That Easy Feeling

This post isn't going to contain much in terms of words (though I think some of the photos are particularly hardcore); I still have a lot going on on account of how much I have going on, but it really wouldn't make for an interesting read (do you really want to know how my classes go, word by word? If so, then I will write, but otherwise I'm going to assume that I should only focus on the very cool bits, of which there may be fewer since I now have to start hunkering down and getting with the whole "education" thing). The posts from now on are probably going to be a bit less extensive, in general; I have actual homework (believe me when I say that my spirits sank more than a bit at the prospect of actually committing myself to doing it) and other personal affairs that need taken care of and which conflict brutally with my desire to write blogs as long as my arm.

But I'm going to do my best. I owe you lot that much.









And here's how Christian and Peter finish a day at Copenhagen North. (Dear Administrative staff: this is going to have to become our website's greeting image.



The above image is merely a sampling of the afternoon's madness: Monday was the official beginning of the school year, and our first day did not disappoint in the least. You know your school is off the chain when the first day's agenda calls for a smattering of the usual "syllabus this and that" discussion before you, along with the entire student body, are offered Free Everything at Bar 44 for a good forty-four minutes (though these people have no qualms about paying for beer on the forty-fifth). The whole lot of us were downstairs in the first thirty seconds, sampling the delectable sweetmeats (mini-Bounties and fresh apples? What hath God wrought?) and drinking whatever the Hell we felt like drinking to our hearts' content. Big props to the Bar 44 crew for keeping the party going; I went for a bike ride to get my falafel and ice cream, and when I got back there were still sauced folks fumbling their way across the campus plaza. Bravo. (Side note: Bar 44 wrote back, so perhaps I'll have a [small] job in the near future. Prepare to have your [fourth or fifth] beer served with a disapproving shake of the head. Just kidding.) Also: Andra, you might want to look for your ass before you leave the air hockey table; last I saw, it was in the trash. (Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!)



















My curriculum is modular; I'm guessing that we start with a single program, then work a second one in, and then a third, and so-forth, until we can each function as a one-man (or -woman) design studio (to a point; the emphasis seems to be on teamwork, or at least this is the impression given me by my professors, who have spent the last three days stressing the importance of group dynamics). The first program being introduced is Photoshop, so you know the boy got skills and that the lock upon which I have the game is a steel-plated, diamond-encrusted sort of lock (though it's not exactly the hardest program in the world to use; I expect to see lots of similar boys and locks in the near future). From there we proceed to Flash, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, InDesign (the advent of which I anticipate with some dread; I hate InDesign, having used it for Valencia's newspaper), and I think I heard mention of hand-coded HTML, which irks me somewhat, but it'll be good to have a refresher. I haven't done serious web design since junior year, but I still remember how Flash works, and since most of the web is easily broken down into Flash and Dreamweaver, I don't see much difficulty.

I could, of course, be wrong.

(The beautiful Danish ladies below (on the left: Clara. The right: Emelia) not only served me some seriously gangster ice cream, but they are also John Mayer fans. I am never leaving.)




Okay nevermind that shit. Just writing out a fraction of my classroom goings-on is causing my guts to boil with discontent. What I want to tell you about is the damn folk school. I have experienced some degree of Chill in my time. I have lain in my own back yard and watched the sky change colors while the stars wink in and out of existence. I have been to the Friedlands, where the breeze blows through empty windmills and across well-kept gardens. I have sat on the floor at Melrose and watched smoke float around my head like some sort of Godly Beard (+10 to Wisdom, Invincibility). I've rested my weary legs at the Swan Hotel without spending a penny, in a hammock that let me smell a beautiful girl's hair, while fireworks went off in the distance, and thought to myself, "Man. Life can be so pleasing when you take most of it away." These instances find their Chill Rating severely challenged by my trip to the folk school.










The very concept of such a school is fundamentally chill. Imagine, if you can, that you attended a boarding school where all you did was learn in the purest sense of the word. A school without exams, or classrooms, or any serious obligations to anyone but yourself. Then imagine that next to this school there sat acre after acre after acre of verdant farmland. Green fields, as far as your eyes could see, and beyond them nothing but forest and a sky that lends its azure sheen to the clouds dotting its ceiling like islands in the ocean. Then take away the sound of all those automobile engines (already scarce in Denmark's less-populous suburban communities), and replace it with birds and not much else. That's what Tuesday was like.











Vali, Kosmin, Andrie and I were the only ones to realize the value of such a glorious, albeit brief, retreat from the clutches of modernized living. We four walked onto the fields, and took it all in. Only Vali and I made it beyond the grass to the wheat field. Oh, the wheat field. 'Twas some Gladiator shit. Diana, you are going to love this place.
















More tomorrow from my dad's birthday dinner. Indus, Lise. Freaking Indus. Remember that place? Still just as good.