2 month anniversery

Tallinn, Estonia

Computer is coming... yay.

I've officially been out here for two months now. (well, two months and a day, I couldn't get to a computer yesterday) and thought I'd write a little post celebrating my anniversery and some of the things I've learned so far, since about two weeks ago it officially became the longest trip of my life.

Ten things I've learned:

1. Just because it's a train or bus, and not a plane, doesn't mean you can arrive to catch it with only one minute to spare.

2. Couchsurfing.org is the best website ever invented. If you travel, use it.

3. Never turn down an invitation to a party, especially if it goes until 8am.

4. No skin, no win - An inside joke that we discovered turned out to be true when watching women's beach volleyball - the team with the least amount of clothing wins every time. Maybe it's air friction slowing everyone else down :) Keep that in mind ladies when you're running late!

5. Friends are the most important thing when traveling - even if they're new ones and you only see them for two days in your life.

6. The government loves to get you to sign shit with deadlines when you're out of the country.

7. If you sneeze it means thank-you in Lithuanian. "ahh choo"

8. "super duper" means "super ass" in Polish - I found out the hard way.

9. The hottest girls in Europe (well, of the countries I've been too) come from Poland (sorry Latvia, you're a close second).

10. I can limbo like a young Hermes. Somehow I won a limbo contest... not really sure how...


and here's a bonus number 11: McDonald's really DOES taste the same everywhere.


See you all from Turkey!

The ol' USSR

Riga, Latvia

Sorry it's been a while since I posted. I think all the trouble I'm having with pictures is discouraging me a bit! I am going to buy a mini laptop that will make it easier (and cheaper) to get online and also let me take care of photos, so once I figure out how to get it, I will have it!

I'm currently in Riga, Latvia, having just traveled through Lithuania and soon I will be off to Estonia. All three baltic countries were formerly in the USSR and it's an interesting place to visit. Things are mostly like western europe but every now and then you see some big communist piece of architecture or an ugly old athletic stadium or something like that and you realize that this place used to be very different.

It's funny, these people have only been independed since 1991 and although there are still problems with crime and poverty and so on, they have come a remarkably long way in a short amount of time. I think the more I travel, the more I am impressed with how resiliant people are. I have only been in Latvia for a couple days so I can't say too much about this country yet, but I spent over a week in Lithuania and visited many of the communist area sites, like the former KGB headquarters and prison (they actually shot people in their own basement), and learned about the gulags and how easy it was to be taken there. For example there's a freedom monument here in Riga. If you put flowers there, or were sympathetic to it in anyway you'd get an all expense paid trip to Siberia. Kind of funny that the government represses something actually called the Freedom Monument. I wonder if the Russians really had any concept of what they were doing, or if they were just following orders and ignoring the rest.

In Lithuania there is a place called the Curonian Spit which is a tiny little strip of land about 1km wide that goes for about 100 km along the baltic cost. It's a bit of a mystery how it formed and on it you can cycle or travel along. There are huge and beautiful sand dunes where from the top you can see the Baltic Sea on one side and the Curonian lagoon on the other. Beyond the dunes it's forested and there is wildlife everywhere. I wish I could get the pictures to work...

As for me, things are going well. I feel like I still have a lot of energy now that I have taken a couple of days off at the beach. However, I got myself a pretty solid sunburn yesterday so I'm going to be sore and itching for a few days. Also, I think that stupid recurring sinus infection that I had in Canada is coming back as my throat has been sore for a while. If it gets worse I will have to go see a Latvian or Estonian doctor and try to score some antibiotics. Damn this thing is frustrating. it just won't go away. I'll probably have to do the same thing again in a few months... Maybe some oldschool chinese medicine dude will know of something that can actually fix it!

After Estonia I am flying to Turkey and I'm really looking forward to it. Still trying to decide when to work teaching english in China but I think I HAVE decided that Shanghai is the place for me. It's the first place in China I have been truly excited about the prospect of living in. Lucky for me it's a big city that should have lots of work.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'm off to do some writing to try and solve my money woes.