BEDA 31: Fake babies.

Today is the last day of BEDA! My grandma (who reads my blog) actually asked me tonight, "have you blogged yet today? You'd better hop to it!" So here I am, on strict orders from Grandma Horner.

I will admit, I am a little sad this month of blogging is over. I've had a lot of fun writing every day this month - through all the craziness and traveling and tiredness and adventure, this blog is the one thing that's stayed constant and that was really nice. But, as usual, after BEDA is over I'll try my best to go back to a normal blogging schedule. I'll try not to let more than a week go by without an update, though I say that every time.

Anyway! Monday was kind of a slower day (basically it wasn't jam-packed with relatives, so it felt less eventful than the rest of the trip so far) but it was kind of relaxing to just "hang out" in North Dakota with my parents. We got up and went to Kroll's Diner for breakfast, and not a single one of us could help ordering a big bowl of Knoephla soup. It's so bizarre to me; foods like that are just 'those things my mom and grandmas make', you know? No one in Seattle knows what the heck Knoephla is. But in North Dakota, you can totally just find it on a menu in a diner and that is always strange to see. Anyway. The soup was good.

Then we stopped and visited with a family friend named Vern for a little while, and on our way back to the hotel we passed the old bar my dad use to own. Yeah. My dad owned a bar. You guys wonder why I have such a cool life all the time? I have a LOT to live up to, haha. Anyway, the bar is called the Midway Tavern, and it's still called that even though my dad hasn't owned it in over twenty years. I'd never been inside, so we stopped for a little while so my dad could show me around. We ordered beer and tomato juice (the only way I think beer is even tolerable to drink) and my dad chatted with the new owner while my mom and I played one of those electronic bar games. I think we tied. Then my dad told me all these crazy stories from his days of owning the place. I really love hearing new stories about when my parents were my age. Sometimes you forget that your parents ever WERE your age, so it's nice to be reminded. Especially when my parents were actually pretty cool in those days.

My mom and I stopped at the mall briefly (mostly to check out the few stores they have in Bismarck that we don't have back home) but then we went back to the hotel to get my dad and head out for BAR BINGO. I can't even tell you what a quintessential North Dakota pastime "Bar Bingo" feels like for me. We went to "Main Bar" (which is, wait for it, the bar on Main Street) and they told us they would only play bingo if at least twenty people bought in. My mom and I were on a mission then, going around to all the old bearded dudes sitting at the bar, convincing them they needed to play bingo with us. We finally got enough people, bought our cards, borrowed the bar's green bingo dabbers and settled in for a couple of action-packed games.

Guys, I freaking love bingo. Part of me cant wait to be old so I can just play bingo all the time without anyone judging me. When I get back to Seattle, I'm going to make it my mission to find a place that does bingo near where I live so I can drag my friends there and play all the time. I don't know why I didn't think of this before.

Anyway, I won! In the second game, I got straight bingo (half the fun is getting to yell out "BINGO!" especially in a dingy little dive bar) and I won four whole dollars. Pretty exciting. I was really close to blackout too, afterward, but I didn't quite win that one. I made friends with the bingo-caller; he went to the same college as me, weirdly. I have no idea how someone graduates from UW and ends up calling bingo numbers in Mandan, ND, but to each their own.

After bar bingo ended, my mom took my dad and I out to her favorite Mexican restaurant, "Fiesta Villa". I guess she used to go there with her girlfriends all the time when she was younger. We ordered a big plate of nachos and some margaritas, but the real highlight of the night was my parents being totally goofy and making me laugh so hard I couldn't even breathe. This might not be as funny to you guys as it was to me, but I am going to try to explain it.

So we're sitting out on the patio and this family walks in; one of them was a woman carrying a baby in a little baby holder on her stomach. The whole thing was covered with a blanket. As they walked by, my mom leaned over and whispered to me, "I bet that baby is fake." I rolled my eyes at her, but a moment later my dad (who hadn't been listening) leaned in across the table and said to us, "That's probably not even a real baby." At this, I almost spit my drink out, right over the table. "Why," I asked them exasperatedly, "are you both so convinced that woman has a fake baby? Why would anyone even bring a FAKE BABY to a restaurant?"

My parents were cracking up, and they both kept spouting nonsense about fake babies and how rude it is to bring a fake baby to a restaurant and how we weren't going to fall for it, and I said again, "GUYS. It's not like there's a BABY DISCOUNT at the Fiesta Villa! There is no benefit to having a baby here!" My mom just sat back in her chair, crossed her arms and said, "Well, there's no way I'm letting someone have a fake baby in here."

Then she got up out of her chair and waltzed over next to the family, pretending to be interested in the plants behind them but was obviously looking to see if the baby was real. Her eyes got wide and she came barreling back to my dad and I, saying, "It's real! It was definitely moving! It's a real baby!"

Needless to say, a few minutes later the family moved to a table inside. I overheard them say to the waiter that it was because of the bees flying around, but I think they were afraid my mom was going to steal their baby. Or something. Because I was afraid for them.

...though it would have served them right if it had been a fake baby.


I still need to write about all my time with my other grandparents, but I'll finish my North Dakota write-up in the next few days. I can't believe I am already flying home tomorrow. I definitely wish I had more time with my relatives right now... but I guess this just means I need to make sure I get out here again soon. It's so tough to plan a trip strictly for pleasure/family time when I travel so much the way it is, but being here reminded me very vividly how important it is. So I just need to make time, like I did with this trip. :)

Thanks for joining me for BEDA, guys! Have a great September and I'll talk to you all soon.

Flights taken: 21

BEDA 30: Cheating.

I am giving myself the night off.

The whole point of Blogging Every Day in August is basically just to encourage myself to write 1. more frequently and 2. about everything I have going on as a means of documenting little chunks of my life more closely than the rest of the time.

I have been having such a good time here in North Dakota and this trip is so important to me that I know I'll blog about it -- so I'm not going to force it tonight. I'm tired and a little blogged out after a whole month of crazy traveling. I don't think I've ever done this much during a previous BEDA - nor do I think I've ever done this much in a single month in my whole life.

So tonight, I will leave you with this adorable picture of my brother and I by an abandoned old farmhouse that was taken today:


Until tomorrow - our last day together for this particular rendition of BEDA! I promise that one will be a doozy.

Flights taken: 21

BEDA 29: Grasshoppers.

I might actually be too tired/burnt out to blog tonight. I was going so strong this month, too.

Here. I will just leave you with this short anecdote from last night at the musical that I forgot to put in yesterday's blog post, and then I will catch up on the rest of today... in tomorrow's blog post. What. I make the rules around here.

So, I was thinking about blogging this all night on the drive home last night, but then I got too caught up in my emotional musings about North Dakota to remember when it came to actually typing it up. It's a big deal, because last night I developed an irrational fear of grasshoppers.

We got to sit in the special handicap seating area during the show because of my grandma, but what that meant (aside from having pretty good seats) was that there was a lot of room on the side of me (unlike the other auditorium style seats). Mid way through the show I felt something hit my head and I smacked it away... when I looked down at the concrete floor to see what it was, I saw the largest effing grasshopper I have ever seen in my whole life. Like, past insect and into monster-status. Huge. Like 6 inches long.

For the next five to ten minutes, I honestly couldn't tell you what was happening during the musical because my eyes were locked on that dumb creature. It was inching closer and closer to my seat and I was too afraid to kick it away or anything because there was this tiny piece of me that feared it might go all Shocker on Shock Street on us. Finally, finally it crawled out of sight and I was able to relax enough to start enjoying the show again.

This was a false sense of security though, because not ten minutes later I looked over and there it was again, sitting on the ledge between our seats and the seats down a tier below us, just watching me. I kind of freaked out a little bit; I tugged my dad's sleeve and hissed, "get that thing away from me!"

Being a loving and courageous father, he flicked it in the opposite direction - which was great, until we realized the multitude of people's heads he'd just sent the volatile creature careening toward. Eyes wide; we glanced at each other guiltily, glanced down, then slouched in our seats as far as we could go. "Don't look over the edge," my dad told me, suppressing a laugh. "I think I just saw an old lady flailing at her hair."

So, yeah. We're bad people. Funny, yes, but bad people.

Flights taken: 21

BEDA 28: Burning Hills Dancers.

I am way, way too tired to make today's blog post anything special, but I had a nice day so I want to at least give it a decent wrap up. My parents keep me out way too late here in North Dakota! It's affecting my blogging!

My mom just mumbled from the other side of the hotel room, "you're still gonna do that tonight?" "Yes Mom, I have to." "Okay, tell 'em I said yo." So. My mom says yo.

This morning we headed over to my grandma's house for an early lunch - she made us borscht soup and sandwiches with her homemade rolls and salami. Then we jumped in the car and drove the hour and a half out to the small town my aunt Colleen lives in. We had a nice little visit with her, my cousin Corina and Colleen's new husband Chauncey.

The weirdest part about this trip, by far, is how many of my little cousins are suddenly so grown up. Corina was always one of the little kids running around whenever we'd visit in the past, but she's 14 now and I was surprised by how grown up she was. It took her awhile to warm up to me, but then she got out this notebook and a pen and said, "You know, I should probably get your autograph since you're sort-of-kind-of famous. Also some of the kids at school watch your videos and don't believe you're my cousin."

While adorable, this is the very reason I needed to come home and visit. Since a lot of this weird internet "fame" stuff has happened in the last two to three years, I just had this horrible image of my relatives losing touch with me as their cousin/niece/whatever and thinking I'm out of reach or something. I was too busy touring last summer to come home and visit, but that wasn't by choice. I was so homesick for North Dakota while my parents were here last year and I was on roflcoptour. And while I bonded with Corina today over knowing people like Shane Dawson and Smosh (boy did she think I was cool for having met them) I was glad to be able to remind her that I'm still just her cousin.

Also, we bonded over Pokémon. She told her mom, "see? Tina likes Pokémon. And you said I was a nerd." I had to interject though, telling her, "Oh, no, don't be confused; we're still nerds. I've just embraced it."

After a couple of hours we had to head out to make it to Medora in time to meet up with MORE relatives. The problem with having such a big family is that even though we have a whole week here, sometimes we only get a few hours with each branch of the family to make time for everyone. We drove the 20 miles to Medora (this adorable little historic town - has anyone been there?) and met with my Uncle Cheekster and cousins Megan and Holly. Those two were both also in the group of cousins who grew the eff up since I'd seen them last. Their school starts again tomorrow and Megan is going to be a senior and Holly is going to be a freshman. The biggest shock was seeing eyeliner and styled hair and cell phones in their hands. Kids these days, I tell ya. xD

We ate at this place in town and I decided to try "fleischkuekle" - which translates literally as "meat cookie" (as Cheekster told me with a chuckle). It's essentially hamburger wrapped in a big doughy casing and deep fried. I had to take a picture of the menu to remember how to spell it. Also, my dad made me order it myself, which was hilarious, as my knowledge of German is much, much more limited than his (which is also relatively limited). We left my dad to bond with his brother and my mom and I took the girls around to go shopping in the cute Medora gift shops. We didn't really buy anything other than ice cream cones a bit later (I got huckleberry, mmm) but wandering around one of my favorite little towns was all I really wanted out of the afternoon, anyway.

We said goodbye to them when it started getting dark, and we drove up to the Burning Hills Amphitheater with my Grandma to see the Medora Musical. You wouldn't think this tiny town in North Dakota would have such a big attraction, but the Musical is amazing and even on a slow night like tonight, there were 700 people there. It's in this great big outdoor theatre where the backdrop is the actual Dakota badlands, and the whole thing is just so cute and fun. It's a combination of nostalgic "growing up in the midwest" stuff, educational facts about Teddy Roosevelt and ND itself, country music and clogging and fun dancing and modern music. I absolutely adore it. We used to go when I was little, and back then my dream was to grow up and be a Burning Hills Dancer. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that's what I would do.

It's kind of funny how this musical (and more importantly just being here in North Dakota with my parents) can make me nostalgic for a life I never knew. I love the stories from my parents about growing up here. I love the prairie and I love these small towns and all the people who are so nice and the "old west" feel of everything and how everyone knows each other. I definitely have a certain pride for being born here, even though we moved away before I even turned one.

It's strange because it's not like I could ever experience the North Dakota my parents even knew, because times have changed and their friends are older and places they loved have gone out of business or closed and people have died and everyone is older now, but I like to pretend when I'm here that I can be part of it all. And since I was born here and everyone remembers me (albeit a tiny infant version of me) I feel like I at least was there for a tiny bit of it. And that's enough for this place to feel like home, in a strange way I can't even really explain.

Flights taken: 21

BEDA 27: North Dakota Moose Lodge.

Bloooooooog post time.

My post is late tonight on account of my parents kidnapping me, taking me to a biker bar, promising I'd be home by 10 -- and not actually getting back to our hotel until about 1 am. I kept insisting "but guys, I have a blog post to write", but eventually I just gave in, drank my three drinks, and succumbed to the wild North Dakota lifestyle. It's hilarious to picture my parents being the crazy people they were in their twenties, because their old friends I meet here from "way back when" are just... old. But, obviously, it's been about thirty years since their glory days, so I have to suspend disbelief and use my imagination when I picture how things were then.

Today has been a great day. I woke up relatively early and got ready in my grandma's shower (which was literally a trickle of water) and before I knew it, my cousin Mandy had shown up with her new baby Chance. You guys know how much I love babies, so I'm sure you can only imagine what a joy it was to have a baby in front of me I was allowed to play with and not just gawk at from afar. Chance is absolutely adorable (he's 6 months old and such a happy, energetic baby) and I spent the better part of the next few hours holding him and tickling him and dangling toys above him and gushing over him.

My parents keep talking to me. I don't think they fully grasp what "I need to write a blog post" actually means. This post is going to be even later than I thought.

My parents showed up a bit later and we all visited awhile, but everyone was getting hungry. After Mandy left with Chance, we went out for lunch with my grandma at this place called Pizza Ranch. It was a buffet style place, and all the food was pretty standard except the Taco Pizza (which was amazing) and this dessert pizza (called Cactus.. something) that was so freaking good I couldn't even believe it.

After lunch we dropped off Grandma and headed to our hotel to check in. We dropped off our stuff then headed over to my Uncle Gary and Aunt Mel's house to hang out for the evening. My other aunt and uncle Lilia and Rod were there too, which was really nice - I really had no idea which relatives I'd be seeing on this trip but so far I've really lucked out. I spent a huge portion of our time there talking with Lilia... we've always bonded so much because we're both readers (she's the one who forced me to read Harry Potter, bless her) and it was so nice to catch up. We talked about everything before everyone else finally came and joined us on the porch and we all started drinking. Not to say my family is super wild or anything, but they like to have fun, and often that includes alcohol. I had this drink that was bright green and when my mom asked me how it tasted, I told her it tasted "like bright green". I didn't know how else to explain it.

After more general family times, and supper, and my parents embarrassingly insisting I show my relatives a few of my YouTube videos, it was around 9 pm. My parents, Gary, and one of my mom's best friends named Lynn still wanted to party, so they convinced me to come out to this bar called the North Dakota Moose Lodge. That brings me back to the beginning of this post, and the biker bar, and being very behind in today's BEDA post.

One of my favorite parts about meeting my parents old friends here in Bismarck is that I was six months old when we moved away from North Dakota. So many of them really haven't seen me since I was that old. Six months to twenty-three years is a pretty freaking big jump, so when I meet them they tell me things like the quintessential "I haven't see you since you were this big!"

One guy we met tonight brought up the fact that when I was a baby, I raced against his own daughter in the "Huggies Diaper Derby". He and my dad argued over whose daughter won (my dad insists it was me) but the real gem from this conversation was that while other parents were waving little baby toys at their kids to get them to crawl faster, my parents were waggling a pickle at me. Because I loved pickles. My baby contender is now apparently married. Time flies, guys.

My mom is currently talking to me from across the hotel room (we have a room with a little wall divider between their King bed and my pull out couch) about our natural disaster plan. I have literally no idea what prompted this. I keep saying "uh huh", and "yeah?" and while this is a fantastic idea in the broad scheme of things, I'm not certain right this second (at 1:14 AM after an evening at the Moose Lodge) is the right time to talk about this.

Perhaps I will suggest we debrief tomorrow morning. If I remember. Remind me to refresh with my mom about our natural disaster plan tomorrow, guys. Thanks.

Flights taken: 21

BEDA 26: Rummy 14.

I made it to North Dakota!

I flew in around 6:30pm and was picked up by my cousin Jade, whom I'd never met before. My mom decided I needed to "bond with my family" on this trip (...why else would I be here) so she arranged for me to "bond" with Jade by having her pick me up from the airport. We didn't even know what each other looked like. My mom said to me before we left, "she studied abroad. You guys will have tons in common". Because apparently all people who study abroad are alike, haha.

Before I left Seattle I checked her Facebook, tried to memorize what her face looked like, found out that she was just a few years younger than me, and that was it. I mean, she's family, so I knew it would be fine. I was only a teensy bit nervous.

Jade showed up and kind of looked at me from across the parking lot and we both kind of did a "...are you Jade/Kristina?" thing, then laughed, and from there on out it was pretty okay. My mom was right. We got along well. I guess people who study abroad ARE alike.

Jade dropped me off a bit later at my grandma's house; Grandma lives in a retirement community though she has her own little house area with a garden. She was over at the neighbors playing cards when I arrived, so after saying goodbye to Jade, I headed over and settled in for an evening with the old folks.

I haven't been to North Dakota in two years (last year I was on roflcoptour during the annual family trip), so the look on my grandma's face when she saw me... it made this whole trip worth it. Right there. One look. Worth the ridiculous amount of money it costs to fly into the tiny airport in Bismarck.

I had a lovely time tonight. I hung with my grandma and her friends Lyle, Bev and Marion. They taught me how to play Rummy 14, which was actually a pretty fun game. I was doing really well at the beginning (they chalked it up to beginner's luck) but then I got one lousy hand which set me back to second to last place. Bev made a German Chocolate cake, which was delicious, and they kept making fun of me when my phone went off (though I swear, more than half text messages were just from my mom).

Grandma's got me sleeping out in the living room on the pull out couch tonight, and tomorrow we are meeting up with my mom and dad who are already in town but spending tonight at the casino because August 27th is their 23rd wedding anniversary.

I actually have no idea what the plans are for most of this trip or which relatives I am going to be seeing, but I am incredibly excited for all of it. I've been so homesick for this for so long; it's nice to finally be back.

Flights taken: 21

BEDA 25: Haircuts and toilet paper.

Liz just walked into my room and said, "where did I put my..." and before she could even finish her sentence, I cut her off with an incredulous "really?" That's the kind of day we're having. I found her car keys in the backyard this morning. IN THE BACKYARD.

In other news, today I got my hair cut! I wasn't actually going to get it cut until after I got back from North Dakota, but Eia talked me into it yesterday. We made spur of the moment appointments and we both got relatively drastic cuts and I am happy to announce that I am quite pleased with mine.


Even though I am missing PAX Prime and a Seattle YouTube event for it, I am very excited to be going to North Dakota tomorrow (also despite the fact that I have to get on another stupid airplane). I haven't seen any of my relatives in so long, I'm really hoping the whole trip is just a total blast.

I still need to finish packing for the trip actually, so today's blog post is going to be kind of short. I will now entertain you with some anecdotes from spending the last two days with Liz. These are real things that happened/I jotted down over the course of that time:

Liz: When I was in the bathroom I killed a beetle.
Me: Oh, cool. Thanks.
Liz: At least I think it was a beetle, I wasn't wearing my glasses. It looked small and dark. So I just assumed.
Me: Hm.
Liz: It might have been something important.
Me: It was probably twenty dollars.
Liz: I highly doubt that.
Me: Well you wouldn't know now, would you. You killed it.


You know when you only have one single roll of toilet paper left, and you know when that runs out you have to go to the store and buy a new pack of toilet paper and that's just incredibly inconvenient? So you conserve that last roll to the best of your ability?
Well, Liz just dropped that roll in the toilet, so I guess we're going to the store now.

Goodbye until North Dakota!

Flights taken: 20

BEDA 24: Hot Tub Night.

It's Wednesday night, so here I am at Project Night again. It's nice to be back; I had to miss Project Night last week while I was in London, and even though I was off having overseas adventures, I hate missing stuff. So I'm glad to be here, even though the Internet is too slow to effectively catch up on my email, which was going to be this week's project. Anyway, I'm instead doing my blog post, which is productive enough.

Alexander just introduced me to a new Project Nighter by saying, "This is Kristina. She is an Internet Celebrity." When I protested the claim, he went on to say, "She once killed a man and got out of the jail time with her celebrity status." At this point, I have given up on arguing any semblance of truth and am just letting the new guy believe whatever he wants.

Tonight's Project Night is special because we've decided we're going to work for half of it, then use the second half to transition into Hot Tub Night. I'm currently wearing my swimsuit under my clothes and hoping the project part of Project Night goes by quickly because I am so excited to get in the hot tub. This is going to be the first time my new tattoo is going to be out in public as well, which I'm kind of excited about in a weird and nerdy way.

I had lunch with Eia today, which was nice as I've been so busy with VidCon and this Europe trip that I've barely seen her much this month. While we were out (we go on these routine "dates" at our favorite Indian restaurant) we got on the topic of haircuts and how we've both been tossing around the idea of getting mildly drastic haircuts recently. Since we're both kind of nervous about it, we just decided to go freaking do it, together. As soon as we finished lunch, we headed back to my house and booked an appointment for tomorrow at 1:45. So... I'm still really nervous, and not totally certain what I am getting done, but I'll be sure to post pictures online.

Okay, everyone is doing interesting stuff and I'm over here being anti-social so I'm going to go.

Flights taken: 20

BEDA 23: Home again, home again.

I kind of forgot that being home from all my crazy travel adventures doesn't mean August is over yet -- I almost totally forgot to blog today. It's only the 23rd; there is much more blogging coming this month!

It's kind of strange to even try and think of anything to talk about after all of the stories I've had to tell the past week. When you've been having a week like I had, a day at home editing videos, running errands and watching a movie seems a bit dull. But it's nice to be home. And I am in need of a few dull days.

I'm so jetlagged and exhausted. I woke up at 6:30 AM this morning and now it's only 9 PM and I am practically falling asleep on the couch. Justin and I ordered in Mexican food and now we're watching "The Frog Princess". I've already seen it, but Justin hasn't.

My brain is all fuzzy right now... I think I need to just give myself a little break. The last few entries were really long, so that should make up for my lack of a coherent blog today. I'll be back tomorrow. :)

Flights taken: 20

BEDA 22 - Poland Day 3 and coming home.

I'm on a flight from London to Seattle right now, after connecting from my much shorter flight from Warsaw. It's midday right now, so I have a sneaking suspicion I won't be sleeping at all on this nine hour flight. I'm only about 30 minutes in right now, so I'll be sure to give an update later on what I end up watching/doing to pass the time as time goes by. So far all I've done is talk to the lady next me, whose name is Linda from Sammamish, aged somewhere around 60 and has a heat rash. So... a few steps down from my last travel buddy.

Yesterday was such a great last day in Poland. We woke up around 10 or so and met in the lobby to learn about the "Urban Challenge" they were sending us out on for a large chunk of the day. I was on a team with Will and Cat. Basically, they gave each of us a map, a list of places in Warsaw and 100 each of whatever the local currency is called (I can never remember). We were then sent out by ourselves in our teams to try and get to all the locations before the other teams could. Right away, the three of us were super into winning. We breezed through the Palace of Culture, the Dairy Bar and Cafe Wedel. But there was this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that we were missing the point of the "challenge" by hurrying like that. Instead of choking down a hot chocolate in the cafe, we should have been taking our time to enjoy a tasty snack in a foreign country. Instead of zipping up and down the elevators at the Palace, we should have been stopping to take in the incredible view of the city we'd been lucky enough to get to visit.

So after our first few stops, we quit racing. Someone else could go home with the prize. Our prize was getting to experience Warsaw at our own pace.

Our next stop after deciding to slow down was the "Prezekaski Zakaski", or "Bistro a la Fourchette". This is apparently the most "happening" bar in Warsaw, since it's open 24 hours. We sat down and had a beer with Lukas, and also ran into Greg and Dan while we were there.

After the bar, we headed to the Old Town and had to find the Zygmunt Column -- where we then were instructed to ask someone what time it was in Polish. It's "Przepraszam, ktora godzina?" if you were curious. I was a boss at saying it, but I managed to pick the one person in the square who DIDN'T speak Polish, so I looked silly anyway. Haha. Then we had to find the statue of the mermaid in the Old Town market square, which turned out to also be a fountain. I couldn't help but put my feet in, along with all the other children under the age of seven. You're never too old, guys. Never.

We only had one stop left after the fountain, but it was across the river, so we stayed in Old Town for awhile instead of completing the challenge at all. We ran into some of our Polish friends we'd met the day before in town, so they tagged along with us -- which not only made the experience more fun, but was also useful when we wanted to order an ice cream and hot dog from a stand and the people working there spoke very little English.

One of my favorite parts about this trip, and one of the things I feel most lucky about, is that fact that I was able to meet so many local Polish people. Especially ones who share my interest in new media, video-making and YouTube. While walking around Warsaw, I was actually running into people I KNEW. In a country that just two days earlier I knew literally nothing about aside from what I learned in high school about the Holocaust. I have to say, Poland is such a lovely country, it definitely deserves to be famous for more than the Holocaust.

An update -- since I wrote the above section of this blog post, I have also met the man on the other side of me (I'm in a middle seat) and the best way to describe him would be as a nice Vernon Dursley. Then I watched "Water For Elephants", which was a really good film (though a bit sad for a plane movie). I definitely had the tears coming on a few times, as well as embarrassingly gasping out loud and having to look away more than once during the animal cruelty bits. I would absolutely recommend seeing this movie; I especially loved it because of my fascination with the circus, but I think it really shows that industry for what it was, which is important for people to understand.

Anyway, back to Poland. We had a bit of a break after the Urban Challenge, where I swore I only rested my eyes in my room for a second but it turned out nearly a full hour went by. Luckily I woke up just in time to head downstairs for dinner. It was our last night out as a group, so the night had a bittersweet feel to it. The food was all amazing, as usual. This time I ordered a venison dish that also came with those potato noodles I have come to love, as well as a delicious cranberry sauce.

After dinner we ordered a bunch of desserts to split, and among them was something that was actually called "Soup of Nothing - with clouds". We had all seen it on the menu before, but since this was our last night, we obviously had to try it. I can't tell you what was in it, but literally every person at that table with us who took a bite exclaimed something along the lines of "oh my goodness! What the heck this, it's so amazing! What IS this?!" It was some sort of incredible strawberry and vanilla mousse type thing with something else white in it that actually melted in your mouth. I think that bit was the "clouds". It's a mystery to me, but it was another crazy Poland adventure I was glad to have taken part in.

After dinner we saw some guys spinning fire in the square (seriously) on our way back to the limo-of-epic-proportions, which was a fittingly surreal end to one of the most surreal weekends of my life.

I tried to fit in as much sleep as possible last night, but the hotel had this amazing breakfast for us every morning, so I diligently set my alarm for 7:45 am. I like food more than I like being well rested. I stuffed my face with potato pancakes and Brie cheese and jam on rolls and fresh fruit. Totally worth sacrificing the extra half hour of snoozing.

Jimmy and I had flights at similar times, so after a brief chat with the man who'd put this all together (thanking him profusely for the experience and promising I'd be back next year if he makes it an annual event) we hopped in a cab and began our adventure home. That pretty much brings us to now, where I am sitting in my middle seat and trying to process the week I've just had.

You know, it's funny. I'm exhausted. I feel like I haven't had any quality time at home in ages. I am tired of airports and living out of suitcases and waking up early, but I am never happier than when I am coming home from one of these incredible experiences. Sometimes I don't even know what I really did to deserve this, but I feel so lucky and thankful every day. And I really love that so many people do read my blog, because it makes it that much more rewarding to know that in a way, I'm kind of taking all of you along with me.

It will be nice to sleep in my own bed, don't get me wrong. But I really wonder... if it's always going to feel like this, so wonderful and eye-opening and horizon-broadening... whats the point in ever slowing down?

Flights taken: 20