Silver Linings and Clouds

It's been a whirlwind of a week but I've finally managed to pull all my shit together and get back on track, school-wise at least. And Thursday I came home to find a surprise waiting in the mail--my sister sent me an iPad! She bought a new iPad 2, so she sent me her older iPad. Not that I'm complaining or anything--I love it and there is no way I would EVER have been able to buy something like that on my own. So I've spent the last few days playing with my new toy, getting it all set up and downloading ebooks onto it.

It's actually really nice because it means that this summer when I go to Afghanistan, I won't have to drag a bunch of books with me--I can just bring my iPad!

However, there was one negative aspect to the gift--it meant that I had to call my sister to thank her. As usual, it didn't take long for our conversation to deteriorate into an argument. So that's the way it ended. And that is why I only talk to her on birthdays and Christmas.

We see the world through very different lenses, and with her being so much older than me (almost five years--not a lot now but a biiiiig difference when we were growing up), she feels the need to constantly instruct me in how I should be living my life and is not afraid to point it out when she feels I am making a mistake. Which is often. Because living a life different from hers is apparently a mistake. Also she keeps trying to get me to work with her, which I have no intention of ever doing.

Sigh.

Every silver lining comes with a cloud.

Chronicles of Copenhagen

I just replied to an email from my sister asking for advice about places to visit in Copenhagen, and suggestions for any "typical souvenirs" people buy in Denmark. A coworker of hers is going to Copenhagen for two days next week for work, and so my sister emailed me on her behalf asking for advice. Well, I don't think they quite had in mind the book I emailed back. I realize that she's only going to be in the city for two days, and since she's going for work she'll be busy most of the time, but I couldn't help myself! I LOVE THAT CITY!!!

But do you want to know the bad part? When I opened that email and read the message, I had to sit back and actively try to think of places to send this nameless, faceless co-worker of my sister's. I sat there for a minute thinking, and at first nothing came to mind! I spent four months in that city, I lived, breathed, loved Copenhagen and three years later I can't think of any of the main tourist attractions!

Luckily, however, after a minute a few of my favorite places came to mind, and once I started to list them they just kept coming, hence the really long email I ended up sending.

The whole process just made me really homesick for my city, so I pulled out my disks of pictures from that semester in CPH and started looking through them. I just can't say this enough, so here I go again: I LOVE COPENHAGEN!!!!!!!

The picture above is from that city and that semester, I don't know where I was in the city when I took it. I was on my way to the Black Diamond (the nickname for the National Library) at the very end of the term for the program's closing convocation when I took this, so it's somewhere in that general vicinity.