done

this is my last night abroad. ive flipped flopped all day wondering whether or not i really want to come home at all. but ive decided i do. its time to take off. my plane leaves at eight in the morning tomorrow. i'm going to go and pack soon. i meticulously packed my bag three days ago in hopes that i wouldnt have to mess with it much. but at the israel airport they tagged me as a suspiscious character and i was searched five times. they made me take my whole bag out and went over every last article of clothing to make sure it didnt have powder explosive on it. then they interrogated me for a while, made me walk through a metal detecter six times, then i was escorted by an armed guard to the plane itself. i dont believe i'll be going back there for a while. trips over though now, heres some things ive done. Ive..
held a scorpion in china
had my beard freeze in mongolia
spent four days on a train in russia
been bored in austria
went to a lake in switzerland
saw an old friend in france
drank spiced wine in czech republic
went to a mall in slovakia
saw a wild parrot in hungary
got almost kicked out of a bar in romania
drove through serbia
went to dive bars in croatia
was broke in bulgaria
watched the sun rise in turkey
saw a bag get blown up in israel
and saw a guy get shot with a rubber bullet in palestine
i'm tired, i'm glad to be going home. i'll be in olympia soon. then back to San Francisco.

whoa

theres too much to really tell at this point. i know i should keep a better handle on this sucker but it always eludes me. though i'm glad i don't stick my head in the computer as much as my traveling contemporaries do, let me tell you yeesh. i was in tel aviv, guided by a few friendly soldiers with absolutely massive msixteens over their shoulders, the guns are completely exotic to my suburban eyes. anyways, i spent the night in tel aviv, i walked out onto my balcony in the middle of the city and watched probably a hundred bats, skittering through the air catching bugs. it made me want to run away, but i forced myself to watch them for a while. the next day i went to jerusalem, i've met many a messianic complex and jerusalem syndrome(people who think they are jesus, or in a womans case, sometimes, the virgin mary) the hostel is old. the tiles move under your feet while you walk around the comfortable couches. i found a good bed in a dorm next to a corner, i have my own shelf. mark twain stayed in this hostel, and herman melville too. today i went to the west bank, and that is too much to tell here, i'll have to do that in person.

istanbul

ive just returned back to istanbul after a few days in the south at the ruins of ephisus. yesterday as i ate my daily kebab, i counted seven stray cats staring at me in hopes of scraps, one actually jumped onto the table to help me finish my dinner, i pushed the officious fellow off of the table a few times. yesterday i hiked the two miles into the ruins from the center of town, and scrambled all up and down the ancient sites that were riddled with greek symbols. then i took another bus back to istabul because i had an idea. i have until the third of april left of this trip, which i suppose will never really end because i'm not going back to live in my little hovel of olympia again. so the adventures will certainly continue, until i finally gain financial stability through a consistent income again. i plan on moving to san francisco straight away and finding whatever job i can muster. in the mean time, i was feeling a bit of boredom at the prospect of spending my remaining days in turkey. i do like it here, but something about spending my last three weeks here didn't enthrall me. so, just a moment ago, i booked a plane ticket to Tel Aviv. i will be in Israel for two weeks, then istanbul for another three days and then back to the states. i plan on going to jerusalem and bethleham. i met a guy who works over there the other day and he said he would show me around. im' really excited, slightly apprehensive, but feeling good about the decision. love to all.

croatia, serbia, train

after leaving serbia, we drove to Zagreb croatia. the city was sleepy and cold, it snowed off and on and we had a small earthquake. through couchsurfing, we ended up staying with an incredibly nice family of girls. they put us up for a few days, feeding us and taking us around, mostly to the cool dive bars in town. ben gave me a haircut thats sort of like a fohawk, it built my self esteem up a bit. the smallest of the family ,a fifteen year old girl, asked me about the US and how it was, i told her a little bit of what i know then she asked if everyone was fat. i looked it up and the US is only ninth fattest, not bad. i met a girl who told me she was devestated after she met me, because id been all over the world and had nothing to say. it just kind of made me smile, she hadn't asked me anything anyway, and she didn't deserve to know outright. finally i took my leave of my car companions and took a train to istanbul. it took 30 hours with a night layover in belgrade, i spent the night hanging out with tweaky canadians who wouldn't stop talking about getting drugs, when i woke up at six in the morning they were sitting up still tweaked out teeth grinding and drinking beer staring at the wall, it sort of freaked me out. i met a hungarian on the train who really ameliorated the proccess of border crossing and showed me some spots in the city afterwards, if i hadn't met him, i'd probably be in bulgaria sulking right now. as usual i forgot to pack a lunch for the day long trip assuming everything would be fine. i ended up not eating at all the whole day and having to beg sips of water from other passengers like an invalid. i always say i've learned my lesson, but i probably will forget it again and starve. my plan when i got here was to go farther east into iran or syria, but they both don't like Americans having an easy go at it. id had to have planned it six months in advance to go in, and i didnt, so i can't go, drag. i have a little under a month left and i'm wonderin what to do, i'm not going west again thats settled, so i'll probably go explore turkey. leroy says there is a town named Batman, that i can't miss. today i walked around the city a man introduced himself and brought me to his leather shop to show me jackets and gave me some coffee, which wasn't bad. but leather jackets(fancy ones) really aren't my style and when i told him that he was more than dissapointed. i spent the rest of the day looking at the giant mosques and listening to the prayers, chewing on multiple kebabs and watching the fishing boats and barges on the ocean from the terrace of my hostel.

goth

i finally got sick. in Sibui transylvania, i caught a cold which turned into a fever and i was laid up for a few days. i had one of those evenings with nightmares that turn into you waking up shivering your so cold, even though your fully clothed, in a sleeping bag, with blankets right next to a heater. so i slept all day like an invalid in a dorm room as the people in the other beds looked at me in horror. today i'm much better. romania was also complicated because apparently my bank doesn't allow banking from there? so i had money in the bank, but none at hand, because of fear of fraud. i called the bank, and my atm card works in serbia and croatia, but not romania. that was complicated in itself. it was even stranger to walk around half dead through the winding gothic streets of the town, i felt like i was hallucinating the entire thing while i stumbled around looking for cheap food. i've got some medicine now and should be fine shortly though. i'm in serbia now, which i was advised not to go to. but in belgrade its very placid, despite the recent anti-western riots, it seems rather normal here to me. granted its not the border of kosovo, which i will not be going to at the moment. the romanian border was packed with people trying to leave and nobody trying to get in, we skirted right through, and drove through a rain storm into belgrade last night down roads that go in and out from being one lane to two. headed to zagreb tomorrow.

transylvania

last night i was pulled off a table i was dancing on by a monstrous bouncer who looked none to pleased with my amazing dance moves atop his glass plated decor, i left soon afterwards. a club who does not let you dance on top of tables isn't a club in my opinion. the hostel i'm staying at has probably two lights, those lights aren't in the bathrooms, so i have to take a shower in the dark. it also smells and the receptionist stares at you in a mean way when you ask him a question. but its not so bad, lots of people speak english here and its been fun. we played telephone pictionary with some locals last night and trashed our room.

east

when i met with my friends, they had rented a car and surprised me with it. which is the most amazing thing, because, frankly, i am a bit tired of train travel after the transib, and ive never had possession of a car in a foreign country. it is amazing, we can leave whenever we want and go to places way off the tourist circuit. we drove to bratislava after a few days in prague, finally escaping the massive crowds. then we drove to budapest. you have to drive fast, people come up behind you and don't slow down, you have to get out of the way. then all of a sudden there will be a speed trap and a bunch of cars will get busted. not us though, because we are too scared and drive under the insanely high speed limit. today i saw a wild parrot in the park in the center of town, then had possibly the best gyro i have ever had in my life. the hostel is small and the people are nice, we played drinking jenga til four in the morning with a girl who works here last night, which in retrospect was a terrible idea, but a memory nonetheless.