Copenhagen CRAZY

I don't even know. All I know is that there has been SO MUCH HOMEWORK in the past few weeks! Good lord! As I've mentioned before, it's been a little overwhelming. However, spring break starts today and I'm leaving for Portugal and the Czech Republic for two weeks! Woo hoo! Two weeks of hiking, surfing lessons, rock climbing, caving, yoga, beach volleyball, biking and much more! Did I mention that our hotel in the Czech is a fricken CASTLE?! OMG!! This is fantastic! I don't know anyone who's stayed in a castle before! :D

So about my other big field study! One evening I got paired up with a few other girls from my class and we were all assigned to different bars. We got assigned to one that caters to the older generation of gay men so when we walked in we got some... stares. We ordered some drinks, sat down and decided to try and come up with a plan to get someone to let us interview them. We were only chatting for a few minutes before a very old man (I swear, he must have been like 75!) drunkenly came over and asked us if we knew it was a gay bar. When we said yes he then asked "Well are you beautiful girls lesbians?" to which we replied "no". Then he went on to talk about how lesbians come in gay bars and other things that didn't quite make sense. It was pretty entertaining and I started to ask if we could interview him, but he was headed out so we went back to scheming about who we might be able to corner for our assignment.

Eventually we noticed a younger male couple (late twenties, possibly early thirties) to our left who kept looking at us curiously. While we ordered more drinks, one of the girls in my group approached them and asked about interviewing them. At first one of them (I'll call him Guy 2) said no, but the other guy thought they should give us a chance (Guy 1). My group member apologized saying that she didn't know how to go about asking them for the interview in the right way and they laughed saying "there is no right way" but we seemed nice enough. And it went great! We had long discussions about the government, gay rights, immigration, the media (which side-tracked to Glee, hahaha).

At first Guy 2 was really quiet and didn't want to say much, but as the conversation progressed he suddenly just opened up. He told us how we was from Jutland, from a town of like 1000 people. He had a lot of difficulties being accepted when he came out. His family basically abandoned him, he was bullied and someone even tried to strangle him in a bar. He moved to Copenhagen because it was safer and more open. He did have some good friends to support him while he was going through such difficult times, but it was still really hard for him. You could tell by the look on his face. It makes me feel so sad to hear about how horrible people are to others who are different. I just want to smack people upside the head sometimes and ask how it could be possible that they've never understood the concept of "treat others as you would like to be treated". But it's more complicated than that of course.

Anyway, the interview went really well. We had some good laughs. At one point they were talking about immigration (Guy 1 has been given his green card to move to the U.S. but they are partners and he doesn't want to leave Guy 2 so they're figuring out what to do) and as they talked about finding a way to be together there was this moment... They stopped and looked into each other's eyes and it was just... love. Their faces held so much tenderness, care, and affection and just... this deep, real love for each other. The rest of my group went silent for a moment because they noticed too. It was such a truly beautiful and private moment and I think we all felt a twinge of envy.

It was a good night. :)

I went paintballing a week or so ago and it was great! That weekend I wasn't feeling too good at first. I came down with this weird 24hr cold that made me tired and the piles of homework made me grumpy and hermitty and all the more stressed out. I really needed to get some fresh air. (Although I did have fun drinking goblets of wine with my host mom that Friday night because apparently red wine has lots of vitamines and is good for a cold...? I really haven't heard that one before but that's what my host mom said it was still pretty fun, haha. Totally hyggelit.)

The paintball game was legit stuff. I was actually pretty intimidated when I arrived because there were so many giant Danish men (Scandinavians have the highest average height in the world thus, Danish boys are big boys.) in camoflauge outfits with their Halo-esk (sp? I can't remember...) masks and smoking their stinky cigarettes. They just looked so... tough. Once I got my gear on I felt more sure of myself, though. I do really miss hanging out with guys. They tend to get up and do stuff rather than sit around and talk about feelings, haha. With the DIS students being 70% female, sometimes there's just too much estrogen around me.

Anyway, it was kind of funny how pumped up my entire group was. We played several different games over a three hour period with our final battle including around 150 people. Intense! It was like a fricken war except it was really fun and something I'd love to do again. I'm proud to say that I got a few pretty good head shots in. (I got a couple of my own little welts too...) Being outside running around and getting covered in dirt and sweat was just... refreshing. I love it and I can't wait for Summer!

Well, that's all for now unless you want me to complain about my homework some more.

- Jenn