For one thing, I haven't been able to get my window to fully close the entire time since being here. They do a lot of construction here and it's loud and a lot of people freakin smoke, and I smell that a lot, and I just constantly battle this window until I am exhausted, trying to get this little crack to finally cease to exist. I even wrote a poem about it, it bugged me so bad... Well about five minutes ago I heard a jackhammer and said, "screw this! You will close!" And you know what?!??! It DID! This is the lack of crack in between my window and my apartment! I am so happy about this!
Next up, we have Danish food. Danes don't really have one, major, type of food that is theirs. They eat a lot of meat and stuff, but really the only Danish thing is the Smorrebrod. This means "butter bread." Not so vegan. However! This refers to any kind of sort of open-faced-sandwich dealy, usually including lots of nonvegan things, but for breakfasts there are always jams and honeys, and this is where i can participate. So allow me to show you my first ever actual Danish breakfast provided by myself (which happened about ten minutes ago). (I've had Danish breakfasts at hostels and stuff, but I hadn't actually bought my own yet. Well here we go...)
Exciting, right?!?! Jam on bread! But seriously, I'm happy that I can feel Danish in this one, small, way. They eat a ton of meat here, so generally anything "traditional" is off-limits for those of us with a cruelty-free-chromosome (copyright Envirowoman).
Lastly I want to tell you about Kai. Kai and I came together on the short, 3-day study tour we had about a month ago (wow has it really been a month?). Who is Kai, you ask? No, not some svelte Danish lover. Kai is a frog. The story goes like this: We had a little sketching contest in groups during our tour, where we had 2 hours or so to draw 4 sites or something, and basically whichever group's drawings were the best (in various ways) got a prize. Now, I'm not so goodly with the sketching. I had been feeling really bad about my sketching abilities since my Urban Design Journal course, in which I was surrounded by talented people and presented what could be called "chicken scratches" (but vegan: tofu scratches?) and felt really awful about it. Well, I found myself hoping on this silly little exercise that we would win maybe 2nd or 3rd place--because even though it was just a silly contest, I really wanted some kind of reassurance about my drawing. Well, they announced the third place: "This group answered the questions really well..." and I thought, "i know that's not us, because we didn't even answer the questions.. great well we definitely won't win if even third place answered the questions.." Then second place was announced "they didn't draw the fourth one-" (i got excited because WE didn't draw the fourth one) "-but they also answered the questions nicely." Well I've given up hope. But lo and behold... they announce first place.. "even though they didn't draw the fourth one or answer the questions, this group experimented with medium and layout..." and it was us!! And actually I was the one who experimented with medium (colored pencils, woot!) and we all had pretty cool layouts, so I even felt like I contributed to us winning, not just tagged along for the ride. So, our prizes? Randomly distributed stuffed animals. Once we unwrap them, our tour leader asked to see them again to explain to everyone who/what they were. Well, there were four--a pair each from two different television shows. One show was about how great the social welfare system is, haha, and those characters were a mouse and a girl. The other show is called Kai og Andrea, and is about these two craaazy animals (frog and parrot? parakeet? bird thing) and their craaaazy adventures. and these two are "...BEST FRIENDS!" (our tour leader smashes them together for emphasis.)
So I'd like to formally introduce you to Kai. (Although the Danes are against formal introductions. So instead I'll invite you (the internets) and Kai to a party where he doesn't know anyone, and then let him stand around feeling awkward, and no one will go talk to him, and after this happens several hundred times, consider yourself introduced. This is the Danish way. I'm not kidding.)
So when I start getting down about my drawing, I have a short conversation with Kai, and feel a little better.
Me and him are gonna enjoy some tea now. We'll catch you chumps later.
