This is it.

Well, it is now the day before my flight back to Chicago. In 24 hours, I will be on American soil in a familiar city with people I have missed, eating my mother’s homemade lasagna and asking Celia to show me her most recent masterpieces. This past week has gone by so quickly, and it seems at this point that my entire trip was a blur. It was so long, but it really did fly by at the same time. Some of my new friends are on their way home today, while others still have begun explorations of new lands in Europe, and now I can only wait for my turn to board the plane.

Our final critiques on Tuesday went well. At the last minute, Helle Vibeke had us rearrange our presentations so that each of us would be hanging our textile one-at-a-time in the hallway outside our classroom while everyone else (including Melene, Gunhild, Joy, and the head of the Danish Design School program) gathered around in chairs to listen. My personal project went over pretty well, and everyone seemed especially interested in my photoshopping of the pattern onto other objects to describe its possible uses (yay UIC industrial design presentaitons!).

Wednesday was exam day, with an easy, though time-consuming, 12-essay-question test taking up the morning. Afterwards, we headed over to our exhibition space with our artworks to set up for the showing that started at 4pm. The space was an old bank, which both Hans Christian Anderson and Helle Vibeke used to have money in at some point until it closed. We set up our finals, samples, and sketchbooks on tables along with the Architecture, Information Design, Urban Design, and Furniture students, and we even had the projector running in the old bank vault, throwing our final designs up on the walls so people could take their own pattern pictures. It was a fun show, and I was able to talk to a lot of the DIS people who I hadn’t seen since arriving in June, so that was funny. Afterwards, DIS held a social for us in a nearby courtyard, served us food, and let us go on our marry way to our newfound school-less freedom.

It really does feel strange knowing that I will be leaving all of a sudden, though. I really don’t know if I’ll ever come back to this place, although I do now feel like it is somewhat of a home to me. Then again, as I said before, I never really miss the places I visit; the place is just the container for everything else. It is definitely the people that you meet and get to know there, the experiences you share, and the short (and therefore possibly more cherished) time you have together that makes things feel special. Still, I don’t know if I’ll be seeing all of those people ever again, either.

Alex and I are already talking about taking a trip to New York to visit, and I keep urging my classmates to do the same and visit Chicago… I really hope at least a few of them will take me up on the offer, even if it’s three years from now. I could not be more serious about that, either. I love you guys.

As a response to my past self’s declaration that “I am not expecting to change as a person from this trip but rather just gain more experiences,” I would definitely say that I had no idea what I was talking about. Absolutely no idea. Which is understandable. Now I know. And I feel different. And I wish to keep this feeling of what little worldly knowledge I have gained from this trip, even as the memories may fade and the photographs become less sentimental. America is not the world, nor should it be. Get out there, travel, and learn.

I will miss my teachers, my classmates, and my feeling of security that I found for myself in this strange place. It is both saddening and a hopeful feeling, as I now know that it really doesn’t take very long to settle into somewhere and make fast friends, but it also doesn’t take much for that security to be uprooted as you all separate and move on.

Alas, we will always have Copenhagen…

“Farvel!” for now, and “Tak!” for everything. It’s been a blast. :)

NINE DAYS LEFT

And so much to do! Yesterday we finished up the actual final textile, but still have to present our projects to a group of five designers on Tuesday, so before that, we must prepare a portfolio and get ready to exhibit at the final show, too.

The day after the presentations, on Wednesday, we have a five-page paper due that we have to turn in when we come in to take our final exam. When the exam is done, we will travel to our exhibition space, where we will set up our textiles and sketchbooks for the show that opens at 4pm. After the show that day, DIS is throwing a party for everyone, and Thursday and Friday are just spent at the show. Saturday I’m catching my flight home!

I have been having trouble with my camera, so I don’t really have much to show visually to document my experiences over this past week, but I’ve still done quite a few memorable things. Other people have been taking photos, though, so I’ll post those here. The weather in Copenhagen has been unbelievably gorgeous, a hot 75°F (nothing compared to Chicago’s scorching heat, though, or so I hear), so we’ve been taking advantage of the sunshine whenever we are not in class and not exhausted from class. Yesterday we ate lunch on the opera steps and we went to the beach last night, and both were lovely and felt like the summer that I sometimes think I’ve been missing by being in school here.

Hope everything’s going well back home! See you all again soon!

Update - Week Seven

I’ve been gone from America for seven weeks now, and everything has finally fallen into place. I love going to class, the people who I see everyday are awesome, and all in all, I’m now pretty much totally comfy in my surroundings.

It’s funny, but I realize that I really don’t miss the cities of Tinley Park or Chicago very much - I just miss the people who live there. But I’ll get to see them all soon enough! There are only three weeks left to my program, and then I’m catching a plane back to Chi-town on August 4th. I’ve only got a week of summer after that before heading back to my new campus job on the 12th… Goodness gracious.

Just have to concentrate now on living day-to-day.

This past week for class (ever since the completion of our study tour), we had relocated to the “Royal Danish Design School” in order to use the printmaking facilities they have. OH BOY, let me tell you, coming from a background of jankily-rigged-DIY-Print-Monger mechanics, this studio space is the epitome of luxury. It’s ridiculous.

We spent time learning how to mix our own dyes and make newspaper stencils, and we’ve been playing around with different dying techniques and fixing processes ever since. This upcoming week, we will start to use emulsion and to expose screens like I am used to doing back at the Print Monger studio, but we are still using dyes instead of acrylic inks, so the process isn’t exactly like I’m used to. Still, it’s addicting, and my classmates and I keep finding ourselves staying pretty late after class and coming in on the weekends just to take advantage of the facilities and conduct some printing experiments.

All in all, I can’t believe I’ve been here so long, but I feel like I’ve been here forever. I’m completely ready to head home, but I don’t want to head home yet. I’m having fun, and I’m happy.