(2005) The first couple days...

Soooooooooo... what a very interesting and eventful last 3 days it's been. I don't think I've walked so much in my life. I forgot to pack socks. I'm wearing flip-flops and walking a million miles in a day. Mmmm, not good. Shops close around 5 here so it's near impossible to purchase socks anywhere because I have class until around then. And I can't buy them in the morning on my way to class because nothing's open yet at 8. And I wouldn't DREAM of not wearing socks with shoes. Enough about the socks. I'm going to be having the time of my life here, despite the lack of socks. It's been raining a bit, forgot a rain coat as well but brought an umbrella. That doesn't help you very much however when you leave it in your room and it starts raining and you're many many miles away from your room. In a tank top. And flip flops. Or should I call them mud flops by this time. This was all yesterday. It started out being a fairly beautiful morning and the previous day was even nicer. We even took the canal tour for the second time in my life. I was assuming that, as it sometimes occurs in the states, that one nice day calls for another nice day, if we're lucky; but not usually more than that. (Sarcastic and forced laugh here) I couldn't have been more wrong. It wasn't until later in the evening that it started sprinkling. Then raining. Then pouring. Then down pouring. All the streets were vacated for minutes on end, then the rain would lighten up, people would venture out, then the rain would start again. This went on for a long time until I decided it was just time to go home and get warm clothes on and perhaps come back and meet up with a few people. By the time I got home I would've been lucky if my underwear was dry. Which it wasn't. I put warm clothes on and figured that I would just go to bed since it was still raining and getting late (but not dark yet!). So I did just that. There's only about 5 hours of darkness right now. The sun sets at around 10:30 and rises around 3:30. It's a lot easier to get up in the morning, that's forsure.
Forgive me for getting into politics briefly, I just want to tell those of you who didn't hear that Copenhagen got a visit from the President today. I believe we were told that there are about 50 some Danes fighting for the US in Iraq, which is why there were a lot of protests against him coming here and many disgruntled Danes, even a riot yesterday. A group of about 4 of us standing around the street yesterday got spat at from a lady walking by. Some of it landed on my naked toe. I would like to think her intentions weren't what they seemed, but then she proceeded to forcefully push aside one of the girls in my class. And I don't see any other Danish women spit THAT close to other people on the street. My mind was made up, then I had to wipe that angry saliva off my toe that didn't have a sock on it. I found it interesting and yet ironic that the President decides to come here during a week that I'm here. His helicopter and jet posse were flying around everywhere today, it was REALLY loud, if you could imagine about 3 or 4 helicopters and 4 or 5 jets flying all at once. I thought the ceiling was going to come down crashing.
Switching gears... my glass blowing class is going to be one of the coolest things I will have done in my life. Perhaps one of the best decisions I've made. I have the most hilarious looking instructor. He's fifty something with stark-white hair, half dreaded on the top and partly cinged all around from working with the kilns, and with gray nose hair down to his knees. It turns out he's from Bozeman, Montana but has been living in Denmark for the last 30 some years. He considers himself a Dane, even though he can't speak the language all that well. The best part is that he's an incredible artist and instructor. I feel like I've known him for a long time and it's only been 2 days since we all met him. I'm excited to FINALLY have an instructor that wants to get to know his students and who cares what we think. He wants us to tell him what we expect to get out of this class, what we want to do for the assignments, and the direction in the glass medium that we want to go. Our first assignment is to make a knife out of cold glass. We're going to be using Diamond saws that use water with the saw to cut thick peices of already made cold glass "pancakes" as he called them. Then he wants us to make up a "myth" to go along with our knife. We have 2 days to do this, 2 days to do the next assignment, then off we go on our study tour already. I can't believe it. We'll be spending a few days in a forest in Sweden aparently, so we were told (I never know whether or not to believe his sarcasm) and a few more days in Finland, going around to glass workshops and studios and galleries (Orrefors!). I'm super excited about this. When we get back, we start the glass blowing. We'll be inspired enough after the study tour that we'll not want to stop. Once I learn how to do this and get good at it, there's no stopping.
I appologize for the lengthiness of this entry. Hopefully I won't have to wait so many days till my next one. God bless all!
Farvel fra København!