hej danmark!

hej from danmark!! i made it safely and am incredibly tired so i'll post more later... all is well!

seattle-nyc-philly-bmore-cph!

i hope 2009 is treating everyone well! first of all, some recent snapshots of my life:

meeting up with friends in new york


enjoying the season in baltimore


a little collage i made yesterday, with the wonder that is photoshop


yesterday i made the realization that i have been doing a lot of traveling lately, and hopefully will be doing even more in the near future! on the last sunday in december i was in seattle; on the first sunday of january, i was in new york city; last weekend, philadelphia; next sunday will be copenhagen! of course this travel mixture contains plenty of baltimore too.

i'm really feeling more and more like baltimore is my home. i'm living in a rowhouse in the neighborhood of hampden and wow, it feels just so baltimore. the more and more i become familiar with the city, the more it seems like there is so much to explore. (luckily the day-to-day adult things like grocery shopping, cooking dinner, and commuting still seem novel and fun to me...i'm sure this will wear off with time, but these make me feel exhilarated and content right now.) last week i volunteered at my favorite nonprofit, the creative alliance, and had a handful of awesome conversations with people there. i then took a leisurely walk about three miles across the neighborhoods of highlandtown, patterson park, fells point, harbor east, and into the inner harbor-- a wide swath of baltimore's intoxicatingly uniqueness. i'm really enjoying the vibe of life here and see myself here for a while....but for now, i have four months of exploring copenhagen to do!

i leave for denmark on saturday, get there sunday, and start classes on thursday. until then, it is working, finishing packing, and soaking up my wonderful friends here.

2009

happy new year! my resolutions are to drink less coffee and eat less sugar-- my constant resolutions.

i am happy to report that i am back in baltimore! the trip was long but fine and now i am enjoying the cold but not snowy east coast for a few weeks...

holidays

the fall semester wrapped up nicely with a holiday sweater, crackers and cheese, and crafts party thrown by my apartment-mates (see above). the party turned out very well with a good, calm crowd, cute decorations, an abundance of snacks and all kinds of farewell wishes as we all packed up to go abroad. my roommates were a steady, comforting presence this semester and i'll miss them as they depart to turkey, costa rica and italy respectively. i am very glad to be done with my classes this term. they were all good but just a lot of work. i am most proud of the website i created for my performance studies project, which can be found here. i'm also proud of the goucher post secret project, which was a surprisingly huge success this fall. students sent in their anonymous secrets, whether silly or serious, to the suicide awareness and prevention group (which i started and serve as pres.). we had an exhibit of them in a community room on campus, and also started to post them on our blog. it was really cool to see the great variety of responses that came from students.

at this point, i have been in shoreline for 9 of my 12 days here and the seemingly never-ending snow has prevented all seattlites from doing much of anything this holiday season. i've ran a few errands with my dad as he tried to drive through the slushy mess of snow, but in general i have stayed in the house for over a week. even with all this free time, though, i haven't accomplished as much as i would have liked. i'm not sure what it is about coming home, but i always just end up watching movies and sitting around instead of being productive and busy like i am at school. hmm. other than the weather and its implications, it's been a lovely break and i'm very thankful to be able to come home and celebrate the holidays with my family. i have really enjoyed spending time with my extended family, especially my adorable little second cousins, and feel lucky to do this.

i've been doing lots of reading and research-- both online and in the little guidebooks i've accumulated from family, friends and the program-- about copenhagen and it's made me antsy to leave. i know what to pack, a few basic phrases (pronounced poorly, however), etc.-- now i want to just go! i leave january 16 and until then, will be working, packing, running errands, etc. in baltimore. of course communication may be difficult and i'll miss everybody here in the states, but i know this is going to be one of the most memorable and eye-opening experiences of my life. i am so excited!

crunch time

i hope everyone had a very nice thanksgiving. i had a relaxing time, pretty much doing homework by a woodstove the whole time. central massachusetts is more beautiful than people give it credit for...or at least the old houses are.

as always happens this time of year, i feel like i'm just swimming in final projects. social science students get slammed not with final exams but huge papers every semester. i gave two twenty-minute presentations today (one of which you can see online at http://students.goucher.edu/auhus001) and have to write a paper on a 1000-page novel. i also have a major qualitative analysis paper lurking over my head. what i dislike more than the work itself, however, is how everyone gets so wrapped up in our own little world of homework and finals. our perception of what is important in life gets totally out of whack as everyone obsesses about the number of hours they'll be stuck in the library. i find myself doing this too.

an alarming reminder of this phenomena: the recent attacks in mumbai. what an atrocity. the situation was terrifying, deadly, symbolic. i really cannot fathom how haunting the scene would be for the people of mumbai. this could have serious global consquences. yet as i returned to school on sunday, awareness of this event seemed to have vanished from everyone's mind. we were all running around stressed out about getting the newspaper published and finishing up assignments. i'm not quite sure how to break out of this pattern, how to be reminded of the real world around us, but i look forward to the end of the semester so that i can more actively participate in life outside of school.

and speaking of life after this semester, i am thrilled and a bit worried that my excursion to denmark is coming right up. by and large i really can not wait, because i know it will be one of the most eye-opening, fun and unique experiences of my life. the program i'm going on seems very well-coordinated to maximize students' time in copenhagen. this week they sent me a map of the city, a luggage tag, cell phone info, and arranged bus transportation from the airport. i'm impressed! i have concerns about traveling so far from my comfort zone for so long, but i know this will just end up boosting my independence and familiarity with the world. i'm also worried about running out of money-- i've heard copenhagen is wildly expensive-- but i hope to avoid that problem.

i'm really looking forward to being in seattle and seeing my family at christmas. i'm also excited to have some free time-- any at all!-- to catch up on reading, seeing friends, doing some art projects, watching movies, etc. i'll be in seattle december 18-30, baltimore december 30-jan 16 and copenhagen jan 17-may 17....

change

wow-- how our country has changed in the past few days.





i am so pleasantly surprised/relieved/hopeful about obama's election. way to go, america! my thoughts on the matter aren't terribly original compared to what any other blogger has to say, so i think i'll refrain from any political banter-- but it was pretty awesome being on a college campus when this historic event occurred. i was in the library working on a project and really enjoying the peace and quiet. i thought the results wouldn't be announced until much later, so when i left the library at 11:30 pm and heard screaming, i was alarmed. i followed the source of the jubilation to the residential quad, where i'd estimate a good 150 students were running, jumping, hugging, drinking, sliding down the hill without their shirts on...it felt like our annual tradition of GIG but at night and in november. i wasn't sure what exactly what they were celebrating but proceeded to take some photos. when i made it back to my room, my roommates were calmly watching the events unfold and told me that he had indeed won. i'm so disappointed that i missed the actual announcement! we watched his graceful speech together and gushed at the fact that he was going to buy his girls a new puppy for the white house.
while the atmosphere at goucher was definitely a bit boisterous, things didn't get out of hand. down the road at johns hopkins, 16 (!) arrests were made at the ensuing street celebration. three goucher students were among the crop who were put in a paddy wagon and taken to central booking for the night. their story was featured in the baltimore sun and on wjz news last night. what insanity the election haze has brought us.

on a less dramatic note, i am feeling really good about my performance studies project this semester. i'm analyzing the great halloween lantern parade, an awesome tradition of southeast baltimore neighborhood residents making and carrying 1000 paper lanterns carried through the once-abandoned patterson park. (i took some photos, including two below, but they really didn't do justice to the whimsical, playful atmosphere of the event. i have some on flickr too but they aren't as cool as i hoped they might be!) i met with one of the community artists who has played a role in organizing it and wow, their work is amazing. i'm a huge fan of their organizations, the creative alliance and the nana projects. i also got immersed in the bibliographic research and for the first time, i can actually picture myself writing scholarly papers for more than just a class assignment. it's amazing how picking a personally interesting topic changes your view on the workload. that project led me to a performance of the famed bread & puppet theatre last night. while i'm not extremely keen on puppets, these artists work with the props and even themselves in a really thought-provoking and skillful way. the 2640 space, a partially renovated church affiliated with baltimore's communist bookstore, was a great venue for it.




i also received my danish residency permit this week. now that i've bought plane tickets, have legal permission to study there, and have signed up for classes, it's kind of hard to focus on the finishing the rest of this semester. we'll see how this next month goes!

autumn

i must say, autumn on the east coast is quite nice. instead of signaling the impending nine months of drizzle and grey skies, "fall" translates to crisp but sunny weather, gorgeous foliage, funny little halloween decorations, and drinking warm apple cider. the photos above are from the 41st autumn glory festival in the very western bit of maryland last weekend.
my boyfriend timmy and i went to celebrate his 23rd birthday and to explore that part of the state. we went camping at rocky gap state park, visited the once-booming and now eerily-empty town of cumberland, and could have made it to west virginia and pennsylvania easily but instead chose to stop at antietam battlefield on the way back. i saw more mccain signs out there than i ever have before. i definitely felt out of place among the largely older, rural, conservative, religious crowd, but found oakland really interesting. the festival took over all of garrett county, ranging from the main parade-- lots of cheerleaders, high school marching bands, shriners and beauty queens-- to glass blowing, clog dancing, choral performances, free admission to the historical museum, a tour of the court house, and many food vendors. we saw a puppet show entitled "autumn declares god's glory," which featured gospel singing puppets proclaiming "jesus saves." with the exception of the election signs, i felt like it could have been pretty much any year in the past 20. the cheerleaders' high-top shoes, weirdly long skirts and abundance of sequins really made it feel like 1992. it was kind of like the movie napoleon dynamite, in which the characters' lifestyles and clothes really fit the mid-90s aesthetic more than today's.

other than that, i've been extremely busy fitting in my homework, classes, work, preparations for study abroad (i didn't realize getting all that paperwork taken care of would take so much time!) and fun time too. i'm doing my big anthro project this semester on the baltimore tradition of the great halloween lantern parade, an awesome community festival sponsored by a few cdcs and an organization called the creative alliance. my fieldwork so far has consisted of a few festivals, making my own lantern at a workshop on saturday, and volunteering at a workshop on sunday. the parade, next weekend, should be amazing. this is one of the coolest projects ever.

it is fall break today and tomorrow, and i'm taking my time doing homework, drinking tea, and running errands. i'm welcoming this little break!!