Hurricane Sandy in Facebook Statuses

A summary in Facebook statuses of what Hurricane Sandy has done to my sanity and a rant about American Airlines....

- Well, guess I'm not going to America for a few days. Flight canceled. Stuck in a hotel in London, had to pay 15 pounds for WiFi because they think a 5 minute telephone call is long enough to rebook a flight. As of now my flight is rebooked for November 1st. Fuck. Could I maybe have gotten stuck in a city that's not so damn expensive? Let me downloading every TV show ever commence...

- This will be my night...and yes, I did open that beer with a DVD cover I found in the hotel room. And yes, I did have to walk across a highway in the rain to obtain said alcohol. #notanalcoholic

- Just going to dwell in the negativity a bit longer before I pull myself together. Today blows. I want to go back to Berlin.

- Also...there was an earthquake in Canada today? What the hell, is North America exploding?

- There are two beds in my hotel room. I am going to sleep on both of them. Nevermind that there is a gap inbetween. #shitbetterbelux

- Just encountered problem #1 with the hotel room: the ceilings are too low to jump on the bed. #wtf

- Apparently this is a four star hotel. That explains why there are no beer vending machines. #fuck

- I wonder how I can make friends with all the hundreds of other sad, canceled flight to NY people in the hotel. Is it inappropriate if I just walk around the halls carrying wine? That's how you make friends, right?

- There is a new wireless network that just popped up at the hotel called "Unicorn". It is not password protected. If I find them, we will date.

- Yesterday I was visited by a toilet ghost. The End is Nigh: 

- Day Two of Hotel Prison: The Hotel Gods have appeased me and fed me veggie sausage and coffee with soymilk. Some people I talked to yesterday gave me a Wall Street Journal and it said the storm won't even hit in full force until late tonight or tomorrow morning NY time. So now I will try to be a productive human and work for a few hours, then begins the day drinking and re-calling of the customer service. If anyone wants a free place to sleep in London, hit me up. I seem to be on a bus route.

- Just waited 25 minutes on the phone to be told they only handle domestic flights, and am now re-put on hold for 30 minutes to speak to an international rep. #someoneisgettingbitchslapped

- No hotel paid for after tonight, not possible to sort on the phone (after being on the phone over an hour, mind you), means I'm heading back to the airport to sort it out in person. Wish me good not sleeping on the streets luck! Why do I always have such bad travel luck?

- New Plan: Fly to Boston tomorrow on stand-by. Hey Boston, how's the weather over there? If I get stranded there, can I sleep on your couch for one night before renting a car or something to NY.

- On the bright side, this hotel room has the most powerful shower I've ever experienced. Downside, didn't bring any razors or toiletries with me as I thought I'd be stealing my parents' stuff. Lesson learned.


How will the story end? Let's hope I catch that flight, my friends, or I won't even have internet to make Facebook statuses. Wish me luck and hope to see you on the other side of the pond!

Au-Pair Drop-Out

(credit ukaaa)

Now that I am safely sitting far away in my sublet, I can write about this on the internet. Basically, my au-pair experience sucked. The 5-year old basically had free reign and was allowed to hit me, spit in my face, call me an asshole, hit me in the eye with a foam sword, etc. with very little consequence. I felt the family wanted another older, more responsible child instead of an adult employed by them. They didn't respect my time and though I asked several times and sat down with them to explain that I'd like some kind of schedule so I could make plans and have friends, they just assumed I would stop whatever I was doing for them and generally only told me my hours the day before or the morning of, which just made me really anxious.

Honestly, except for joking around with their oldest son and playing with the cute dog, I started to hate everything about my au-pair job. The first time I visually appeared upset in front of the family was after I cut up some fruit for their 5 year-old and his friend and brought it upstairs. I told them they needed to wash their hands first and they refused and spit in my face. Now I'm not talking cute stick-your-tongue-out whatever, they literally covered me with spit. I herded them to the bathroom, where they still refused to wash their hands and when I went to go help, I got the door slammed in my face. Meanwhile, the Mom was downstairs, doing god knows what, while I was getting completely disrespected by her child. Eventually I just told them, "Alright, if you treat me badly, you're not getting any fruit and I'm going downstairs now". I stormed downstairs, put the plate on the table in front of the Mom and asked, "I don't know what you want me to do! They spit in my face and refuse to listen." Her reply was just, "Do you like kids? They're just being 5 year-olds."

This was the general response. Now let me tell you, if I had ever spit in a babysitter's face when I was a kid, hit someone or was generally as bratty as her kid, my parents would've grounded me for a week, taking away any TV privileges, no friends over, no phone, etc. My parents rarely ever touched us, but when we were bad we generally had to write a LOT of apology letters to whoever we wronged and had a stern talking-to. I said to the Mom, "I know I need to learn how to better deal with him, but what are the consequences when he acts like that?" The answer was nothing. No consequences. Apparently this behavior was completely acceptable and didn't warrant any punishment.

Fuck. That.

I got yelled at for such things as putting the tea cup on the wrong side of the place mat and they made me mow the entire backyard lawn, which is definitely not an au-pair job. When they asked me at a later date if I would mow the front lawn, and I inferred that I would not care to, the mother made it seem like that was preposterous and asked me, "Well, what DO you want to do?!". The last straw occurred as I was attempting to get the lawn mower to work, crying hysterically in their front yard. I think my exact thought was something like "Fuck this shit, I'm leaving." I almost texted the host Mom "I quit" right then and there, but realized I probably needed somewhere to sleep first.

We had a date to talk last Sunday, where it was decided that it was not a good fit and I was leaving. They said I could have until mid-September, which they later revoked this past Wednesday when they told me I had to be out Friday (2 days later). Now, I am a relatively independent person, but there are plenty of 18 year-old au-pairs who don't know anyone in the country, don't speak any German and who have never lived abroad before. The fact that they would just shove someone off like that is absolutely ridiculous.

To add insult to injury, yesterday before I moved out I asked about getting paid. They said they would only pay me for 2 of the 3 weeks I worked, because the last week I was in-and-out looking for jobs and flats. When I explained,  "Well, what am I supposed to do? You told me to get out so I needed time to find somewhere to go!" Her response was that the chores and errands I did for them were payment for being able to sleep there. Honestly lady? You people are fucking rich. I'm pretty sure 70 euro extra for the week would not have broken the bank. My general thought is that them choosing an au-pair that didn't "fit" is mostly their responsibility. They brought a woman over an ocean from America. If they are so particular, they should have asked me more questions about myself, actually taken the time to Skype with me, etc. They fucked up and made a wrong decision and I was left in a shitty position in a foreign country, so I definitely should have been paid for the last week.

Anyway, I'm now happily sitting in a sublet in Kreuzberg, far away from them. After a few interviews, I have a job as a freelance English teacher and am making my first attempt at the visa on Monday morning, so wish me luck! I will be going to Rostock in East Germany for 6 weeks starting September 26th to teach an intensive English course and then coming back to Berlin November 10th, after which I'm staying forever! I'm sure I'll be back some weekends as well. Now I just need to find an awesome flat for November!

I wish I could just find a long-term flat now and stay here, so I could finish getting settled and make some friends, etc. but it will be an adventure, right? And earning a paycheck will definitely be nice.

So get ready for some hopefully less emo posts, now than I have escaped from indentured servitude and am no longer quite as prone to random fits of hysterics! Yes!

Updates!

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about this blog! My life has just been a little boring, and if I had posted, well, it would have been boring. Or whiny. Or whiny AND boring. Ouch.

BUT!

This will change soon.

Notable updates because no one seems to know where I am ever:

1. No Fulbright
2. Moving away from NoHo in less than two weeks...forever!
3. Only 3 more days of retail slavery.
4. On August 17th I'll be on a plane to Germany! One-way ticket! Sleepytime flight!

This is good for you, oh faithful readers, as it means I will no longer be bored and scanning things across a computerized platform whilst being yelled at for a multitude of things I have no control over and berated over a lack of local produce and lemon juice, but instead will be thrust into the hopefully welcoming arms of Berlin in search of:

a. job
b. flat that is awesome and full of clean
c. to be determined

So maybe then my life will be a little more exciting if not extremely overwhelming and ridiculous.

seeyouthenkthx

P.S. The URL to this blog changed, but you probably figured that out if you're reading this!

Northampton, Massachusetts: Welcome to Lesbianville

That's right, folks. I'm back in America and I brought some crazy European germs with me! At least I got three seats to myself to lay down and sleep on the plane. I've been sick for three weeks and after visiting two doctors three times and getting sent for two rounds of blood tests, they're thinking it's mono. When I get the results from the second round of tests I'll know for sure. I've broken out in a rash all over my body, blew some mystery solid material out of my nose yesterday that at first I was convinced was actually a part of my lung, have something seriously fucked up going on in the back of my throat that looks like leprosy and am on my second round of steroids. Needless to say, it's been fun and I've never slept so long or been so sick in my life!

You didn't think I'd be done blogging just because I'm back in America, right? This might just be a year for me to recover, replenish my very empty bank account and rapidly learn German (more on this later), but I'd probably die without adventures. First up: Northampton, Massachusetts!

Let me tell you a few fun facts about Northampton. It has the largest number of lesbian households per capita in the entire nation (City-Data.com). My first year there, Coldstone Creamery, the major ice cream chain, went out of business to the local ice cream place called Herrell's. All of the chain stores are hidden on one road away from the center of town. There is an acapella group in town called the Raging Grannies and they are grannies that sing about peace, justice, and how much they hate George Bush. Northampton is the first place I've ever been proud to live. You cannot throw a stone here without hitting a trendy coffee shop. Or a lesbian. Of course NoHo has its problems, but I like it here.

It's in the Pioneer Valley and is home to the one and only Smith College, my alma mater. Smith is a women's college of less than 3,000 undergraduates. They call it a mini Ivy League and boy, did it kick my ass for that title. There was one time during finals that I burst into tears in the dining hall because a piece of broccoli fell off my plate and that, my friends, was the last straw left of my sanity. Also in the area are four other universities: Mount Holyoke, which is also a women's college; Hampshire, the hippie one that doesn't have grades; Amherst, the preppy one and last but not least; UMass, the much bigger state school. Students at any of these schools can take classes at any of the others. Smith is the Gay One.

A picture of part of Main Street in Northampton that I stole from the internet. The best game to play while walking around NoHo is called "Lesbian or 14 year old boy?" I mean this in the best possible way, I love me some lesbians.

During my 3 years at Smith College (I went abroad), I lived in Tyler House on Green Street, which was an old estate from the 1800s that Smith bought from super rich people. The areas of campus are Green Street, where the quiet nerdy kids allegedly live (except we know how to do it in Tyler), the Quad, where the straight girls and parties are and Upper and Lower Elm, where the hipsters are alleged to live. We don't do "dorms" and instead have 36 smaller houses. Most people stay in their house their entire time at Smith if they like it and we elect and govern ourselves leading to a general sense of house community (and house booty). Tyler was pretty bangin' because we had a dining hall and were right near the gym and academic buildings, so I could be really, really lazy. At one point someone stole a key to the dining hall and during finals we would break into the kitchen and make ourselves really big sandwiches and sodas.

Tyler House

We have Paradise Pond (really part of the Mill River that was dammed off) on campus and our own waterfall! During Spring and Fall you can canoe and kayak on the pond for free if you're a student, alum or friend!

At Smith, we are a very self-selecting bunch. Rather than throw keg parties and go clubbing all the time we like to do things like this:

Pin the Body Part on the Androgynous Being and,

Make really big blanket forts that take up the entire living room and have a TV in them! Say hello to Charlotte.

Fall is the best season in New England, the area of the States that Massachusetts is part of. Here is a walking bridge on campus leading to the Athletic Fields. Smith campus is pretty.

Now that you've had a primer on Northampton and are getting a feel for Smith College, I'll start telling you about my adventure. Though I was sick and ailing, my doctor prescribed me steroids so I headed up to for Senior Week (re: giant week of partying and adventures before graduation where seniors are allowed to stay on campus after finals) and Commencement (graduation). I booked my flight back to America specifically for this, only giving myself enough days to recover from jetlag, so I was pretty pissed when I got sick, but I went anyway!

The first thing I did honestly was go to the Co-Op because one Miranda M. was too busy being an outdoors kid, kayaking in Greenfield, MA to let me in. It's okay though, because I got some vegan chicken and beef boullions, dried apricots and 2 free sample boxes of iced tea! The first thing I did when she got back and let me into her room was a) say hi and b) order Taipei & Tokyo. At Smith, I ordered so much sushi delivery from them they knew who I was. Oops.

Before an adventure to Brattleboro, Vermont, Miranda discovered that one of the big trees outside Tyler House had fallen down in a storm. We also tend to hug trees at Smith. But really, this thing was massive, good it didn't fall on somebody's car.

This is in Brattleboro, Vermont, which is about a 40 minute drive away. We occasionally go there to checkout the Twilight Tea Lounge, an awesome tea place that has over 100 types of tea and baked goodies. It's still awesome, but not quite as great since they moved locations this year. This river and that mountain are pretty much in the center of town. Brattleboro is basically a more rugged version of Northampton.

In Northampton there is a store called Acme. It sells things that wouldn't sell at other stores. Things like these baby doll body parts that have penises. We like to walk though this store in Thornes for amusement. And to buy cheap things.

On one such trip to Acme, Amy bought these animal noses. So we all put them on and walked through town back to campus. Amy was a condor.

You wish you were this cool. Me, Alli and Amy. Or should I say, Dolphin, Dinosaur and Condor.

Alli (left) and Celine. Do you sense a theme with the noses? Because there is no work to do during Senior Week and Smithies don't know what to do without work, we can be pretty creative with our adventures. On one occasion Alli and I made a mad rush to Target before it closed. Without further plans, we sauntered across to Buffalo Wild Wings. Let me set the scene here. Buffalo Wild Wings is near UMass, so it was filled with frat boys watching sports and their straight girlfriends. Some of us may be straight, but we don't look it and are lost in frat culture. Don't get me wrong though, Smithies can play a mean game of Beer Pong. We stuck out like a sore thumb and it was awesome.

Katie, Amy and Celine met up with us. They thought we'd get drunk. As two of us were underage and I was sick, we had another idea. Alli and I had realized that the establishment had unlimited soda refills, so instead we had a contest to see who could drink the most sodas. I said I would drink 15, I mean, you just pee it out right? I don't drink soda much. This ended up being far more entertaining than being drunk, as we just chugged soda, peed all the time and then giggled for hours from our sugar highs. As a table, we only drank 11 sodas. I drank 2.5. Shut up, things are bigger in America. Those cups were as big as my face. Alli won. In the bathroom I overheard such conversations as "Megan thinks Joe likes her and it's like, totally hilarious because he, like, thinks she's disgusting!".

I also saw this awesome advertisement that said "Mo-He-Toe: Congrats. You're now bilingual". Good, I'm happy it was that easy.

Katie! Reunited! This lady puts the fab in fabulous. We talked about poop and ate Taco Bell and it was pretty much amazing. There was also a trip to Montague Book Mill in there somewhere. Books you don't need in a place you can't find.

Christine (center) gave about 15 massages one night. This is Miranda's (left) look of pain. Christine doesn't mess with her massages. Anna's (right) massage is not quite as painful.

On a super exciting note, the lovely Gina, my TEFL Worldwide comrade whom I met in Prague, lives 45 minutes away in Connecticut and drove out to visit me. We went to Cafe Evolution, a wonderful all-vegan cafe in nearby Florence, MA for lunch and took an adventure through Smith's Plant House, which is massive and boasts such things as banana trees, a rubber tree, tea plant, coffee tree, cacao tree, venus fly traps and tons of orchids. This is us and and a pretty special plant with little squishy balls on it.

This is me petting a really hairy cactus in the Lyman Plant House on campus.

And I'll leave you with this, the chapel on Smith campus is called the Helen Hills Hills Chapel. Why? Because she married her cousin (Hills HILLS). Someone decided the "Chapel" of Helen "Hills Hills" was tired of being the third wheel, so they added a little somethin', renaming it "Helen Hills Hills Chapel Chapel". Nice one.

I ended up getting too sick to stay for Commencement, which killed me because Rachel Maddow was giving the Commencement address, which you all should WATCH HERE! I think my favorite line is:

...Al Capone rose from humble beginnings in Brooklyn to build a huge crime empire that essentially owned Chicago during Prohibition -- a personal triumph.

All these people dream their dreams and work hard and achieve their dreams.

Some dreams are bad dreams...

You should all watch that video up there though. Not only is Rachel Maddow a flaming hot homo, she's hella smart.

Image of Rachel Maddow (a la The Rachel Maddow Show), a political commentator who rose to national prominence after launching her career on local radio, stolen from Google Images.

I could write about Smith and Northampton forever (and farm lesbians), but you get the idea. I just might though, as I plan to move back to Northampton in August for the year since I cannot survive more than a month or so on Long Island. I'll hopefully be auditing intermediate German at Smith (once I get permission from the instructor), working to save up money and bein' a big gay before heading back to Europe (hopefully on a Fulbright grant this time)! I'll probably write more on this and my constantly changing plans in another post.

Mythological Creatures in Germany

 

You’re sitting in a bed, in a house, in the middle of a farm in northern Germany. There are two spiders you’ve been watching for days in two separate crevices of your bedroom. You’re afraid to kill them because of the sound they’ll make when you squash them, an ongoing problem, but also because you’re living on a farm and you don’t think you’re supposed to do such things. What if they eat some pest, contribute to the greater good? The last thing you want is to murder the Greater Good.

You have dirt stuck under your fingernails and that makes you feel tough. Yet when you go to bed each night you shut the lights and rush under the covers lest some creature gets you. After telling your host this, she gives you a key to lock the door at night, which is when you realize it’s mostly mythological creatures you’re afraid of and keys won’t keep them out anyway. You’d prefer a unicorn over the bogeyman, but in reality it’s probably just the mice having tea parties in the walls again.

There is a lot of time to think and you’re not sure if you’re running away from something or towards it. Maybe you’re just running, so may as well enjoy the running for its own sake, and you are. Make a note to live in the moment. Page through a found self-help book and stumble upon the fourth Secret to Life: “Live in the moment.” Go figure. Think about how it’s even possible to live in the moment, anyway. Your to-do list rings in your mind and you think you will write it down soon, a list of things to do and pay for when you have access to fast internet again. You should probably book a flight back to America eventually. Ponder whether you really want to go back to America. Think about the unknown abyss of the future. Of all the things everyone else is doing and how you can’t make yourself want them. Of being a vagabond indefinitely. Wonder how long that last paycheck and what’s left of that money you’ve saved since you were 17 for just such an occasion will last. Probably not the rest of your life. Or through the summer. Same difference.

There’s always this problem: When you leave America, you think of all these things you might want to do when you get back, all these people you don’t want to loose in the woodwork and this sense that you need more closure than America has already given you, that bastard. Closure from what, you don’t know. Just closure. You always want things to be completely beat to death before you leave them. You’re not sure how this fares for a country. You think of your friend who asked why you’d ever even consider leaving the Greatest Country in the World for more than an extended holiday? How could you ever fathom never coming back for good? You don’t dislike America, per se, but you want to become an expatriate indefinitely just to oppose that thought whole-heartedly. You do miss pumpkin ale though, quite terribly.

You’re not looking forward to the second bought of reverse culture shock, even if it’s months away. You realized when you went to England that being able to understand all of the language spoken around you is stressful. You want to listen to everything at once, trying to understand all of the people chatting on the bus up Elm Grove, and eventually turn your headphones back on in defeat, exhausted. Make a note not to compare everything to Prague when you get back, but know it’s a losing battle. Hate how obnoxious you’re going to sound. You’ll miss the public transportation, sitting on trains and the trams, the Czech language. All the languages, really. You’ll miss feeling useful on this farm, more useful than you ever felt during your 4 months teaching English. You’ll miss the Friendly Sheep, her especially, looking at you with big eyes when you come to refill the water bucket at night. Her mother forgot her so she likes humans and you like her.

You’ll even miss not knowing what the fuck is going on around you half the time, what with your 30 word approach to each respective language. You think you’re just starting to get a hang of the metric system. You know that minus 8 degrees Celsius is cold and you don’t even need to convert it to Fahrenheit. You know what you weigh in kilos.

You think of a passage you read in Into the Wild yesterday, “I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.” You hate yourself for being such a hipster sometimes, but think that if you call yourself a hipster it negates your hipsterness so you’re probably safe. Whew.

You’re not sure if leaving is easy, but that passage resonated with you somewhere. Goodbyes were always hard for you. Hard to understand. What is an ending and what should it mean? What does it mean to everyone else? You always put them off until last minute, clutching your drink, sipping slowly until it’s warm and flat in the corner of the pub, and then somehow you make your feet move to the train, bus, plane taking you away from those you care about while you sit teary-eyed and confused at the whole debacle, doubting. You could just stay here, you think. You could. But you don’t. You’ve made a habit of crying on public transportation in the last few years, but maybe you’re just on public transportation a lot.

Everything feels so profound when you’re leaving. Goodbyes are hard, but leaving is easy, you decide. Leaving places is easy for you, but if there’s one thing you’ll ever regret from your life up ‘til now it’s your inability to leave people when you should have. Like America, everything always needs to be beat to death until nothing interesting enough is left to ask any more questions. You think of how much time you wasted being unnecessarily unhappy since you were 15 and hope you at least learned a lesson this year besides how to conceal your inner-thoughts and desires from yourself. You wonder if you like to travel just because you’re afraid of getting trapped in relationships you don’t know how to get yourself out of. Then again, you also like staring out windows. When you discovered you could stick your head out the train windows in the Czech Republic there was no turning back. You were a dog in a car. Tongue out, smile wide. There’s something about being in trains and buses that makes you feel content. The motion. No matter what you do, you’re being productive. You have a destination and you’re working on getting there. You can sleep the time away, you can twiddle your thumbs. No matter, still going.

You’re inwardly proud of yourself for breaking up with Prague and believe it’s a first step in the right direction. She was a beautiful lover, with castles for eyes, cherubs carved into her skin and a clock delivering both death and the twelve apostles to you on the hour, but you never really paid attention. Cobblestones flowed in every direction, creating a path between you, but you two had some fundamental differences you just couldn’t shake and you were tired of fighting. She was fun, but you wanted to be understood more completely. It was precisely the hardest decision of your life.

Mostly you hope you can transfer your new decision-making methods to the next person you’re with that gives you that familiar wordless anxiety at your core. You know, the one that splits the pros and cons list right in two, ruining any attempt to have things laid out for you in a logical fashion, clear as day. Prague split you right down the center: Sixteen and sixteen. But somehow your fingers typed the letters and your voice led the conversations you needed to move on to the next phase of your life. Maybe you’re really growing up.

You’re not sure about this growing up thing. Not the growing in itself, for you don’t really mind getting older. You noticed your first wrinkle forming and viewed it as a rite of passage more than anything. Since you don’t remember Coming of Age like all the books say you should, this will have to do, won’t it? You’re worried about when the line is drawn between when you can have fun and when you can’t. Not the Sex, Drugs and Rock-n- Roll, like everyone else, though you could always use a bit of all of them, you guess. You don’t want to have to put away your sense of adventure and the absurd, much less pass up a good playground. You don’t ever want to be one of those people who talks about things they can no longer wear, play or do because they are “too old”. You think you won’t really mind the whole being wiser thing, however. You’re sick and tired of losing sleep over these things you’ve yet to experience.

But there you go thinking outside of the moment again. You’re not sure any fully functioning human brain is capable of this. You damn anyone that never dropped you on your head when you were a child, but maybe thinking ahead is not so bad. You always did like making lists…

"Fate is not just whose cooking smells good, but which way the wind blows..."

On January 10^th I had my goodbye dinner at Maly Buddha, an Asian-influenced tea lounge-cum-restaurant with lots of vegetarian options by Prague castle in Hradčany. On a Sunday night on the 10^th of January, 15 of my friends showed up to bid me farewell, enough to book three full tables and an American waiter just for our English needs! The food was delicious and the company great; I’m really going to miss these kids. Luckily, I’ll be back for a few days for my birthday on February 8^th.

From the left: Sara, Bryan, Jess and Ali

Miriam, Josh, Jillian, Pete, Klara and Dusan

Katie, Anna's friend, Anna, Viktor and Andrea

After dinner I decided I should finish how I started, which meant U Sudu, one of my favorite bars in Prague that has a couple levels underground and is a maze of caverns. Later, I went with Jess, Sara and Miriam to Red Room—another expat haunt where I always seem to know everyone by the end of my 5^th month. There is live music that may or may not always sound like Jack Johnson. This can be good or bad depending on your taste, I guess, but I generally vote bad. It’s the kind of place you’re not sure you like, but forces attract you there nonetheless.

The trek to U Sudu from the restaurant in the snow

Eventually, I had to get home and pack up my life (again), so I bid everyone goodbye. The fact that Jess won’t be here when I come back for a visit made the reality—the ending of this strange life in Prague I’ve grown so accustomed to since August 8^th—set in. I walked teary-eyed to the tram and packed from midnight or so until 4:15 am. My procrastination skills are one thing in my life that seems to stay constant.

Oh, and because I never actually put up a picture of the babies on the TV tower. Here they are!

After a hearty 2 hours of sleep, I was off to Hamburg, Germany. I woke up at 6:15 am, rushing madly with my suitcase through the snow, terrified I was about to miss my 8:31 am train and almost in tears over the rough snowing terrain and the lack of cooperation from by oversized suitcase. I didn’t factor in the extra time it’d take to lug my heavy suitcase by myself through the snow. When I got there the train was of course delayed by over an hour because of the weather. Finally getting on the train, I wandered confused through the compartments. They looked much more posh than I was used to, so when I heard a woman speaking English I asked if I was in 1^st class. She laughed, told me no, and offered to share her compartment with me.

One thing I love about traveling is you meet so many interesting people. There’s definitely a sense of camaraderie that exists between those living out of a suitcase for some period of time. This woman was a roughly 40-something massage therapist from Vancouver traveling through Europe and Northern Africa (re: Morocco) for several months. She started in New York and had already visited many places in Southern and Eastern Europe, aiming to see as much opera as possible. Opera’s not really my thing, as far as I know, but whatever inspires you, all the better!

As we watched the Czech landscape slowly fade into a German one and the voice on the train switch languages, we talked about rock-climbing, back-country skiing, how I’m fed up with academia, her travels, the Czech language, books we’ve read, her son and daughters’ tree-planting gigs, etc. Eventually some German people got on in Dresden and we talked to them for a bit, too. It still amazes me that everyone can speak English.

My compartment friend, Enid, got off in Berlin and I was on my own. Unfortunately, the internet told me I only had one train to take, so I was startled to find that I needed to switch in Berlin from the conductor. Again I rushed, only to find the train delayed. I am already tired of snow. Once onboard, we go one stop only to have the doors break because of freezing conditions. Out in the cold again, we all wait for another train that shows up packed, leaving us to stand the entire 2-hour journey to Hamburg. Alas.

Four hours later than expected, I finally made it to Hamburg and was greeted by Kassia, a friend from Geology class at Smith my senior year, who took me to German Smith College (a.k.a. the Smith Center in Hamburg). I met another fellow Smithie staying with her, Stephanie, and we were off back to Kassia’s dorm. After looking at German TV, some tea and making small-talk with Kassia’s German dorm-mates, the first thing I did in Hamburg was sleep. After my long day of travel, I couldn’t think of anything much better than that.

Leaving, but not going home.

"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life." -- Jack Kerouac

I don't even like Jack Kerouac, but I do feel that this quote sums up my life for the past several months in the true pseudo-intellectual, hipster-cum-stereotype fashion that only a good Kerouac quote can muster. Ah well, they say there's a place for everything. From Smith, back to Long Island, my road-trip, Bryn Mawr, to England, Prague and then off from there, there's been a lot of piling of suitcases. Not just piling, but pushing, dragging, your rare and oft unsuccessful attempt at lifting, crowded metro-riding, standing to watch as all my valuables hit the bottom of that staircase with a reverable 'phluummmph!'

Oops.

In short, sure or not, I'm at it again. A lot of life plan changes coming my way soon, so here's the actual explanation of what is going on for you, my loyal readers.

Short answer: I'm leaving Prague. The legitimate reason is that the person I hired to help me get my work visa dropped off the face of the Earth during that integral last week of my tourist visa, making it such that it's basically impossible for me to work legally here until I leave for an extended period of time. Goodbye job. While I'm pretty pissed at said visa person for not doing her job (word of advice: Don't hire Hana from So-Ry Agentura to help with your visa!), I had been in a sort of moratorium as to whether or not I was actually happy here anyway.

Which brings us to the less legitimate reason for my departure. Pretty much, I didn't meet an adult until I was 19 or so that actually seemed happy with their life, and fuck if I'm going to fall into some comfortable routine just because it's easier or expected of me. It was really hard for me to make this decision. I love Prague. Walking around this city at night, I feel a real pride in myself for getting here. I look around at the buildings, the castles, think of all the crazy, amazing and determined people I've met since August and it's almost crippling to think of leaving. The main factor is that I don't feel like I'm either a good teacher or that I'm making any positive difference in the world. I wake up in the morning wishing I'd get sick so I didn't have to go to work, my boss constantly reprimands me and makes me feel like I'm a failure at life. After a bit of this, I start to wonder if I really am. I sit on my couch all day, unable to concentrate on lesson planning and unable to make any plans because I'm always so anxious about lesson planning. When I had a complete mental breakdown due to a simple scheduling conflict, I knew that this was no longer healthy for me. That's not to say it was all bad, I learned so much from both TEFL and my jobs and have a few pretty awesome students. Perhaps at a different job, with more structure and support, I could be happy doing the teaching thing, but not here as it is now.

I made this decision a couple weeks ago, but I didn't want to make a post until I knew exactly what my visa situation was, sorted things out with my flatmate and officially told my jobs I was leaving. This is a public forum, after all, and it wouldn't look too great if they found this first somehow.

The question is...what's next?

I'm not going home, that's for sure. My first thought is that I needed to visit all of my friends who're living abroad, since I haven't had time to with my job and since I won't always have the privilege of 10+ friends living all over Europe. However, without a paycheck, funds for basically hanging out long-term run a little low, not to mention my feelings of self-worth, so I decided to look into Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOF) as an option. This research led me to http://www.helpx.net, which is basically a database of farms, hostels, hotels, families, B&Bs and even boats that need help with something or another and will give you a place to sleep and cook you meals in exchange for roughly 5 hours of work a day. I'm not really a fan of your general museum, shopping, fancy-schmancy tourist stuff, so this sounded great to me. I'll pick up some skills while actually meeting people and learning from them. It is definitely one of my goals to have my own garden and be as self-sufficient as I can once I have my own property, so why the fuck not? Give me something to build or plant, some dirt to roll around in or some poop to clean and I am set. After how much I've had to use my brain in the past several years, it'd be nice to actually use my hands for a change.

As I begin planning all this, I feel like I'm living some surreal life out of a book. Locations I'm considering are Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Spain, Portugal and various places within the UK. If you told me I'd be traveling alone through Europe to places like Bulgaria, Portugal and Slovenia to work on farms, I would've said you were crazy, yet here I am. I definitely want to visit friends in Germany, Austria and Spain so those are definites and I've already had contact with farms in both Germany and France. Hopefully everything else will come together soon and I can work everything around my less than favorable visa situation.

I feel good about this, though thinking about leaving the little life I've made for myself here makes me sad. Lately I just stare at everything around me just in case it's the last time I notice the way that tree fits perfectly into that building's silhouette or how that graffiti contrasts just right with the color of the sky. It seems like it's time though, in that way that it does. Most of the people I started out with here have already gone. The general empty, crazy state I've felt looming in my subconscious is my cue. I leave December 15th to spend Christmas as an adopted child in Lewes, England. Then it's hopefully back here for New Years and onwards from there.

I still have no idea what I want to do with my life, but at least I'm accumulating things that I don't, feelings that I don't want to feel. This is the only way I know how. What else can I do? It may seem crazy, irresponsible, whatever name you want to call it, but I like to think I'm traveling around, picking up the bits and pieces that will one day come together to form this blurry little life of mine. It will be okay, right?

Time to get my hands dirty, or, to continually quote the fuck out of Ani Difranco...

I got friends all over this country
I got friends in other countries too
I got friends I haven't met yet
I got friends I never knew
I got lovers whose eyes
I've only seen at a glance
I got strangers for great grandchildren
I got strangers for ancestors

I was a long time coming
I'll be a long time gone
You've got your whole life to do something
And that's not very long

First Post.

I need a real blog because the LiveJournal I still keep from high school just makes me feel like I need to whine and be emo when I write in it. I like to think I'm past that stage, being 22 and graduated from college and all, so maybe it's time for real people thoughts.

I guess this will eventually be my travel blog of sorts, but maybe also my (potentially) intelligent thoughts about life that don't involve whining blog. I leave for England on July 23rd and then for Prague indefinitely around August 7th. I'm working at Bryn Mawr for a few weeks starting June 25th, which leaves me just over a month on Long Island right now.

My life has sort of come in a weird full circle at this point. All year all I wanted to do was leave the country and get back to the life I left abroad, the last possible thing I would've wanted was to stay in Northampton any longer than I had to. The past few weeks in NoHo before I left, however, were pretty magical. I made new friends and got to know old ones better, everyone had free time and we went on adventures and enjoyed the awesome weather, danced and did maybe a bit too much drinking. I just find myself with a really positive outlook on life again such that I want to be everyone's friend and learn about everyone's lives and their stories, which I haven't felt for awhile. This entire year I felt shrouded in this hopelessness where I thought no one was worth my time and nothing would ever get better. What a silly thought! There is so much to learn and so many people to meet and things to explore!

So...all I've wanted to do was get the fuck out of NoHo and Smith College, back to my life abroad with my friends there, yeah? Now the idea of being a townie in Northampton for the year and hanging out with my friends who will still be around, drinkin' beers and going for pretty adventures out to Shelburne Falls and Brattleboro doesn't really sound that bad. Of course I think that now. I always have to start liking places (and people) once they're about to leave my life indefinitely.

I'm just not sure if I'm questioning Prague because it's getting closer and actually becoming real to me or because...I don't know why. I just didn't expect that there'd be much in NoHo for me to miss, I guess, and now I am a bit speculative about my motivations for leaving. In any case, it's worth a shot. I'm really good at leaving, so might as well give it a go. I'm well-suited for living abroad because I can't handle being in one place for too long and like having lots of very different places and languages within public transportation's reach. I know I'll make wonderful friends and drink lots of cheap beer and dance around really old historic buildings at night that were probably erected before my own native country was even founded. Right? Right.

I'm trying to remember how I felt before I left for Brighton last year to study abroad. I'm sure I was scared and questioning everything too. I remember calling Liz and crying about how much I wanted to come home a few times, even almost buying tickets home for Thanksgiving, so it wasn't all flowers and wonderful feelings from the start. The fact that the end of my year was so great overshadows the doubt and fear I had upon arrival, mostly.

My problem with Long Island is there's not enough around to distract me from thinking, but maybe that's a good thing. Mostly this place just makes me sad because everything is backwards. Everyone in my house seems sad or not quite happy. Even my bird self-mutilates for goodness sakes. There is definitely something in the water. As far as places to think are concerned, I could think of much better ones than Miller Place.

I think I've managed to be both really happy about life and really out of it at the same time. I miss Northampton and everyone there and how great Senior Week was. I'm sort of afraid I'll never be able to stop leaving, but really there's just nothing holding me to any one place quite strongly enough. I will never be the pre-fab house with the white picket-fence, several kids and a dog type, but I think if I came upon someone who could keep up with me and somewhere pretty and full of possibilities I could do it. Right now is about learning and living and growing, however.