Spring Arrives

Hey! Look! Little things are popping out of the ground!
Today I spent four hours working on stacking wood into an orderly pile for 75 Kr. an hour meaning I made 60 dollars today. The weather has gotten much nicer and I feel nicer in nice weather. However, my everyday enthusiasm for sewing and my other work here is at a very low point. I like to imagine myself as a grumpy sleepy bear who would like nothing better than to settle down with a nice book and then fall asleep on it, or maybe a bear that is tired of being cold and isolated from other bears. That is the problem with going to Stockholm, when I come back I feel lonely and irritated. I am really looking forward to Easter next week, and to visiting Erik in Hamburg and getting away again for a bit. There are two main problems right now, one being that Vraa is about a 10 dollar train ride away from the next place were you can buy art supplies or paper, buy a used book, or go out for a coffee, etc etc etc. The other problem is the way people act towards one another - you would think that with only 70 students here it wouldn't be worth their effort to judge one another but what do I know.

I had a very strange experience while I was moving pieces of wood this afternoon, where I caught a whiff of some smell, from the wood or the ground or maybe the breeze, that reminded me of sometime when I felt really happy. I couldn't figure out the smell or even what it reminded me of, but I felt happy and optimistic for a short time just thinking about it.

To Stockholm to Stockholm to buy a fat pig. Home again home again jiggety-jig!

And that's what i was doing last week. Here's a picture to prove it! This is me sitting in Stockholm trying to learn this tiny guitar.

More about that tomorrow! now i am back in Denmark, and everything is fine except for loosing one of my shoelaces this evening. It is twice as nice to see everyone here now that i've been away for almost a week, and the weather is definitely perking up. So tally ho! as they like to say or something like that.

Unfortunately this is my bed time. but i will leave you with today's danish phrases of the day :

Er du vågen? Er du klar? Er du sulten?
Are you awake? Are you ready? Are you hungry?

Goodnight!

I hate to make a post with no pictures and no news really, but it was just a pretty pleasant day here today. Here are the things I liked about today in list format:

1. I went for a jogging, at seven! Seeing the morning sun coming through the trees was actually enough to distract me from how much I hate sports that don't take place underwater.

2. I had a REAL coffee, made with freshly ground locally roasted beans, courtesy of my Hungarian next door neighbor Andrew.

3. Our textiles teacher Lene decided that we should take a walk to enjoy the strong sunshine and so us textiles people spent the morning (up until the coffee break) walking through down and then sledding down a hill on little plastic discs.

4. I ate an avocado.

5. I washed my hair!!!

6. We have afternoons free every Wednesday, so I went with a couple people to the church thrift store in town which is only open from 2 to 5 on Wed. Thurs. and Fri. and I finally found on old bed sheet the right color and weight to finish my first project with. I also bought a vintage looking bright red day dress in a soft kind of fuzzy but not as fuzzy as swede fabric.

7. One of the towns people who was eating dinner with us as a part of our community meal thing on wednesday nights complimented me on my hat with bear ears.

8. I watched the movie "Seven Pounds" starring Will Smith, and it was kind of sad, and then listened to some music, including a silly techno song version of a traditional Finnish polka, and a band called the Panics that I liked, and then part of a live show of George Carlin. Also I ate part of a Toblerone bar.

9. On my way to my house I ran into the British student, Lee, who was preparing for a presentation on his hometown of Brighton. He showed me some pictures of the Starlings gathering in a big flock/swarm at dusk to spend the night under the pier, and also video of the annual Brighton pride parade and festival which they are famous for. Brighton was also apparently the site of one/several? huge clashes between Mods and Rockers back in the day. Which reminds me, Lee told me to watch a good movie about that which I can't remember the name of but it started with a Q.

10. and, tomorrow morning I will do some yoga with Marta and actually get up in time for breakfast again.

What a good day.

Goodbye February

I wish, I wish I were a fish.

Sometimes you just have a day where you start to think about things, and you start to ask, "why is this skirt I'm making not working?" and "why do I always compare myself to other people?" and "why do I get so pessimistic about my future when I compare myself to other Grinnellians?"

And so on days like this I find myself saying "I wish I wish...."

Right now I wish I were staying at højskole another semester. Or I wish I could move to Sweden. Forever. I also find myself wishing for things that I don't even want, like wishing I had done a summer internship or wishing I were more ambitious, successful or clever. I know that partly responsible for this wishy outburst is the email I got from the Sociology department announcing the upcoming elections for members of the Soc. SEPC, a student-to-faculty liason group that organizes events for the students in the department. Not exactly knowing why, I decided to run for a spot. In my statement I basically wrote that I have been abroad for a while now and that has helped me to get the kind of wider perspective that I often lose at Grinnell when I get overwhelmed by the pressure or stress, and that I know I do sociology because I love it and think its important, which is why I want to serve on the SEPC - to keep an awareness of why we are here, and form a group with the students and staff of the sociology department where concerns and experiences are shared and ideas are supported.

This is what I want. But when I got the everyone's statements to read and then vote from, I realized I am actually the only one who cares about or thinks about or even questions why we are at Grinnell, studying sociology, and not off doing something completely different. And I was less disappointed by the realization that anyone reading all 10 statements would read mine and think I a failure for having no plans for graduate/law school than I was disappointed to realize that I am going back to a place (a society, a country, a school) where I am surrounded by people with a completely different attitude towards life. It's like I can see the gigantic tidal wave of culture shock gathering on the horizon but there is nothing I can do about it except wait for it to crush me...

So I wish I wish I were a fish.

We also were required to post our favorite youtube video as a part of our SEPC statement, so here's mine for your viewing pleasure. Hoppípolla means "hop in puddles" in Icelandic.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAYb8ZyjzD0&feature=channel

In other news, last weekend I made chocolate covered bacon with some of my friends here. Their idea was this: What three things are delicious, no matter what they are with? Answer: Chocolate, bacon, and sour cream. So why not put them all together? The scary thing as that it actually was good. I think the key is to keep your bacon crispy and only eat them with sour cream when they are hot. But the chocolate and bacon combo was delicious. Here are some pictures.

Muffins and Grandaddy

I was just sitting here looking for interesting things on the internet to kill an hour before dinner, when I thought, "I want to make some muffins!" I am out of money for this month, so I didn't even think about trying to buy the necessary things and make it happen, but I did you on google to took at pictures and recipes of muffins. One of the first pictures that came up was a cartoon from this website about a muffin (below). I like it.
I also saw this comic on the same website, which is probably only funny if you have heard music by Grandaddy - perhaps I can provide an example (Here is a link to "Jed the Humanoid by Grandaddy). But I liked this one too.


I don't know what its like to watch an overlysensitive robot get neglected to death, it sounds sad.

We had salmon today for lunch with potatoes and roasted vegetables and chocolate mousse for dessert. Yesterday I tried to dye a light pink tablecloth darker pink using beet-juice kindly donated to me by the kitchen ladies. The reason I needed to to this was because I made a visit to the fabric store yesterday and realized that it is hard to find anything that is cheap enough for my to be able to buy it. Also, I don't like wearing pink, so I thought if I'm going to have to use this tablecloth, I should try to do something to make it a little more interesting. Maybe tonight I will soak it in coffee and see if that does anything fun.

Usually on Wednesday nights we have a song evening where community members come and eat dinner with us and then sing with us out of the folkhighschool song book, but our music teacher was sick so it was canceled and instead I watched the Spongebob Squarepants movie, which is surprisingly funny and relevant to my life.

My biggest problem right now seems to be keeping a wide-angle lens on things, and remembering all of the things I need to do/wanted to do if I had a bit of free time. This includes corresponding with various people, studying Danish, organizing things, and actually a lot of things and I have trouble remembering them. I have plenty of free time, but its very very hard to remember what it was that I wanted to do with it.

Last thing before I go down to dinner:
I really really really appreciate emails or letters keeping me updated on how you are doing and what you are up to. I am sometimes feeling a little disconnected from things here - partly because its a small town (hard to absorb culture in a quiet, isolated place), partly because I don't have very good access to books in English or a place where I can do research, and partly because I get distracted by various things. But talking with people seems to help, and I want to talk about things that happen here with people that AREN'T here so that I can try to explain and define what's going on a little better. So tell me what you're up to! and also ask me things if you can think of any - help me lose this haze and become bright eyed and curious again :)

Monday, Week Six

Now that its over, today seems like it has been a very productive day. And maybe when you compare it to other days, like the day there were three dogs in the classroom eating scraps of fabric and chasing each other, it was productive. For example, I watched all of the musical numbers from Hair again between lunch and afternoon classes, and went to two different grocery stores looking for cheese with my housemate Betina. I FINALLY started to hammer a ring I have been working on for probably four weeks, once a week. And soon it will begin to look like a whale I hope! I finished off my carton of Sødmælk ("sweet" milk, the best one, comes in a dark blue carton, 3.5% fat) and my box of Pepparkakor Hjärtan (the same heart shaped pepparkakor I was eating all the time last semester in Stockholm, usually at Anna's house dipped in healthy teas :) )

Next week or this week maybe in textile we are going to make two skirts, one correctly so we have more practice with the technique, and then another one that we will deliberately sew incorrectly to make something interesting. This is why I like my textile classes here, because we aren't just following some textbook, our teacher Lene is interested in doing things that will be fun or experimental, and unlike a lot of "crafts" classes (I think) we aren't just following instructions to get to a nice finished product we can take home with us; I think (this is my theory) that we are being forced to think a bit more. For example, in week nine (I think this is week six), Lene wants us to create some costumes/dresses, one by sewing on the machine, one sewing by hand, and one using glue, and using fabric, paper, plastic or something else, and we will have to design them with inspiration from some yet to be determined musical artist. So we will be listening to this artist the whole week/time we are working on the costume. So far, suggestions have been Michael Jackson, ABBA, Johny Cash, and Sun Ra, which I couldn't help suggesting even though I think everyone would hate me if we had to listen to experimental free jazz for an entire week BUT it would be really cool because the things they were wearing are already really interesting, and also Lene said she wanted us to get into the history of the people and their philosophies, and what little I know about Sun Ra (the guy) there is plenty of philosophy to get into. I am mostly just hoping we don't do Michael Jackson... sorry I mean, while I appreciate his style, I am a bit tired of hearing the same 10 or so songs of his, especially after this summer, when apparently that was the only thing people wanted to listen to. Actually it could be more interesting to do this project for a band that doesn't have a well established image already, or maybe just some completely unknown musicians playing folk music - then it would be all about what you hear and not about how the musician wanted to be seen.

SO, creative interesting people that you are, have you any suggestions? I'm really excited about this assignment!!!

SUN RA (guy in purple cape) So anyways, despite that glowing review, I think it would be really nice to get away this weekend to someplace a little more populated and maybe witness some live music experience. If only I could convince somebody to come with me! But I think the important thing right now is just the feeling that a change of scenery would be nice, walking around, wandering through someplace I've never been, learning something by watching, hopefully meeting interesting strangers would all be nice right now. It would actually be great to see Ditte and Lars too, but I haven't talked to them and don't know what their plans are for the weekend or if they would be home or anything.

OK, sorry if I'm boring you, just kind of thinking with my fingers on the keys. I need a haircut. I bought a SIM card this weekend so now I have a phone number! But I haven't turned on the phone yet. Tomorrow, Tuesday, I have Danish and then textile. Who knows what we'll be doing in Danish, I need to do WAY more work on my own or I'll never be able to say anything with confidence, in textile, I am still doing other things in lieu of finishing my skirt because I don't want to use the expensive stuff I bought on accident, and the tablecloth I got at the red cross second hand shop today is really too pink for me.

So that was today, and tomorrow, and hello! and sorry, I will buy batteries for my digi camera and take some pictures and put them here <3

Pas på Hinanden

Today was a day of tragedy here at Vrå højskole. Around twelve thirty as we were all eating lunch, someone noticed that smoke was pouring out of the upstairs windows of our headmistress and headmaster's house, Søren and Pia's house for those of you who know them. We tried our best all of us to find fire extinguishers and some students even tried to fight the fire that had by that time erupted out of the side of the house with an emergency hose. However, it had already taken a strong hold and all most of us could do was wait for the fire trucks to come over icy roads from the next town over. Their dog, a big part of everyday højskole life, had been sleeping upstairs in the bedroom and died in the fire.

When they finally put the fire out, when it was all over, everyone came together in the school living room, all feeling shocked and sad, and some with problems from inhaling smoke. Søren and Pia came in to speak to all of the assembled students and teachers and staff, and they told us that the most important thing to do right now was to pas på hinanden, or take care of each other and be there for each other. So that's basically what was did for the rest of the day, talking and hugging and crying sometimes, and despite being a very very sad time, it was a good feeling of everyone being close to each other.

I feel so sad for Pia and Søren. Their dog Severin was really a part of their family, and every night when Søren would make his evening rounds of the school he would be close behind. I know they loved him a lot and I can't imagine how awful it was to know he was inside without being able to do anything. They lost a lot of personal possessions like all their clothes, their computers, Søren's whole office, and many other things. Søren told me that all his pictures from the trip he took to the US with dad are gone.

I'm too tired to write any more right now, but I just wanted to say that this happened, and also that we are ok, we did a good job of watching out for each other today, and when Pia and Søren come back tomorrow from their summer house, we will be watching out for them too. It's a close community here, which in and of itself can feel a little claustrophobic at times, but it also means we can really come together and be there for each other when we need to.