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.