i remembered it’s yom ha’atzmaut but didn’t process that that meant the embassy would be closed. andrea and i trained out there and walked through the mist to find it. we counted eight security cameras on the outside perimeter fence alone, and three cop cars circling the area. it felt good at least to see the flag flying in the face of hostile danish weather; the neighboring embassies had theirs tucked away.

i imagine most of the protesters are setting up outside the soccer game. i don’t know if they realize it’s israel’s 54th birthday, if that will add a bit of urgency or venom to the demonstrations (there are three scheduled and the danish police are preparing to be present in record numbers. the league offered to refund tickets to anyone who feels unsafe attending.)

i’ll be at krissy’s. she invited me for veggie pizza with her host parents, adding, “if riots break out, you can always just spend the night.”

also, this seems to be a good time for google searches. the following have brought i’m sure unsuspecting individuals here: “swarthmore college nude dash”; “some of the cons of chemical castration”; “gorgeous females thumbs”; “ester swarthmore copenhagen andrea” (okay, that one may have hit its target); and, my favorite, “life humanity.” anyone interested in life humanity, please email. it’s virtually my middle name.

it would have been nice if the sun emerged today. it appears to be sulking. meanwhile, unconcerned trees here continue turning a demure green while people run around doing the same damn things they’ve been doing for months arrayed in the same damn sweaters and coats.

i’m getting a little tired of winter. there’ve been more sirens lately and the drunks on the square near DIS have gotten more rowdy, so i guess i might not be the only one. the girlz and i were thinking bakken tonite perhaps; with this insistently chilly, droopy weather though, why bother?

today i’m heading down to the israeli embassy with andrea. i’m not sure what my motive is or what i want to accomplish. once i heard that anti-zionists of all sorts — arabs, jews, and nonsectarians inspired by the palestinian struggle — were demonstrating there, i felt the urge to go. it’s awful to have to stand alone, forced to represent, as though you had no opinions of your own, all aspects of some greater thing. they’re diplomats. i’m sure they’re used to it. all the same, i don’t know exactly how isolated they are, and maybe they’d like to see a couple friendly faces.

okay, more of my brother, because you know you’re dying to hear and it’s too funny not to share. he claims he’s nervous about me copying his emails online but that’s such a front. see, i published this story about us in amsterdam in swat’s humor mag. everything would have been great except our parents found it. luckily the shrink they called in assured the family that such adolescent rebellions are relatively normal. the best thing to do, after some shock therapy, would be to send the offender someplace safe and warm where he can be out of trouble. hence: australia. being the girl and the younger one, naturally i got off lite: a lot of guilt trips and an arranged marriage. not too bad.

i told him roger. but hell, alouicious works too.

a dusting of my hair now covers mychal’s floor. while we bonded over having similar thickness and curl and our dreams to be casting directors of indie films, she, as promised, snipped and layered and shaped. i think i like it, tho of course it’s too early to be sure. it took a little longer than i expected so i had to rush back to dis, calling to heather and andrea from a block away. they had given up on me and started to dinner by themselves. we settled in a meat-oriented place; none of us ordered meat. over chicken, tuna, and a danish excuse for a veggie burger (garnished and redeemed by pineapple) we cheered our barcelona venture. heather’d already purchased her ticket and andrea and i went to seal our fates as well this afternoon. spain! sunshine! oh mercy.

two guest lectures today took the place of classes. another sexy criminologist (i am going to be a danish man in my next life) talked about victimization and the different attitudes towards victims in continental european vs. anglo-american systems. then an orthodox jewish woman talked about being an orthodox jewish woman in copenhagen. how the atmosphere has changed with the influx of immigrants from arab countries (“they’ve never been minorities in their country. they don’t know how to be a minority”) and how she feels the current political situation has affected the safety of jews everywhere in europe. someone asked whether a person could be anti-israel or anti-israeli policies without being anti-semitic, and she said flatly, sure, you can make that distinction; but people firebombing synagogues in paris don’t seem to.

on a lighter note, she told that joke about how to distinguish reform, conservative, and orthodox jews. in case you’ve never heard it, i’ll repeat it here: at an orthodox wedding, the bride’s mother is pregnant. at a conservative wedding, the bride is pregnant. and at a reform wedding, the rabbi is pregnant.

come on, laugh.

two movies, both alike in dignity, yesterday: one, moulin rouge with andrea et. hall; the second, in the bedroom, in a theater, next to a danish girl who yelped at one inopportune point and left us both suppressing violent laughter for five minutes.

one made me cry, the other didn’t. guess which.

housing problems may be solved = terrific. time will tell, of course. the girl who stood me up last week apologized like mad and offered me a free hair cut this afternoon. if it goes well, i’ll take it as a sign that maybe other scrapes-and-bruises incurred then will heal themselves.

for the second night in a row, i stayed up til 3 a.m. talking to ben. the phone startled me out of my pre-bed ritual: cautiously entering the apartment, turning on all the lights, furtively glancing behind doors. my imagination projects bizarre characters lounging in chairs, their suave a contrast to my on-edge. music helps so i rush over and turn it on, often choosing bachelor #2 b/c it’s the first cd of the first artist on the machine. gradually i sit down and try to relax, disguted at what a wreck i become alone at night (my suitemate having unaccountably disappeared.)

when the phone rang, i jumped. morose, sick, ben was still better company than the insidious silence of 7F.

best. ever.

no gloom! be banished; go. after i left (building, email, thoughts of everything happening elsewhere) my mood improved. andrea’s influence played no small part, of course. also shopping success. we’d had this date for over a week and i was much looking forward to my first earnest shopping jaunt in a long time and hers in even longer. the day did not disappoint. DIS is in the second-hand heart of copenhagen. there must be five stores within two steps of the door. one of them, UFF, is my favorite, and scarcely had we walked in, we strutted out, two shirts the prouder each.

next we tried Second Way. a dress began singing to me quietly on the rack. it didn’t look like anything i already owned; being part green and part floral, it didn’t even automatically look like something i’d like. but it kept on singing and i became entranced. that it fit perfectly didn’t hurt either. andrea proclaimed it special and the deal was done.

bagel sandwiches with heather; a stroll through Tiger, the “dollar store,”; lingerie shopping (spending $10 on lingerie sounds so much more justified than spending $10 on underwear.) i returned home with a full bag and promptly fired off four emails to intership possibilities i found thru googling for “summer internships” +washington, d.c. god bless the internet.

i’ve heard lots of people blasting oldies recently. i will survive, ymca … the other night it was abba. sheesh, i thought, rolling my eyes, can’t they make their own kitschy music? why do they need to import ours?

… then of course i remembered: abba is swedish.

well, even the beatles became american after awhile, right? posession *is* nine points of the law.

i have one of the worst lottery numbers in the junior class. i’m not quite sure how that’s possible — i thought they adjusted them so that people who blocked last year were lower on the list which should install a floor past which a normal, not-having-blocked-or-lived-anywhere-spectacular-freshman-year chick like me could not fall. well. no.

conclusions: 1) i am a spoiled brat accustomed to everything going my way. 2) i wish there were a bull i could sacrifice to appease the swat gods, who i seem to have angered. 3 prime) perhaps i should stop making leftist jokes, as the swat gods do not seem to find them amusing. 4) i’m reading roots — you’d think that’d help! 5) oops, there i go again.

things that could make me happier: 1) shopping w/ andrea, which i’m about to go do. she gave me one of the sweetest compliments of my life: that i make her like her more. as she makes me like humanity more, i guess we’re even. 2) drinking heavily. i hear that works for some people. folks are pre-partying starting at 5 at dis; i was thinking of joining them anyway. 3) a movie i actually enjoy, unlike the last two we’ve watched in film class (both about WWII) or the last 4 i’ve seen in a theater. maybe this will do. 4) powell being effective. but i can’t wander off on that train of thought again or i’ll cry.

what are the odds of seeing two movies about paranoid schizophrenics in two days? shannon suggested revolution #9 this evening so i hopped to, blindly, just as i hopped into donnie d.. i have to say that revolution really made me appreciate donnie — had shannon not been with me, i might have hopped right out again. bad timing, horrible script, irritating direction … yeah.

nb: to those of you who notice such things, i deleted the other entry from today. apologies to ben and various others i probably offended.