American failure

America has failed its friends and itself
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The more I read about US military prisons, the more disgusted I become with our government and upper-level military. It is really sick how often we've tortured prisoners, and I just can't believe anymore that each was honestly just 'an isolated incident.' I don't think it's possible for it to be so widespread but not policy. And, as far as prisoner treatment goes, some of the things we excuse as just barely legal are equally repulsive. Even worse, we allow many countries which we've denounced as enemies of democracy to torture some prisoners for us! "Enemies of Democracy" - ha! We are the enemy of democracy! The government continuously spouts this rhetoric about bringing democracy to the rest of the world, yet we deny it not only to those caught up in our War on Terror, but we also deny it to our citizens with instruments like the Patriot Act. Bush is not interested in liberty for the world - he's interested in total political liberty for himself, the power to accomplish anything he wishes and gain everything he wants. I am so glad the Iraqis aren't forced to live under a terrible dictator like Saddam anymore, he really was a nightmare of a leader and did horrible things to his people. But our leader has become just as bad! Prisoners in Guantanamo are denied access to lawyers, abused by their jailers, held without charge, refused all the basic freedoms we take for granted. If Bush really wanted to spread democracy and freedom throughout the world, he would extend the legal privileges of Americans to our prisoners. How can we push our system on other countries, force our values on foreign peoples, and then not even apply them to everyone under our jurisdiction? Instead, we brush off the report by Amnesty International on American abuse of prisoners as 'absurd', Cheney saying he didn't take AI seriously and Bush calling the report 'the work of people who hate America.' Funny how they did a 180 - just a few years ago, Cheney was citing Amesty reports on Iraq as part of the rationale for war. I was reading today (before the article on how Guantanamo prisoners are being denied their day in court) about suspected torture and mistreatment of prisoners in Burma. I found it mild compared with the reports of American maltreatment of prisoners - only 3 deaths! less than 30 tortured! While both are detestable, it's sad how far our country has fallen in this area. A beacon of freedom and democracy has become a hypocritical cesspool of rights breaches.

Nice Things :- )

Tonight, I walked home from the bus stop, and the sky amazed me. It was almost 2:30 in the morning. It was dark, but there was still light in the sky. In one direction, I could see clouds tinted a dark red. In the other, where the clouds broke the sky was an amazing bright blue, darker than the normal color of day, but very very bright. I couldn't tell whether I was seeing the last colors of the sun setting or the first colors of the sun rising. It was so amazing.

Skagen!

Skagen is the northernmost point on continental Europe. It's at the very tip of Denmark, where the North Sea and Baltic Sea meet. Jenn, Kristi, Erin and I all visited today. We walked down the pedestrian street after the four-hour train ride. It was really weird - every building matched. They all had the same basic, Danish shape and style, and every single one was yellow with a red tile roof. It got kinda creepy as we kept walking and they never changed. We weren't there for the shops, though - we were there for the beach, so we started walking towards it. A couple of houses broke the mold as we left town, but no more than I can count on one hand. We found a really beautiful beach - perfect white sand, sea grass, huge rocks by the water (which was absolutely freezing!). We had a picnic and played in the water, picked up cool rocks (Kristi is a geology major), took a bunch of pictures, admired the light (sought out by numerous painters). The color of the sky and the clouds was such an amazing blue - Erin called it an "emotional blue", and I think that description fit really well. Then we started walking to the point. OMG, it was rough - walking through soft shifty sand and smooth deep rocks is a real workout. We finally made it, and it was soooo cool. The two seas have different temperatures and the currents flow in different directions, so the color of the waters is slightly different, and the waves crash into one another in a line extending from the point. We took turns having our picture taken as the northernmost person on continental Europe. I got some awesome pictures of the waves.


After playing around at the north point, we began walking back into town. We were planning on seeing the buried church. Only the steeple is visible - the rest has been covered by sand drift. It's not like a sand dune heaped around the church - the level where people walk is now at the level of the steeple. But, as we walked back, it started raining, first lightly and gradually more intensely. It was pouring by the time we got to the train station, so we went ahead and took the train back to Aarhus (very soggy). We didn't get to see anything else, but everyone was still pleased with the trip. The beach was what we came for, and it was just as amazing as we'd all heard. It was an almost perfect trip.

Horsens!

Jenn and I went to Horsens today. We wanted to see the fjord (an inlet carved out by glaciers). So we took the half hour train ride south after almost no planning and arrived in the small town of Horsens. It was really cute, with a lot of very traditional Danish houses and a large gate over the entrance to the pedestrian walk that reminded me of something from Legoland. There was a beautiful park right by the train station, full of tall, flowering bushes. We meandered down the pedestrian walk and stopped in at the church in the center plaza. Outside were vendors selling fresh fish, cheese, flowers, and fruit - we bought some of the best strawberries I've ever tasted. Next we made it to the commercial harbor, where the water was full of jellyfish!!!!! Then we got to the harbor with all the sailboats (and more jellyfish). The view was pretty, although the fjord wasn't exactly all we'd expected. While we weren't planning on Norway (famous for its beautiful fjords), we were expecting cliffs. Newer fjords are tall cliffs (see pic of Geiranger Fjord) - older fjords, however, such as the one in Horsens, are filled with water. So it was pretty much just a bay. Maybe it would look cooler if you scuba dived in it. Anyway, we walked down the beach and had a picnic on the grass. Thank God the weather was good!!! It was warm and sunny and breezy, almost perfect. We stayed on the grassy beach for hours, dozing and eating and playing and enjoying the sites - such as the 50 or so year old man with a large gut in BLACK SPEEDO THONG!!!! He was very comfortable with himself, and he laid out right next to the water so everyone could enjoy his body. There was also the scrawny, bony man of about 70 or so laying out in his bright green Speedo that was puffy like a diaper. All in all, interesting beach characters I thought as we left and passed the 70 year old relieving himself in the bushes. I had a nice time (abhorrent scenery or no), the town was cute, the beach was fun, it was great to get away for a day. And I came back with a really crispy sunburn that should turn into a great tan within a few days!

You're going to try what?!?

Today I went to the doctor to take advantage of Denmark's free healthcare. I hurt my foot walking in bad shoes over a month ago, and I hadn't seen any improvement since about a week after the initial pain. I went in (after wandering around FOREVER in the rain looking for the place) and he starts squeezing places on my foot, trying to figure out where exactly the pain was centered. Good God, it hurt so much! He was putting intense pressure on the source of my discomfort and the area around it, repeatedly! Squeezing hard with two fingers just once wasn't enough - oh no, numerous times were necessary to figure out where the pain was centered. Anyway, after deciphering that nothing was broken or jammed or anything like that, he suggested we try acupuncture. Acupuncture!!! I had no idea that was a common, accepted medical practice around here! And we all know how much I looooove needles (in case you don't, I really really really hate them a lot). So I let him stick a needle in my foot (the alternative is taking a prescription for gout). At first, it didn't hurt. I felt a tiny little stick as the needle went in, but I couldn't feel it actually inside my foot. But, oh, it gets worse. He managed to find the direct center of my pain and stab it for awhile, and then stab around in the neighborhood, and there must have been at least half a dozen separate sticks into my foot - that's not counting the poking around with the needle that occurred after it had penetrated my skin. I was in hell! Finally he finished and told me to call in a couple days if it hadn't improved. I'm sure that won't be necessary - I don't see why stabbing my foot with a needle wouldn't improve it!

Free!

I'm finished! After slaving away for a week, locking myself in my apartment and staring outside at the absolutely gorgeous weather, feeling guilty for every hour I wasn't working, I'm finished! The paper from hell, the 10 page paper that I realized was really more like 15 US pages, the nightmare exam that I had 7 days to finish is over! I turned it in today half an hour before deadline, and it felt soooo good! I'm done! My days are mine now! I'll probably be complaining of boredom before the week is out, but at least I won't be whining about my paper! I'm so happy it's over!

First Pangs of .......

It's 2:30 am, and I have just walked from my friend's apartment to my own. While most of the sky was black, in the east, there was a good sized line of pink. The sun was beginning to slowly make its way up. Sunrise was technically at 4:46 this morning. But as I walked home in the cool air (probably in the 50s), I could see the first stretches of the sunlight. I liked it. I'm actually beginning to feel some attachment to Denmark, and I'm not eager to leave like I was. I guess I'm profoundly affected by the weather. I was thinking of taking a picture of the late sunset (currently around 9:50) on the day I fly home, and the thought of actually leaving became very concrete to me. I'm not sure I'm ready to just pick up and abandon, possibly forever, the place I've spent the last 5 months inhabiting. While in the midst of horrible February weather, few things would have made me happier than going back to Texas or Oklahoma. But now, with the sun shining and temperatures in the 60s and lower 70s every day, with 17 hours of sunlight per day (a figure that's increasing steadily), I'm not as excited as I was about returning to 100 degree heat and withering humidity.

Austria: Day 3

Today began with shopping. Compared to Denmark, Graz seemed so cheap! So I spent a reasonable amount of money and came away with quite a few things. I was pleased. Then I went to a palace on the outskirts of Graz called Schloss Eggenberg. It's built to resemble the universe, with a planetary garden, four towers facing the four directions, 24 state rooms, 52 windows, and some others I can't remember. The coolest part was the peacocks! I walked up the long pathway and there was a peacock just wandering around the grass! After I took a ton of pictures and walked on, I realized there were at least two dozen of them, just roaming around the grounds, flaunting their feathers and making a weird sound. I've never heard a peacock call before! There was an albino peacock as well! It was beautiful, totally white, completely amazing. I explored the grounds and found a little grotto in a niche of the plaza at the center of the palace. It was made of a porous rock and decorated with designs made of seashells. There was a fountain in the center, and the whole thing reminded me of the sea. I liked it a lot. Then I took the tour of the state rooms, which had some of the original sumptuous decor of the 17th and 18th centuries. The rooms were all full of paintings - some set into the ceiling, some put up on the walls, many of them depicting gory disgusting scenes of history or mythology. I enjoyed it a lot, though. Afterwards, I went to a little museum in the back of the palace. Mostly it was coins, with a little pottery and some weaponry, but they also had a mummified head displayed with a mummified falcon & baby crocodiles alongside a sarcophagi. It was awesome!!!! Don't know why it was in Austria, but who cares?

After my trip to the palace, I took a little nap and then had a really nice dinner. The waitress was in traditional Austrian dress - it was kinda funny, but apparently it's normal. I saw lots of waitresses at different restaurants in these dresses, and they were even in shop windows alongside normal women's business suits. So dinner was great, then I went to see the Opera House. It was very nice. I liked that it was intricate and decorated on every side, not just the front entrance. There was a large wire statue nearby that looked a lot like the Statue of Liberty. Not sure what that was about.

Austria: Day 2

Today was a holiday, Ascension Day, I think. Almost everything was closed because of it, but it also meant there were fewer people on the streets, so that was nice. It's good to be able to look touristy without toooo many people around to notice. Since I slept through the hotel's breakfast, I ate at the cafe in Mur Island. Mur Island is an artificial island built in the middle of a river running through Graz. It sorta looks like a conch shell. Breakfast was good, and then I continued my tourist walk through the city. I had a list of the sights I wanted to see in the city, and I made my way through Graz, seeing the history. It's a really cool town, small, nice and clean, relaxed. They pride themselves on their mix of modernism and history, and on their selection as Unesco's 2003 Cultural Capital of Europe. They apparently celebrated quite a bit over that one, and there are still remnants of it around the city. I saw the armoury - it was fun. Tons and tons of weapons and armour, most of it a few centuries old. My favorite floor was the ground floor, though, with the history of the wars fought where the armour was necessary. I found it really interesting; the weaponry alone got a little redundant, though. When all 8000 rifles look the same, you can't spend a lot of time with them. But I'm glad I went, it was cool. I saw the Royal Bakery, which has been serving the people longer than we've been a country (since 1568). I spent the entire day sightseeing, so by early evening, I was exhausted. I slept for a couple hours, and then experienced the highlight of my evening. I took a nice, long, relaxing bath in the hotel's huge bathtub. It was my first bath since I arrived in Denmark!!!!! It was so so so so so so so so so wonderful, especially after a day of walking and a couple days of traveling.

Austria: Day 1

Ugh, getting to this country has been a nightmare! I had to take a bus to the Aarhus airport, and I missed the bus from my house to downtown to take the Flybus, so I had to take a cab to get there, and then I figured out I could have gotten the bus at a different point and made it without the expensive cab. I was quite angry. Then I flew to London, where I had to spend the night. I couldn't sleep, I was bored out of my mind but still tired. I finally got to Austria, where I had to take a bus then a tram then walk before I finally got to my hotel. It has a bathtub!!!!! I haven't seen a bathtub since I came to Europe. Oh man, I've got plans for that baby! I checked in, exhausted, and took a nap. Then I went out that night with Martin and Beate. Martin is an Austrian friend of Kyle's who lives in Graz and Beate is his girlfriend. They were both so nice to me! We went up on the Schlossberg, a large hill in the middle of Graz. You can see all over the city from there. It used to be a fort, but Napoleon had almost everything up there torn down, so they planted trees all over it and made paths and now it's beautiful. It's very nice, a piece of nature in the middle of the city. The paths and trees and things are great, and the view is spectacular. After hanging out on the Schlossberg for awhile, we went to the Stadtpark. It's the city's major park, and there's a bar in the middle of it that we hung out at for awhile. It was packed because tomorrow is a holiday, so I got to meet several of Martin & Beate's friends. We just sat on the grass of hill overlooking a nice little pond and chatted until about 2, when I walked back to my hotel. I got döner on the way home, and it was soooo good! I'd missed it since Berlin.

Deliciousness

I took a quiz called What Kind of Candy Are You? So, surprise of surprises (Mom), I am a.......




I'd like to hear your comments on the accuracy of my results.

While I hate to influence your opinion by clogging your head up with my own views, I know you're dying to hear what I think. In short......somebody understands me!!!! LOL, I was really happy to get these results - Peeps are one of my favorite candies.