so finally have all the plans in order..
tomorrow we take the ferry to Bari then the train to Rome or ferintino to that family. stay with them a week then 27th i fly from Italy to Frankfurt, train or bus to the international airport, then 2 pm i try for the first plane Home, if i don't make it theres still another one at 5 something that day.. pretty exciting! really have only a week left!

day before yesterday comice, doug, and i rented a little paddle boat and went out to the island. miranda wanted to lurk alone on the beach so she didn't come, but we had a good time. found our very own private beach and did some nudisting. it was good. on the way back though i got pretty sick.. just queasy.. i though i was just sea sick but then i kept getting worse and i was up all night really sick vomiting and feeling terrible. i really don't know what was wrong though.. i slept all day yesterday but i'm just a little shakey and sleepy today. hopefully i'll be ready for the journey tomorrow. ugh. being really sick away from home is awful though.. comice and miranda were really sweet and took good care of me. really quite nice.. well theres a big line for the internet so i should really go..
i'm trying to set up a skype account so i can call home. its only like 2.2 cents a minute if i do so pretty worth it. k. miss you all. can't believe i'll be home so soon..

hm.. been a while. we took the bus from Kotor to Budva today. it was pretty sweet they had terrible music videos and montenegrin pop the whole way so the ride felt even shorter than it was.. they-re only like 30 km apart though so i guess it wasn't really that long.. they just kindof dropped us off on the side of the road though so we were totally lost. found the bus station and dullarded around for a while. finally got english directions the an internet shop. it was totally full with little boys playing Halo, we looked online and found out that hippo hostel is like the only hostel in the country, we got some really terrible directions here but quickly got really lost. we retreced our steps tyo try the other direction and saw these two men who'd been the only other adults in the internet shop and they stopped us to offer us a ride. it was totally chance we saw them at all but they were really nice, from slovenia and staying here 3 months as tour guides for slavics or something.. they spoke the language though and could ask for directions, which we can't do, they drove around for a while but eventually we found it and they just dropped us off. so nice. i was stoked. when we looked online hostel world said it was all booked tonight and we just came on the chance they'd have space.. they are totally layed back and nice here and have 3 beds for us 3 nights. its nice to be in an actual hostel finally, we keep staying in these private apartments so its a good change to have people around who speak english and some of them are even from the US! we met this really nerdy buy named doug who we spent the day with. he's pretty great and its aslo a welcome change to hangout with some guy who isn't contstntly hitting on us. we went with him and one of the guys who works here down to the beach and did some epic cliff jumping! i was pretty weibis and only did the 20 foot one but comice and miranda got really into it and jumped from this one that wasd 40 or 45 feet we guessed. really extreme. i have a great picture of comice doing it.. (actually i'll post it since they wanted it to put on the website so its on this computer..) miranda did some wierd thing and twisted to some sideways bellyflop, like just her leg it the water bad and it got really bruised and red.. we swamped really slowly back here and the girls are deleriously making dinner. actually i should stop missing out!
heres comice..

still in dubrovnik, i can't believe we've been here almost a week..
we pretty much just go to the beach all the time. yesterday we went on this 3 island tour, it was pretty nice, got to swim on an actual sandy beach, all the ones here are little stones, but it wasn't really a big deal. i layed in the sun a lot, but came out of it with no major sunburns, was being quite diligent about the sunscreen. we made friends with the captain and he let us hangout up in the top. we had a big fish lunch and drank a lot of wine, i dunno, it was nice to be out at sea, really pretty.. took some pictures and lurked around. i bought a sick gold swim suite cause the one i made didn't really have enough elastic to stay on when i swam so i terrorized with that. today we got really stoked and found this huge nudist beach. swimming naked was nice, we had a lot of fun watching all the regulars hangout with perfect full body tans and this woman kept catching bizarre sea life, like a little octopus. this old man let us use his snorkel and goggles, seeing underwater was really amazing all these schools of fish were letting me get really close. he said tomorrow he'll bring two sets and we can borrow one all day. i want to go, but for some reason today i thought it was late enough in the day i wouldn't get burned and now i have a huge terrible full body burn. really lobster. i keep covering myself in baby oil so maybe i won't peel. i hope. it all hurts though. :(
we've been thinking about going to Montenegro next, cause we still don't know whats going on with Italy, it could be cool. probably cheap and maybe more tropical than here, i doubt my skin could take it if it was though.. i'm really homesick though and i think it might be nice to just stay here a little longer, go to Italy for a week or not at all, fly to Amsterdam, shop for a couple days in all these flea markets there then come home.. i don't know what will happen though, depends on when if at all the family in Italy wants us, and also on how soon Comice would want to come home. we could split up if she wants to stay a whole lot longer.. gkzdfkjd all this iffing.
i should go sleep off my sunburn. also i need to find a call shop, i need to call Brian and the fam.

hmm.. i did just post, but a little update,
we DID make it to Dubrovnik, finallz. its really amazing here. totally tropical and pretty.. the bus ride was hell, i was distressed when we started it even because at the place where we checked our bags for the day we almost couldn't get my bag back. . for some reason the guy only gave us a ticket for 2 bags and put another ticket on my bag, i have no idea why, so a different guy was working when we came back and we didn't have the other ticket for my bag so he was refusing to give it to us, also he spoke very little bad english, finally i got really upset and started crying and he let me tell hima couple things that were right on top so i could prove it was mine. also i had to give him all my passport info and sign some thing before he gave it to me. we got on the bus really weibis and this terrible drunk guy decided it'd be a good idea to harass us the whole time. like i had my foot inthe isle a little, trying to lay down in the seat, and he kept kicking it and even grabbed my ankle to "position me more comfortably" but i got really pissed and we all gave him horrible looks and he backed off a tiny bit when we just ignored him, then finally we just moved to the front of the bus and he left us pretty much alone. total creep though. the bus ride was both really terrible but still kinda nice cause we got a beautiful tour through croatia country side. i really want to WWOOF here sometime, all the land is totally exotic with olive trees and grape vineyards and oranges and lemons everywhere. when we got to the station we were again accosted by a crowd of people trying to rent us their apartments, we didn't make plans of anywhere to stay so we picked one that sounded nice and was cheap (about $36 a night) and the guy even drove us all the way there. it actually is really nice, a whole little home, with a kitchen and everything. today we went to the beach, a short walk away, and swam around in beautiful clear water and layed on our own semi-private rocky beach. the only bad part was theres all these little urchins right on the edge of the water so getting in and ourt you have to watch carefully for them, miranda stepped on one and has all these tiny spines in her foot, but we plan on getting some super nerdy water socks for defence so they won't be a problem long! when we got home we made a huge pot of soup and had some really good sessions together (Tibor will be proud!) and now we're in oldtown which is pretty much the same as split. i'm glad to have alittle home base finally. hopefully we can get through a couple days without too much incident.. i just wanna lay on the beach all week.
i took tons of pictures, post em when we have wifi..
♥

we've spent the last few days in Split.. its pretty hip. definately the most fashion oriented place we've been so far,, everyother store is shopping. probably more than that. everyone wears full makeup and heels and has perfect salon hair all the time.. its a little rediculess, kinda fun people watching thopugh. so many slavic babes.
we took the night train fron Cesky Krumlov. totally delerious. it took 22 hours. we had a 2hour layover in Salzburg and again in Zagreb, we slept most of the ride but they moke us up every hour or sop to check our tickets and passports. seriously, 7 hours and i have 7 stamps on my ticket. so we got here really delerious and tried to get a bus to our hostel, which was actually 24kl out of split. kinda lame, but we never even made it.. we got on the wrong bus and then all these people were telling us it was wrong so they just dumped us on the side of the road and we decided to walk back to the bus station, but didn't really know where it was. we walked for a few hours, with our terrible backpacks. i complained the whole time (i did have bruises on my hip bones later though..) we asked some people where we needed tro go and they told us one thing, we njust kept walkling, kind of aimlessly. it was really hot and miserable. finally this guy who'd been accosting us at the station earlier ( all these people crowd yoiu when you get off the train telling you they have accomidations and offering you tons of places to stay) was riding by on his moped and he stopped to offer us his apartment again, so finally we just accepted and crashed in this tiny one room place just in the center of old town. actually itz was way better than our hostel would've been any way and we satyed 3 nights.. but i'm getting ahead of myself. the next day we continued to try to find our far away hostel, we took off walking again. we walked about an hour along the edge of this bay cause we were sure the bus station was on it, but then we realized we'd been walking the entirely wrong direction. we pathetically got on a bus back to where we'd started and started walking the other direction. we went along a few feet and saw some scruffy boy sitting on a bench drawing, we remarked how it looked like Esteban, since we knew he was going to be in Dubrovnik in a few days for this peace conference he+s going to and we were going to try to meet up with him, he kept looking more and more like esteban until we realized it actually was! we walked up in front of him and we all freaked out when he look up and saw us! suddenly everything wasn't quite so desperate or aweful and of course he didn't act too surprised or anything, (chill award winner #1) so we decided we must go to the beach or something and we called the man who owns that stupid apartment and ditched our bags then met up with him and his granma again then we went to Bene beach, which was beautiful and we lurked around in the beautiful teal clear salty adriatic sea and did some nudist sun bathing and much refreshed headed back to our little home. yesterday we got up relatively early and went to this huge market that was all over the street, i bought some epic silver and black leopard print leggings and other garbage and we shopped pretty much all day. we went home later and dressed up a little, esteban came over and we all wondered for an hour or so then went to this facny restaurant for top quality fish. we got really into it and were really out of place with all these fancy people, but it was quite fun. we ordered some random fish we selected off this huge platter of dead fishes the waiter brought for us to choose from. also for some reason he threw in a little squid.. esteban was epic, eating the innards and heads and eyeballs and such, i got a little squimish but it was a fun time. all together it was like 15 dollars each, so food is pretty cheap here. it seems really expensive all the time though cause its 6.6 Kunas to the dollar so again, like in czech rep., eveything is like 50 kunas and it feels like we're spending tons. we all wondered around for a while trying to find something to do, lurked in a prrk a while, eventually we swamped back home and fell asleep. this morning we slept pretty late, but woke up at 11 to that man, michael trying tio come in and clean our room, (check out time was 9) he said he'd be back in 10 or 15 minutes, so we jumped up and packed at top speed and ran away, totally escaped. we checked our bags in soem bus station bag check and so we'll get them at 3 when we take the bus to dubrovnik. i really like it here, the whole place is beautiful, i'm ready to try dubrivnik though, this city is pretty big and stuffy. also theres all these islands off the coast we can explore so that sounds good..
alright thats enough..

AHHAHAH!
sorry for being away for years.. couldn't get the wireless to work. but now that its really cold today it works outside.
sniffling around i'll post some pics.
we've been in cesky krumlov for 6 nights. tomorrow we take the night train for 22 hours to Split in croatia, its right in the mouth of the pacman. we're meetingf up with Esteban there. should be nice. its been really hot here all week, with occasional rain pours. but overall its beautiful. really scenic.
enough said. pics.

overview of the town. took it from up above the castle..
over comice'sshoulder below\/

we make great faces..

the castle moat has 2 bears in it instead of water.

walking with our friend Freddie who works at the hostel. it was so hot out that day..

we swam in the really smelly polluted river.. we had to sneak around this old broken building to get to a slightly nicer swimming place.. we still smelled terrible when we got out.

the tower of the hostel we're staying at. our room is on the left half.

miranda and freddie under the castle tower.
they just painted it to look like its made of stones.. i guess it was a really popular look in some century..

okay.. i'm freezing.
hope thats a good look at krumlov.

p.s. if the pictures don't work, they're all on my myspace. for those of us who have given in and have one.. :/

so still in Prague..
we've been exploring. theres tons of monuments and huge beautiful buildings covered in statues. and huge fountains.. and unfortunately, tons of tourists. but heres some pics.. theres more historc buildings and stuff, but more important is how rich we look because of the Krowns to dollars ratio. not really that rich cause everthing costs like 100s of krowns, but it looks good, right?

Mural building on Vodickova, a really central street in old town.

miranda is proving existence.. yes, we really were here!

View from the roof of our hostel.. sorry for the blur. so postcard.


straight up THUGGIN!

sO RIcH!!

so.. a 5 hr train ride from Berlin and we're now in Prague Czech Republic. can't say much about it yet cause as soon as we got to the hostel last night we passed out and slept pretty much straight through to this morning.. mmm, a nice 12 hours has done me good. i feel better, maybe ready to figure out a whole new city.. ?
the hostel we're at is pretty decrepid though.. all the buildings are pretty decrepid actually. we're on the top floor in a tiny room with a queen bed and a mattress on ther floor. sadly they don't have wieless so i'm in the gross internet part lurking in my cubicle on some gross old pc. we talked to Justin last niht and he recomended a better part of the city we'll try to get a hostel in for tonight.
man, czeck is so confusing. like half the vowels have accents on them so we're pretty much clueless as to how we'd pronounce any of it. also it sounds really extreme, like spanish and German with extra s and k noises thrown in. hm.. i wonder if we'll pick any up?
yesterday on the train i got really homesick. actually was pretty upset for a while.. i'm not sure how i'm taking to this amless traveling method. hopefully i'll fall into it better with a little more time..
something i didn't know at all was that Czeck rep. still uses Krowns.. its prettier than Euros i think. and een the 500 bill has a woman on it! it kinda sucks to have to switch again though.. 2/3 of a dollar is a euro.. then 21 krowns to a dollar.. i keep doing it in my head, maybe i can track my sepnding? who knows.. ugh. money money. i really hate it.
i think it'll be warmer here.. further east but a little south. its nice and sunny today, but yesterday when we got off the train it was pretty cold. dry though, which would be nice compared to all the downpour we had in berlin. mostly i'm excited to lay on the beaches of Croatia.. so ready for that sun.
well i really should try to figure out where we're staying tonight..
all my love
-A

bimithie and myself on my last day home.. BLIMP for life!!


at our going away party.. michael jackson themed, or just 80's epicness, comice and i were the only ones who dressed up, not a problem though. aw..miss that boy..


some Ammish girl we met at SFO. she was even hand sewing!!


lurking with some grafitti


Brandenburg Gate


Holocaust Memorial


pretty Girls


Miranda's new friends.. what a Trio!

well its been a good couple days..
the first night we went to the hostel cafe and these terrorist guys from montreal bought us somem beers.. they all speak french and english but not any German so it was nice we weren't the only lameoids who don't speak the language.. we Departed and went to some delerious hardcore bar where they played agent orange and all this death metal. everyone was kinda lame though and too absorbed in their attitudes so speak to some delerious americans. we wondered about a little longer and eventually made it home to bed.
we spent the next day exploring a bit, eating really dank, cheap food. the converion rate is really bad $1.00= .60 Euro, so we've been trying to live cheap.. its actually way more affordable to eat out than go to the supermakht which is kinda nice cause even though there's a tiny kitchen here its faster to just pick up a Doner Kebap or some really good pizza thats everywhere, and we usually get distracted and wait too long before we start looking for food and it becomes an urget situation.. its a little overwhelming to think i'll only know 2 people who consistently speak my language for the next 7 weeks.. !!!
also yesterday we went on this free walking tour in the main part of the city.. well i think the most touresty paty we've seen so far. it started under Brandenburg Gate, we leared alot of interesting history, but the tour was 4 hours and we left after 2. we saw alot of the Berlin wall and where Hitler's bunker was and this huge memorial to the murdered jews of the holocaust.. i wish we could've stayed longer but the stomachs took over and overruled my histoian side..
last night we went out with all those canadian guys, there's 7 of them and apparetly they've all been friends for all their lives, which makes them have almost as many inside jokes as we do, a good thing so they don't get too offeneded when we go off in hystarics about nothing, they understand. we all went to some 'regge' club they were stoked about but actually it was really great Funk, which was super fun dancing. also they did some amazing beastie boys covers in German. the lead singer was totally tubbis and epic. we all dripped sweat and violently danced.. they boys we were with got really drunk and being pretty lame, but they left soon enough and we stayed to dance to the dj for an hour or so after the show was over. randomly danced with some tall German. we bearly talked but he was a really fun dancer so whatever. we left and came back to the hostel. oh, we didn't make more than one night reservation here when we found them online before and they were all full, but the owner was nice (or delerious) enough to let us lay out in the common room. we slept instantly but woke up really early.. had a swampy day exploring the city. there's so much amazing art everywhere! all the buildings are covered in grafitti or just have posters of art stuck on them.. there was this huge market over a huge square which was pretty much the same as saturday market, a little more grungy and alot or resale, less crafts. but i bought some earrings, sunglasses and random old buttons in German.. one says 'ich will's in echtzeit!' which i think roughly means 'i want it in real time!' or something. also i got one with some hedgehogs on it, and more German. we lurked around and saw tons of amazing people.. theres tons of grungy punkish people just hanging around, they all have really epic dreads or a few dreads sometimes. i've seen like 10 dread hawks today though! made me jeleous for mine though.. some day it'll be back. theres alot of dyed hair and piercings. too bad very few of these people would understand us if we tried to speak to them. they all look so cool! the more time we're here the more i like it. i'm liking that i can drink really delish german beer with my meals, but it is a drag how they smoke inside all the time. bars are always haz with the smoke, but alll the best shows are there. today we heared live music really lous down the street and there was a big rock show just in some bar in the middle of the day. we lurked outside and danced on the side walk..
alright that enough..
love you all!

ah.. after far too much traveling i think we're finally settles for a couple days at least..
we took the greyhound after a painfully drawn out goodbye and were on it for 18 hours. pretty much hell. we transferred 3 times i think and the busses were consistently late so we always ended up lurking for hours in sick dirty hot bus stations. we finally got to san rafael to walk the mile to my Grandma's house in 90 degree sun. we pretty much passed out instantly cause it was pretty freaking hard to sleep on the bumpy smelly greyhound we'd been on all night. my Aunt picked us up and took us to her house to spend the night. we only slept about 6 hours though cause we had to get up at 3 to make the 4 am Airporter that took us to SFO, we got therre earlier than expected, 5 AM, and sat outside the international check in counter til 7 when we wondered down to the domestic to find out oiur flight had been rescheduled to 1:55 pm. so we had a cool 8 hour hangout in SFO. oh and did i mention we had to wear really nice buisness clothes so we would be allowed into buisness class if it was the only space, so it was pretty uncomfortable trying to swamp out in these nice outfits.. and by nice i mean comice looked totally Amish, i'llpost the picture as soon as i get my camera cord so i can import them on miranda's computer. oh yeah, when we were in sacrament CA i discoverd i'd forgot my wallet and camera cord. luckily my passport was in my bag, not my wallet so there wasn't any problem there, and for now i've just been making comice pay for everything and writing it down so i can repay her once my wallet gets mailed.. still have to workout the details of the shipping etc.. ugh.
um so anyway, we actually did get on the flight which was great because in our delerious, sleep-deprived, over dressed, under fed, in the air port for 8 hours, state i probably would've had a terrible breakdown if we had to stay in SFO any longer.
we didn't go in buisness class but we sat next to some really nice people and i managed a little decent sleep anyway. we got into Frankfurt at 9 AM german time after our 10 or 11 hour flight. we couldn't find miranda and were in a bit of a shock because allof a sudden we looked incredibly out of place and we couldn't understand anything.. etc. probably some kind of culture shock. we couldn';t find miranda anywhere, we even paged her ( i doubt though with the incredible german pronunciation of her name she wouldn't recognized it anyway) so we settled into some clump of benches labeled "Meeting Area" (Tuffpunkt, i think) oh yeah, most of the signs have english on them so we are doing pretty good not knowing any German.. Miranda finally showed up so we took a quick train in to Frankfurt main station, which is beautiful, and conveniently has a hostel right across from it where we stayed. i was so excited to have a real bed to sleep in! we showered and got much refreshed.. looked at all Miranda's pictures etc.. caught up a bit. we went to some little stores and bought dank German bread and cheese and beer and munched up then went to sleep at like 7pm. i woke up at 3:30, called Brian, and went back to bed a little later. we got up at 8 to take the train to Berlin since we weren't too excited about Fankfurt. W weresupposted to take 4 trains and get there at 9pm but of course in our dullardness we missed one and had to take someother trains and got there at 10 thirty or something. another overdose of sitting. we were really confused at the train station but luckily there was a hostel across the street where we stayed. it was like 22 euro each though and we were in an 8 bed dorm and overall it was pretty crappy. there were all these field trips of 16 yr odls terrorizing. we talked to this epic dutch (? i think) boy for a while who was telling us which american stars we looked like (miranda- ashly simpson, me- marilyn monroe ?) and saying how much he loves toi shop till he drops and wants to go to LA.. (hearing German with a sassy gay twist on it is really great btw) its fun to see all these kids close to our age over here in Germany.. they all dress pretty preppy by our standards but some will randomly have epic hair, most of the boys had these swampy mullety mowhawk styles which is really great andn there are totally normal buisness looking women with purple or red highlights. it a good contrast i think.. today again we traveled to another, better, part of berlin. near Brrandburg Gate and this Gallery (i forgot the name..) which id the biggest part of the Berlin wall still standing.. it has tons of art on it though so its called a gallery. i really like this part better, all the people seem more relaxed, not all so buisnesslike and formal, like on the train it was always total silence to the point of feeling cold. but here people dress more ratty, like us, and have epic dreads or colored hair and i think they're less scorning when we dullard around in English. also we're learning a little German which feels good, less snotty than just having to awlays start speaking english to everone.. like at least now i can say "i don't speak German", "good day, morning, night" "thankyou" and Goodbye" also we prectice pronounciation on the trains like when they announce the next stop you can read it and say it.. we really nerdily were repeating eveythying yesterday. but it does help alot when we're asking for diirections to almost be able to say where we want to go..
k. i think i'm rambling.
anyway. its all very beautiful and especially here theres a great mix of old and new like all this neon grafitti on ancient brick buildings. and of course the narrow cobble stone streets! sadly its really rainly, but not too cold and the hostel guy said it'd been sunny the past 2 weeks, so hopefully it'll come back.
alright i think thats enough..
we're staying at this really great hostel tonight, and hopefully for a while, but there might not be room. we just ate a huge delicious meal at this New Zealand Cafe. oh also in this part of Berlin everything is much cheaper than elsewhere, like a huge burger, fries, salad, and beer was all like 7 or8 euro which would definately be consitered a gourmet meal in the states.
theres a really cute little girl playing across the cafe from us, man, i love hearing little kids speak German.. i guess i'm just fascinated with hoe all these wierd sounds are a whole language.. same for them i'm sure, everyone stares wherever we go.. awwirf,gaefkv k. i should stop.
i miss you all!
send my love!
i'll write again soon..
so far the plan goes..
here.
Amsterdam.
Czech Republic.
Croatia.
Italy.
Hungary.
Germany.
Home.
but of course we'll probably make some kindof change..

blorg..
its a little too AM for me but i havn't been sleeping well.. i guess it is a little hard to relax when in a couple days you're gonna be across the pacific!!
anyway. as it stands now.. today is my last day in Eugene, at 12:30 tonight comice and i will get on the grayhound to San Rafael. we should arrive around 4 or 6 PM depending on how slow we are. we'll spand the night with my Aunt Lea and Grandma then 4 AM we take the Marin Airported to SFO and if the flight has space we'll be on our way to Fankfurt by 9 AM.
So.. thats how the plan stands and we'll soon see how it pans out.

i miss Eugene already.