disenfranchised?

My absentee ballot arrived in the mail yesterday, so I quickly filled it out, sealed it up, and went to the post office today to mail it. In my experience in Denmark so far, mailing ANYTHING to the US costs at least 8 kroner. But the postal worker today, when I was sending the most important document I have sent so far from Denmark, charged me only 7 kroner. Maybe it's cheaper to send things is official government envelopes, or maybe the woman was new and confused, or maybe she was taking a stand against American hegemony and ensuring that I couldn't be an active American citizen while living in Denmark. Either way, I'm concerned that my ballot will not get to New Jersey and thus my vote won't be counted in this close election. (Someone's actually running against my asshole Representative, and although he probably doesn't have a shot he does have a similar last name, so if you're from NJ's 5th, get out and vote! And watch the clip of Paul Aronsohn on the Colbert Report.)

In other news, autumn is in full swing. The trees haven't really started changing yet, because it was such a warm summer, but there's that chill in the air. The apple I ate today just tasted like fall. It was delightful. I'm about to head south to slightly warmer weather, but so it goes.

I had a pretty busy weekend; I went out with some friends Friday night, but didn't stay out to late because I had to wake up early on Saturday to make some nice fluffy American pancakes with real maple syrup. My host family didn't really think there was anything so special about the syrup, as my mom thought they would, but they quite enjoyed the pancakes. At the dinner table on Saturday night I observed the universality of tension between a mother and her sixteen-year-old daughter. "You can only go out with your friends if you get your homework done beforehand, and no talking online while you're doing it!" Mothers will always, wherever they are and whatever their daughters do, find some point on which to hassle them.

On Sunday, I returned to Jutland, spending many hours on a bus in order to visit Legoland. It was well worth it. The miniature world is AMAZING, and although the park is aimed towards kids, there are a lot of great rides. It's definitely a place I'd like to bring my kids some day, as an excuse to experience it even more fully.

In Danish news, the Danish People's Party has made a fool of themselves and their closed-minded racism. There's a travel warning for Danes going to Muslim areas, such as Turkey, where my host sister is going with her father tomorrow. Besides that, I don't think the rest of the world cares, yet. But we'll see--it took a few months for the cartoon crisis to get out of hand. That whole situation exploded because of a lot of overreacting on all sides along with an unwillingness to engage in dialogue. People even outside of Denmark continue to defend the publication of the cartoons as freedom of speech, as though in objecting to them Muslims are backwards people who will force us to do away with our most prized freedoms. An article in the New York Times quotes a Dutch woman with a Muslim husband: "No amount of explanation about free speech could convince her husband that the publication of cartoons lampooning Muhammad in a Danish newspaper was in any way justified." I do agree that the government can't legally do anything to Jyllands-Posten for publishing the cartoons, but the Prime Minister could have still met with the Muslim leaders in Denmark, and there is certainly no need to socially defend the paper. Just because there's freedom of speech doesn't mean you can be a complete jerk without suffering social consequences.