cheating at this again

here i go again ripping off my own writing. i started writing in the hotel because i was exhausted and the light was so yellowy and i was so robbed of sleep that i looked at the silvery styrofoam balls hanging from the ceiling and the parade of obnoxious fakey folk costumed russians and this obnoxious comedy sized balalaika and i felt like maybe i had slept in a closet standing up or something and i kind of wondered if i'd ingested something. yellow lights will make you crazy. we had a pretty long night and i sang so loud the same chorus and then i woke and wandered back to where i belonged and we rushed downtown and were the first in line to see Lenin's dead body. Like disneyland or something. i also started writing to legitimize myself. i was holding all of my stuff in my hands and sleeping in a large leather chair. i wouldn't trust me if i saw me. im pretty sure i was sleeping with my face nestled in my own neck.

its this place, cosmos hotel, and its right across from the space museum which is, of course, sucks because , of course, I can't see the cosmosabaki like I wanted and there's a vitamin conference and everyone is wearing black pleather heel boots and drinking protein shakes and it smells like hard boiled eggs. and i hate hard boiled eggs.
oh and its also a casino. the hotel i mean. lights and jackpot noise and everytime my eyelids get too heavy that same guy is still at that same machine and he just doesnt have a soul anymore. and olympic swimmers are here and they keep sitting next to me and keep talking about buying houses and doing commercials. maybe one of them will maybe marry me. the funnest lot are the japanese and their trainer has a white board on his room that says Japantrainer but of course i read it Japanther and got overly excited and tried to peek in and succeeded eventually and wished i hadn't and felt uncomfortable.
oh and there's a hanging circles sculpture of the solar system sort of in blue and purple styrofoam balls the size of tractor wheels and everything is bathed in this sickly yellow light and my face hurts.
i can officially sleep anywhere. today: face up one boot on my suitcase one dangling kind of off the chair face up and surrounded by 13 year old russian girls singing and my purse in my armpit.
and i still love you. and by you i mean moscow.
oh and i just found a really heavy silver bobbypin in my hair and i just dont know where it came from. russia's getting confusing.

im not thatthat obsessed with the space dogs (theres a movie called that and i dont mean the movie) and im not really even into Japanther but i mean they're both kind of interesting. especially when they're in russia.

reading disorder

i think i maybe liked moscow a tad bit better than st.petes even though that girl suggested that i shove my train ticket down my shirt so no one would steal it. yeah, a tad bit better. now that the sun isnt showing up things are more monotonous and im only going to halfway halfass this post. because its pretty much a message that i sent to bradley after reading his bradley oliver blog and he likes it and his taste level is pretty refined so ima spit it out again.

we were staying at this really gross {nice but super trashy} hotel called cosmos that had all these flashing lights and was next to the cosmonaut musuem featuring the stuffed deceased cosmonaut dogs {which was of course closed for renovation like everthing else in russia of course}. but anyway a large group of international olympic swimmers was also staying there and we were looking for our coordinator irina and we passed a room with a handwritten sign in english and japanese and i read it too fast and read "Japanther" and was all at once confused and excited and passed by the room several times very slyly trying to take a peek until i finally spied inside a japanese man lying naked face down on his bed and then another japanese man in jockey underwear and i think the one was giving the other a massage because it makes the most sense realised "Japanther" actually read "Japanesetrainer." they both made eye contact with me but nothing happened. the end.

i really wanted to see the cosmonaut sabaki Belka and Strelka real real bad and who would have thought that the cosmos hotel is directly adjacent to the cosmonaut museum. there's a rather beautiful sculpture of a rocket launching against the sky and when the sunset the light hit it right and it glistened. and then the moon came out and the cosmos hotel lit up. like they have flashing lights all over it. i was a little scared the show might keep me up or give me horrid nightmares or the other kinds of bad things that happen with flashing lights. none of that happened. i slept like a baby. although the carpet in all the other floors was space themed and i believe the furniture was metallic. ours wasn't. some vomity color carpet i believe and the furniture looked like it was bought at a yard sale. and the door shocked us every time we opened it.
i also just looked up the cosmonaut sabaki and figured i would share about about animals in space that i looked at. a monkey was the first animal in space. i mean they sent up fruitflies, but i just dont think that counts. The first was Albert the second and he died on impact. Besides dogs the USSR sent up mice, guinea pigs and frogs. And then they decided to send a tortoise in orbit around the moon. The french sent a rat and then two cats, one of which died. And thats my bookreport on animalsinspace. I dunno, i kind of think its interesting about these animals in space and "first spiderweb in space" and things. one night my fake dad talked about the theory that america never went to the moon. and then he said something awkward about black people. like most dinners.

so this is winter

ive been slacking. for alongtimenow. its because sometimes my ears feel like they're burning from the drum out and sometimes i forget that i have toes and the wind is all made of snow and they sprinkle sand on the park paths instead of salt and you cant tell that there were once stairs their until you sink in the better half of your leg and the first time i tried out my snowleggs i fell some 5 times. once i deserved for getting overly excited, twice was a freak fall {whenever i fall its usually really cartoonish; like i feel myself in the air for a split second and all my limbs everywhere and i have time to say oh brother or something like that in my head}, the third some fat dude laid me out, the forth some babushka chewed me out and the fifth some dog kissed my wounds and then promptly pissed on the ground next to me (next to me mind you, he was a way polite stray). and this is all a pretty big excuse.

my fake family has been sometimes forgetting to feed me and i cant tell if its a statement or a suggestion or if they just want to teach me what is a russian winter. like all the lights are off in the house and im thinking they'll come to my room and roll in a potato and i'll have to fight the cat for a raw potato dinner. its not that that bad but im awful grumpy when i havent been eating and then i move onto delusional and everything to me gets funny and thats just a bad idea in russia. some dude made eyes at me because i was giggling and you know what happens when some dudes make eyes at you. we went to this russian walmarty thing called OKAY. walmart back home gives me anxiety and so did this one but they have free samples of booze which is interesting but which i didnt partake in. i did, however, get some really great bargains. but i did, however, feel extremely dirty afterwards.




i was thinking about trying to write about moscow and some of the past weeks and budapest but we'll see what happens.

the end of an era

i almost lost my fingers today trying to eat ice cream.
goodbye to the sweetest taste of russia i suppose. but hello snows.

ruining sixteen year olds dreams of course

i left my hungry hostel house at 4 a.m. with my stupidbulkybag. and hungary is so well kept but all of the train stations are in primary colors and all the titles have too many j's and ii's and when primaries are lit that way like super market lighting and you dont sleep everybody feels a little bit drugged. maybe thats why they're so harmlessly sweet. we did go to a nightclub that was basically a highschool gym. and it was like a highschool dance. the bad kids were smoking in the back, akward boy and girl clumps, bad music only they were serving cheap beer in plastic cups. when i left the bathroom i saw a hungarian tripping examining the wall. i ought to go to hungary more if only for the airlines. only 2 hours long and a full vegetarian meal and they gave the vegetarian meal chocolate and 2 drink services and when was the last time you saw a matching barfbag and charted your flight the whole way and spoke in three different languages and not one bitter flight attendant and if you stay one saturday (no, i wasnt in on that but i ought to let you know) its 99 euros round trip which really isnt bad.

im in moscow by two with everything in my hands and i didnt buy a ticket because the online ticketer wants to charge you 96 euros for moscow to st. p. no thank you i will attempt to speak in broken russian. i talked to some girl in a beehive that was no help. and then to another one who also had a bee hive but was a help. they'll never smile at you but its the tone of their voice. but theres not a chair in that train station. and i witness the gay mafia in kofe haus. they combed eachothers beards and wiped eachothers chins and drank fancy coffees and cakes and smoked long cigarettes and a couple held hands and i was there for 6 and a half hours and so were they. and then im back at the station and im getting nervous because something seems off. and i switch platforms and dodge some leather jackets and then im in some strange backway with a broken train car and some old lady's selling a ton of plastic bags that say "MGM Grand" and another leather jacket is following way to close and im paranoid and loose him under a sidewalk underpass.

two girls help me realize that im at the wrong station and they tell me to tuck away my ticket and they say maybe i even want to shove it down into my shirt, you know, people here are different. and she takes me all the way to the new train station although we stop along the way to help a babushka carry some chairs which was her idea and she says she just thinks how she'd feel if she needed help. and then she negotiates with a security guard and he looks at me funny and i just dont know which kind of cop he is yet but he's straight, he shows me when he kicks some creep creeping up on my shoulder while the creep is "sleeping" and tells him he can sleep when he's dead so move on. best cop ive known in russia.

the ticket was all of 20 USDs. random selection open sleeping car and it leaves at 2 am. 12 hours for a train waiting in moscow. and i get to my car. girls in russia wear heels and spot on makeup and hair and proper manners and cross their legs. and i help a kid unfold the top bunk held up by utility chains and he says thanks and then looks and realizes im a girl. and they all do and they're wide eyed. and one's got an earring and one's listening to rap and ones reading lord of the rings. they're all probably 15 maybe 14. and im ruining all their wonderful ideas about girls. i am going to wear these clothes to sleep and wear them in the morning and i am wearing tights where you can see my dirty toes. and i am paranoid enough to sleep with my shoes underneath the bundle of my coat under my pillow and with my purse still looped around my shoulder and clutching my passport just incase the guards come to check again. and my hair is still wet from the hungarian bath the night before and i do sleep in a crumpled ball against the window against my pillow.

why me?

i know low-fi is getting way cool but why did somebody steal my CD player?

supa sweet

speaking of really sugary sap stories and that kind of thing my card hasnt showed up and i have about $20 total in my pocket and i leave for moscow in a little bit and im actually kind of a tiny bit worried about all of this and today some lady on the metro totally made my day without even looking at me so there.

people dont smile on the street in russia. no really. and anytime they did it mostly just makes you completely worried and scared and hold your stuff a little tighter. like this serial smiler in the metro and he smiles at sarah and i with his gums and wild crazy eyes. and keeps doing it. like that girl with the curly hair in the cafe. and she just kept smiling and turning her head to follow me and did she want some kind of connection and maybe was she trying to make eyes with me and it just was an alarming kind of smile i suppose. everytime i hear someone speaking english i just assume we're best friends. in one of my worst rush hours when my hand got wedged up someone's small intestine or something i say this couple. they're both wearing backpacking stuff and northface jackets and he has the kind of face you get when you get shoved into the metrocar and get your hand wedged into someone's scrotum and someone's got their armpit nestled in the nape of your neck and he's swearing up a storm and his face is just fed up. best friend. and i make eye contact with the two and give them my biggest best american girl smile. and they're eyes get the size of saucers and they both snap their eyes to the floor and i can hear their heads screaming GYPSY.

and then theres this little lady on the metro and she gets on with these pizza boxes tied with string. i dont think they were for pizza. probably baked goods maybe. and shes beaming. and closing her eyes and theres this creep in a leather jacket next to her and she's just closing her eyes and glowing. shes totally imaging opening that box. and just starring at those baked goods. and setting them on a plate and staring at them. and bringing in her whole family so proud and just staring at them. and thinking of how good they might taste and just staring at them and glowing. and the sleazy stops slackjaw staring at sara and i and starts checking out the baked goods. and thinking about just staring at them. and just starts beaming.

how im hungary

this popped up when i searched budapest on youtube. and i liked it. and i'm (okay so my t's and i's arent dotted so knock on wood) going from moscow to buda sunday and leaving morning thursday. and i like it. and i better like it.

strictly for saps

if you've only been reading for the occasional piece of eastern euro grit move on. sometimes im a girl. cute overload doesnt do much for me and i've never even seen the notebook and i hate to death jane austin but when a 17 year old girl almost starts crying because all she wanted ever was just to meet somebodies (anybodies and maybe even nobodies) from another country and speak to them in english like she's been practicing and i tell her i'm from arizona and she says wow and bends her knees and looks up to the sky and her eyes well up with tears and i'm going to be kind of touched.
i got what i deserved for walking around in the rain with demolished shoes. im kind of sick and my card still hasnt made it. and my phone shut down and liz is bailing me out. and we decide to meet on the street and theres this awkward moment where we both kind of feel like we're making a drug deal and it doesnt help that my eyes feel like they're on fire. and then theres this girl in a little white elfish hooded coat and shes talking. shes 17 and shes from outside of moscow. her teacher says her english is horrific. and i can barely hear an accent and she keeps apologizing but they're perfect apologies. she's only 17 and shes in proper university. and shes so in awe with us. so much so that her eyes are going to pop out of her head and she's clutching her heart and she's saying "wow" over and over and we're only just these two kids from america making a shady cash pass on a bridge.
and we didnt do anything at all and her dreams coming true and i kind of started crying and i kind of wish id loved every bit of every minute so much when i was 17. and i kind of wish i could love every bit of every minute so much anytime at all. maybe some day if i eat all my vegetables and finish all my chores and say all my prayers maybe then just a bit.
totally beautiful. totally sapz.