someone told me they knew an entry was going to be happy because it was in pink. well, here it is again. today was about five times better and more cheerful than yesterday, in no small part because i woke up to glorious glorious sunshine. everything perked up accordingly. after a cool first crash course in danish class where i sat next to and exchanged observations with australian amanda and lunch with andrea (who i will always remember fondly as my first hello and my first hug, in that order), i met up with eric the viking (no really, he told me he’s a descendent). wed. night at the restaurant we’d sat across from each other and spoken briefly but i couldn’t concentrate much as i kept falling asleep.

today he invited me to an art exhibit. the sun’s shining!, i said. forego art — come walk. he asked the two guys with him, kong and blair, who assented to the change of plans, and off we went. i was exhilirated. maybe the serotonin i haven’t been using the last few days all kicked in at once. we talked a lot, shopped, walked, watched ice skaters. when we got too cold we ducked into a bar. they got beer, i got irish coffee. blair lectured for thirty minutes on slam poetry, which apparently is his specialty, and we debated the virtues of poetry v. architecture, analysis in general, and words in general. blair recited a poem on the spot — we all had to lean in over the candle to hear — and i was impressed.

aside from good company though small things have kept me buoyant. i got done nearly all of the errands i had to run. i’m not usually goal oriented but sometimes i derive much satisfaction from checking things off a to do list. we got on the right bus and this time someone else made the mistake that had us hop off at the wrong stop. it wasn’t a problem: we walked back still under a staunch blue sky and i thought, if i have just one day like this a week, just one, i’ll be all right.

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.

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.

keyboards are different here so i have to type painstakingly, looking down at the keyboard. i don’t have oto much time at the moment: shops close 5 or 6 and my roommate (wasn’t expecting to have one but i do — we share a suite, a closet, a bathroom and a kitchen but we each have an individual room. her name is sapna and so far we’ve gotten along well) and i have to go buy groceries. she can cook. i wonder if it’s my destiny for this year to be curry filled. hey, why not.

we live in a dorm of about1,000 students total, roughly 40 of whom are DIS but none are in out tower. the room has its plusses and minuses which i’ll go into later. so does the city, although it’s beautiful, unremitting gray sky nonwithstanding. it’s rained since i got here and will be raining all week, i’m told. this is a test of my I Can Get Used to Anything idea about myself. not too cold thus far. i have no illusions about it staying that way.

i have yet go get really worked up about the program. kinda like being vegetarian: every once in a while i ask myself, ‘hey, why?’ but i made up sufficient reasons for that; i guess i will here too. maybe when classes start i’ll become more excited.

meanwhile i’m faking it when necessary pretty well, meeting people, forgetting their names, trying desperately not to make bad impressions (gaaa! any advice?) and otherwise making my way. some encouragement, fellas, would be great.

my brother is trying gamely to continue sleeping despite the fact that i’m in his room, copying cds onto his inexplicable little archos jukebox 6000 which will either be the solution to all my problems or the bane of my existence (pick a cliche!) i have to use his computer b/c i shortcircuited the other jukebox somehow using mine. quite possibly it was a flaw in the machine but one can’t be too careful. so for the past few days i’ve been picking and choosing cds — they take time to burn you know — trying to be cold-blooded and rational (will i really listen to that South Park soundtrack i haven’t even considered putting on for a good eight months?) and now trying not to wake adam although that’s a lost cause.

well, siblings sacrifice for each other, right? or as ross says if you can’t use people, what are they there for?

my flight takes off at 6:10 and as this is a german airline i expect it will be precisely ontime (that’s a JOKE, people. altho i did make a sharp comment about volkswagon yesterday that i won’t repeat here after my mother and i were nearly run over by a crazed cabrio. half of what i say could get me kicked out of swat; i guess it’s a good thing i choose only selected people to confide in. like the world wide web! –sidenote: in the Forward last week my father came across an ad put out by Tikkun, the jewish leftist/progressive group, begging us all to live good charitable loving lives and for god’s sake, and i swear this is a quote, “STOP GOYIM BASHING!” … it was a truly sobering moment for all of us in the kitchen right then as we took stock of our own actions, considered changing our ways, and laughed so hard i’m sure our goyish neighbors heard and assumed we must be jeering at captive christian children we were about to make into matzah. but that aside.)

so we’re leaving the house at 2:30 to get to the airport quite early. my friend jamie told me on her flight back from south africa she was strip-searched. is that practice nowadays or is it because she’s part-syrian? i wonder.

hope it doesn’t come to that with me. i’ll be edgy enough. i’ve also taken the precaution of transferring anything possibly objectionable to my suitcases. all i have left i could use as a weapon in my carryon is a copy of satanic verses i could bash a richard reid over the head with. well, wish me luck.

all right, all right, no more maudlin crap. i slept badly last nite, despite having gotten a wonderful-sweet email from sorelle. i always said that i’d rather be dragged kicking and screaming from a place than willingly, gratefully board a plane. so. yes nori’s entry brought up a little lump in my chest. i can deal. i’m glad i’ve enjoyed the place thoroughly, more or less, since i’ve been there. my problem is i live in the past. but. i’ll be better. no moping, no wallowing. i will steel myself. i will be strong. strong!

i’ll miss you swat. but this, dear reader, is the last you will hear of it. at least til i land in daneland.

— who, incidentally, is schwa?

well the damn golden globes were damned disappointing, altho i’m sure to many of you that doesn’t come as much of a surprise. sure, the british accents kept us amused, and lana and i made excellent observations — everything from, “what an awful dress!” to “why are all the black people at one table? it’s like a college cafeteria” — and once in a while the best option won (go, six feet under, go! and sissy spacek, elegant and composed enough to compensate for ten denise richards). even a little moment of questionable sexuality between ron howard and that other guy who called ron “my friend — my best friend; my partner”. all in all though what a lackluster night.

maybe it would have gone over better if i’d had more sleep, but after staying up til past 2 to talk to ‘friend and watch GIrl, Interrupted with my mother, who, having never seen it before, squeezed my hand through the last ten minutes, i rose at 8:45 to go bid farewell to my darling smith-bound liz. i can’t conceive of the fact that i’m leaving so soon. the barn in its new incarnation continues without me. rebecca has apparently painted my (her) room lipstick red, no doubt to match her newly copper hair. classes begin tomorrow. i still have one more grade to find out and i will not leave the country until i know.

i wish i were more cheerful about this whole thing.

oh the co|motioners are having their first reunion meeting tonite . . . oh. sad. well, hi guys — hope you had great breaks — hope you have great semesters — keep me up to date.

there’s so much i’m missing. there’s so much i already miss.

saw a portable dvd player at montgomery mall today and stared at it lustfully for a minute or two. i don’t know what i’ll do in daneland without movies. no tv, no vcr, no computer w/ dvd capability. i’m going to go into withdrawal. with luck my modern european film class will compensate. and i guess i can seek out a local theater to get friendly with.

quote of the day, from xandra: “The truth is, the day that nearly all of my musical interests match my shoes, that’s the day I shoot my self in the foot.” amen child. now i’m going to go collapse in a corner. being a woman and leaving the country is hard work.

under orders from one i can’t refuse to post. my gums still hurt slightly from my quick transit from waiting room to dentist’s chair, hygieneist (sp?) to dentist, sure i floss, no problem i’ll floss more then out the door to spit in the ivy and wait to be picked up. funny how that trip is always the same, down to the lying about flossing. they expect that, don’t they, and if they expect it how could it be unethical?

pre-that, went down w/ adam to get flu shots. i had betsey brown to keep me company but adam was antsy. the woman who received us was positively incredulous. “but it’s flu season,” she said, “everyone’s gotten flu shots already or else the flu.” yes well we’re under orders from mother so no time for logic, thanks. she shrugs, says she’ll defrost some posthaste, disappears. minutes pass. finally i get called up, pay my $15, return to the plastic chair with my book. more minutes. adam fidgets. getting late, have to go soon. he asks what’s up. turns out the woman forgot to give me a sheet to give to the nurses. apologizing profusely offering a sheet now but it will then be another half an hour and no-can-do have to be up connecticut avenue already. we get our money back and sigh out.

meanwhile, a big meanwhile, darling elizabeth has granted me permission to link to her website, lazyqueer. she emailed me pointers on how to meet gayfolk in denmark which i need because i’m so accustomed to being surrounded that i’ll go into withdrawal without them. jamie for dinner tonite, back from galavanting around south africa. also finished the book my aunt sent me, Happy all the Time. once i stopped resisting it i found it sweet and enjoyable. like Say Goodnite Gracie for grownups.

so much little happened early today that i feared i should have nothing to form an entry of. luckily later events proved that groundless. rendez-voused in bethesda w/ johnny, who claims he’s never missed an entry despite the fact that he never leaves a comment to mark his presence (got to take his word for it, i guess) and nomi [as always between jaunts to various regions — most recently, n’orleans, the slopes, and now, tomorrow, montreal –] and of course lana. ofcourselana is my steadiest companion. the four of us, arrayed in various shades of red, dined at thyme square on gucci salads before drifting over to barnes’ to thumb through ma–ga–zines and drink coffee.

on the way home, still buzzing, inspiration struck in the form of my first concrete thought re: kobenhavn: maybe it’ll change me. new cities tend to. they exert different influences and i’m an impressionable person. talking to the barnies later ross gave his blessing to that idea. “change everything about you,” he cheered on, “except the good stuff.”

ahh if only the distinction were that simple in my head. well anyway.

elizabeth has a website! but i can’t tell you what it is unless she says i can. or at least comes up with five good reasons why she’ll expire painfully and dramatically if i do. cross your fingers folks.

today has been surreal. first a trip to swarthmore with liz and lana. lunch at the overpriced but cute cheese court to which i’d never previously been; once i listened really hard, i could almost hear its fabled past occupants enjoying excitement through the ceiling. unpacked the flat, liz finally breaking in my beanbag chair by throwing it downstairs, catching visitors offguard: kim, back from china; anna, of the intimidatinglycoolfolk; and mariah, who i never got to say goodbye to at the end of last semester. everyone chorused, “i thought you were gone.”

hopping through parrish, i encountered others, including a serene jackie and our friend Bob the Dean, who had the same reaction. missed the girls upstairs in my favorite room. said my last goodbyes, at least for a while.

capped off the long day by unloading at my house and lingering briefly in my kitchen where my father was translating a page of yiddish for my mother for her co-worker. the page was a xerox from a book the coworker had found in her house but couldn’t understand. as it turned out, it described the coworker’s grandmother’s town in russia. apparently they grew potatoes there.

like i said, surreal.