blog camp fears: some founded and most unfounded

photo of me in flamingo stance (there was something wrong with my shoe) by kristina

who am i at blog camp? am i who i really am? am i somehow more or less? am i at ease in myself? do i behave differently? will we click? will everyone belong? are those stupid little hairs i burned off going to stick up so i look like i'm trying to contact my home planet? will they like me? will they like the house? will they feel comfortable here? am i like my blog? if i am, is that a good thing? has my blog somehow presented a picture of myself that doesn't match me? have i been misleading? these questions swirl in my mind in the lead-up to blog camp, that doesn't really change, even tho' we've now had three.

i think the worries are stronger when it's my house. the house is such a reflection of who i am, who WE are as a family, that if the blog campers don't like it or feel it's not as they thought it was from my going on and on about it here, it will feel like that much more a rejection of me. and nobody wants to feel rejected. not that i felt that way at all, but that's my worry, every time, before blog camp begins.

but it turns out that all of those worries are totally unfounded, because the blog campers are wonderful, warm, real, non-judgmental, open people who don't think like that at all. and that the whole weekend is filled with laughing and drinking wine and gin and tonic sorbets and eating and taking pictures and laughing (have i mentioned laughing) and telling stories and making things and talking and getting to know one another.

but there were a few things i should have worried about...like were those orange tights a bit much? should i really stand on one leg to adjust my shoe and risk looking like a flamingo when there are people with cameras in the vicinity? or how awful our ancient we-can't-actually-remember-how-old-it-is toyota looks and what a bad impression it makes to pile people into it to drive home. and how embarrassing it might be to leave scones in the oven 'til they are but a lump of charcoal. and serving enough water to go with the wine. and how junior-high level jealous i could be at how incredibly thin and gorgeous jelica is despite the fact that she refuses to eat vegetables and can put away chocolate and quite a few red velvet cupcakes (insert audible sigh here).  that i should have asked the cleaning girls to make sure the cobwebs were gone from the map ceiling. i could undoubtedly go on, but it's making me mildly depressed, so i'll stop.

interesting to read back over this and realize all of my fears about blog camp were really fears about myself and none of them were really about the gorgeous, fabulous women who came to blog camp. you guys obviously rocked.

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don't forget to stop by here this week for more photos of blog camp. 

i really do adore our across ö/øresund project.

blogging blog camp 2.0 - take 1

blog camp lived a little more up to its name this time around. at least the blogging part of it. because we (and by we, i mean spud) actually blogged at blog camp (tho' there was still no camping). it might have been the rain, which kept us indoors on saturday. it might have been that this time, i planned it that way - that we would have a relaxed day, where we could just hang out together and talk. we also actually did a little craft project, which was one of the original ideas behind blog camp - remember when we talked about everyone having a talent that they would share? that somehow got dropped along the way, but sabin remembered it and she insisted that we all make some small clay figures.

there's a great picture of the end result over on the blog camp blog. i somehow took an insufficient number of photos around the house on saturday, i was too busy flitting around, running to the grocery store, jumping on my bike to run to the station to meet kristina, trying to prevent husband from buying a chainsaw, making dinner, keeping the blog camp blend diffusing, burning up the biscuits, filling wine glasses (you get the picture). but i think somehow when it's your house, you just don't think about photographing stuff in the same way. because you're used to all of it. i'm really looking forward to seeing what pictures the others got and seeing my own surroundings anew. jelica and spud have already posted a few pictures that made me smile.

aside from sneaking out between showers to go to lunch at café le zinc, my favorite local cafe, we did spend most of saturday hanging out in the blue room (not to be confused with a bar in a little town in the upper midwest).  jelica's husband, ruslan, was a bit suspicious of us spending so much time in the blue room and suggested that we might be indulging in some odin cult ritual, but i actually suspect that he kinda wished he was here, sipping wine and discussing roland barthes as well. :-)

on sunday, as you can see above, we walked around copenhagen, snapping photos at every opportunity, eating a sausage from a sausage stand, drinking a coffee (what a surprise that was! not.) and perhaps even indulging in a beer at nyhavn (not a sailor in sight, unlike last time). spud had to depart first and we choked back our tears and let her go home to her megaboys, followed by anne a few hours later. jelica didn't leave until today (which was according to the original blog camp plan) and now she's on her way home as well, so i'm here in the quiet house, feeling a bit lonely and bereft and thinking about it all. because it's not easy to take it all in.

blog camp is really hard to explain and it really is true in some ways that you "had to be there." i exchanged some emails about that with an open heart this morning. she had gone to blog camp - reno and was finding it difficult to express how great her experience was. because sometimes words don't really express it. and that's a strange feeling for us bloggers, so stand by for more as the week progresses...

still basking in the sparkle of british blog camp

bee called it that fizzy feeling and spudballoo wrote about it too, but i think for me, it's more of a sparkly feeling that i feel when i think about blog camp. so the sunlight dancing on the oslo fjord when i took a little walk this evening after work seemed to embody the happiness i was feeling as i reflected on the weekend.

BBC was different than the first blog camp back in june. which isn't really that surprising, of course you can't duplicate your experience and you only ever have one first time. it was different for the obvious reason that it wasn't at my house, so i didn't have all of the worries about levels of tidiness and preparedness that i had the first time around. it was quite delightful to just get on a plane and be picked up at the airport and proceed to enjoy myself. and although i had butterflies as i came out to a waiting bee, it was just for a second and then it passed.

i guess i was just really much, much more relaxed. it helped that i knew B and polly and kristina already and that we just picked up where we left off the last time. it also helped that i got there a day ahead of the others and bonded with bee. the impatience of waiting for spudballoo made us quite antsy for the last half an hour or so, me constantly glancing over polly's shoulder and her jumping up to look out the window whenever bee's husband's game shook the house a bit from above (he's got some good speakers on his computer in his lair). but at last we saw this sight...

not a great picture, i realize, but i didn't take time to change to motion settings and just dashed out to capture the moment.

once spud arrived, it felt like things could really begin. bee had stretched out her lunch preparations (she is a brilliant cook and makes a really mean salad) and the timing was perfect. there was a big rush of words over lunch, as we all felt the intensity of being together and wanting to tell everything and ask everything immediately. looking back, i'm not sure any of us ever really properly took a breath, we were in such a rush to talk to one another.

maybe it's something the blogosphere does to us. we sit in our little lairs wherever they may be (mine's currently in a boring hotel room in oslo), tapping out our words and thoughts in isolation, but actually being quite social people. as bee put it, we're sociable loners, so although we are quite happy with our own company (as long as we've got a macbook and wireless (or maybe that's just me)), once we get together, we feel desperate to catch up on the social side of things. so out tumble the words in a huge flood.

this blog camp, as many of you - desperate for updates - noticed, didn't involve much blogging (or camping for that matter, not that we've ever meant camp in that sense). we tweeted some (those of us with iPhones - which was four out of six), but we didn't blog. and we had the password to the wireless and everything, but we were simply too busy talking. and talking. and talking some more. maybe it was also because we had one less day together than at the first blog camp and so we didn't want to "waste" any of our precious time together staring at our screens.

another of the joys of blog camp is, i have to admit, the prezzies. since i was sick the week before, i didn't get to make a present for everyone this time, but i did bring along some goodies - really special chocolate that i bought at the chocolate research facility (yup, that's the name of a posh chocolate shop) in singapore. the packaging was so beautiful (that's what's in the background of the picture in this post) i didn't need to wrap them, so i tied a little wooden viking ship that i acquired at the viking market the previous weekend around them and gave everyone one of the little scrabble tile necklaces that sabin went into overdrive producing a few weeks ago. i happened to have some little tags that said charming, intelligent, adventurous, humorous and inspiring on them and i stamped the name of the person who best suited those words on the back of each one. can you guess who got which one?

overall, with the second blog camp, i feel an evolution of the concept happening and i'm fascinated to see where it's headed. the first time, there was an element of performance to it and that was totally absent this time. we were all just being. enjoying being together. although we ate great food, drank awesome coffees and had glasses of lovely red wine, all of that was secondary to our just being together. really, truly present in the moments we had. sparkling. illuminated.

please do use the links above and go read what everyone else is saying about their experience. i'm sure that together we are capturing some of the sparkle and fizz that was.

blog camp: different yet the same

there were a couple of moments at the beginning of blog camp, when we were wandering around copenhagen and i felt a little bit like this place was far too small. and that's because twice we ran into someone i knew. first, at the airport, we almost missed B and polly because i was talking to an old friend i ran into. then, at nyhavn, those crazy guys who had been working for some hours on their buzz before the ACDC concert (they actually remembered running into us, because the one i knew left a message on my wall on facebook that indicates he remembered!)

just to clarify these guys for all of you who were deeply confused by our strange posts during blog camp...guy on the left, friend of guy on the right (who i knew and used to work with). both were very drunk at 6 p.m. since they'd had quite a few beers and possibly some nasty licorice vodka during the four-hour train ride to copenhagen. they were going to attend an ACDC concert later that evening. guy on the left really wanted to play with my camera, but i wouldn't let him--he's also the one we pretended was seaside girl. at one stage, he took a little nap in his chair (next to polly), then suddenly woke up and burst into "singin' in the rain" (it was raining at that point), which seemed a little at odds with the whole ACDC concert thing.

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the rain cleared and upon slipping free of the drunks gentlemen sailors above, we made our way on the train to my house. i was fine until we were two houses up the street from our house and then suddenly i had a major case of butterflies. the more i think about blog camp and how i felt leading up to it, our house was my biggest worry--whether they would like it. i'm not sure why that is, except that i feel it so strongly reflects who we are that i was worried that if they didn't like it, then they wouldn't like me.

when we arrived, husband had placed this stump and all of the axes in the household out front, which was great, because it broke the tension i felt.

he and sabin had also locked the doors and put up signs saying the house closed at 7 p.m. (it was by then 8:45 or so). they had left a little tray of sandwiches outside the back door, but apparently the cat had eaten them as only some tomatoes were left. somehow, i didn't manage to take pictures of those signs (i'm sure others did and hope they will post them), but they were quite hilarious. finally, they did let us in and we opened some wine and set about the business of picking places to sleep (we drew names out of a cup) and then ate a simple dinner of cheese and sausage and homemade bread and hummus. 

it was chilly from all the rain and husband had started a fire for us in the wood-burning stove in the blue room, so we moved out there for more wine and strawberries and cream and lots of laughter. we diffused some of the wonderful gingery-lemony "blog camp blend" of essential oils that the fragrant muse had been kind enough to send to us (among other things) as a special treat (more about that later today on the blog camp blog). and we laughed and talked about blogs and blogging and whether we were like our blogs 'til the wee hours. 

B has perhaps said it best on her blog as to whether we are like our blogging voices. and i feel largely that we were. the biggest surprise for me was polly, who is quite serious on her blog but is very funny and a bit more wacky in person. kristina didn't join us for the evening, having parted with us in copenhagen to go home to sweden, but we realized that although she blogs largely through images, those had given us a good idea of her voice--pictures really are worth a thousand words. seaside girl, who we had gotten to know better from her blog in the month or so leading up to blog camp, was very like her blog self, as am i (we know i don't hide that much of who i am here). i would say that extranjera was actually nicer than i expected her to be...by which i mean less sarcastic and cynical that she seems (for humorous effect, which we totally get) on her blog. as she said herself, "i'm really quite pleasant." and she is.

best of all, tho' was the way there was no one dominant person and no underdog. no one person was ever the single object of ridicule--it shifted nicely (me and the stains on my shirt, polly's posing, seaside girl's open mouth in all pictures, extranjera's crouching, b's closed eyes, kristina's butcher knife in the head). no one was albanienated at any time. and i didn't have to be mother hen and protect anyone from being left out/bullied. in other words, we were all totally cool, capable adults who rocked blog camp. yay for us! and frankly, i didn't really expect it to be any other way, tho' you do worry anytime you gather a group of women. i think five (sometimes six) was an excellent number--three is no good, then it's always two against one, but with five, there's always someone on your side (see evidence in the comments of this post).

in all, blog camp was a resounding success and i'd do it again in a minute. like in august in the UK, at bee's house (she apparently has a very cool and understanding husband as well). and then, of course, there's blog camp 2.0, right here at blog camp ground control in denmark. two of the four spots are spoken for, so check those ticket prices today! you don't wanna miss out on scenes like this:

blog camp: reflections on the beginning

when you plan for something big, you have all of this anxious build-up to it...both literally and in your mind. you imagine what it will be like and you plan for what it will be like. with blog camp, it was the same. only it was difficult to really imagine what it would be like. it was a little strange to think of meeting five people who i'd never met in real life, but felt like i knew through their blogs--what would they be like for real? what kind of chemistry would be there between the group? or, even worse, might there not be chemistry between the group members? yikes. so many thoughts.

with all of the personalities and talk of tiaras, would anyone be a prima donna? would we all be? would it make it insufferable? or would there be one nice person who got crushed under the force of stronger personalities? or would one person dominate totally? would the weekend go quickly or drag on endlessly? so many questions.

so, in the end, all i could really do to mentally prepare was get ready in the physical sense...house cleaned and tidied, beds ready for people to sleep in, food and drink supplies laid in. if the house was ready i would be ready.

and largely, i would say that i never second-guessed the decision to invite five strangers to come hang out at my house for a weekend. it was done a bit on a whim and quite possibly began as a joke on husband's part (he should know better by now), but i never regretted it, even if i couldn't really imagine what it would be like.

i headed for the airport on friday with good butterflies. i had a sense of trying to consciously preserve the "first time-ness" of the experience--because you only have one first time experience of anything. and it's not that often that you know you're going to experience something for the first time--most of the time, things just happen and they end up being the first time. this was a unique opportunity. i knew i was going to meet my blog camp friends for the first time. and that felt somehow special.

my only doubts as i headed there were, "oh dear, will i recognize everyone?" i thought i'd know extranjera and B and polly, but i'd never seen seaside girl or kristina, so i wasn't sure. we'd made a plan that i'd buy a little flag from each country and be standing there waving those and they would thereby find me. however, i got to the airport and realized i didn't know for sure what the flags of poland and spain looked like and the shop was out of all of the others! yikes! so, i'd have to hope they recognized me.

i saw kristina first, she was leaning against a big pillar near starbucks, where we had agreed to meet. although she didn't look as i expected, i knew it was her right away from the way she looked at me like she recognized me. she had spotted extranjera, sitting in the starbucks and we went over to greet her. we knew it was her from the murakami she was reading. (oops, still owe a discussion on that one on the hermit book club blog).

i'd had word from polly and B that their flight was delayed, but we knew that seaside girl would arrive soon from gatwick, so we went over to wait. we giggled quite a lot about how we would recognize her since none of us had much of an idea how she would look...we couldn't even really agree on what she'd said about her recent haircut. thankfully, she recognized us and came right up to us. we all immediately started laughing and headed back over to starbucks to wait for B & polly's flight to come in.

we chatted away, only having a couple of minutes here and there of wondering what to say next. but it helped that we felt we knew one another from our blogs. then, it was time for B & polly's flight. while we were waiting, we tried to catch a photo of a weird nu skin cult leader girl for molly's sake, but kept missing the opportunity (ok, it was me who was too slow to get out the damn iPhone at the right time). at last, just when their flight had disappeared entirely from the sign and we were beginning to wonder if they had had to report a lost bag, they came out. and we were off towards the train to the center of copenhagen.

i entered my usual chaos mode and it took extranjera and i quite a bit of discussion to determine how many tickets to buy and which color of clip card was best, but soon, we were on a train and stowing their bags at the central station in copenhagen so we could be free to walk around.

it was so much fun walking around the city, cameras constantly at the ready, seeing copenhagen anew through their eyes. and it was quite amazing how quickly any nervousness and awkwardness melted very quickly away. i suppose because we did, in many ways, know one another quite well through our blogs and everyone proved to be very like their bloggy self.

more later from the first evening...