Work and play

A jolly time

I had a wonderful time last night!  It was Sventer's (svet-er) last dinner with us before he left, and he bought a lot of wine for dinner.  Through the night, we drank, and after dinner, Sventer brought out his guitar, and we all sang along to songs-- traditional native songs, james taylor, and many others.  we were all up till one, and it was a fantastic time!  It was a wonderful dinner, and just a wonderful time all around.  I slept in an extra hour today because of it.

here's a video I took of some singing.  I think it sounded better in person than in the recording...  haha

I worked a good part of the day.  I had to destroy the sculpture i was working on because the clay was cracking terribly.  I would be working, then see daylight through the side of it, and they were long vertical cracks...  I decided to use the clay i have to throw pots, something i haven't done in a long time, and I've been having a marvelous time with it.  I've been making pieces with what i think of as smoke plumes on the sides of them.  I'm trying to relax my throwing style a little more and just have fun with it.  It's been pretty fun so far.  I can get stoneware on monday and start a new sculpture.  

a large bowl i'm working on

It was Liv's (the Norwegian resident) turn to cook tonight.  She mostly stayed in the studio while her boyfriend cooked dinner with Marianna (a Danish network resident).  It was a fantastic meal.  He made Spaghetti Carbonara, a wonderful plate of roasted seasonal vegetables with coconut milk, brussel sprouts, and Marianna made a salad.  It was very quiet at dinner, as Sventer was gone and 5 other people went to Copenhagen to a concert.  I get my room to myself since my room mate was one of them.

Cups!

After dinner, it was my turn to help clean up and do dishes along with Jessica (another american resident from woodstock, NY).  We talked for a bit and thought it would be fun to go into town and check out cafe skaelskor, the local bar.  We recruited Erna (an Icelandic Network resident) to go along, but only after we all went and worked till around 10pm .

Cafe Skaelskor is a very small and very well lit bar.  Their juke box features a lot of "hits of (insert decade here).  apparently haddaway was insanely popular here...   they also seem to love dolly parton and CCR.  No one really talked to us for the first hour, then one person began talking to us and that opened the flood gates...  In the middle of talking to this danish woman named Sally, I was called over by this towny Danish man and asked if i was scottish.  I had purchased a really cute skirt at the Red cross second hand store, and he thought it was a kilt and I was dressed like a scottish person.  It was an odd question, but then it got stranger because he asked me another question--even more off than the first one.  He said,"Uh, do you wear your scottish garb in the traditional scottish way??"  lol, It was funny, because i think he thought he was being very clever, but I already knew that traditional scottish kilt wearing doesn't include things like underwear... So yeah, I basically was asked by a bar regular if I had no underwear on.  He was very amazed that I was american and that i was there.  any time he brought it up (he brought it up a lot) he had to punctuate it by not just saying "the states", but saying "the fucking states".  Strangely enough, apparently the Danish people know what snail trails are...  go figure...

I didn't really talk to Henny (the kilt questioner) much after that... i was informed later by Erna that in the northern countries, the size of a man's chain is supposed to indicate his sexual prowess or masculinity.  Henny had on a very large silver chain.  I guess bar crawlers are the same in most countries after all, haha.

same cups, different view. 

I was lucky to have another local start talking to me at that point.  Lars was a pretty cool person.  We talked about Amon Amarth, Metallica, lars frederiksen and the bastards (coincidentally a half Danish person), the marx brothers, laurel and hardy, old movies in general and cultural stuff.  By far the highlight of the local people so far.  While i was talking to him, the goofy but nice guy that walked me to the main house the first night i was here showed up and kept trying to talk to me.  Lars is convinced he fits the profile of a serial killer.  Funny enough, everyone who had to talk to him that were native Danish also had a hell of a time trying to understand him.  He does know enough english to string together the words, "Tracy, you make me crazy".  Funny since I haven't really said much to him at all.  He was caterwauling down the street while we were walking back home.  I didn't know what he was singing, but he was screaming something, then he'd get louder and scream "tracy!" as part of it.  I was being serenaded, haha.  It was a fun time.  

I have to make dinner with Wenda (UK Network resident) tomorrow.  I went to the grocery store earlier today, and the whole trip took 2 hours because i had a hell of a time finding a particular kind of cheese.  I think I spent a whole hour staring at cheese packages trying to figure out if it was a relative of what i wanted.  I never figured it out, so wenda and I just decided to buy this large block of cheese that was called "Thor" and had a celtic knot on it, as well as a picture of thor.  Bad ass cooking demands bad ass cheese, and no one, except odin, is as bad ass as thor!  I ended up having a headache, and we were all joking around about how staring at cheese gives me headaches.  I never had too much of a problem with the packaging of food in Italy, because a lot of the words are pretty close to what they are in english, but here, it's every man for himself.  I bought a thing of lunch meat yesterday and didn't know what it was, and so i asked a danish resident what it is--I bought a lunch meat made of cow tongue.  It's pretty good.  she told me that it's what a lot of kids get sent to school with for lunch here.  I guess it's sort of like the Danish equivalent of bologna, except it's way better quality and actually tastes pretty good.