Update!

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Its been a looong time since I updated this.

The short version.

Half Machine was getting ready for Roskilde festival, I finished school (with an A on the last project no less) and went to Canada for thre weeks. Visited family and friends, went to Vegas with my mom, won at the PENNY slots, haha, and had a great time in both Canada and Vegas. Came back home to Denmark, spent a day with my then-very-new boyriend, and had a job interviw the next day, (didn't work out, but proves that I should not work for evil empires) next up, Roskilde festival, a week of crazy explosions, insane crowds, cold showers, and multiple escapes to the boat, which was a five star hotel after Roskile. Roskilde ended and we came home to the barge, and got working on the Half Machine summer lab, a three week event where artists from all over the world came together to create amazing interactive installations, dance performances, submarine dances, aerobatic routines and light and sound extravaganzas. Its been a ton of fun but was made stressful by the fact that I finally got an apartment, with above mentioned boyfriend. Its beautiful, two floors, gorgeous everything and perfect. We've survived the Ikea trip and the first few shopping trips so we'll see how it goes but so far, amazing. Now I'm back to laying on the submarine, typing this, enjoying the finally hot weather in Denmark, and appreciating having a weekend destination on the sea.

Canada:

The trip home was fantastic and much needed. It was great to go and just settle back in, very naturally but also was very frightening because for the first few days it almost seemed like this entire adventure hadn't happened but of course, it had, and I needed to focus on all the things I'd done and then it was fine. It was the strangest feeling however to simply get back to having dinner with my family, going out with friends, driving to and from Vancouver, and having everything right back where it was. I spent the first week recovering from either a bug or jetlag, and stayed home and got to spend some time with my family without the crazyiness of trying to plan out my time for everyone else. On Friday night, we all met up at the Central City Brewing Company and ended up at Roosters, that was a fun night, it was great to see everyone again and really was like I hadn't been gone at all, which was of course, good and bad. The next week was spent visiting with everyone, trying to get around to doing everything that needed doing while I was still in Canada, and finally, preparing for my trip to vegas. I didn't know about the trip when I went to Canada, it was a surprise birthday present which was fun. My mom and I went and stayed at the Luxor, and employed my mom's very practiced strategy of playing penny machines, and getting loads of free drinks. 😊 We did this a few times and had a load of fun. One night, at the Wynn, we played this again and I won $140 in pennies, the machine just kept singing and singing until some nice customer service guy came over and showed me how to make it pay out instead of sitting ther for hours waiting for it to count out the amount in pennies. Thank you Mr. CSR. We did a bit of shopping and had an amazing tour of the Grand Canyon which despite the insanely long bus trip was well worth the effort as the view and the entire experience was truly spectacular. We came home and I was able to spend a few more days, squeezing in time with friends and family. I even got to go to a Serenity screening, thank you Ben and Browncoats! My trip was pretty full, I managed to see nearly all my friends, have a birthday party (my birthday is June 21), go on a ride along, (with a half danish pc at that, haha, and even got a lesson in how to do an oil change. It was a fantastic trip and ended with a spectacular display of packing as the Bay managed to lose my luggage which was in for repair, and I got it back half an hour before we had to leave the house fr the airport. To say the least, my packing skills were...atrocious. :P Thank you to everyone for a fantastic trip it was really great to see you al!


Back "Home"
Somewhere in my trip home, my parents started referring to Scandinavia as my home, which was great, it went from "When you go back to that place" to "When you go home, remember..." so that was fun. Upon my return 'home' I was met at the airport and given a lit back to the ship which considering my aforementioned packing experience, was a very nice gesture. I went and tried to unpack but it was pointless so we just went to a cafe nearby instead. This was great, as we walked through the old cobbled streets, and saw the American Embassy (heavily guarded, with barb wire fence, etc) and next to it, the Canadian embassy with lovely flowers, a white picket fence and a mat. Gotta love America. Anyway, we had a great dinner outdoors at the cafe, and then walked along the waterfront before heading back to Half Machine, in its new location in Nordhavn, which is on the open ocean. Its beautiful here.

Next up was Roskilde festival.

This was perfect for the first few days, wile setting up. It was a really good vibe of enthusiastic volunteers, who were all happily working together and building the huge explosion village. . We also had three tents entitled the Dream Machines which were beautiful displays of light and interactive elements. (PICTURES)

The festival itself began with a huge influx of 100,00 people storming into the grounds and like locus, destroying everything in sight. Okay it wasn't that bad, but it wasn't pretty either. There were too many people to properly move or enjoy anything, it was boiling hot, an d sleeping in a tent in that weather was horrible so despite one's best intentions of having a great night, going to bed late wasn't an option since sleeping past 7 wasn't an option either. Having a car was a huge advantage however and we managed to escape on a number of occasions, even once going to a castle and spending the day being quite posh comparatively to the mayhem of Roskilde festival. It was fun tough and the performances were amazing - even those besides ours. Chemical Brothers, Jay Z, all sorts of big name players and some of the best smaller world music people too, Bucovina Music Club for example being a ton of jump-around to horns and trumpets kind of fun.

The Half Machine Event:

In a sentence, we had artists from all over the world come to play and collaborate to create interesting projects. It was really inspiring to see everyone working together and to see the types of project that they created. (Everything can be seen here: http://halfmachine.dk/posts/188)

The Move:

This all coincided with me moving in my new apartment. Its beautiful - a two level apartment on a gorgeous street that's quiet, and full of trees and gardens. Its fairly close to everything and such a luxury to not have to take the train to the main city like I did from Lund to Malmo. We've turned our kitchen into a tech-kitchen where its primarily an electronics workshop and secondary, a place where my amazing Scandinavian boyfriend can cook - oh yes, they cook here. 😊 We had a few fun moments - buying a bed that we knew would fit through the door - but didn't make it up the stairs. We left to go borrow a friend's van to return it to Ikea (as it was stuck in the stairwell) and when we got back our neighbor, and the only way we could move the bed out of the hallway via pushing it into his apartment, was gone, so we went to Ikea, got two single beds and brought them up and over the one wedged in the stairwell. That was fantastic. Besides that, we've had some smelly cat issues (apartment came with cats), and that's about it, its beautiful, and completely amazing and I'm really happy. We had a house warming party on Friday which was a lot of fun, had a small group of friends over, and had a very 'hygge' gettogether, with everyone having a nice time, and enjoying our ridiculous geekiness. (We even put LEDs on our doorbell so people could figure out it was us. I love us.)

I'm currently working on trying to establish a career either in Denmark or Sweden. I'm hoping (really hoping) to get a job I had an interview for on Friday so we'll see - and hopefully we'll see by the end of this week.

This weekend I'm off to Berlin, and then back for a last couple weeks of summer before its all back to work and school and mayhem!

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