This past Sunday meant me and Per the bus driver and a personalized tour of Copenhagen while we drove the highway route between the airport, Nor Vest, and Bispebjerg and back again four times over. I thought the wind was going to blow me away every time I jumped out to greet the students. Per was there with a smile to open the doors and help with bags, even though some of these students packed like they were moving to Copenhagen for two years.

They tell us at the beginning of our internships that Danish bus drivers will either be notoriously difficult, insisting on particular routes and stopping for their mandatory breaks every three hours and such, or wonderful people that tend to talk about...everything. I definitely have only ever encountered the latter.

Per heard I was taking Danish, so he immediately told me I was free to try as much as I'd like in the vicinity of the bus. "I have an old, old friend from Utah," he told me, "and whenever we get together he says, Per, don't be perfect, we're just trying to communicate. Kenzie, people all speak to each other in some way, we'll get there. And if we don't? We ask questions. You ask me as many questions as you'd like."

Per was excited to show the students some of the sights on the ride, but a lot of them were jet-lagged and quiet, so it ended up being me in the front, enjoying his vast knowledge of the area that comes with driving many busses, growing up in Copenhagen, and being a generally curious person. He told me about the architecture of some buildings, a place near the airport where they recycle dirt that has been contaminated by oil spills and can be used again, where the new development is in Copenhagen. He went over how to count in Danish, the weekdays, and that aegte means 'authentic' when we passed Thai restaurants. He offered to take me by the scenic route on our way back, a pretty route on Amager that had us passing beaches, which looked cold but beautiful, and a lot of wind surfers. He pointed out the tiny water-side summer houses and we both wished summer would come sooner. He suggested to me that I compare tiny Nettos (local grocery store) and larger Nettos if I had time, swearing the prices differed, and told me that toasted rye bread with cheese on it is 'heaven'. He noticed after lunch I had began to crash, so he politely told me to take a power nap and that he'd wake me up when we reached the airport. At the end of the day, he gave me a bottle of water and dropped me off near my neighborhood and we thanked each other for making the day a low-key, enjoyable-as-one-can-have-in-a-bus-for-eight-hours kinda day.

I've met all kinds of people here, from the friendly to the outrageous to the thought-provoking. What about the performance artist, with whom I had a discussion about 'acting' in the public realm? How Americans always seem to treat their existence in the public realm, such as on public transportation or on the street, as a unified experience, somehow knowing that everyone is secretly paying attention in some small form, and so we perform for each other, we come together in small ways as a group. And that Danes are more likely to shy away from any collective public existence, preferring to exist in smaller bubbles, keeping the quiet, narrowing the focus. Why she loves being in America because it is a more fertile place to observe as a performance artist, because we are all actors in some way.

Or what about the woman who came here as a refugee from Iraq? Who showed me the dual existence of Denmark's ugliness and Denmark's opportunity? She lived in an immigrant ghetto of a community - she had owned multiple cars, her father had been an engineer, they came from wealth - before being housed in the same building as many other types of people, including criminals. A girl was raped there. The family was told they would never amount to anything, would never learn Danish, would never integrate. The immigration officer asked her mother how many camels the family owned. It's a story that's painful but familiar - her father working many months as a delivery man, geography dictating that him and his knowledge suddenly meant nothing. And yet - she didn't become a maid, like they suggested she be. She learned Danish, and now her family is all so successful, and Denmark was a land of contradictions for her. But she's smart and beautiful and quietly powerful, more so than I'll ever be.

I greedily collect faces, and moments, and colors. I tuck them into my pockets, hide them behind my ears, watch them puddle in my cupped hands, dripping between my fingers. My world throbs with the knowledge that now is the clearest vision, now is city-dirt, is foreign-stare, is sweat, is taste, is something.

A gift. A task.

Every night here, my mind races. Every day here is opportunity. In the past each day might have been but a grain of sand, quickly collecting, meaningful only in quantity. Here? Each day is bright in the knowledge that no two are ever the same and each lasts but once.