost in the second picture (the white hallway) so I spent about an hour and a half trying to get out but now I know the building super well.