back at the dorm in the computer lab. not at karaoke which is supposedly happening at the bar downstairs. i don’t think i have the energy for that. after a 3 hour bus tour which included numerous stops, treks through the rain to see parks, castles, the little mermaid, we — the group of girls i was with today, primarily: my roommate sapna, a berkeley chick named claire, and two black girls, jackie and k— something, who are in all the same classes — had another impromptu one. bus drivers are so far the only people we’ve encountered in this city who don’t speak english and the one on the bus we got on to get home couldn’t help us. the ride is supposed to take 7 minutes and after 20 we were kinda nervous. despite our evident distress none of the other passengers volunteered to help until i approached one woman, bowed with my head to the floor and without looking offered her a slip of paper with our address on it. then she was quite friendly and said in perfect english, ‘oh no, you’ve gone entirely in the wrong direction.’ thanking her profusely, i crawled away.
anyway, we finally made it home, went shopping (another adventure. everything’s one in a foreign country) made dinner, relaxed. by dinner of course i mean a roll with cream cheese and tomato soup from a box. but hey, i did warm up the soup before i ate it on the stove. that’s something. in one of liz’s letters to me for use in various situations, she instructed me to learn to cook. baby steps. the letters in general made me cry on the plane. it’s a good thing no one was sitting next to me. they would have thought i was nuts, alternately laughing and weeping and carrying on.
my room has character which makes up for a lot (a lot = location, as its situated on the seventh floor of tower F where apparently the antisocial folk who never learned to share live. hence every apartment has an individual kitchen and people keep doors closed and locked. the DIS students are scattered among towers A, B, and D.) it’s pentagonal, with a grid of nine windows paned in dark wood taking up an entire wall. the other four walls are white and clean. i have a desk, three chairs, a bed, a shade over a lightbulb over my bed that looks like the ones we had in the hallway in the barn only threaded with grass, plenty of bookshelves, a mirror, and lots of light. sapna and i share a bathroom which efficiently combines a sink with a shower. the toilet broke the first time she used it yesterday and has been making gurgling noises for our listening pleasure since. the shower broke too — or rather the faucet that controls it broke — but swiftly fixed itself. the danes aren’t as smart as the israelis, though: they use mops to clean up instead of squeegies. not nearly as good.
some guy just introduced himself and asked if i was going downstairs to karaoke. all right, if personally invited i really should go. if it sucks i’ll leave. tomorrow i start a crash course in danish from 9 a.m. to 12. after i plan to run errands, get a tea pot, and find someone who shares my sense of humor or likes folk music. ideally both.