december doings
bye-byes, burlington and a brand new year
December and 2023 is over! I am currently packing up my bags for Montreal, and even though its only been a few short weeks since November ended, I feel like a lifetime has passed. December had so much to do, so many people to see, and so many cookies to bake and eat. This post is business as usual with some short summaries of the month, but in honour of the new year also some reflections on the year that passed and has, thankfully, come to a close.
As per usual, and like everything anyone puts on the internet, I will have left out many things by accident and on purpose.
Buckle up, this one is going to be a long one. Read to the very end for my first travel-blog feature about my visit to Burlington, Vermont!
Quotes of the month:
I went full hermit this month, so the quotes are from a pretty small circle, aka my roommates almost exclusively.
“Two things can be true at the same time” - don’t remember who or where, but it felt really important this month, and this whole year
“Congrats! You did a really hard thing!” - Alina
“Then you deal with disappointment in private” - Anna, on the perks of finding your Christmas gifts as a child before Christmas and acting surprised when unwrapping them in front of the giver. I think about this quote almost everyday and laugh
“I look forward to tomorrow… I also look forward to the time in between…sometimes when you look forward to things, it’s like you can waste the in between, so I try to also look forward to what’s before” - Matthias
“They’ll have to love me as I am” - Madi, on not prepping for a job interview (That she got! Yay Madi!)
“First and second year I felt like a cat scratching at the door to get out, but this year I’ve felt like a cat lounging in the sun” - Madi, a sentiment I want to carry forward
Moments
I stress ate a wheel of brie to cope with my own idiocy of starting a final essay pretty much the day before it was due (Thank you Anna for providing this. I would not have gotten through without it.)
Secret Santa Session! Apparently you can eat the packing peanuts from Lush?!?
Burrito lunching and Japote lunching
Cookie extravaganza! (Great dip-in-something cookies)
Burgers and a movie with Alina! So calming! Felt so end-of-season! We laughed a lot – At the movie and the circumstances!
Banana pancake breakfast
Matthias’ leaving party with lots of chatting and laughter (And lots of Europeans!)
Sophia’s birthday cocktail night with so many new lovely faces
Barbossa dancing (A pre-dancing pictured above)
Birthday surprise concert for Sophia (Also pictured above)
Dinner with my friend Vansh, lots of gossipping and some pretty good pizza
Craig brought Elsa over. Elsa is one of the 4 dogs in the whole world I am not a little bit scared of and she is so soft
The other 3 are named Gibby, Julio, and Bendico (Benny for short)
Coffee morning walk with Alina the day I was leaving
Strangers always want to strike up conversation with Alina so I got to learn more about our local coffee shop which was a lot of fun
Tik Tok time with my sister Ida when we randomly had to share a room for 1.5 weeks
Brunch including the most delicious chia seed pudding I have ever had
Library visit for the holiday <3
Commencing a crocheting project that I will show next month (Trying to hold myself accountable by posting this)
Being back in Copenhagen was so lovely. I love my neighbourhood a lot
Christmas! <3
Being in Denmark for the Queen’s abdication on NYE
I would have been devastated not to be able to dissect this with my family
So many people brought me clementines after last month’s Thorn. Thank you so much!
Reviews (Lots of good things this month):
Danish Christmas Food
6/10: Too much pork, too much potato. Tasty for 6 bites, hence 6 out of 10. Coming off of vegetarianism for Christmas break was a strategically wise decision though.
Cafe Tuyo
4/10: The apple cake was pretty okay, everything else was on the lower side of mediocre. Sorry Tuyo!
I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson
10/10: I loved this book! So much! I would highly recommend it! It is beautifully, and playfully, written! Touches on grief, love, and their intersections! If you read it, let me know, and we will chat!
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
7/10: Totally fine read, took me a long time to get through compared to her other books that took me literally a day to devour. The message was important but felt a bit too spoon-fed at times.
Don’t Worry Darling
8/10: Despite the controversies and the drama,I thought it was a really good movie. It was well-crafted, and I love Florence Pugh. Some plot inconsistencies (I can’t detail this without spoiling the plot, but that’s where it lost some points) and Harry is not an awesome actor but he’s really hot so I can forgive it…
Queen Margrethe II Abdicating
8.5/10: Added some much needed drama to New Years Eve, the nation is in shock. So grateful to be home to experience this moment. I think it’s a smart decision but it will be strange to have a king now.
Songs on repeat!
No Coward by Demo Version by Augusta
roberts place by voice memo by simon robert french
Interlude: I’m Not Angry Anymore by Paramore
Visions of Gideon by Sufjan Stevens (This single-handedly got me through finals)
The line “I have loved you for the last time” literally breaks my heart into a million tiny pieces
For You by Delaney Bailey
Rose
Watching my 6-year old cousin impersonate Voldemort
(Very accurate. Very impressive. Very funny.)
Thorn
Saying bye-bye for now to so many of my lovely friends who are heading on exchange or heading home! I’m excited for you and your adventures and I am even more excited to have you back in Montreal to tell me all about them. Call me sometime!
Bud
2023 was really hard in a lot of ways. There was so many shifts, sharp turns, losses, I hadn’t expected and didn’t want. Life is so different from what it was. I sometimes miss what once was but at the same time, I also feel more grounded than I have in a long time.
I felt so anxious during much of 2022, and at the start of 2023. I don’t feel as anxious as I did a year ago, nowhere near. I feel so grateful to have grown healthier coping mechanisms to work with the anxiousness that I do feel, and will probably always feel.
I was really reluctant to keep this section of my writing in. I try to write earnestly without oversharing, and it is a constant back and forth in my head, if some things are inappropriate. I felt it would be strange to not acknowledge that there has been some hard things in a post otherwise clad in happiness and gratitude. Happy and hard co-exist and they each add more meaning to life. Alas, this section was kept in.
On that note, half of my bud is the lovely lovely friends I have. I feel grateful to be around people who help me unravel the anxious knot in my stomach by listening tirelessly, who make sure I put brown sugar on my oatmeal (so it doesn’t take like horse food) and who let me take moments on my own when you need a moment to be on your own, to reground, to recollect.
I would peel 100 million oranges for you if I could, but that seems silly so instead let me kill your spiders, wash your dishes when you’re busy, and tell you I think you’re the coolest person I’ve ever met and mean it.
Thank you for being you.
On a more self-reflective note (and I cringe as I write this) I also feel proud of myself. The anxious feelings I do have exist, and I exist with them, but now I can tell them kindly to please leave me alone because quite frankly, they’re being unreasonable.
I am going to spend the rest of my life with me, so I am proud to be making the inside of my head a nicer place to be. That is the ultimate bud, a lifelong love story I am grateful to be pouring my heart and soul into.
(Can’t get enough of my oversharing? Stay tuned, I am working on a post about feeling anxious actually, but it is pretty personal so I am building up the courage to post it! Ironic, huh?)
~Travel Special ~
Burlington, Vermont!
We leave Montreal around 8:30, a beautiful clear day with nothing but blue skies. The drive to the border is pretty quick, almost no cars on the road. Upon arriving at the border we are greeted by a surprisingly cheery border officer. She’s so chatty it throws both of us off, and afterwards we discuss that it felt like a trick. She asks me when I was last in the States, February I answer, and she sends me inside to get a new stamp.
The inside of the border office doesn’t exactly scream promising. There are 3 guys in front of us, all of whom look disgruntled and impatient. A man from, what we will later learn as there is zero privacy in a border office, Laos is also waiting patiently. Next to a large 9/11 Remembrance Flag, a Bob Ross painting tutorial plays and we settle in for what will turn out to be a long time. A steady flow of officers come in and out of the room, none of them doing very much, but all carrying some sort of beverage.
Stirring, sipping, stirring, sipping.
Besides that it’s silent. Any whispered comments between us feels incredibly inappropriate. I look through Philip’s keys, there are 4 if you include his car keys, an indicator of how bored I am. A baby enters the room, accompanied by its parents, and it is so cute. I wave at it and it smiles, my heart melts. 45 minutes later, the three original guys are still waiting, disgruntled, and the Laos Man has been cross-examined and led to a back room to have his belongings checked further. I would bet a lot of my personal items that he really is just an elderly man trying to go visit his sister like he has patiently told the border officer for the past 30 minutes. However, the officer seems to think this man is about to personally set fire to the entirety of the United States and is taking no chances.
Finally I am called up to share all of my personal details in front of an entire room of strangers. The kind lady from the drive-through section asks what I am doing in the United States today, and it takes a lot of self-control to not say the real reason why we have commenced this journey. Instead, I explain we are just going to Burlington for the day. She asks who I am travelling with, where we will be and for how long, and if I plan on committing arson on American soil. I answer them all, to the very best of my ability. I pay 6 dollars for a passport stamp and am granted entry to the country of bald eagles and freedom.
We drive on while I wonder where those 6 dollars are going. The landscape is beautiful: snow-clad, bright blue skies. It reminds me how much I love driving (Well, being driven), looking out onto arguably plain highway adjacents, and being on aux.
First stop: The Great Harvest Cafe. I had picked this out ahead of time and it doesn't disappoint: it is cute, warm, pretty, and has delicious grilled cheeses. It is located between a ton of little art shops that I, of course, have to peek into. Lots of very pretty stained glass. My future house will have a lot of stained glass, I’ve decided. I think it’ll go well with the glow-in-the-dark-painted stars I want throughout my house’s ceiling. Whimsical.
Feeling full of baked goods and artistry, we drive towards the main attraction of the day. I am looking upwards in anticipation, expecting the monument we are searching to appear any minute now. Curiously, no signs don the streets, no large tourist groups are filed up along the streets of Burlington, and I haven’t seen a single snowglobe store either. We drive along, expecting our end goal to appear above buildings, needing birds to fly around it cartoon-style, and to be touching the sky.
Instead, the GPS takes us into a parking lot. Amidst a couple of cars, and next to a construction zone, stands the reason we have driven two hours, and crossed an international border. In a mixture of severe disappointment and shock, as well as absolute hysteria, I ask “That’s it?”.
We get out of the car, in shock, laughing, to take a closer look. Part of me thinks this must be the smaller version of something much bigger. Like the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. But no, this is it. The World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet. “Not even a plaque” Philip says after taking a very short lap around the tower of file cabinets.
In disbelief, I lap it too, looking at the stickers clad to the concrete bottom part of the structure. Someone has written “The experience of a lifetime!” and I couldn’t agree more. We keep laughing at this structure which is, truly, ugly. As any good trip planners, we had read a couple of reviews before committing a whole day to this trip, and they are starting to add up.
A few people had given it 1 star, and while I strongly disagree with this (I am having a blast!), I am starting to understand those who see it as a safety hazard. It might not be that tall, but it is still 36 drawers stacked upon one another, sitting on a large concrete slab, close to a road, and the wind is not gentle. Yet, we can’t stop laughing. Especially me because this whole concept was very much planned out by yours truly.
After about 10 minutes of roaming around the structure, Philip suggests we drive elsewhere. Reluctantly, I agree although I do suggest we return later. You know, to take it in again. I am still laughing as we drive out of the parking lot, leaving behind the World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet.
Thank you for reading along.
with love, cecilia
**the format of this post (and all my other monthly memos) is entirely the courtesy of
!!**
This was the perfect thing to read on a Sunday sitting in the library
love and so sweet!! miss you cecilia