Long time no post!

First of all, sorry sorry sorry to everyone who has looked at this blog at all in the last two weeks or so and thought "oh fiddlesticks, nothing new here!" because I have gotten really behind not only on posting here but also in answering emails, giving out my new address and taking pictures of the new place as well. So I will try to take care of a few of these things right here right now!

My new address is this: Brita Higgins, Vrå Højskole, Højskolevej 1, 9760 Vrå, Denmark

Specific apologies to Caleb and Marianne for taking so long, especially Caleb who is used to me showing up late everywhere and is very patient and still friends with me despite this sort of thing happening all of the time - by the way, we never went on a bike ride to your house from downtown we should do that sometime.

This is a picture of the windup toy booth at one of the christmas markets in Hamburg that I took simply because this woman's job was just to stand there and wind up the toys so that people would get excited and buy them and I think I would be extremely good at this job.

Erik just left today from visiting, and I think Søren tried to convince him to come to school here... maybe it will happen, who knows, right? and he got to meet the people I have met and see the school again which was hopefully fun.

JON GARREY! I heard from Erik that I got a postcard from you THANK YOU!!!! But I haven't seen it yet, Erik needs to send it to me, but I'll just say that please you are welcome to visit anytime, you can sleep on my floor or probably get your own room and eat with us all for free! So do it! Weekends are completely free so we could go iceskating or watch movies or have a party but weekdays are free after 4pm and basically all I do all day is listen to music and play with fabric so you're welcome there too. Just let me know before hand so I don't run away to Stockholm on a whim at that particular time.

Speaking of which. Stockholm, I miss you lots and lots and I am going to come visit as soon as possible. We will have många många fikas!!!! and dance about and drink öl!

Grandma - thank you for sending a letter, I'm looking forward to it and I will send you one back!

Anna Smith - thank you for facebook stalking me and calling me a pretty lady!

Anna Cassel - I miss you! Come visit! I need to send you some music which I will do soon.

Tim - thanks for dropping a line and basically its really nice to be remembered.

Randy - damn you and your moving! but its ok because we'll hang out this summer.

Meemo, Jim, Mom and Dad - thanks for all of your picture captions. Erik thought "your base are belong to us" should win, but I haven't really picked a winner because they all made me laugh and that was really the whole point :)

Seth - hello! ha ha I know you read this now I can mind control you with hidden messages!!!

J.A. - hejsan! Har du glömpt mig nu? Jag hoppas inte! Jag behöver din hjälp att kommer ihåg hur man talar Svensk! Dansk är svart att lära.

Here are some more random pictures from the last two months or so:
Jonas in his new shirt for Christmas!
New Year's Eve in Hamburg
Downtown Hamburg in winter
Marzipan sculpture in Herr Max, the awesome cake shop by Erik's apartment.
Singer songwriter with tiny guitar who was playing at Haus 73, a "cultural house" in Hamburg with a coffeeshop/bar that was fun to hang out in.
Um... and for my staged photography class I had to dress up like a big baby
Unfortunately, that's about the extent of my pictures right now. But visit the school's website and look up "Billeder" for a few more pictures from the school.

Yes, so look forward to more news, on the classes, how I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, useful phrases in Danish, what's for dinner, how many cups of coffee I can drink in one day without feeling gross, and what its like to be here.

Lars Winnerbäck, don't make me cry! OR Jag längta efter Sverige

I am having a unexpected wave of nostalgia for/ längtar efter Sverige. Which is not to say that I don't like Denmark or don't feel already like I belong here because I feel very warmly towards all things Danish and I always have. I actually don't know what it is. I felt like a stranger in Sweden for a lot of the time, and it wasn't until we read "The Emmigrants" by Wilhelm Moberg that I felt significance in my family connection - reading that book about people just like my relatives (Moberg spent a lot of time researching and interviewing emmigrants in America and their diaries of the trip) was like some kind of solidifying agent that made it possible either A) for me to feel overly emotional or B) like my connection to the Swedish-American identity we practiced at home was real and something that really belonged to me.

Today we had a "song night" after dinner where the two music teachers at the school introduced the hojskole song book, talked about its history, its use historically in framing the hojskole movement as it evolved, and its continued use today in many settings as a way to frame meetings, become focused and so on. We also talked about our purpose in singing from it every day at morning assembly and in the afternoon and usually at night too. Its about togetherness, and remembering the past melodies and the past history through these songs, and also to help us non Danish speakers with inflection. There have been many editions of this book, but the effort to compile old Danish folk melodies was started quite late (I guess?) and so many were lost or almost lost, BUT luckily, said the teachers, in Sweden there is a strong long tradition of keeping and recording and singing folk melodies, at schnapps drinking parties probably ;) and so there are Swedish and Norweigan and some German songs in our books too.

Today we sang one such song, which I can't recall the name of right now, except that I was written in the cold war era and the first line was something like "If you have a song to sing, sing it now" (implication being "there might not be a tomorrow") - it was kind of sweet and sad. I actually understood most of what I was singing, and singing in Swedish while the Danes stumbled on the pronunciation of a couple words, like göra with a "g" sound instead of a "y" sound, I was very excited to be seeing Swedish again and understanding it and well, its not even like I have great pronunciation in Swedish either, but for some reason I was feeling really emotional about it.

And then I came home and listened to Lars Winnerbäck, and the song "Innan Mörkret Faller" especially was making me miss Sweden - again, who knows why! I suppose because of all the Swedes I met that were great, and who accepted me as one of their own, even though I'm about as Swedish as blond hair (It's not like people AREN'T blond in Sweden, its just not unique, you know).

Youtube the song, maybe it will make you längta efter Sverige as well!

OMG I'm EXHAUSTED

TODAY was my first real day at the Vraa hojskole (folk high school) and despite drinking maybe five cups of coffee I am completely totally worn out. I will try to explain. First, I got up at 8:20 this morning, about four hours earlier than I have been getting up for the past, um... three or four weeks? Then I had breakfast with Soren and Pia (for those of ya'lls who ain't in the know: Soren= my dad's friend, teacher at the school, married to... Pia= headmistress of the school, both of them played a big part in convincing me to come here) so right - breakfast. Also at breakfast were two former students spending the holidays with Soren and Pia, one named Tina and one who I spent a lot of time with named Sofia from Hungary. I like Sofia a lot - she is learning to play the tin whistle and just got back from visiting her boyfriend in Iceland (some Islander she met at the hojskole) with a really nice Icelandic sweater, and we watched The Notebook and Enchanted together. Oh yeah, and then we shoveled some snow. Most of the students were arriving today and to pick the one guy who flew in to Alborg today up from the airport, the school borrowed a limo from a wealthy benefactor, which apparently has a low bottom, so we were 1) shoveling snow off the roof of the art building 2) attacking a lump of ice in the main entry gate so that the limo count make it in. After this I rode the limo to the airport and met/got to talk to some five of the other students returning from last semester. When more people started arriving, we had what I will call a fika, (coffee and cookies) in the "living room" in the main building of the school. This is when I drank all the coffee that is now making my mouth dry and legs twitch... and met more students. Considering the most socializing I have done in weeks consisted of one or two people that I already knew or wandering around in an unfamiliar neighborhood in Germany asking where I could buy hair dye, this was eventually quite exhausting. So luckily, Sofia wanted to watch a movie, so I went back to Soren and Pia's house with her and began to knit a hat - BECAUSE ITS REALLY REALLY COLD and I can't believe I forgot to bring a hat to Europe. At six it was dinner time, and we arrived in the dinning hall to see the most delicious looking, lets say "feast", laid out in the middle on a table. There was roast pork, baked potatoes with herbs, and then probably twenty or some bowls of things to make salad with - olives, bean sprouts, corn, nuts and seeds, tomatoes, greens DELICIOUS. And there was desert too, some kind of berries with whipped cream on top. Then we had the whole evening of 1) everyone meeting in the living room and introductions of teachers 2) singing songs out of the special folk high school song book (looks like a hymnal) we sang "It's a Wonderful World" and then a Danish song, and then that song that goes "winter spring summer or fall, all ya gotta do is call, and I'll be there yes I will... you've got a friend" 3) introduction to the five or six different main subject lines 4) and probably most importantly, a BIG DANCE to some CRAZY SCANDINAVIAN FOLK MUSIC! They were calling it the "porn polka" because you line up in two lines, and then run out and link arms with your partner and spin and then, well its hard to explain, but you spin once with everyone else in succession and between each one you swing back with your partner, so its a bit like an infidelity dance - that's what they told us at least. But it was really really good fun. Apparently Soren has been telling the other students about me, that I was coming and, unfortunately, that I was really crazy/fun/interesting. This means that people already have a positive opinion of me (Yay!) but it also means I have something to live up to. And I'm the sort of person that takes a bit to warm up to people and really be myself - so I hope they can wait for the crazy. Now I'm in bed - its been a wonderful day, there is wireless internets at the school so I checked my email/facebook for the first time since I've been here, I have a nice dorm, and a nice roommate incidentally with an AMAZING singing voice - her name is Line (pronounced "Lean-eh") Tomorrow morning I get up at 7 (!!!!!!!) so now I must must must go to bed. But wow this will most likely be a great semester.

IKEA: Stylish and affordible Swedish design, OR time-sucking hell-hole?

So, Erik and I went to IKEA today to pick out a wardrobe, rug, bathroom light, and additional chair so that when there are three people in his apartment, Erik doesn't have to sit on the trashcan.
As much as I love IKEA, four to five hours of even a potentially good thing (they have a cafeteria! and all of the furniture have cute little names!) becomes not such a good thing. I was excited to see these familiarly Swedish items: princess cake (green marzipan covered cake with jam? and cream DELICIOUS), köttbullar (meatballs a la Sweden), and kanelbullar (cinnamon rolls but these didn't have very much cardamom). I tried to take a picture of the princess cake - partly because I have so many good memories of eating it with Matthew Chance at Sture Katten - but then the cafeteria lady yelled at me in German, because apparently you aren't allowed to take pictures of the food. I was downcast, and I don't understand, because when I think of places where you aren't allowed to take pictures its places like meat packing plants or Walmart where they have some evil violation of health codes or human rights lurking around the corner, but IKEA, what do they have to hide? Anyway, so we had a fika (refills are FREE on coffee) and then spent a very long time looking at wardrobes. For part of this time I occupied myself with filling my virtual house with as many virtual chairs as possible, and then taking a picture of it BECAUSE HOW WILL THEY STOP ME! mwaa ha ha ha ha ha....
Finally we left IKEA having bought a wardrobe and a chair but no light and no rug... Also, Erik bought me a mouse because I liked it, and it was only 99 cents, and I had a hard day and he understands me and my needs. My needs for mice. So there we are, that was pretty much today. Ha! and wouldn't YOU like to know if I'm talking about a real mouse or not!

(... but if you're smart you probably know what kind of mice they sell at IKEA....... and I bet you're smart)















Here's the lady getting ready to yell at me...














....And chairs.

Learning Danish!

I wondered how much I have learned in Sweden that will help me in Denmark language-wise, especially because all the Swedes I talked to said these (mean?) things about the Danish language: 1) that it was like Swedish but with porridge in your mouth, 2) that Danes can understand Swedish but if I learn Danish my Swedes (and yes I mean to make that possessive- I met them, their mine now) won't understand me, 3) and also they told me that I will think I know what word to use and then all of a sudden it will be a completely different word or mean something different - till example: in Swedish "frukost" means breakfast, but in Danish it means lunch HOW CRAZY IS THAT? Not actually sooo crazy but okay.

But here's what I've got so far:

New things:

"riot" på Svensk is "upplopp", but in Danish it's uh, something else, sorry I forgot.
"konstig" in Swedish means "weird", but in Danish "weird" is "underlig"
"maybe" in Swedish is "kanske", but in Danish it's "måske"

Old things:

I'm REALLY GLAD that "duktig" exists in both languages, although I think it's spelled differently, because it just means you've done a good job at something.
Of course "tack" is the same, although it's spelled "tak" in Denmark.
And it appears that if you change "t" to "d" in many words, they are the same, like "food" in Swedish was "mat" but in Danish it's "mad" - I swear I'm not overgeneralizing here, but I will have to add more examples later when I can think of them.

And sadly, things I have to leave behind:

Fika, does not exist in Danish.
Bra! or Jätte bra! do not exist in Danish as nice general expressions for "good".
And I haven't seen that many Kanelbullar or Lussekatter, my delicious friends.

But after a couple weeks of what I will call "down time" (more accurately: Sweden withdrawal pains, sleeping, Christmas! and culture shock in Germany) between last semester and this one, I'm ready to go at this learning a new language thing again, this time with full intention, not just sincere hopes that I will learn to speak it.

blink, and you'll miss it

Hello. Please post a caption for this picture. The writer of the best caption will win something silly sometime in the future.