after a day filled with demanding liquids (diet coke, a hot chocolate that was very thick milk accompanied by a kebobed triangle of chocolate, a skimlatte with caramel, and an aquarius in an effort to appease and honor the gods of february) i’m trying to redeem myself with water and tea. in result i feel a little more wholesome, but draggy and tired. a long discussion with eric about globization, pulp fiction, and speed nearly put me to sleep.

this came on the heels of more walking. first i set out this earlyafternoon in search of a quiet place to sit and read criminal justice; i ended up in a park, although the wind didn’t let me stay long. last nite i met heather at 7-11 at 10 and we looked for jazz. live music is supposed to be ubiquitous here yet we came up empty-handed, having confronted three separate private parties and an old white guy playing a guitar. we settled for barhopping and talk. (an aquarius, by the way, is a very pretty blue and tastes a lot like sprite. sipping, i thought of my friends who have birthdays this month where the calendar is a minefield)

things have a tendency to happen to me twice. the v-day anxiety is my own fault: i incurred bad karma when i broke up with avi in a letter to arrive then and ended with the words, ‘happy valentines day.’ when i wrote it i think i meant it sincerely. it didn’t strike me how callous that was.

the anniversary anxiety stems from farther back, from sixth grade, when the other ben informed me sixdaysshortofayear that he liked rotem. i cried a little, realized the simpsons were on, watched laughed and forgot. i doubt somehow that i’d rebound so quickly now.

oh, for march 1. to know how it all ends and not have to be bothered by the living through it.

walked out of my dorm into a day more beautiful than i deserved, mixed with equal parts blue and sunshine and a dash of wind. last nite got me all in a funk when my experiment was a washout. my enthusiasm spiraled down the drain as i watched and left me feeling sluggish, selfpitying, and out of place. girls concerned. finally they left and i trooped downstairs to be comforted by ben, who magically appeared online.

vowing to do better today, i left my unconscious roommate and ventured into the city on foot. tracing the route the bus usually takes, i wound over to str�get and from there to nyhavn, the canal area where jamie and i had our wonderful outdoor sm�rbr�d in wicker chairs with plaid blankets tucked up to our chins. inviting restaurants and my hunger collided but i was reluctant to go someplace with a tablecloth by myself (there are unwritten rules about such things.)

turned a corner and ended up in a very cute cafe that served me a sandwich i promptly made open-faced and ate european style, with a knife and fork. we’ve been informed that certain things mark us as tourists: traveling in packs jabbering engelsk, ordering and taking kaffe to go, and eating with our hands. god forbid we be so identified.

found my way with no problem back to city center, and stopping to pat myself on the back i noticed a used clothing store. hopped in and bought a lovely purple something — yes it’s solid colored but it has gold buttons on it and it’s not a shirt! exactly. bussed half the way home until irritation with the noise pushed me off and onto my feet again. something very satisfying about returning at sunset, having spoken maybe three sentences since before noon, thoroughly enchanted with this city i’d navigated myself around.

it’s officially february

so far it’s had a mixed start. on the happy side, i have some news to report:

1) only one month til ben and i see each other. yes, this is the way i count. february = 1 month

2) elizabeth the awol and stefanie the kindsweetandgood are together. i just discovered that it wasn’t a secret, which i interpreted to mean i could broadcast it far and wide. ahh thrilled. ahh.

3) it’s jamie’s birthday. jamie!! who is now 20 and who has been since 5th grade one of my closest and most dependable friends. she’s the one i traveled europe with after israel. enchanted by kobenhavn — that’s one of the main reasons i’m back here now. jamie who will always listen or cry with you (in or out of the girls bathroom at jds) or share in your neuroses or sing in public or gossip over chai. i love you, darling.

4) tomorrow is tamar’s birthday. tamar!! who will also turn 20 and with whom i haven’t spoken in weeks. i don’t think she reads the site. when i get nostalgic or brood over past intense friendships, i think of tamar. whatever the reason that we’ve drifted, i still adore her and think she’s one of the best people i’ll ever know

5) spent a pleasant evening with eric and kong drinking hot chocolate and tea

6) was informed by sorelle that she is writing a short play inspired by an event in my life. she asked once what the best compliment i received was and apparently it made an impact. i can’t wait to hear how the story ends as i myself never knew.

oh, and heh heh

i sent my mother a hurried email during a class break saying hi, still alive, fine, bye, and she returned one instructing me at length to take things less seriously. after being initially taken aback i realized she must have tapped into babblebook.

in any event, i woke up this morning feeling much better without any reason for the change. had enough time for a leisurely shower and meal before heading down to my very first class, Criminal Justice in Scandinavia. the prof, who we are supposed to call by her first name, is a lawyer in her early thirties (although it’s impossible to tell danish women’s ages as they look uniformly sternly beautiful from 21 to 50). this position at DIS, which she’s held for five years or so, is a supplement to her position as an instructor at the police academy. you all are easy, she says, because you’re academics; you want to learn. cops, who are three years in the force before they get to me, are quite a challenge.

the class covers a nearly-daunting amount of reading and argument is a key component. you can believe anything you want to about gun control, drugs, prisons, or the death penalty, she said. just be ready to defend anything you say.

afterwards met up with heather and drea, both similarly excited for their classes, and embarked on phase one of a mysterious venture i’ll go into depth about here when or if it’s successful. came home to make more french fries — or should perhaps say fewer french fries as i learned from my mistake — and eat corn from the can and yogurt from the carton. not bad, all told. my film class tomorrow starts at 8:45. isn’t that monsterous? who can watch films that early? flipping through the syllabus i nearly collapsed in shock: in addition to classics (discreet charm of bourgeoisie, au revoir les enfants etc.) we’re watching diva. now, that may or may not be the p.o.s. liz brought over. but just the thought set me to rolling on the floor.

for the first morning since arriving in this country i didn’t have to get up at 8. when my alarm went off at 10, i lay in bed, refreshed after a full night’s sleep, staring out at a swept blue sky, and didn’t want to move. just lay there, not particularly warm or comfortable or happy, just there. didn’t want to get up.

i shouldn’t have.

and tomorrow classes start.

just a few more additions. i meant to say this before: a shout out and a huge congratulations slap-on-the-back hug kiss and cry to my co|mo girls. emails are beginning to pour in from curious, enthusiastic parents. cheers specially to misses sarah c. and sorelle, our fearless leaders.

people in this country have the right idea. the average age for marriage is 31 for men, 28 for women. many never marry at all. why the kids on this program are aberrant — and it is aberrant, isn’t it, to want to get married? at least, so young? — i’m not sure.

we finished our four day danish crash course with a walking tour. through winds strong and sharp enough to bite off your head we made our way to two different libraries, the american store (at which we turned up our ready-to-do-the-european-thing noses and the proprietress replied, “yeah, just wait til the craving kicks in”), the high class supermarket that has everything we’re familiar with and much more besides, and finally finally the bakery in anticipation of which i hadn’t eaten breakfast. my hunger was rewarded by a wonderful looking something in the window; i bought it without even knowing what it was (brown sugar mostly, more than i’d ever seen in one place outside of a bag.) and my hunger helped: so eager was i to finally eat that i didn’t think twice about pronounciation or sounding like a fool.

brief lull between activities. next comes folk dancing; i think i will go after all. maybe after i’ll rent cabaret and envy yet another performance i’ll miss this semester. ah well. i guess i’ll have to put on a couple of my own to compensate, eh?

mm, might vomit. yes, might. i just ate the largest pile of french fries i’ve ever seen, let alone ingested. but i did it: i transfered each greasy, crinkle-cut square from plate to mouth and for good reason. i, ester, laziest of all lazy eaters, chronic nibbler, able to subsist on dry cereal, carrots, yogurt and diet coke for weeks at a time, finally bought something from the supermarket that requires more preparation than tossing the thing in the microwave and pressing ‘power’.

i made too many as i didn’t stop to consider that i would be the only one eating. but i didn’t over or underdo them; burn the apartment to a crisp; or in any other way fuck up the baking process. i baked! i! baked!

sort of, anyway.

got one letter from ben, wrote one to liz (it seemed appropriate as i was ‘cooking’). i miss homefolk though i’m in a better state than i was. books for our classes were distributed in blue ikea bags and mine was quite possibly the heaviest. 5 classes, each social science = more than i can carry; hell, probably more than i weigh. eric and kong helped me and then we went shopping. we might go out to celebrate my culinary achievement in a bit. sitting around in my empty room on my empty hall is arsenic for my mood. poison in high doses but with the frightening extra that in small, daily doses i could get used to it.

back at home for the first time since i left for class saturday morning. sapna was astonished: ‘where have you been?’ heh heh. that’s RIGHT. … oh lord, did i just call this place ‘home’? wow.

finally slept, with drea’s purple frog as a pillow. made it by ten for a walking history-through-paintings tour of fredericksburg castle and a folk high skool which served us an excellent hot lunch. i hadn’t signed up to go but as there was room i shrugged and boarded. in the castle, gorgeous and freezing of course, kong grabbed me and told me to pose with a realredhead named tony. he took our picture. then tony and i introduced ourselves. i had four subsequent conversations with him (‘why doesn’t your name match your complexion?’) in which he told me rambling, creative, impossible stories about his life. at any rate it was entertaining.

i’m in alburtsland (okay, i know that’s not how it’s spelled, but none of YOU know that), andrea’s dorm. last nite i crashed around 8 o’clock after a macrobiotic dinner prepared by eric the viking. in return i walked him thru some html basics and gave him pointers, sounding i think very professional which is a talent i have. even when i don’t know what i’m talking about i can sound convincing. so it’s tempting to pretend to be an expert all the time. when i was little i used to lie cheerfully to other children on the playground, make them think i only spoke hebrew. ben and i lied roughly every other time we spoke to each other during those formative grade 4 – grade 6 years. i guess i deserve the mistrust of people and things i developed back then.

met up with andrea and co. feeling in my own way refreshed. sam, a sweet-looking red-cheeked midwesterner, invited us to dinner with her host family. excellent food; very wry, relaxed company; lots of alcohol offered and thanks waved away. the girls — andrea, mel, another midwesterner, and i — adjourned to sam’s room for storytime. bonding. i needed that. still need to find people who curse, tho. even the monster clubbers seem more wholesome than i am.