last full day in europe

so i'm in paris staying at cousin anne's apartment with anais. anne has been in portugal and is returning sometime tonight, meaning we'll have one evening of catching up before i head back to the u.s. tomorrow. anais is just about ready to go into paris, so heres a quick list of updates:

hia was amazing, and actually managed to hold true to its "life-changing experience" reputation. that said, the big news is that i've decided not to go to grad school for social work and follow that path into policy or ngos or whatnot, but to instead attempt to make a career of what i really want to be doing all the time - taking pictures. so my life plan is to become a documentary photographer/photojournalist. for some reason i feel really great and rather secure about this right now. ask me again in a few months.

my few days in berlin were also great. what a wonderful city that is... every time i'm there i ask myself why i don't actually live there - perhaps that will be fixed with a wonderful photo assignment someday.

seeing anais is lovely as ever, though true conversation is more difficult with my diminishing german skills. this will be remedied by living in berlin!

all in all this has been a really great summer, and, as usual, i can't believe it's almost over. for now i'm going to go make some coffee and sit down to a nice french breakfast with anais.

see you soon, usa!

last two days

while i was initially a bit bummed that my action group is the only one without a dane, i think i actually got really lucky. i'm working with sesi, a guy from austin, texas, whose family immigrated to the u.s. from nigeria when he was 8, and inga, a bosnian girl who lived through the war, spending 4 years of her childhood almost never leaving her basement for fear of being shot. it's just amazing hearing people's stories when you take/have the time to be with them and listen. our group dynamic seemed to really work - inga and i are both sort of sarcastic and bitchy and more or less want to control everything, but sesi's laid-back, relaxed humor kept everything upbeat and on-track. stories about our histories and families came out slowly as we worked all day today on our project, creating an interesting framework for understanding where we each are coming from and what we are bringing to the table. the research topic itself is incredibly interesting, but i think it was working together that actually made it worth it for me. thanks, hia!
sadly, and really quite surprisingly, i only have two days left in denmark. tomorrow we have presentations all day (i've still gotta work on my part of that...) then a good-bye dinner and some group going out at night. saturday we're on our own, and marissa and i are hoping to cram in all of the sight-seeing stuff we never had time to do. then, early sunday morning we're off to spend 3 more super busy days in paris with the whole european program. it will be really cool to see everyone again, witness their group dynamics, see how relationships have formed, etc. weird though, and i'm kind of nervous about it, and really quite sad to be leaving copenhagen. maybe someday i'll be back.

it's business time

that's why i'm sitting her procrastinating. we're now in the "action research" phase of the fellowship, meaning we've been split into small groups and are working on specific topics relating to things we've learned about during the lecture phase. my group is focusing on denmark's policy regarding asylum seekers, specifically looking at iraq and a group of 282 who are now facing deportation, many after spending years in denmark in asylum camps. pretty much denmark is at least as fucked up as the u.s. in this area, and it's kind of sad and weird to learn about. the danes are supposed to be super happy, and it seems that most of them are (aside from being beautiful and all more or less well-off), but they're beginning to realize it was quite easy to be ultra-liberal and all human-rightsy when there were no issues actually facing denmark. now there are immigrants and refugees and the current government is creating this self-fulfilling prophecy of fear and anger towards these people, reiterating over and over how impossible it will be for such people to "integrate" into danish society, and thus - send them back! our paper is being guided by the idea that the current group of iraqis are being used as an example for others thinking of coming to denmark, making sure they know how terrible and difficult it will be. the sad thing is, it seems to be working, though at great cost to the current refugees.
so, yeah, that's what i've been working on the past few days. we interviewed two members of parliament this morning, a psychiatrist who works with refugees yesterday, and a volunteer at the church where many of them are currently living the day before that. kind of overwhelming, and i haven't even started writing the article yet...
outside of the academic-ish sphere things have been going quite well here. still getting along with marissa, and still loving her relatives' amazing house. sadly per and nonni left for london this morning, meaning marissa and i are on our own in this grand old house for the next 6 days. today after a muggy day of running around doing interviews and tracking down my seemingly-lost camera marissa and i hopped on nonni's new and old bikes and rode the 10 minutes over to the sea where every copenhager around seemed to have spilled onto the mostly grassy, minimally sandy beach for a bit of lounging and some quick swimming. copenhagen boasts about its clean water, and while it may be toxin free it sure was surprisingly yucky looking and incredibly shallow, so we just hopped in and out, dried off in the sun, then rode home just in time for a heat-induced thunderstorm. quite an afternoon.
now it's back to work for me...

ah, time!

i can't believe it's already june 24th, and nearly the end of the formal section of hia. tomorrow we're going to have a presentation about the bosnian conflict from the two fellows from bosnia, then a lecture about rwanda, then something about the functionings of post-conflict societies in general. while i'm excited to hear about these topics, it will actually be strange to shift away from denmark-centered themes, as we really haven't done that at all. i was kind of disappointed going into the program about how focused the whole thing was solely on danish issues, but now i'm actually really happy with the rather in depth and critical view we've gotten to take into danish society. we've visited a center for asylum seekers, a maximum security prison, danish parliament, the ministry of integretion, a center for drug addicted prostitutes, an alternative school for homeless and alcoholic adults, a center for arctic studies (with a focus on greenland) and probably other amazing places that i'm forgetting at the moment. we've also heard lectures on related subjects and also various issues such as immigration and asylum seeking, free speech, social marginilization, human trafficking, then more specific subjects such as a discussion of a cafe for mentally ill immigrants and their families or the psychological and social difficulties facing greenlandic youth and families. so many interesting subjects it's absolutely overwhelming! tonight i have to email the program coordinator three potential topics that i'd like to write about for my action project, which is an article i'll be writing with a danish fellow after doing qualitative research, likely in the form of interviews. i'm thinking of a) something do to with the mental health of immigrant children who have to spend years of their childhood in asylum centers b) perceptions of immigrant women among ethnic danes or c) perceptions of identity among greenlanders living in denmark surrounding issues of sovereignty and control over national decisions in greenland. this last subject is one fresh in my mind after today's lectures, and also one that i had never even considered. of course i knew greenland existed, but i'm not sure i knew that denmark still owned it, and i certainly didn't know what sort of terrible crises they're facing. teenage pregnancy, horrible alcoholism, incredibly high rates of sexual abuse, violence, and vast unemployment plague the country, just as they're gaining more independence. also, only 56,000 people live in greenland! it's really a rather fascinating place.

so, these are the things that have been occupying my days, and many evenings for the past weeks. last night, however, we had the priviledge of having a midsummer night's party where we joined thousands of other copenhageners for an evening of grilling on the beach and general merriment to celebrate summer, and oh, witch burning. weird, huh? they burn effigies of witches on pyres in the water and sing songs and eat lots of food. no one could really explain the tradition, but i must say i whole-heartedly enjoyed it. then after only a few hours of sleep and another super busy day today we indulged in a leisurely tourist boatride along the canals, soaking up some sun and catching new views of the gorgeous city of copenhagen. 75 degree weather and no rain really allows for a different vantage point.

well, i'm gonna go get ready for something closer to a full night's sleep. love to you all!

pictures!

so these uploaded in reverse order and i'm too lazy to undo it, so just know that the top one is most recent, and they go from there. this first one is marissa and me standing in front of the canal we walk down every morning to get to the danish institute for human rights, where our program is centered.
this one is of a protest we attended against the deportation of 283 iraqi asylum seekers. many of them were deported yesterday, though iraq has been deemed unsafe for return. denmark has incredibly strict laws concerning immigration and asylum, which we've been learning a lot about in the past week. we visited center sandholm (which you can read about in my entry to the hia blog, which can be found if you click on my profile) a terribly depressing refugee center just outside the city. with the shift towards a much more conservative government in 2001 denmark went from being a model for europe in terms of liberal policy to one of the most conservative in terms of offering any sort of help or refuge to outsiders.
this was taken at a basketball game arranged for us with some "local youth." this was the crowd who, like me, decided to opt out of actually playing.
some of the b-ball players stretching before the game. danes are all so fit.





last sunday rune, one of the danish fellows, had us all over to his dorm's "garden" for tea and a game of kings, a viking stick game.



these last photos are all from our "welcoming program" in paris. they were actually all taken during a walking tour of the goutte d'or, a very african neighborhood near montmartre.

real quick

i'm so tired i hardly have the energy to post something, but i'm beginning to realize that will likely be how i feel every night, so...

1) marissa and i moved out of the sad, dirty dorm they stuck us in and are now staying with her long lost danish relatives who more or less live in a fairy tale castle with a giant garden/little secret garden. it was kind of like we had to endure punishment before winning the grand prize.
2) turns out her relatives are secretly friends with judy goldstein, the founder of hia and this scary powerful presence of a woman. marissa was super ill all weekend (think crazy fever that created fun dream stories) so i got to attend a three fork dinner with judy, marissa's fancy aunt and uncle (we use these terms for simplicity's sake), an american diplomat whose mother owned the first contemporary art gallery in washington, d.c., and the head of a multinational human rights ngo. the dinner lasted a good two hours and i eeked in maybe 10 minutes of conversation. so terrifying, but also kind of awesome. i'm suddenly part of the elite.
3) danes are strange. apparently every single one of the danes in my program is in a serious relationship, but none of them have actually brought their significant others to any of the social events we've had. weird.
4) i finally got to go for a bike ride and it was great. flat land and warmish weater = great times. pray for less rain in the future.

that's all for now. things are great, crazy, busy, and much better now that i'm getting free delicious food provided for me. pictures soon, i swear.

danmark

i left exactly a week ago, yet i feel like i can hardly remember a time before humanity in action. during the past week i haven't slept more than six hours a night, and have had perhaps 15 minutes of down time, though no alone time. until tonight. new york was intense, paris was insane. we went from being a group of 50 giddy, excited americans to a group of 120 flustered, exhausted, and utterly nervous americans, danes, germans, dutch, french, bosnians, poles, and ukrainians. quite a mix. the three days in paris were so cram-packed full of lectures, workshops, site visits, and general discussion that the socializing with strangers became oddly easy and secondary. because of that we all bonded quite quickly and i felt surprisingly sad saying good-bye to some of my new friends. it will be really interesting to see them again in paris for the closing program, full of stories from our different experiences across europe.
copenhagen is adorable so far - full of nauseatingly stylish danes, tons of bicycles, cute shops, a shocking number of ethnic restaurants, and a generally laid back attitude. problem is, it was about 60 and rainy all day. did i bring appropriate footwear? of course not. gotta deal with that at some point. after our first day of the program here (during which we heard lectures from a former danish ambassador who now sits on the board of the danish institute for human rights, one of the top 5 scholarly think tanks in the world, and the editor-in-chief of the largest danish newspaper) marissa and i made the confusing journey out to our dorm in outer copenhagen. with many bags, crazy rain hair, and absolutely soaked shoes we arrived in the strange little place that is to be home for the next month. we each get our own room, which i'm happy about, but i'm also really thankful to have her down the hall. it's a really strange place - no one in charge, very little info, and you have to bring your own toilet paper and soap every time you go to the bathroom. i was told this was a socialist country... anyway, it's late, and i'm shooting for a glorious 7 hours of sleep tonight, so i'll update later on intergroup relations, my odd living situation, and pictures! love to all!