And just when I was starting to get used to her...

Russia, that is...

Anyway... I finally found a place that the photo-upload application on Facebook works at. So, I put a few new pictures up of my trip so far. Hopefully they're a little more impressive than the randomly-selected pictures I put up when I had no idea what I was uploading. And there'll be more to come!

So, the itinerary for the next week or so...
Friday: leave for Tallinn, Estonia at 6pm
Saturday: arrive at 8:30am and spend day in Tallinn
Sunday: leave for Helsinki, Finland (by boat) at 8am; arrive 11am and spend day in Helsinki; sometime go back to Tallinn to sleep there again
Monday: 4-hour trip to Riga, Latvia
Tuesday: Riga
Wednesday: 4-hour trip to Vilnius, Lithuania
Thursday: Vilnius; night bus to Gdansk, Poland
Friday: Gdansk
Saturday: 5-hour trip to Kaliningrad, Russia
Sunday: Kaliningrad; flight home at 8pm

The other day I went to the library to check out a book, to find out that you can't actually check books out of the library. You can reserve them and then read them in the library. Or you can copy them. Anyway, not the point of the story... I was about to leave when I saw some bookshelves with paperbacks for sale. It being the Foreign Languages Library, I thought just maybe some of these books might be in English. They were! I bought nine books for less than $25. I love Russia. Although, it is difficult to tell sometimes if a book is the original text. Russians apparently like to have the text dumbed-down a bit for them before they will attempt an English version. Seven of the nine I'm sure are original-text versions. The copy of Lolita says it's the original text, but I'm fairly certain Nabokov wrote in Russian, so I'm not sure that's possible. And I thought I had found and original-text version of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, but now that I take another look at it, I'm not so sure. I already read Murder on the Orient Express, and the other 6 are: The First Jungle Book, The Second Jungle Book, Peter Pan, Alice's Adventures (Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass), The Hounds of Baskerville, and Slaughterhouse Five. Should be a good time--even if I don't have a high school English teacher to tell me their "significance". ;-)

I don't remember if I posted this already or not, but Russia is not the world's most multicultural place. Every time I see a black person, I think, "Oh, right! I knew something looked a little off without you!" So, this happened like 5 times or so since I've been here. Yeah, scary. ...I miss my multicultural motherland.

Oh, I don't think I mentioned the time she brought home a package of whole, salted fish, each about 7 inches long. I was really hoping they were for the stray dog that she feeds... They weren't. She showed me how to eat them: you cut off the head, cut off the stomach, hold the tail and make little bites up to the tail where you bite it off. You kind of eat them like a celery stalk, if you were holding the leafy end in you hand, and didn't eat that part. ...And you ate the whole stalk in one mouthful. She showed me a couple times and then asked me if I wanted to try some, adding something like, "They're SO delicious!" I think I said something along the lines of, "No, thank you. I don't quite believe you..." She laughed and that was the end of that. Well, she kept eating them, but she didn't ask me if I wanted to try them again.

The reason this came to mind is because the food has been delicious for the past few days. ...And when I say delicious, I mean just like home! :-D We (I) had "American sandwiches" the last few days. It was great! She bought this bread called Harry's American Sandwich (which is like Wonder Bread, but completely square) as well as some ham, lettuce, and tomatoes! It was amazing. Except for the mayo not being Hellmann's Light, it was pretty perfect--almost like being in America again! :-D

I should be able to keep in touch pretty well (or at least as well as I have been) while travelling. Feel free to shoot me an email or something. However, I heard on the grapevine that some of you have sent me letters and/or packages. Unfortunately, I won't be able to get those until Tuesday, November 6 (I get back Sunday night, but Monday the 5th is a federal holiday). Well, if they're even there by then. Letters seem to be taking about two weeks, on average, and I've been waiting a month, tomorrow, for a certain package... I mean, I'm confident that everything winging it's way to me as we speak, will be ready and waiting for me when I get back.

And on that overly-confident note, I bid you farewell. Wish me luck at the border (x7)!