April 17th, an ordinary saturday

News:
Tomorrow morning I board a bus to Prague. I have never been to Prague; I think this will be exciting. What won't be exciting will be sitting on a bus for 16 hours. I don't know what we will be doing, probably going to some exhibitions, markets, antique stores, that sort of thing. I already have a ticket to see a jazz/funk band Wednesday night, something my friend Katja found online. One of the girls that went last semester told me about a cool store with clothes and notebooks and other things. Here's the link - Parazit Fashion Store.

Monday is my 21st birthday, and I am excited to be spending it in Prague, and not on a bus to Prague. I find myself wishing I could be with my friends for this birthday, and also thinking back to birthdays of the past. Last year I remember my birthday was on a sunday and it was room draw at Grinnell, but I didn't have to go because I was coming here. That was kind of like a gift to myself, not having to go or think about room draw. I may never have to think about room draw again, considering next year I'm living in an apartment. Saturday the 18th last year, I remember going to an Indian folk music concert featuring the poems of Kabir - an Indian mystic poet from the 16th century whose poetry is well known in song form all over India. I have rarely felt so relaxed and happy - the music and the words (translated at the beginning of each song) was easy to just float away in. There was hardly anyone at the concert because it was Saturday night and I suppose they were drinking. I know I had a proper birthday party in the student coffee shop in the little corner of couches with my family and the dog, I think on sunday evening. It must have been after 8pm because the coffee shop doesn't open until then. They had brought a cake all the way from Omaha that read "happy birthday" but in Swedish - I think, because I didn't know a lick of Swedish at the time and my thoughts were just filled with the idea of actually being in Sweden in a short amount of time.

Anyway, I'm wandering.

There have been a lot of jokes going around, probably you have heard them already, about Iceland. Something like "Iceland was going to send a bunch of cash down to England, but they haven't got any "c"s so they just sent ash instead". Thursday evening I went with to the coast to try to see the ashy sunset which was supposed to be some strange red color, but the sun just disappeared behind a cloud and the wind was so strong we went home before it got dark. There are three Icelandic students at the school, and they are used to this kind of volcanic eruption. It isn't dangerous, because the ash is so high in the air and it gets blown across the sky instead of raining down on us. It can be dangerous for animals, because the ash is poisonous so you should watch out and not let them lick the ground. I wondered if I should watch out and not lick the ground as well. In Iceland people are wearing masks and having the sun blocked out by ash - and of course what everyone is talking about is how the ash blowing across Western Europe has caused all of the flights to be canceled. I am starting to get irritated at everyone blaming Iceland and putting Iceland down all the time. Once I said to Johann, one of the Icelandic students, "You can't possibly know what its like to be American. Everywhere you go, somebody wants to start a fight with you about the government or consumer culture, and I'm just so sick of apologizing for the 300, 000, 000 people of the USA whom I don't know or control. I'm sick of being blamed." And he said, "Yes I do. An Icelandic man living in London was attacked for being Icelandic after the financial crisis. Its something that most people in Iceland had nothing to do with, but we get blamed for it anyway. Now when I go out, I just say I'm Scandinavian."

So my personal message to the world about this volcano is: Leave Iceland alone! They didn't erupt the volcano on purpose!

And here's a link to a video of the ash in Iceland.

This morning I got up around 10:45, scurried over to the dining hall and had some orange juice before they started putting things away at 11. After that I didn't have any ideas about what I would do today, so I went to the TV room and saw the end of a movie about a little boy in London in the 60s who was hoping England would lose to Germany and people would come to his Bar mitzvah instead of watching the final match. In the end, he finally realized that "being a man wasn't what I thought - it was realizing that my dad wasn't perfect, he was just a man, and I loved that man." or something, Helena Bonham Carter played his mother. Oooh! I just found it on IMDB, its called Sixty Six.

Which reminds me, I have seen a few good movies in the last couple of weeks. I highly recommend "The Wackness" - it was really fun, set in the 90s with a great old school hiphop soundtrack and Ben Kingsly plays a washed up hippie psychiatrist. April 9th was Occupation Day in Denmark, commemorating the day Nazi Germany invaded Denmark on the morning of April 9th, 1940. I went on a long walk on the beach and saw some old German concrete bunkers that have been exposed as the sand blows away and the shoreline recedes. We talked about the history of that day, and had a occupation themed party that night, which descended into drunken attempted knife fights and other crazy shinanigans which got five students expelled... but anyways, before all that, we watched a holocaust movie called "Fateless". It was a Hungarian movie that apparently got a lot of criticism for the light in which they presented life in the concentration/work camp, showing the "good" parts - the happiness he was able to find in the midst of the horrors, showing how this young boy was tortured and starved and many other awful things, but when he left, he had trouble adjusting to the real world, and even more trouble returning to Budapest and meeting former acquaintances whose lives just carried on almost normally since when he left. I thought it was a really good movie, and I thought the focus on what the holocaust did to people's identities, especially after they returned home, was really interesting. So I recommend it also. I can also recommend "Mary and Max" as an excellent claymation video - kind of strange, and sometimes sad, but funny too. And unique from other claymation I have seen. My last recommendation for the time being is "Waltz with Bashir" - an interestingly animated documentary about a former Israeli soldier, now film maker, trying to find his memories of the 1982 massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Probably the biggest moment of the movie is when at the end the footage switches from animation to real footage of the wailing women and corpses from this massacre. Really a good movie.

Other (sad) news: I droped my external hard drive on accident :( and after a look from the computer guy at the school, it was pronounced dead. Which means all of my music stored on it is gone... especially the stuff I got last summer and in Sweden because its not backed up on the computer I used at school the last two years. So I have been sad about that, and have tried not to be so sad, because I can probably find it again its just a lot of trouble that could have been avoided with a bit more care.

My lord I have a lot to say! I'd better stop soon, but just one more thing before I do: I had a "free sale" last week, made lemonade, and tried to get rid of some clothes, cosmetics, and junk I have collected. I just want to get rid of the unnecessary things in my life - things that weigh my down and make it difficult to travel. Or see the floor. Although I heard a new word for my clothes storage system : the floordrobe. "What's that mess? Why are your clothes all on the floor?" "What do you mean, mess? That's my floordrobe!"

Anyways, I haven't got any good pictures at the moment, something I'm embarrassed about because I know I will get home with nothing to show from this year but ticket stubs and strange second hand books in foreign languages. Oh yes, and my memories :)

So goodbye for now, hope to write more soon - perhaps from Prague. I have to take my computer anyways to preregister for fall semester at Grinnell.