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.

Bright, Sunshiny Day!

Hello! I may be missing out on some of my favorite Easter traditions, such as dying eggs, getting lots of chocolate shaped animal gifts, or listening to the Pines of Rome at First Plymouth, but its just about worth it to be here in Hamburg enjoying a couple of lovely sunny days. Hamburg until now has been a dreary, grey place, in my mind it's always raining, always cold and windy, but yesterday my opinion was completely changed. Erik and I rented bikes from the little do-it-yourself automated city bike rental station (positioned around the city so you can pick a bike up one place and leave it were you are going). We biked from his neighborhood to a lake somewhere more in the middle of the city where people were stretched out on long grassy lawns with crocuses jumping out of the ground everywhere. There were lots of happy dogs wandering around and happy guys braving the soft ground to play some muddy soccer. It was so sunny and nice, and SO NICE to be on a bicycle again. Today we walked to the botanical gardens, about 10 minutes from the apartment, and played frisbee until Erik's opera started. There were ducks everywhere, and flowers, and people smooching on benches. Must be spring! I even met a stranger today - which was one of my goals for this break, somebody from Freiburg who was sitting on the next bench over in the neighborhood park this afternoon, who recommended a place to go tonight to see a crappy punk show. "I don't know what bands are playing... but it doesn't really matter!"

....Aaaaand pictures.

Happy Easter!

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 :)