It’s 11:12pm. It’s Friday. I have just put on a silver duochrome nail polish to celebrate. It’s been a long week. Primarily due to my Spanish class.

I have such a love-hate relationship with Spanish. It’s like a passionate, sultry Argentinian tango, where we spend 3 minutes and 25 seconds of the song giving each other the stink eye – and then just as the dance is about to end, we make out. I KNOW. It’s very complicated.

This was just one of the many times we have had to watch a movie this week. While sitting still for two and a half hours seriously hurts my rump, I LOVE and treasure every moment spent without the teacher asking me anything. I eat it up. Like, I love the days where all we do is watch a movie, and I secretly always hope it’s a long one. (That’s what she said). Sometimes, on a good day, I’ll actually understand some of what is going on, and that’s when I feel like a genius. That’s when I start to have thoughts like, “Wow, maybe I am meant to TEACH this wonderful language that is so easy for me to understand. I obviously speak Spanish”. And then one second later a person shoots up and I am like I THOUGHT THIS MOVIE WAS ABOUT A GUY’S LOVE OF HORSES.

But now it’s the weekend and I don’t have to think about it for a couple of days, so whatever. I am not a quitter. I vow not to quit, even though every fiber of my being tells me that I am the opposite of a linguistic talent.

I am sorry for all that quietness that has been going on around here. I arrived in Denmark more than a week ago, after a horrifically terrible 12-hour trip that was pretty much full of suck from beginning to end. In fact, it was so sucky that I would say that it was 12 hours of one suck-factor replacing another. It was so sucky that I VOMITED in that little mandatory barf-bag you can find in the pouch on the back of the seat in front of you. This happened 5 minutes before we landed in Denmark, might I add. I had been holding it in for 11 hours and 55 minutes, and it was just time. I have to say that I was feeling pretty horrible from the get-go, so plaining it up across the atlantic was pretty much the last thing I was in the mood for.

Thoughts I had in those 12 hours, in chronological order:

- God, I am going to vomit.

- Please tell me that’s not airplane-dinner I am smelling. It’s 11.30am and I just had a low-calorie mega-blueberry muffin from Dunkin’ Donuts an hour and a half ago. (Which reminds me – what exactly is low-calorie about a 410 calorie muffin?)

- It’s really not cool to serve fish on an airplane.

- I really hope those people next to me don’t pick the fish.

- Thank god, they went for the “poule” (“chicken” is much sexier in French. I wouldn’t even mind my last name being Poule).

- ARE WE THERE YET?

- Oh god, here we go. Here comes the poule. Poule for everyone.

- Right now, I prefer water over diet coke. WHAT IS THIS CROSS-ATLANTIC AIRBORN SHITFEST DOING TO ME.

- I really hope those next to me don’t ask for diet coke.

- I sure do hope my wheelchair is on board somewhere.

That may have been my last real coherent thought on this whole trip.

After 7 hours of this, we landed in France, where I had my connecting flight. Due to our flight being delayed, I barely made it on to the plane to Copenhagen. Because of my current situation, they had to hire a super shuttle just to get me from one gate to another, and I was THIS close to not making it. You can’t see it, but right now I am making a hand gesture that signals THIS CLOSE.

The plane ride from France to Copenhagen might have been even worse, despite of it lasting only a few hours. I was so nauseous and tired, and I just wanted it to be over. And that is when the barf-fest began. I am telling you, we were THIS CLOSE (visualize my hand-gesture) to landing, but that did not matter; when you got to go, you got to go. It wasn’t awkward at all to hand that barf-bag to the stewardess, by the way.

The last thing to make this trip absolutely awesome was the fact that my wheelchair had been left behind in France by mistake. They didn’t know it was going with me to Copenhagen. I learned this after waiting at the odd-sized-baggage claim f0r 2 hours. They shipped it to me three days later.

Now that I am back, Spanish is really kicking me in the nuts (figuratively speaking; in reality I am nutless). I don’t know what happened, but, well, actually I do know what happened. We got a native speaker is what happened. Victorio. I had just learned to say that I like things, and now I have to be able to say words like c-section and midlife-crisis. I am struggling with every single part of the language, and that is not even an exaggeration. The nouns, the verbs, the tenses. It’s like math to me, and I failed math. Hard. Right now my sole ambition is to pass the class. If this happens with a D, then so be it.

I know I have written a lot of academic-related entries lately, but that is honestly the point of focus in my life at the moment. Spanish is still perpetually difficult, but sometimes I feel like I am in the only one in that class who thinks so. And that makes me want to renounce the whole thing. I am not going to, because that would be stupid, but on days like today, I feel like I am THIS CLOSE. You know, on the breaking point.

AHHHHRHHHHHHHH

Fuck.

And my pronunciation, OH GOD, don’t even get me started on that. There is a lot of reading aloud and I know as I go along that I am butchering every.single.word. Even though I am not sure where exactly I go wrong (if I knew, I would try to, you know, improve), it sounds like nails on a chalkboard in my head. It’s such a beautiful language, except when it’s coming from me.

I have always been told that I probably have some kind of linguistic talent, since I was able to learn English by myself, but this is SO foreign to me, and English never was. Spanish is… probably a lot more logical than it seems right now. Now, if only people would stop talking so fucking fast. It’s like they are trying to win a race.

Oh god, oh god, oh god, my eyes are about to fall out of my head.

I have been sitting in front of the computer for the past seven hours, working on a synopsis that has to be turned in tomorrow that I should have started on a loooong time ago. I have said it before and I have said it again: I hate synopses. And excerpts.

I hate thesis statements and research questions and all of that bullshit. I hate it. I suck at it, and that is why I hate it. Or maybe I suck at it because I hate it. It’s almost like the chicken and the egg. Alright, this is getting too deep for me at 12:13 am on a school night. My brain won’t allow me to reflect very deeply on anything right now, so I will skip subtly on to something else.

I failed my Math-midterm. That’s right. I have never failed a midterm before in the history of my existence, and I have a feeling I should be more mortified than I am. I mean, I don’t like it, but I am not shaking and crying, either. I feel strangely apathetic, actually. That class is so ridiculous that it hurts too much to feel anything. I just expect the worst of myself now. It’s cynical, I know. However, I am not sure I want to fix it. I think I am happy with my cynicism for now, maybe. It’s a strategy.

I got 2 A’s and a B on my other midterms, and those are classes I care about. I think that is good enough for me.

Now I am going to grab my cup of Sleepy Time and go watch some bad TV in bed. ONE DAY LEFT. Please excuse any grammatical errors (I just wrote “exquse” instead of “excuse”), you can blame it on my square-y eyes.

You know, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I have (unexpectedly) been rocking this school business lately. Except for my math-midterm today, which I am pretty sure I tanked. Erhm, MOVING ON. Deal and repress, deal and repress.

I got two papers back that were both graded A. Not bad for somebody who suffered a writer’s block from hell just two months ago, am I right am I right am I right. Yup, Baby, I’m back in the game. I have also finally understood trigonometry, which is quite an accomplishment in my head. Trig (I just call it “Trig”, you know, we’re that close) is actually not that hard and is quite enjoyable when you get the hang of it. Only took me a bazillion years. Unfortunately my brain can only handle understanding ONE aspect of mathematics at a time, so I’m hoping my teacher will appreciate my newfound relationship with Trig, as that’s all he’ll be getting from me. Neatly drawn triangles and a couple of doodled elephants. And my signature, ‘course.

I walked home from school today, because the weather is absolutely glorious. If you could eat the weather, I would eat this one. Or at least just lick it. Walking home from my school is not the most exciting thing, as there is nothing fun to look at. You just walk and walk and walk, and despite of the walk being fairly short (we’re talking two and a half kilometers), it feels like you are just walking and walking and walking without actually getting anywhere. Do you know that feeling?

Anyway. Happy Monday, everybody! (Let’s pretend Mondays are something to celebrate). I will leave you with a few pictures of a Danish summer that I took last year, so you can see what I am so desperately looking forward to.

The city, booming with joy and color

Green, green, green

Green, the color of hope is overflowing

Wanderers walking in pure bewonder, life is about to begin.

And no, the title is in no way related to the content of this post, but I just had to throw that question in there somewhere because OH MY GOD that is so wrong. I am watching the re-runs and like, why would they ever go there? ‘Tis so wrong. For those without a clue, I’m talking about Ugly Betty. 

I have written a couple of posts that were solely about the arrival of Spring, and how fan-fucking-tastic that is, you know, in MY humble opinion. I am sure most people will agree that Spring rocks 4893829 x infinity, unless of course you are allergic to pollen. Then Spring might only rock 48938 x infinity.

I’m a child of the summer, a summer baby. Sun and light is my fuel, and if I were to compare the seasons to weekdays, Spring is my Thursday-Friday, Summer is my Friday-Saturday, Fall is my Sunday (can’t we all agree that Sundays blow?), and Winther is my Sunday night and my Monday. Every Winter day, with it’s darkness and hopelessness is Sunday night/Monday, and it’s like being trapped in a limbo, where you live in entrapment with no way out as Nature’s captive. There is nowhere to go, you are just forced to live in the darkness until it is over.

This Winter was one of the worst Winters in my life. Me feeling horrible started in November, and I was so convinced I wasn’t going to make it. I woke up every morning consumed with sorrow, like I was being punished by waking up. It didn’t help that I had to write the most important paper of my school career. We had two weeks to write it and I think I left my apartment twice in those two weeks, both times to go meet my dad who was pretty much my savior for those two weeks. I had the worst writer’s block I have ever experienced, and I have been writing for a long time. I have always put a lot of thought and effort into my papers and have in return received very good grades, so my teachers had pretty high expectations and talked about this 15-20 page like it would be a complete piece of cake for me.

The subject of our paper was completely in our hands, and I chose to write about The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, my favorite book in the whole world. My assignment was to do a complete sociological analysis of the book, with a particular focus on Holden and his personality and characteristics. If I had had to write this paper a year ago, it would have been heaven to me. Really, it would have been the most wonderful thing I could ever be asked to do. I could analyze Holden to my dying day, because he is so my dear to my heart, and I have done it before. This exact thing, I mean. I helped Andrew write a paper about this book a couple of years ago (he hated it) and we got a stellar grade.

I can say with complete honesty that I thought at least once every day for those two weeks that I was going to die. I couldn’t write one word. Not even one single word. I had trouble writing my own name. I had to write my teacher to ask her a question and it took me an hour to write a three-lined message. It was like I had used all of my words last year, where I wrote a bazillion papers and did great. I ended up with the conclusion that I must have had a certain amount of words available inside and that I had used them all on stupid papers that didn’t really matter, not compared to this big one at least. It’s completely irrational, I know, but I was irrational. I thought the paper was going to kill me. Eventually, I wanted it to.

The two weeks went by with a snail speed and I managed to write 17 pages, with the moral support of my father and grandmother, who went out of their way to help me. We had to turn it in the day before the start of our Christmas Vacation, and the day after I left for New York, putting it all behind me. I spent my entire vacation over there and had an amazing time. Not only was it not as dark over there, weather-wise, but it also was not as cold as it was in Denmark. The complete change of environment was gold to me, and after two weeks of sleep deprivation and nightmares I was finally able to SLEEP and SLEEP WELL. I think spooning helped.

Possibly also the anti-depressants that were prescribed to me.

And now Spring is here, and it is beautiful, and I am feeling better. I am not feeling 100% okay, but I am feeling better and I am hopeful.

I guess I am writing this both as an explanation to why there will be many more posts dedicated to the weather and the light and how miraculous it is that all the dead comes to live again every year. The nature AND the people.

Me.

Sunday afternoon we went to the Botanic Garden. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and it’s the first time I have ever taken Andrew there. As with everything else, I had wanted his first introduction to it to be during the summer, where all the trees and flowers are in bloom. With everything being dead and withered, there really was not much botanic about that garden, but I guess somebody decided we can’t have life and summer and happiness all year round.

Andrew was pretty excited about the gigantic greenhouse, which, I have to admit, IS pretty cool. And huge.

After our massively long walk (3,7 miles!) we went home and I wrote my Biology report. Five pages, baby, with awesome pictures and illustrations to boot. Let it be known that I hate Biology with a fiery passion. The same with Physics. The only science-y class that I can handle… sort of, is Chemistry, which I finished last year (and got a pretty bad grade). No hard feelings, Chemistry, I know now that the feelings weren’t mutual. Guess I had to learn it the hard and humiliating way in front of two teachers.

Andrew is going home on Monday, which is killing me little by little each day. I can’t wait till the day where we can be together all the time. I even dreamt about it last night. I dreamt that I decided to pack up and just go already, enough with all this dilly dally. I only brought a small bag, because I did not feel like I needed anything really. Just my heart, who happens to live in New York. I also dreamt that I was a member of a mob family. Any psychology majors willing to tell me what the EFF that means?

I have been working on this project that I am incredibly excited about. It is going to be so great, and I just have a good feeling in my stomach about it, like I was meant to do this. Get your excite on, I think you will like it!