Okay there are some DK pix up. The "design" is not quite "finished" but it "doesn't matter." Go!

at the library in copenhagen. but the man might come and tell me to get off at any second. originally our plan was to just walk here, but instead we ended up walking through some old "hunting castle" and then walked through denmarks only rainforest in an entirely glass windowed building. So my feet are tired and I am happy, realizing how much there is to see, and do. this weekend we might go up to helsingor, the gateway to sweden. i am bringing my passport because who knows, maybe we will take that 15 minute boat ride there. much love to youall.

new poem in the poem page, but i can't bring myself to write out these days, each one of them. but yesterday angie and i took to the beach, under the only patch of blue sky there was, and Sweden out there in the fog.

got that hollow headached feelingwith a fly landing on me in consistent intervals. bored as hell. dont know what to do with myself. i can't wait until regular school starts, with an art class and some new people. i went to copenhagen today to meet my cousin-by-marraige. and i got off of the nasty train with the smelly man to meet her and her friend from zimbabwe. they wanted to eat pizza hut, and that we did.. it was crappy and expensive. we walked around some more but really there is nothing to do in copenhagen on a gray sunday afternoon. nothing is open.

so i decided to go check out the black diamond, this huge black mass of a building connected to a more historical, more pleasant looking library. but it was closed and i really should have figured that out. so i got lost. and then i found out where i was, got on a bus, got on a train, got on a bike, and came home to an empty house. it really is quite sad. tomorrow language school, errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. i ought to just go to bed and get it over with.

Spiraled up a tower today. I figured out how to put pictures in here. So here is the church. It's called Vor Frelsers Kirke. It was a really cool experience, 400 stairs that just kept getting steeper and steeper. And we got to the top and we could see all of Copenhagen because there aren't skyscrapers (thank god.)... Today we tried to go to a museum with my class at the language school, but this girl fell down and broke her arm. So we walked back to the school and ate lunch. Then we were free. It was damn hot today too. Man I feel really strange writing this all down. Nobody CARES! Read the poetry if you really want to know what is going on, in my head. But then again most of that is babbling anyway.

I got some letters today via real mail. The fact that they travel so far make them so great to read. I get so happy when I see some new envelope with stamps and seals and marks all over it from all of its travels. Its the most amazing thing it takes only 3 days for a letter to get here.

I also went here today.

I dag er min fodselsdag! Haha. Today's my birthday and I was sung to in the morning with danish flags everywhere. It was sweet and wonderful. I sat around this beautiful house too long and missed my train. I meandered through the yellow block housing where all the merchants used to live.... went into an old church. Then decided that it aws time to get my ass to class.. When I came into they all proceeded to sing the danish birthday song. I think I like singing the song better than being sung to.

During class I mostly just do my own studying. Today I read all about 'familien Hansen,' and felt that this textbook was a little too personal. At least I know how to say I got the hots for someone now. I found the scanner at my school yesterday and soon there will be amusing looking pictures of danish people drinking beer up here. I will also probably post some of my scrapbook pages... tuborg labels, store reciepts, japanese writing... all of it.

At school there were about 100 more non-rotary students today. The majority of the girls had the head shawls that Muslim women wear. And I thought about how different that was from the Danish women in society. These people were going to this school because they needed Danish to get jobs here. Because at home it was so much harder. So I am thinking god damn! Little me and my grammer books.

"time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." ~hector berlioz

Danish grandmother made me socks for my birthday. People are so fucking good..! They are puke yellow and warm. Tomorrow is the first day of school in this crazy ass, danish speaking place. I dont know anyone.. and scared outta the mind. Been learning a ton of Danish just talking with my host mom and being like, "whats this?" "so wait, how do you say congratulations again?" "Trwajlkfhiehugga." "What?" "Tillykke!" "Ah! Tilooky?" "No! TiLOOky" "AH!"But tomorrow, I will just follow the directions. Just follow the directions. Follow directions. Directions.

Yawn. 17 in 2 days.... heee heeee heee!!!!! Jeg kan lige kager....!

listening to Ryan Adams on little Neeek's cdplayer right now. he's got this raspy voice and this semi-drawl. but enough to make it damn good music. ahhhhh... as i wrote in a letter to a friend, this is music that makes me want to do something cheesy. like take a white horse through a nameless field bareback or something. haa damnit who am i?

someone also told me that my english is deteriorating quickly. i guess the faults are slowly being replaced by danish. good, i say. i need danish more than english here. continue on with the dying!

ran around through the rain today trying to find grub in the gammel (old) part of Copenhagen. Apartments with faded blue, yellow, salmon colored facades and vacuum stores. And castles. The scenery is wonderful and very european, but its damn hard to find anything but knickknacks and accountants there. we finally settled on a pizza place run by some turkish guys. i had a nice wonderful VEGETARIAN pizza..... but was sick afterwards.

fell asleep on the train again. it's nice. but i feel weird writing about what i had for lunch. so i leave you.. godnat.

most nights i come onto this computer after everyone is asleep. and then i listen to some good music and just write about the day, either via email or through these stupid webjournals. i just feel like maybe somewhere in this world someone might want to know. and its a good way to get it out and have it there, on some nameless server. today i have a headache, and i know that i have to get to the courses again tomorrow. everyone back home is still having a summer. my summer ended just about 2 weeks after it began.

I learned a lot about languages today. it was such a good introduction to a language course. his name was Torben? yeah he started off with a map and all these language families. and he proceeded to tell us that in a way, the danish and english-speakers alike are just speaking a dialect of german. its funny how much gets lost along the path of a language. all the complicated he/she/neutral genders, all the old words somehow find their way out of people's mouths. there is a girl from japan named Akiko. And when she writes her name it looks like art. I admire so much that they are taught aesthetics in their writing. my writing is like chickenscratches compared to that. She sits there and barely understands a word because although she came here to learn Danish, she's ending up learning to speak English too. I cannot imagine how hard it must be for her. I could stay her my whole year and not speak a word of Danish. When she was about to leave the language camp, she was crying silently into her hands, but when she looked up at us, she smiled. We build our world on description and nouns. We want to be able to call things by their "name" and be able to describe things into categories. What would we do without our names for things. But I looked at her and I could not describe how it felt. I just felt like some people are so noble. And I am in admiration of so many things here. And so many people.

Sometimes I look at the sky, and there are a thousand nameless thoughts mixing with a thousand nameless urges. And I know there is a dormant place in my body. A place that could hold those sacred things if only it knew how.

school! ergh. but the instructor let us out at noon, so me and some girls from the Midwest USA went exploring. Using our badly marked map, we made our way to Strøget, the 'famous' walking street in Denmark. A river of people!! Jenny said she could tell people didn't drive much here because it was a free for all. I notice in the United States that when you walk down a street, people usually stick to the right. Just like a normal car street. But not Strøget. I was constantly being plowed into carraiges, danes, bikes, etc. Maybe I am just uncoordinated.

i don't like shopping much, and that's what we did. and i was very tired by the end of it all. we made our way back to the train station and we proceeded to fall asleep, hoping we would not miss our stop and end up in some town whose name we cannot even pronounce.

a month today, isn't it amazing? a nice little anniversary for me and denmark. my english is getting more and more slaughtered everyday. and two flies are flirting next to the light right now. tomorrow i go to school for the first time in København. i shall wake up at 7 am, ride my bike on this little country road to Ølstykke Station, get on a train for an hour, walk through downtown for 15 minutes, and then sit sit sit. i am dreading the class but i cannot wait to be independent. i feel like maybe this is my first REAL taste of that city. and even through these foreign glasses i have already fallen in love with it.

I am trying to write one letter a day. So tonight I spent about an hour on good old Vintermægårs letter. Made a little collage on the back of a postcard. It was that or watch Danish people impersonate the likes of Britney Spears and Abba on TV.. so I opted for the cut + paste.

Today was my relaxing day before the crazy day. I took a bike ride to Snostrup Kirke, this wonderful church that I know I will be spending a lot of time at. There is a cemetary outside where about 50 people are buried, but it doesn't look like an American cemetary at all. When you walk in the gate, there is a shelter where there is a water spicket and watering cans. Then you look around and there are all these nicely trimmed hedges surrounding graves with wonderful inscriptions and little flowers growing up out of the ground. I wish I had those pictures so I could show you right now. It makes me so damn happy and I don't know why. That and getting an e-mail from my granddad who must have spent 20 minutes writing out, "We love you and we miss you. Happy Birthday on the 14th." Because I have watched him type and he just pecks at the letters. He is 80 now and he lived through a time when his house didn't have a telephone, so I doubt he gives a damn about typing.

And I don't give a damn about writing anything more, so godnat og sov godt min amerikanske venner.