hej hej

May 17, 2023

hej hej

i woke up at 6 am this morning, frightened by the bright light shining through the curtains, thinking i’d missed the alarm and missed the flight. always happens, not too surprised. gave me good time to eat breakfast and cook lunch, too. last time i’ll be packing a lunch 🙂 also took out the trash and cleaned up the food that was left.

leaving doesn’t feel as real as being left behind. it’s an interesting phenomenon that has plagued my entire life. i’ve said this already, but perhaps it’s because leaving is so entangled with the process of going, arriving, and new adventures/locations.

kelly came at 8 am and we chatted until the ride to the airport came. i’m sad to leave her, but i’m glad she found a nice host family and is spending more time with them.

the airport is a wonderful place, different languages coming out of everyone’s mouths, people hurrying to get places and people waiting. i’m not gonna cry. i’m glad that this part of my life is over. i learned more about myself, what i liked, didn’t like, wanted out of life.

now I’m just wasting thought away, trying to not be bored for the next 5 minutes until 12. then I can go check if my flight’s check in has opened. if it has, i can then check in, go through security, and wait my next two empty hours on airside, rather than landside. yay, i guess. oh, and i can eat lunch and see how my fried rice turned out. aw man, should’ve boiled that egg. why is there still 5 minutes?

denmark has been ok to me. a lot of ups and downs. the downs i keep remembering, but more good things happened.

hej hej means both goodbye and hello in danish, so perhaps it is the same thing. a friend of mine used to say, see you sunday!

– denmark

the first new growth i saw this spring.

it seemed like they had appeared in one night, popped out of the patches of earth or gently fluttered down from the sky. some say that if the wind blows hard enough, the the flowers become butterflies and are freed from their earthly bonds. but who is to say that the opposite isn’t true? to me, these dancing daffodils might just be butterflies who needed a rest. the past winter had been so long that spring came as a surprise. as i walked out of the humid auditorium with its grey walls, spring greeted me with its colors.

– denmark

sound of a train.

in different languages, trains make different sounds. in japan, the children hiss as they line up one after the other, mimicking the carriages running on the rails. in taiwan, the children turn their elbows and yell ching chiang ching chiang, like the sound of the metal bars turning the wheels. the chatter inside, however, is the same. on empty days, it’s a quiet murmur, people in low voices, afraid of standing out. i like it when the trains are loud, the atmosphere lively and full of little groups. that way, it’s easier to talk to the person next to you. on that day, i sat next to an old Moroccan man, and he asked me in broken english if I spoke French. I couldn’t, but that didn’t stop him. our conversation was one of photos and hand gestures, through the two hours from casablanca to marrakech, ending only when the train arrived.

– denmark