Europe Since Then

So the last post I put up was "Europe So Far" and now we're just continuing since then.

We left off with Kutna Hora. After going around town and seeing the sights, Daddy and I caught a bus back home to Prague, and the next day we took another one for Berlin.

The first night we stayed at a very nice hotel, and Mom and Daddy went to dinner with some friends, who, starting with the next day, would lend us their apartment as they went off on vacation. The parents came home at an absurdly late hour and we were torn between worry and that "WOOHOO THE PARENTS ARE OUT AND I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT YAAAAAY" feeling that most people get when the parents shut the door. And, like most people, we didn't really use our fleeting freedom and just hung out doing whatever. And then, you know, scolded our parents when they came home at 11.


The next day, we packed up our things and moved into the friends' apartment, which was full of awesome books in various languages, and had breakfast with them before they left. Then, for the rest of our [internetless] stay in Berlin, we alternated between going through the city with one of Dad's friends and our German guide Ina, and reading the awesome books. Ioan read comics about "Mooman" (or something like that), Maria read a French grammar back, and I, after giving up on Lolita (probably if I hadn't spent read Love in the Time of Cholera I would've been able to read another book about dudes having sex with girls) I decided to read Harry Potter instead. I got through Chamber of Secrets (Lockhart is much less annoying the seventh time around*), Prisoner of Azkaban (my poor Severus), and to Chapter 28 of Goblet of Fire.

*I am on a mission to destroy our Harry Potter box set. Unfortunately, reading other people's copies does not contribute to the slow death of ours, so rereading them in Berlin was actually a waste of time. In case you were wondering, the fourth, fifth, and six books have already fallen apart several times, so I'm succeeding with them. The problem is with the first three, shorter ones.

We saw the Wall, Sans Souci Palace, a few museums, and might've gone into a church. Really, the churches are all blurring into each other at this point.

Then we flew off to Barcelona, drove to Estartit, a little town not too far away, where we stayed a few days. We ate at Xabi's, Isma's restaurant (who we met in Thailand), and the food was delicious (but there was too much and not enough space in our stomachs!!!) and then drove back to Barcelona, where we met up with our family, who were also visiting from Romania.

We had two different programs in Spain: waking up early, then most of us (us five, my aunt, grandmother, and two cousins) would go out and see something (like La Rambla), then go back to one of the apartments and having lunch, and then just hanging out for a few hours. Then afterwards, we five would go see something else (like that church by Gaudi) that we (and by "we", the parents) wanted to see.

The second program was us five waking up early, seeing something we wanted to see (like Park Guell), then meeting up with the family somewhere else, then lunch and hanging out. It is, so far, my favorite part of the vacation, though Greece is pretty determined to take that spot for itself.

After Barcelona, we flew to Milan, where we spent the night before flying to Mykonos the next day. We couldn't find the hotel, so that was fun ^^;

Then we flew to Mykonos, where the owner/manager of Evangelia's Place (where we were staying) picked us up (so we couldn't get lost), and we spent the whole time hanging out either there or at St John's, where our grandparents were staying in celebration of my grandma's 70th birthday. Well, except for that one time we walked around town. And that other time we went to that evil island. But mostly we hung out at St John's. It has a scary-huge pool. And by scary, I mean terrifying. It is too big.

(That's what she said.)

After going to the pool the first time, we discovered that my old swimsuit had stretched since camp (how this is possible, I do not know), and between mooning the world every time I put it on and buying a skimpy bikini, we decided we preferred the bikini.

On the day that we purchased said bikini, we were going to the aforementioned evil island. It was really quite lovely, we saw an excellent jaguar mosaic, the museum was pretty okay, and everything was all-in-all fine (except the burning temperature) until everyone decided, "Oh! Let's go to the Temple of Zeus up at the top of the gigantic hill!" Maria, feeling ill (and why not? They were the stairs of doom), was allowed to stay down at the museum, while the remaining six of us had to go. About a quarter of the way through Daddy asked me if I wanted to continue. I did not, so he gave me a backpack of mostly empty water bottles and sent me on my way.

"Are you sure you won't get lost?" He asked me.
"Daddy, please, there's only one road."

There were two. The right way, and some beat-up old path that led to the top of a hill from which the only way off of was either backtracking or charging through a field of sharp scratchy plants of clinginess toward a building that looks exactly like the museum but turns out to be some sort of cafeteria/kitchen thing on the other side of the island so you have to walk around people's houses until you see the real museum where you collapse just in time to see your mom coming back from the Temple of Zeus.

Not that that's the way I took.

After Mykonos, we went island-hopping, and I would like to say that these ferries are awesome. The first one was like a cross between a supermall and a casino, with escalators and fastfood restaurants, but after that the ferries were normal. You know, couches in the lounge, plastic seats on the deck, snack bar...

We went to Santorini, and missed the bus to Oia, so we had to take a cab with a driver that looked scary-alike with Jake Gyllenhaal:

At Oia, at least a bajillion tourists go to see the sunset. We did too, and I missed it. Then we went back to Santorini on an incredibly crowded bus, which was fun.

We went to Crete (where we are now) and drove around, walked 18 km through a gorge that we didn't really that much like, and spent the past couple days on the verge of tears with every movement we'd make. Then yesterday we stopped early at a hotel (where we could quite obsessively download the new Taylor Swift singles, because she is amazing dammit) and had a picnic on the beach <3 Then last night we watched a thing on the TV about the Romanian king Mihai (who is actually not king anymore) and his cars that he has and personally restored and the museum for them that's going to open, and then after that we watched a Romanian movie called Grăbește-te încet, or in English, "Hurry up slowly", or something like that. It's about a guy that, driving home, hits a guy walking down the highway. Then after that is the guilt he feels for not stopping to make sure that the guy was okay, his wife's suspicions that he's having an affair, his coworker's affair that he gets tangled up in, and his attempts to turn himself in. It was pretty funny and I'd definitely watch it again.

Now we're going to the pool before we leave. Bye-bye :)

Europe So Far

We'll start this thing with London.

Actually we'll start by saying I can't type. But this has already been established.

Maria and I flew from Chicago on Tuesday and arrived in Great Britain the day after, where we met with Mom, Daddy, and Ioan. We took the metro and eventually reached our hostel, which was recognizable thanks to the construction stuff around the entrance-y bit. We slept on the top floor, which happened to be the fifth. Thanks to the teeny-tiny elevator and the long wait required for it, we preferred the stairs. The internet was only available on the ground floor, so the stairs were used quite a bit.

We met up with our grandparents and sightsaw a bit, going to the Tower of London and seeing the Crown Jewels, Buckingham Palace (sans parents), saw the changing of the guard (yawn. Yawn yawn yawn yawn yawn. Yaaaaawn.), was rushed around the Queen's Gallery which happened to be showing a very interesting exhibition on Leonardo da Vinci (the rush was to see the yawn changing of the guard), saw Westminster Abbey which is less church and more graveyard.


No seriously. What kind of psychotic freak puts bodies in the floor? Where people step and walk? I'm serious. Bodies belong outside. The floor is not to hide bones. It is for the living, not the living dead, not the dead-dead, to utilize for their own live purposes. So long as their live purposes do not involve cadavers. Because that is sick and wrong. Do you know how hard it is not to step on graves when they're everywhere?!! In all that cemetery, I only saw one other person (an American, for those of you wondering) avoiding the graves. He nearly stepped on one and then he jumped back just in time.

"Dude, chill out," said his traveling companion (also a dude).
"It just feels weird." The first guy explained. And I nearly hugged him. But then I would've had to step on a grave. And that would have been ghastly.

I don't know why I don't step on graves. I'm blaming my mother on this, personally. I remember once I went to a graveyard when I was younger, and I was playing around and Mom said not to step on the graves. I can't remember the reason (maybe something about how it's disrespectful), or how young I was, or where I was, or really anything to support this theory as to how my little superstition came to be. But I digress.

We also went to St Paul's Cathedral, which in the catacombs also had some (but much less graves) in the floor, but that makes sense as it's the catacombs, where dead people are buried. So it's acceptable. Also there was much more space to circumnavigate said dead people. Plus most of them were buried in big raised thingies that would be pretty hard to step on accidentally, as you would need wicked long legs to get even half-way over them.

Then after London we went to Vienna where I met my second cousin Victor for the first time. He's about nine years old. We stayed in his mom Alina's apartment for the duration of our visit. We didn't get to see his dad Septimiu, but I think we will in Romania. Maybe.

On the first day we had some ice cream (yum) and walked around (uhhh) and saw some churches with Alina while Maria, Ioan, and Victor stayed back at the apartment. We also went into a few coffee shops and purchased nothing (because this is possible). Then Alina went back home and Mom, Daddy, and I went to Haus der Musik which was really interesting. It's an interactive museum about music. Pretty cool, amirite?*

*Amirite: pronounced "am I right". Means "am I right". It has been introduced to the English language by both those unable to spell or press the space bar and those who want to confuse you into saying "ah-me-ree-teh", convincing you that this is some sort of cool Spanish slang.

And basically in Vienna we mostly just stuck to churches. And a museum about Sisi and silverware and things like that. And then on the last night we went to the opera to see L'elisir d'amore, which was very nice and had sparked up an argument between us five as to whether or not we'd seen it before on DVD. Maria and I said yes and the parents said no. Ioan had no idea what we were talking about. Finally we managed to convince the adults that we'd started but never finished it. It took some talking and reminding, but we convinced them. I think.*

*My parents had a phase in which every Wednesday night we watched an act from an opera. In this manner we watched Figaro,  Figaro's Wedding, Notre Dame du Paris, and half of L'elisir d'amore.

Also at one point we went to a restaurant, all seven of us, and we ate schnitzel. Lots of schnitzel.

After Vienna we went to Prague, which I had heard was really beautiful, but was actually really dirty. I mean, like, Beijing and New Delhi dirty. Which is really really dirty. And normally I like graffiti, which I can't spell without autocorrect, just not everywhere. And it was everywhere.

Anyway, yeah, you get the gist of it by now—churches. We saw churches. And an exposition-thing on Mucha, which was fantastically awesome, and I really liked. Then yesterday Daddy and I took a day trip to Kutná Hora where we saw the Sedlec Ossuary, which is a church decorated in bones (see, I don't have an issue with bones or dead bodies or things like that. Just graves. I mean, those are seriously messed up. Why do you bury them? That is insane. They just stay there. And then, what happens to the coffin? Does it decompose or does that just stay there too? Seriously. Imagine future archeologists finding a skeleton in scraps of rotten clothing in a perfectly preserved box. That's not gonna be pretty.), and there was this skull on display which had a hole in it, which reminded me of the Tartars from The Golden Compass/Northern Lights who cut holes in their heads to put a coin in, and so I looked it up when I got home and found out it's called trepanning. See? You learn something new every day. Or lots of somethings. Today I learned that if I don't write a blogpost for a while, I forget my self-imposed rule of "no exclamation marks ever!" [thank censorship I have erased them] and "do not OD on italics. Nobody cares". I blame the opera titles and the graves.

And now I realize that my parents will use this excuse to get me to write more blogposts. I think I should correct myself to say if I don't write at all. So I should write more. And improve my typing. And spelling. Because my lack of skills in both is really quite frightening and don't get me started on the deterioration of my grammar. So really, if they'd just give me the computer more often, I'd be able to further deteriorate my grammar by writing in English. On the upside, typing would improve, though spelling probably wouldn't. I have Spell Check turned off so I can pretend I know English.

Anyway, we were on skulls. There were a lot (and I mean a lot [see what I was saying on italics?]) of them, and most of them had their jaws disconnected. But we did see jawbones arranged as flowers and also holding up that phantasmagorical chandelier with at least one of each bone in the body. That was pretty awesome. It's gonna be really awkward at Armageddon though, you know, the bit where the dead rise from the graves and come back to life? Yeah, I can see it now. "Hey! Who's got my tibia?" "Sorry, Joe, I can't find mine!" "Well gimme mine back!"

Bad jokes are bad.

I'm tired.

Anyway, nothing else is really worth saying except that I do not like orange-flavored ice cream as much as strawberry. And waffle cones are delicious.

Summer Camp

So it's about time I confront the keyboard and my rapidly deteriorating ability to type and write a blog post. I figure summer camp is as good a thing to write about as any. Except for the fact that it will be heavily censored, as this took place at a church camp, and further censored as this is a family blog and swearing is not included, and censored even further because the participants will probably end up reading it. Maybe.

Friday, Aug 17: Fly to UAE, bid parents adieu, fly to JFK, reach Saturday somewhere over the ocean.

Saturday, Aug 18: Keep flying, fly to Pittsburg, wait around to be picked up by someone, we do not know who.
We assume Danny, a counselor, or maybe Father Daniel, or we don't know, and walk around asking random strangers for their phones until Claudiu, the (I think the word is deacon but I could be wrong) of our church and who was mostly in charge of the sports and games at camp. Honestly, I do not know the titles of anybody at camp. There were campers, priests, and then everybody else whose jobs were indeterminable.

Anyway, we drove from the airport to camp, an hour and a half which passed by way too fast, because all of a sudden we were there. Then we had to carry our big heavy backpacks up the gigantic hill to the girls' cabins, along with the sheets, pillows, sleeping bags, and towels Father Daniel had lent us (as we did not have any, except the sleeping bags, which are too thin to warm an icecube), and we got there and we said hi to everybody, and made our beds, and I ran up and down the hill a couple times for stupid reasons I can't remember, and at some point I got grass stains on my knee, and everything was a blur.

Sunday, Aug 19: Because it was Sunday, we had mass, so we had to wake up early and not eat and spend about an hour and half at the church, maybe two, I don't know because I don't wear watches, and then we had brunch, which was bliss. I spent the entire week borrowing clothes from everyone, and I spent that day wearing Dacia's sweatpants (THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL AND WARM AND COMFORTABLE AND I WISH I NEVER HAD TO GIVE THEM UP I LOVE THEM SO MUCH), and then when it was warm Andreea's shorts. I wore my shirts. Oh, and Eric's cap. That was mine for the duration of the week. Then that night, because I felt a bit sick, I got to stay at my cabin instead of going to church. The plan was to listen to Jason Mraz to keep myself awake and then go down to the Pavillion with everybody else to watch movies—a skit about St Pantelimon and then a video about the life of St Filofteia, who we named our camp after, and then Maria's and my video we made about going around the world. The plan did not work. I fell asleep, rushed down to the Pavillion to find them finishing the life of St Filo and then remembered I'd left my coat at the cabin. Bliss.

Oh, and they laughed at all the wrong parts. I blame exhaustion.

Monday, Aug 20: I had to skip church again, still out of illness, but it was okay, because I had a lovely time drinking tea with Doamna Mihaela, my counselor and an avid reader of this blog (HI THERE). But then we had to go back to church. Sigh. And then I felt worse again. Double sigh. We played some volleyball and me and some other girls took great pains to avoiding physical activity. In the end we brought the athletes some water, which was the extent of our exercise for the day.

Tuesday, Aug 21: I honestly can't remember Tuesday, except feeling ridiculously happy the whole time. Or at least most of it. During freetime, me and some of the other girls were playing card games like Mr President, then Anca and Gabriel showed up and we played chemps (pronounced "kemps"). At some point during the day we played some basketball. I played barefoot, which, in combination with hot pavement, will naturally result in gigantic ugly blisters.

Wednesday, Aug 22: I remember Wednesday even less than Tuesday, but it was the day we started the Olympics, which, for once, actually showed some sign of organization. We were divided into four teams, which we could name ourselves, so long as it was after a saint. The results were St Alexandra, St Spiridon, St Ghiorghie (which I think translates to George), and I can't remember the last one. It's Maria's team, while mine is Alexandra. Danny and Andreea were on Ghiorghie and Anca was on Spiridon with Ingrid. We played tennis, badminton, and basketball that day, and the winners were Maria's team for tennis and badminton and Ghiorghie for basketball. Klara, the future godmother of my daughter, and I prefered to invest our energy into writing a song about camp to the tune of Cotton-Eyed Joe. Then it was Father Gabriel's birthday and we had some absolutely delicious cake which everyone wanted seconds from.

Thursday, Aug 23: We continued the Olympics with soccer, volleyball, and swimming. Ghiorghie won the swimming, while Alexandra won the others, to my complete shock, as I have never won at the Olympics. Then, before we got into the pool, after volleyball, Ingrid and I started a whipcream fight, which has been taped by at least three different cameras: mine, Dmna Mihaela's, and Domnul Flechtenmacher's, who films all the scheduled events at summer camp so that he can make an official video at the end. Yes, this is his actual legit job there. Unfortunately for you, we have not yet uploaded anything off my camera to the computer, so until then, you must imagine it.

Then, during the afternoon, the Archbishop came, and we had a very long service that had something to do with St Parascheva, and we did not have an evening service.

Friday, Aug 24: We had another huge, early-morning mass, in which most of camp took communion, having done confession at some point earlier in the week. Again, we did not eat until brunch, which was again bliss, and then later we did a show for the Archbishop, where we sang, danced, and did two skits, more information on those later. And then later we went down to the river and went in canoes, which was nice.

Saturday, Aug 25: We left camp :( It was kind of funny, watching everybody run around to say goodbye to everybody else, pretending to push the cars to get them started... Eric spent our entire goodbye making me promise to give Anca a kiss and to tell her he loved her, because she wasn't there when he was leaving. So in the end, the awesomeness that is Roxy and I filmed me doing so.

I also left in a rush, as my ride was taking me to a little nowhere-town near Watkins, where I'd be spending the weekend with my friend. It was just under five hours, and they had a baptism to attend, which would take them another hour to get to, so the rush was understandable. As we were driving away, though, I saw Anca's brother Andrei drive past to pick her up. Naturally, I just had to say hi, so we stopped the car, I hopped out, and ran over. We hugged, said hi, said bye, and I left.

On the subject of skits, dancing, and music: I am not sure what began on which day, so I've included all the artsy things at the end. We painted icons, and when I say "we", I mean the adults, because we would start them, break for lunch, and then admire the finished product. At the end of the week, it was revealed that this arrangement was not liked by the campers, and it will probably be different next year.

Father Gabriel, whose birthday we celebrated, was the head of the drama department. We did two skits: a pantomime and a short play. The play was about St Pantelimon (which explians why we they watched the movie about him on Sunday), and I played a doctor that did not appreciate the fact that the saint healed his patients for free, setting an example for the other doctors to follow, and if you've ever seen a medical bill, it is obvious that they did not. This is because I (or at least, my character) appealed to Emperor Maximian, played by Eric, to kill the poor saint, which he did. In the pantomime, we did The Good Samaritan, in which Gabriel was the samaritan and Anca was the beaten-up traveller and I was the person with the house that the samaritan took the traveller to.*

*If you don't know the story, it goes something like this:
A man was travelling when he was set upon by two robbers (played by Roxy and Dacia). They took his coat and beat him to the point of death. A priest walked by, but did not help. A levic (a helper of the priest) walked by, but did not help either. Finally, a samaritan walked by, and seeing the traveller, checked to see if he was still alive, and seeing that he was, put him on his donkey (but as we had no donkey available, Anca was carried) and brought him to a house, where he gave the host two dinars and explained what happened. Then the samaritan said to use the dinars for the healing of the traveller, and if more was necessary, then he would pay the man back. If that last sentence made sense.

On Thursday, the dance teacher came, which we were very excited for, and we had a lot of fun learning lots of traditional Romanian dances from then until Saturday, when we left.

During the week, we did music class with Leo, and we learned a cantacle for St Filofteia and then one for maslu, which I don't know how to translate, but basically it's one of the Seven Holy Things of the Church and it's when two to seven priests gather and have a special mass, and anyone who goes is healed.

So yeah, that was a rather long and pretty bad summary of summer camp, and it sounds rather boring, but that's because all the interesting things that happened had to be censored. Sorry.

Bali, Bruises, New Jobs, the Middle Ages, Sprite, Rumpelstiltskin, and Oh, By the Way, Lydia is Awesome.

Let's start in order—Bali.

Bali's pretty cool. Everyone's nice and friendly and proposes marriage to you. They ask for your name and give you theirs, shake your hand and ask where you're from, tell you you're pretty and that they hope to see you again soon. Occasionally, someone will try to sell you something. But they don't compliment you, usually. They just try to sell it to you.


Bruises.

We went surfing and I got bruises on my knees, my hips, my head, my arms, my elbows, my everywheres. Not that you can see them. But they're there. Hiding. Invisible. This is because we went surfing
(more on that at "Oh, By the Way, Lydia is Awesome."). I also have very sore feet because at Jati 3, where we're staying, they have rocks arranged in beautiful patterns—beautiful, painful patterns. Now, if I'd wear shoes on occasion, I probably wouldn't mind so much.


New Jobs.

At Candidasa, one of the first places we stayed, I was given a new job. Every time Maria complained about not wanting to see this or that because we'd already seen some version of it somewhere else, we would threaten her with me. If she persisted, I would make a scene and "embarrass the family!!!!!" This is done, of course, for the simple pleasure of freaking Maria out about the family's honor. We have yet to put this plan in action though. Until then, Daddy will keep on yelling, "WE LOVE JUSTIN BIEBER!!!" at the mere mention of his name or, if no-one should mention his name, ingest an unfair amount of rice wine, beer, and alcoholic welcome drinks and be cheerful.

This only happened once at the Sagitarius restaurant. Needless to say, Maria was not pleased and spent quite an amount of time shushing him. I shushed him too, but so did the rest of us at some point or another. Maria just did it 3,019,823,783 times more.


The Middle Ages.

For years now, Ioan, myself, and our friend Eric have had a comic in the works. I've taken advantage of the less time (read as: no time) spent on school and have used it to work on various details—what Jenny looks like, who Theo is, details about the Elves and their tribes, Shades's history, and even *legasp* learning anatomy. Kind of. Barely. Frankly, I'm too turned off by the gigantic pile of failure me + full body is, so I don't too much try. But the moment I finish this sketchpad (soon, judging by the remaining three pages) I will try harder. Oh, but I have a vague idea of what their clothing is and I'm learning about the Middle Ages and their stuff, so I'm improving. But there is no way on earth that I will be learning architecture until I get home, so I haven't improved that much.


Sprite.

The We're Going Anyway family and I are, as you probably by now know, rather good friends who meet up occasionally. We met up yesterday with them and ate at Bendi restaurant again (which, after what just may be the shortest trip I have ever made to a bathroom ever, I don't want to visit ever again. Seeing paintings of boars... copulating... is in a lewd way, sorta funny in a family restaurant, but people? In the bathroom? Thanks, but no thanks). As usual, Meena Badeena, Tin Tin, and Snowy were congregating around Ioan and his miraculous iTouch before, during, and after eating. Then, when Ioan shut it off for a moment, they all came to me for my attention and to talk me into a really bad southern accent.

"Oh mah wurd, luck at that fleahwur ovur there in the midul of the table. In't that the durned purtiest fleahwur you done e'er seen afore? I think that's a real purty fleahwur. Oh mah wurd, and luck at that keeeeyout li'l gurl! Ain't she cute? Y'all kean thank wut ya lahk, but I thank that she just may be the keeyoutest li'l gurl I e'er seen in mah lahf."

You have no idea how many times they made me repeat that. Over and over and over again. And they still found it funny.

Ioan was slightly hurt by the fact that their interest in him extended only to his iTouch (you have no idea how much control he has over them just by threatening to permanently remove Aralon from their lives) and pointed out a fact that was glaringly obvious to us and not so obvious to them—iTouch on = Ioan. iTouch off = Ileana. If I'd have had my iTouch, they'd have divided their time between us, but Tin Tin had said that it was okay that I hadn't brought it.

Anyway, another glaringly obvious fact is that they are always so nice and quiet with Ioan (because they're watching a teeny tiny screen), but are so damn hyper with me (probably because with me, the only options are doing physical things. This is sad. I hate hyper things and physical activities. I was always the kid to sit down and draw, or come up with stories, or read, or watch TV, or chill at the computer, or something. That's why I never joined the softball team [that, and I am a baseball fan. Baseball. Why Ioan got invited to baseball in kindergarden and I did not, I do not know, but I have yet to forgive the elementary school's administration])

Another good reason why they were so hyper was because Ioan gave them Sprite. Which they never drink. Like, ever. For a reason. Because little kids + sugar = the apocalypse. It's simple math and yet the math whiz didn't see it. And he let them have quite a bit, the stupid monkey.

Thankfully, Ioan turned his iTouch back on and they left in peace with Tin Tin's shuffle, where I listened to Eva Cassidy for a while.


Rumpelstiltskin.

Ioan: Guess what?
Ileana: What?
Ioan: I have a name.
Ileana: Cool.
Ioan: And you will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever guess it!
Ileana: Rumpelstiltskin.
Ioan: What? No!!
Ileana: *laughs*
Ioan: But you know, there's a giant gap in that story.
Ileana: What?
Ioan: How did she, out of all the names, pick Rumpelstiltskin? which, by the way, is not a recognized word.
Ileana: *blink blink* So, on the night of the second day, Rumpelstiltskin was dancing around the fire, singing about how the Queen would never guess his name because it was Rumpelstiltskin. And there's this guy, and he's in the forest and he's watching Rumpelstiltskin dance around and singing about how his name is Rumpelstiltskin. So he goes to the Queen and he tells her that the dude's name is Rumpelstiltskin.
Ioan: THEY NEVER TOLD ME THAT!!!


Oh, By the Way, Lydia is Awesome.

Well, she has to be, if the first time I managed to actually stand up on a surfboard and not fall on my butt I get off and sing "Look at me now. Look at me now. I'm gettin' paper~~~"

Yeah that's right, we went surfing :) It was so great I actually broke my self-imposed rule of no emoticons and stuck one in.

We had this instructor named Haki and he was really nice and asked a lot of questions about Romania. And I kept needing Ioan to translate for me, but he wasn't actually translating just giving the same advice.

But yeah, we had awesome fun and I will even break another habit—my reluctance to learn how to put photos in blogposts.

Before surfing :)

You do not believe how much I had to insist on this photo.

Look at that muscle definition!! Why can't I have muscle definition too? Do you realize how awesome my arms would be if they were toned? But no, I'm all soft and curvy.

Before

And after

Us with Haki—he loves you <3

Videos

So, I made a couple videos with the Hong Kong footage. The first one has a song by Roxette called "Fireworks" and it's about Hong Kong in general.

Click this

The second one has a song by Daisy Dares You called "Number One Enemy" and it's about the Chinese New Year parade.

WATCH HERE!

Enjoy!

Hawaii

Blog about Hawai’i. (I don’t actually like that apostrophe, so I’ll start again.)

Blog about Hawaii. (There, better.)

So we hopped on a plane from New Zealand and reached Sydney, Australia, where there was a free internet station with four computers and no chairs. I stood on my feet for well over an hour, checking my Facebook, my email, my deviantArt, and could’ve stayed much longer had there not been a person waiting for me to get off. But in the end, I solved all those little things that had been saying, “Ileana… come to us… reply to all your comments… read those poems… favorite these pictures…” The only thing that I couldn’t do with those computers was to upload my pictures to dA, because they were on our computer. The one that is never, ever connected to internet, and if it is, then the internet is too weak to upload so many photographs. It’s not so bad, though. There are only 80 photos crying to see the World Wide Web, and six people who will definitely see them, not to mention the innumerable passerby’s that say, “Oh pretty! I will favorite this picture! And this other picture by the same person! And look through their gallery and favorite some more pictures! Oh, what the heck, I’ll just add them to my watchlist and see every new picture they upload.” And so increases my popularity*.

*Not that the popularity means anything. It just gives you a bit of an ego boost. And bloats up your head a little.

At some point we got on the long, boring flight to Hawaii. I read the magazines that may or may not have said interesting things, and saw which movies were available during the flight—not that it mattered, because to watch the movies you’d have to rent an iPad, which we were not doing. I can’t exactly remember what I did; I think it was sleep, iTouch, stare, stare, stare, sleep, stare, and more staring. Mostly staring.

Finally, Hawaii! We reached Honolulu and found the plane to take us from there to Big Island, where we would be spending most of our vacation. 

When we got there, we rented a car and drove to our hotel, which had a bathroom with a sliding door; a kitchen area with a counter on one side, a huge sink on the other, and opposing mirrors above both; a small balcony; a living room where us three slept; and a bedroom for M&D. The living room had a television, and we discovered FRIENDS. Every night at eight, we would sit down in front of the TV and would watch until ten, doing important things like tooth-brushing during the extensive commercial breaks.

One day, while waiting for M&D to come home after (what was it? a walk? shopping trip?), we found this show, “Ridiculous” or something, that finished at 8, right before FRIENDS. It was about ridiculous stunts gone wrong. For example: one idiot decides to snowboard off of the roof of a school bus and onto a plywood ramp and expects it to work. Instead he gets a bed in a hospital. Or another idiot skateboards off of the roof of a house onto another, but he chickens out, the skateboard rolls off, and he loses his balance and actually falls into a shed. And so on and so forth. During the commercial breaks, we decided to start tallying how many of which type of commercial there were. We kept doing this until the end of FRIENDS, and the final score, after two and a half hours of television was:

Money:         2

Sports: 2

Shopping: 2

Cars: 3

Hair products: 4

Misc.: 5

TV Series: 5

Electronics: 5

Clothes:         5

Insurance: 6

Health: 8

Beauty:       12

Hygiene:       29

Food:       52

Total:     140 commercials in 2.5h.

Mostly, besides FRIENDS, we didn’t really do much. We went on a long drive to a parking lot, from which we took a long, long, long walk to get to a cliff which we would climb down to get to a beach with lots of olivine that made the beach green. With just twenty minutes worth of walking left, a pickup truck came along and told us to hop in the back, which was a godsend. In just five minutes, we reached the beach and climbed down, then got back in the truck and rode back quickly. We drove a bit some more to spot where we could see the sunset and then went on the long drive home.

The next day we decided to see the town, and found Dinah’s Haircuts. Ioan sat down in the chair, said he wanted it short, and snip, snip! All his long, flowing locks fell to the floor and he looked fantastic. Maria sat down next and said she was growing it out, but she wanted the bottom part off. She got up with a bob straight out of the 20’s. Next Mom said she wanted it just like this, but shorter. Luckily, she fared better than this poor individual: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TBmNN8hM1o. Finally, Dad sat down and got his haircut too.

And me? I shaved my head bald.

JUST KIDDING. The hair is here to stay.

We got back to town and tried to see a palace (I say “palace”, but it actually looked like an okay-looking house), but it was closed, so we decided to walk into the church across the street. Then we went back to the hotel, and Dad drove us to the theater to see The Hunger Games.

And it was awesome. Just so, totally, freaking awesome. I can’t spoil the movie for you, in case you didn’t watch it, but it was really good. I really hated, though, how shaky the camera was. I mean, I understand for the violent bits, but Katniss would be, say, walking through the forest and everything would be quiet and peaceful. This would be conveyed to you via lots of short, shaky clips that left you slightly dizzy. Or she would be talking with Gale, and the camera would be bobbing up and down. It was probably the only bad thing about the movie.

The next morning, on Saturday, we took a tour of a coffee farm belonging to the family of Dinah of Dinah’s Haircuts. It was rather interesting, for someone who aspires to be a coffee drinker but has not yet fulfilled that dream. I think Mom is the one explaining this in detail, but all I know is that someone else is covering the topic of the coffee farm.

The coffee was rather good, especially with orange icecream :)

Then at some point we went to a Hawaiian temple on a beach. Apparently, if you were a warrior that lost in battle, or if you had broken a law, if you could reach this temple and then the gods would forgive you and you would be redeemed, or something like that. It was very hard to reach this temple, unfortunately, and many died trying.

When I think of the word “temple”, a very large and open space with the temple made of driftwood and palm trees with leaves and seaweed on the roof, is not what I imagine. I imagine temples and shrines like in Kyoto, or Buddhist temples in China or Tibet (which, technically, are the same country), or Hindu temples in India, or anything other than what we saw in Hawaii. It makes sense, I mean, it’s not like they really had much to work with; the aforementioned countries were more advanced than the Hawaiians, but it was still a bit of a shock.

We changed hotels and drove from one end of the island to another, and we attended a church service. It was very confusing, with a card that had your responses written on them, and you would have to read them out loud at the right parts. Mostly, I spent my time with a look of fear on my face and thanking God that Catholic sermons were short.

Our new hotel wasn’t too far away from a volcano that was constantly smoking. At night you could see the lava glow, and in the daytime you could see it smoke. There was a museum with lots of volcano facts and beautiful paintings of the volcano goddess Pele, accompanied by certain myths. Like the one about how she dreamt of a chief on another island, and she sent her sister to bring him over. But, because she was jealous and suspicious, she thought her sister had betrayed her, so she killed her sister’s friend and destroyed her sacred grove. The sister retaliated by embracing the chief, so Pele killed the chief in her anger. Then they were both very sorry for what they did and the sister brought the chief to life, and he chose to stay with her. They went back to his island and, I assume, lived happily ever after. Pele eventually found another lover, who happened to be her opposite, the god of rain.

Also at the museum was a sort of seismograph, and the display said, “Jump jump jump and make your own earthquake!” So Ioan and I did a lot of jumping. Every five minutes, Ioan would go back to it and try to figure out how to make the biggest lines on the seismograph, and I would watch him. Another guy who did the same thing was Tommy, who was visiting the museum from another island for his project on volcanoes. He took a picture of Ioan jumping, but we don’t have it.

The next day, our last day on Big Island, we went on a helicopter ride to see a volcano and new lava flow and the island. It was interesting, I think. I fell asleep. It was terrible. I really don’t know what we saw. I saw grey rock (hardened lava) and a glowy bit once or twice and the ocean. And the pilot was talking about how this guy’s house was destroyed by the flow but the guest hosue wasn’t, and how this town had been destroyed but now the people moved back on top of the flow, and these three uninsured houses that had been destroyed and there were these really bad covers of classic songs like “Brown-Eyed Girl” and I fell asleep. It was terrible. It reminded me of India, when we went to see this show, and my head was a pendulum. Fall asleep, head sinks down to chest. Wake up and fall asleep with head tilted back. Wake up and head sinks to chest. And so on for half an hour.

After the helicopter ride we went to the airport and hopped on a plane to Honolulu, and our hotel was so similar to the first one in Big Island that it was scary. We were in Room 947, and our balcony was right over the pool. Unfortunately, the pool was too shallow to even think of jumping into it from that height. Darn.

We continued our FRIENDS fascination and got to see the first ten, fifteen? minutes of PUNK’D with Justin Bieber and were totally horrified. Just kidding, we totally saw the humor of traumatizing people by letting them think they ruined a wedding, or that they convinced this girl to crash a car into a restaurant’s window (who’s paying for that, by the way? Justin Bieber, the most highly paid person under 21, the show, or the restaurant itself?). Oh how we laughed and laughed / except I wasn’t laughing (Under the circumstances / I’ve been shockingly nice).*

*Sorry, I couldn’t resist. These are the lyrics to “Want You Gone”, which is the credits song to the video game Portal 2 (which I didn’t play, but it is such a hilarious song sung by, I’m assuming, a defeated robot).

[Verse 1]

Oh here we are again
It’s always such a pleasure

Remember when you tried

To kill me twice?

[Verse 2]

Oh how we laughed and laughed

Except I wasn’t laughing

Under the circumstances

I’ve been shockingly nice.

[Chorus 1]

You want your freedom? Take it.

That’s what I’m counting on.

I used to want you dead but

Now I only want you gone.

There is more, of course, but I don’t think Daddy will appreciate my precious blog space being taken up by a catchy song. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFeTzCMFaH8&feature=BFp&list=FLyuYI4M08QL4&index=1

Honolulu, to me, looks more like a sleepy town than a city. This is probably because when I think “city”, I think NYC, Las Vegas, Tokyo, Beijing, and New Delhi. Even Tibet had more bustle than Honolulu. Where is the bustle?!! Hawaii, in general, had a frightening lack of bustle, which has brought me to the realization that I am not very good without it.

We mostly sat around in our hotel (fine by me—except when they left the balcony door open*) and took our tests (which was lovely, and the italics are to emphasize, not sarcasticate). I drew characters from a comic I’ve been working on with Ioan and our friend Eric for three and a half years now, and wrote the basic storyline and came up with ideas and did a good job of avoiding blogging. As you can see, my good luck only lasted for so long. That’s probably why my posts are so long. To cover everything and to get me through for a long time.

*One day, the balcony door was open and there were two white pigeons hopping around. “Wow, so cool! So amazing!” Maria said as we watched them hop nearer and nearer to our room. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if it came inside?” she asked, to which my firm reply was a panicked “NO! WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?!” If you recall from my first blogpost, I am not fond of birds. The bird was very close to getting inside when I screamed. Very calmly, it hopped out. Our second adventure was with a tiny, sparrow-like bird (sparrows used to be the only birds I could stand, until we were in Honolulu eating sandwiches and these evil sparrows kept coming right into our faces trying to scare us into dropping our food. They failed, though) that hopped in our room, did a little loop from the couch to the TV, and, thanks to the stink-eye I was giving it, left.

We didn’t sit around in our hotel forever, though. We went to see an aquarium, which was very interesting but would have been more so if there would’ve been more sharks (BIG sharks, not little ones. BIG sharks), but there was this really cool exhibit with these HUGE ugly fish bigger than me, straight out of a scifi novel! And there was this kinda boring exhibit about coral, but I found out that, had I been a coral reef, I would be 160 years old (corals are measured by height, and I am 5’2”. The discovery that I haven’t grown in almost a year led to much giddiness on my part. Why? Because 5’2” is my ideal height. I don’t know why, since I can’t reach anything in Mom’s kitchen, but I just like the number).

After the aquarium, we took a short walk by the beach, and saw this epic huge tree. It was gigantic and I have no clue what it’s called (I have asked Daddy so many questions [“What did we do in Big Island? Honolulu? Wait, wait, lemme write it down so I won’t have to ask again. When was this? When was that? I don’t remember. No, I still don’t remember. I honestly have no clue—oh wait, yeah, now I remember. Thankies!”] that I’m scared to ask the species of this tree), but it was gigantic and Ioan and I went to climb on it. Then Ioan said there were fire ants on one of the branches, and M&D said we should get going, and the issue of getting down started. Maria once compared me to a cat, “She does what she wants, when she wants, if she wants,” but what she forgot to mention was that I love to get up in trees. So long as the fire department is ready to get me down. “Oh mister fireman, sir, I need you to get my kitty out of a tree!” “Sure, no problem! ...that’s no kitty, that’s a little girl!” “Yupp, my sister Kitty.”

Oh, the shame of it.

While we were off adventuring, Maria was at the Apple Store updating her computer. Just as we got back, though, they finished this workshop that taught you how to use Final Cut Pro, a movie editing program which looks much more complicated than iMovie, but that’s probably because you can do so much more with it. I have no clue at all about it, but apparently they have workshops at all Apple Stores, so I have found my latest obsession.

The next day we did quite a bit of stressing, which, as I recall, involved a long, long, long walk with heavy backpacks to a hotel, lots wrong directions and mess-ups on my darling father’s part, reaching the Marina Hotel, dumping our stuff in our room and going to Pearl Harbor.

Ha! I remembered that without Daddy, because he forgot to tell me it when I was writing my list of what happened!

...Seriously, you have no clue how proud I am right now. My memory is so lovely I can totally remember Camp 2010 (the sweeter parts; I have such a vague recollection of the nastier bits) but need so much help in remembering five minutes ago. I think I’m a bit young for Alzheimer’s, though, don’t you?

At Pearl Harbor, we had to leave our little rucksacks with important things like water and… water… at a special locker, where we found lots of rubber bands on the ground. Ioan collect quite a number of them and tied them up together to form a really long chain. Then we saw a 23-minute movie about Pearl Harbor and WW2 (which is one of my favorite topics in history, but I never quite understood it. This is embarrassing, because I reread those bits a lot), which explained that Japan wanted to invade a small territory in Asia that belonged to the US, so they decided to attack Pearl Harbor, where all of America’s warships were docked so that they could safely invade and not have to worry about the US. Until, of course, America did the inconceivable and joined the war.

After the movie, we went to a memorial and saw the names of all the fallen. It was on a huge wall with names all over it, and then at the bottom, there was a smaller block of concrete with the names of the survivors that died of natural causes. The most recently deceased was in 2011, but I forgot his name.

We practically ran out of Pearl Harbor to get to the mall in time to see Mirror Mirror, which had been released that day. It’s a version of Snow White with Lily Collins in it. Most of the time I wondered how on earth she could live with such gigantic eyebrows. They were literally huge eyebrows. They had, of course, form, but they were gigantic! It was ridiculous!*

*I’m only reacting so strongly because I am addicted to, among other things, my tweezers. No-one really understands why I like such thin eyebrows—before we left they would literally grimace at how thin they were, but now they’re more or less “normal”. I’m assuming they’d be happier if I let my eyebrows grow out and throw out the tweezers, but the only way this is happening if they mysteriously find their way into the ocean.

Mirror Mirror was a nice movie that I only watched for three reasons: Julia Roberts, the puppy love scene, and dwarf actors.

I mean, it was a nice movie, with lots of funny lines and scenes (most of which either involved the dwarves or were about them), finishing off with the only song in the movie, a song and dance that were straight out of a Bollywood film. It was nice, but would I watch it again? Yes. Because I yearn for the nectar of her skin! This was one of the funny lines which was, surprise surprise, said in the vicinity of the seven dwarves. But I would totally skip the mannequin scene with the same fervor my mom skips violent scenes in movies. Because, while Mom has issues with blood and gore, I have issues with messed-up creepy things, like the Other Mother from Coraline. After watching it [twice, for some odd, masochistic reason], I could not stand the dark for months. Months, I tell you. And seeing a mannequin giggle its ugly, deep giggle with a creepy smiley face made of two tomatoes and a splash of gravy as it was going in for the kill is definitely, deeply situated in the messed-up creepy things that made Disney’s Anastasia impossible for me to watch until the ancient age of 14.

Okay, so I’ve written quite a bit now, so I’ll wrap up. Yadda yadda yadda, got to airport, went on long, boring flight, slept, slept, slept, stared, stared, stared, iTouch, slept, stared, more staring, got in taxi, reached home, lots of books, yay! so happy! realized FRIENDS is too much bother to find in Australia, watched old documentary about the slaughter of dolphins, went to bed really fast.

The End.

Cambodia & Thailand

As an Orthodox Christian, I’m not supposed to believe in destiny, fate, omens, and the like. We’re supposed to believe in Free Will & Co., which is fine by me.

However, as a slightly superstitious, anything-is-possible, there-must-be-some-sort-of-hidden-meaning-to-this sort of person, I have three philosophies:

1. Everything happens for a reason.
2. Everything has some sort of hidden meaning and
3. If you figure out the hidden meaning, everything will turn out well in the end (the end, however, may come later than you think).

And this was beautifully demonstrated this morning at 4 am. But to explain, we must go to the beginning.

We left Cambodia, which is gorgeous, but there isn’t much to say. I will say it here, though, as I have no intention of writing an entire blogpost about it.

We met a group of adults who taught English in the southern part of China, who were traveling for a few weeks around Southeast Asia, and at least three out of five of them had been homeschooled. Later, we saw them again with monkeys climbing all over them. I would have borrowed one, but they weren’t exactly tame, and I had no inclination to go back to the bathroom to wash my hands, then spend the next few days picking monkey fur off of my clothes. One of the women was later bitten by a mother monkey for picking up the baby monkey. After that we left the monkeys alone.

Also, Angkor Wat is possibly the most boring temple in all the Angkor Wat complex, if not the world.

More interesting things that happened in Cambodia was that, one morning I was talking with Gabriel, who asked me if I wanted to go home. I replied, ‘YES’ and gave my reasons. Later that day I was at a restaurant, eating my delicious stir-fry noodles with pork when it literally hit me. I rocked back and forth* as if I’d been hit in the head [and as Tae Kwon Do student who used to spar every Saturday morning as a kid, I would know the feeling very well...] and I realised, why would I go home? What would I do home? Sure, I say I’m going to start composing and become reacquainted with my piano, but I’m always saying things. Sure, I say I’ll take a long, long, long walk outside every day [does wonders for the complexion], but I’m not that sure I will. No sir, I will not be returning home ahead of schedule.

*I tend to get dizzy very easily. Running in circles, tire-swings, standing up too quickly, mad-crazy heat... So I suppose it was coincidence that the heat hit me at the same time as my little ‘eureka!’ moment.

Also, we got a pedicure from some flesh-eating fish [which is actually better than I just made it sound] and met Patrick (also known as ‘Patty’) and Sam, two Britishers traveling around Southeast Asia for six weeks, and had a very nice long conversation with them.

We also later visited a land mine museum.

We left Cambodia by bus, in the wee hours of the morning. We stood waiting with a group of people also going to Bangkok, Thailand, expecting a boring ride in a big van, spent reading, listening to music, perhaps talking with the rest of your family (if you had a family), or, in Ioan’s case, killing battery on various games that I was not aware existed. He has developed a habit of surfing iTunes looking for interesting apps, then somehow convincing Dad to download them. I don’t know how he does it. I wish I did.

Anyway, we were right—we spent the ride in the vans not caring for our neighbours, as there was no reason to, and then, just a few kilometers from the border, we stopped.

Scene I, Act I: A Comedy of Scammers.

A guy came and said we had to buy a red circular sticker from him, and that we had to give him our bus tickets to Bangkok. No-one understood why we had to give our tickets—our only form of proof that we had bought tickets for the bus—to this man, and when asked he didn’t give any satisfactory answers.

Now I, as a child going through her own, non-serious, version of Peter Pan’s Syndrome, did not pay much attention to what was going on between the adults, and followed their lead. When Daddy came handing out red stickers, I put them on. Of course, I asked why, and received the answer that we had to, or else the bus people wouldn’t recognize us. Then another guy, an American from the second van, came up to us and said, ‘No. It’s a scam. They’re taking your tickets so you have to buy a second ticket when you get there. It’s a scam, get your tickets back.’ So we took the stickers off and gave them to Dad, who, along with some of our neighbours, managed, after a long time, to convince the guy to give our tickets back.

Scene II, Act I.

Now, as this was going on, I was as usual, listening to music (but not Guns N’ Roses, shockingly enough—to the songs of the Alternate Genre, a playlist of 100+ songs, from my previous post. I was right, though, I did manage to finish all those songs before the post was finished.), but then along came a little boy, about two years old, maybe more, maybe less. He climbed in our van, walked around, played with the seats, got out, got in again, noticed the van door was open and closed it. We opened it later, and he came back again to close it. We opened it again.

Beside the door was a young Korean woman, with long brown hair and big, square, black-rimmed glasses. When the baby came again to close the door for the third time, she quickly grabbed the door handle from the inside and made sure the door stayed open. The baby pushed and pushed, but he couldn’t close the door. Confused as to why the door would not close this time while it had been in proper working condition before, he came round to see what was wrong. Very quickly, the girl took her hand off the handle and placed it in her lap. Seeing no problem, the baby returned to his work of door-shutting. Immediately she grabbed the door handle and once more there was a brief battle of wills, which she won (barely—she was laughing too hard). The boy came round again, trying to see what was wrong, but again there was nothing to show any sort of problem. So he went back to the door and she grabbed the handle again. This time it lasted longer, but eventually, the baby gave up, assuming the door had simply died.

He kept coming back to the van, though, as Maria, Ioan and I kept playing with him. Finally, I got out of the van and picked him up. I felt so proud—it’s a baby and I was holding him properly!

He looked at me with his big eyes and plump face, with a look that said, ‘You are a human. I shall endure this strange turn of events until you put me down, but I prefer you put me down now.’ I was smiling at him, bounced him once or twice, making the usual cute baby noises, saying nonsense like, ‘Hello, hello! You are so cute, blah blah blah.’

Now, if you smile at a girl baby, the chances she will smile back are much bigger than if you smile at a boy baby, and, knowing this, I didn’t think much of the fact that, even though my smile was as wide as wide could be, he stared at me like that aunt that’s always pinching your cheeks.

So it really came as a shock to me when he lifted up his pudgy little fist and punched me in the face.

Now, if you assume that a baby’s punches have no weight, you would be correct. But it is rather annoying to have a baby punch you twice and then slap you for good measure.

I quickly put him down, rather shocked but still finding the whole situation absurd, and got back in the van. He climbed in after me and then pulled back to punch Ioan, who caught it. Then he went on to Maria, but luckily he was taken out of the van by—his father? Anyway, he left us alone after that.

‘Wow, Ileana,’ said Ioan. ‘You were just punched in the face by a baby. I can’t believe you couldn’t defend a punch from a baby!’

Of course I couldn’t defend a punch from a baby. First off, I am a girl who, upon seeing a cute baby, exclaims to Maria about the overall cuteness of that baby, which is, more often than not, agreed with, and the two of us shall make wistful comments along the lines of ‘I wish I were pregnant/I wish I had a baby.’ (The first is usually mine—being pregnant means I can be fat and eat way more than I should. Also, it means that the rest of the world is automatically my slave.) Secondly, I am rather insecure about the whole holding-a-baby thing, so I would rather have both hands on the baby I am holding. To defend a punch from a baby, I would have to either dodge it (not possible without a giraffe neck), or take one of my hands off the baby and then take appropriate measures.

As you may have already deducted from previous paragraphs, due to my lack of giraffe neck I ended up taking the punches.

Scene I, Act II.

After we finally left the baby and the man who may or may not have been scamming us, we reached the border and looked for our bus. We stood in lines, got to know each other. There was an Australian who was actually from New Zealand, and he had brought his guitar with him. Discovering that I also played guitar, we had a conversation in which he gave me some tips on improving. There was the American, Derrick, who had warned us about the scam, and taught world history back in California. Then, of course, was the Korean girl, and a family from Czech Republic. They had kept their red stickers, so when the people came saying about a bus to Bangkok, us sticker-less people opted to follow them down the rabbit hole. However, like the white rabbit, the man leading us (or, more correctly, the Czechs) to the bus had no consideration for the slower people of the group, an old Israelite woman traveling with her daughter. The daughter would keep shouting, ‘Excuse me, could you please go slower? Excuse me, please slow down!’ and then angrily exclaim to us, ‘I can’t believe it! He has no consideration for the older people of the group! My mother is way back there, she can’t keep up.’ They had been on the bus with Mr. Derrick. We finally reached the ‘bus’, which was actually a van, and watched as the Czechs got it and rode off into the noonday sun.

Scene II, Act II.

Now the comedy really begins. The Israelite woman went up to one of the men working at the bus-center and started talking to him, saying how her money had been stolen and she wanted the police. She started getting louder and louder, and pretty soon was shouting at him. Mr. Derrick, trying to be helpful, came up and explained very nicely that they had been scammed, that they wanted their money back, they wanted the police... The man was listening to Mr. Derrick, not the Israelite, which I found slightly sexist, but had to agree with. I myself know very well that shouting, violence and tantrum-throwing is not a very effective way of getting things done. Putting it into practice, however, is surprisingly difficult.

‘I want the police! Who is the man with the bus? I want to know his name!’ the Israelite woman shouted, referring to one of the scammers.

‘I don’t understand why you are attacking me,’ the man from the bus-center said, which is normally the best thing to do when you are dealing with an angry person.

‘Why I’m attacking you? Ever since I came here, all I hear is screaming, screaming, screaming! My money has been stolen, I want to know the driver’s name. I want the police to arrest him!’ She shouted angrily.

The Australian-from-New-Zealand walked around, minding his own business, getting a new bus. Mr. Derrick also walked around, trying to find a way to Bangkok. The man talked with his coworkers. The Israelite women talked with us calmly about various things. The money, the scammers, why this is happening, how is it happening, how they made money off of it, where are you from, how Romanians have Israelite students at the Universities, before charging off into battle, switching from their gregarious, lovely selves into she-demons, angrily shouting at the other scammers. The police came, they explained to him, did some more shouting, and between this they would come to us to talk some more.

‘A little fight is good,’ the mother said, smiling. They were enjoying themselves...

Mom and I watched, also enjoying ourselves at how worked up they would get, and how quickly they would switch to normal, friendly people. While they would be off causing a ruckus, Mom and I would be discussing them.

I hate complaints and negative comments. It really messes up my day. And because I hate hearing these sort of things, I try to avoid saying them. So, to me, causing an incredibly huge ruckus about how your money has been stolen and how you want the man arrested and this bad thing happened and that bad thing happened and you want it all fixed, is not something I would do, or something that I fully understand.

Mom, on the other hand, says that it is good that they are making a ruckus (maybe she doesn’t agree with their shouting and angry gesticulating, but she agrees that at least someone should be protesting this ‘scam’), because if enough people make a scene at this bus-center, then they will eventually have to close down, which will be good for future travelers, because then they won’t get scammed. This went into my ‘for the greater good’ category, which includes tourists exercising self-restraint as they go on night-safaris to watch lions, and refuse the urge get out of the jeep and really close to the lions, for the sake of future tourists. Because if you do get out of the jeep, the lions will no longer see the jeep and assume it is one single wickedly ugly animal. Instead, they will see the jeep and assume it is a jeep full of tourists, which may be eaten. And so, even if the lions don’t eat you, who got out of the jeep, they will eventually eat a different tourist, for no reason other than tourists are much slower than gazelles, and probably more nutritional.

And so, with this to compare to, I let the Israelites shout their way to I’m not sure what end, but I think that they may have succeeded, I don’t know, but we did end up on a bus to Bangkok, and then on a second bus to Ayutthaya, and then we were in a hotel room enjoying ourselves.

Tourist destinations were visited, temples that were climbed on in the hot noonday sun, museums full of sculptures and fans, and more temples to top it off. Then a bus was taken to Bangkok where we had another hotel room and my iTouch, iLeana, had great difficulty in connecting to internet, which resulted in much anger on my part in those moments in which internet was absolutely critical (which, I’ll admit, is never, really, because internet is not actually that important to human survival, unless, of course, you are Shane Schofield from Ice Station, by Matthew Reilly. Then, in that case, it is sorta critical).

We slept in the first day, then woke up early the next, so we could visit a very shiny palace or temple or whatsit, because I wasn’t really too clear on that (I think you have understood by now that there are few things I’m clear on), but it was interesting and... shiny.

Then we waited in our hotel lobby for a taxi and I saw a very interesting book cover (they say don’t judge a book by it’s cover, and they may be right, but I will continue to pick up blue books) at the bookshelf—it was royal blue and had a combination of real leaves and golden vines on the cover, a few insects, and in the front, a dragonfly that wasn’t really a dragonfly. It mostly had the body of a dragonfly, but where its head should have been was a green statue of a naked woman, showing only her head (which seemed to be helmeted, but turned out to have the dragonfly’s eyes on either side) down to her waist. And the moment I saw that dragonfly I thought, ‘Oh damn.’

Because I had this book at home, in a very thick hardcover edition. And I had tried very hard to read it and understood nothing.

It was not a romance. It was not a thriller, nor an adventure, nor a fantasy, nor anything I could think of. It was about the lives of various people in 19th century England as they went about their lives, various people who were all connected to each other.

The Children’s Book, by A.S. Byatt.

‘Oh, what the heck?’ I thought to myself. ‘You did say that you should reread it when your older. Well, you’re older now.’ So I sat down and started reading.

I now blame all of my nonunderstanding to the hardcover. Because I really don’t like hardcover. What I don’t understand, however, is how my copy is so thick, and how this copy is so thin. Because they both have small font and, besides the thickness and the fact that this ‘new’ copy is a soft-cover, there really is no difference (that I can recall).

So, an hour later, you see me waiting for my Hepatitis A vaccine while reading a book that now intensely interests me.

The vaccine was surprisingly painless, but took such a long time that I finally had to open my tightly-shut eyes, stop reciting the alphabet and check if the needle was still in my arm. It was. I did not appreciate it.

Finally the vaccines were over and done with and we went to the train station to get on our train to Koh Tao. We mostly stayed at a restaurant, even after we’d finished lunch, except for when we went to KFC for ice cream and later for the bathroom. I managed to convince Dad to give me five baht (the Thai currency) for a machine that would tell you your fortune. You’d put in your money, a little slave would turn a numbered wheel, and a huge magician would hold a stick over the turning wheel. When the wheel stopped turning, the stick would fall onto a number (in my case, 6). Beneath this whole ‘magic act’ was a shelf with differently numbered slots, and depending on which number you got (6), that slot held your fortune. It was rather similar to my (mis)fortune from Nara, Japan, where you’d shake a box of sticks, and depending on which one fell out you ended up with a fortune. Hoping for something more optimistic than Japan (or my horoscopes for 2012, which include, you guessed it, more misfortune for both Pisces and the Ox), I took a sheet of paper from Slot 6 (six being, along with four, one of the numbers I for some strange, unknown reason, just plain and simple do not like), looked at it, and burst out laughing. I showed it Dad and Ioan, then went back to our table at the restaurant to show Mom.

‘Mom, you know that fortuneteller thing down by the stairs?’ I asked her. ‘Well, Dad gave me some money to try it out.’

‘What does it say?’ She asked.

‘Here, read for yourself!’ and I showed her the paper. She too burst out laughing, because it was all in Thai, with no English translation. It’s here in my pocket as I write, because I have a sneaking suspicion that Jim, an English diving instructor living here in Koh Tao, may speak Thai and might be able to translate my fortune.*

*I never did ask him. Now it is in my other pocket, waiting for someone else to translate it.

Finally we got on the train and settled down. We ate a few crackers. Read some. I stayed up until 9.07 pm with a flashlight strapped to my head, skimming through the political events of 1896, itching to find out what happens to Philip (who, even though he is an important character, is not the main character. In fact, there is no main character, which means that I will read about Philip and Dorothy, my two favorite characters, but I shall also have to read about Olive and Dobbin, two characters who I find excruciatingly boring), but instead put the book down and settled down to sleep. I pulled my blanket out of its plastic bag. It looked and felt more like a towel, but it kept me warm and smelled like something that had been washed perhaps a week ago, but hadn’t had the opportunity to smell otherwise. It smelled clean, but in a dusty sort of way.

I put in my earbuds and listened to Guns N’ Roses (I had discovered on the first night in Bangkok, that, much as I loved my Alternate songs, I had actually missed Guns N’ Roses, more than I’d realised), then woke up after I’d listened to all my songs at least once, and turned the music off.

I woke up a second time at 12.30, and again at 3.36.

I stared at iLeana’s screen contemplatively. Then, ‘Yeah, you can probably sleep for another 20 minutes.’ The next thing I knew, I was being shaken desperately, as if being silently told that if I did not wake up immediately, honey badgers would eat all of humanity. This terrible image resulted in me sitting up so fast that I cracked my back, saying in a whispered scream, ‘Oh my God oh my God oh my God!’ repeatedly.

It turned out that honey badgers were not eating all of humanity, and that we’d simply arrived at our station at the allotted time, 4 am. I put Book in my backpack, gave Dad back the flashlight, loaded up my stuff and walked out of the train.

As an Orthodox Christian, I’m not supposed to believe in destiny, fate, omens, and the like. We’re supposed to believe in Free Will & Co., which is fine by me.

However, as a slightly superstitious, anything-is-possible, there-must-be-some-sort-of-hidden-meaning-to-this sort of person, I have three philosophies:

1. Everything happens for a reason.
2. Everything has some sort of hidden meaning and
3. If you figure out the hidden meaning, everything will turn out well in the end (the end, however, may come later than you think).

As I walked out of the train, a man in his ‘compartment’ asked me what the time was. And I, knowing that we’d be arriving at our station at four in the morning, and that I’d woken up at 3.36 earlier, told him, ‘Oh, about four.’ He thanked me and went back into his little cocoon.

I know you knew the time, my Inner Self said to me, but shouldn’t you have checked to give him the exact time? (Because I am one of those people who, if it is 1.47, will say ‘1.47’, not ‘1.45’ or ‘1.50’.)

Yeah, I said back to my Inner Self, but he just wanted a general idea of the time, not an exact number. Besides, it’s not like I had time to stop and pull out my iPod.

At this point, I was already out of the train and had dropped my backpack on the pavement.

Do I even have my iPod...? One self asked the other (because, seeing as I’m the same person, it’s very hard to keep track of who is who). We patted down our pockets to check, because I had a feeling that I hadn’t put it in my backpack.

‘OH MY GOD,’ I said.

‘What?’ Everyone said back.

‘I DON’T HAVE MY IPOD.’ I said.

‘OH MY GOD.’ Everyone said back.

And so the next scene includes me and Mom rushing like madwomen back to my compartment and successfully rescuing iLeana from whatever terrible future awaited it.

Which has effectively proved my philosophies true.

(What? You can provide evidence proving them wrong? Just wait a bit longer, you’ll see that I’m right. You may have to wait a very long time though.)

We waited until seven to get on a bus to the docks, where we got on a boat to Koh Tao, where we met Jim, the English diving instructor. I am currently in my little bungalow with Maria and Ioan, writing this incredibly long blogpost, and in about six minutes we should be going off to eat.

PS: Yes, The Children’s Book is written by a British authoress. The spelling and single quotation marks totally didn’t give it away. Besides, the British know that words like ‘honour’, ‘colour’, ‘neighbour’ are spelled with ‘u’s in them.