players only love you when they're playing

These people who hand out flyers on every street corner here would never survive in America. I got one handed to me today advertising a new way to get rid of cellulite. I don't take it personally (they hand them to every woman they see), but if they handed this to pretty much any other girl I know they'd probably get punched in the face.

Oh, and newsflash to me, I apparently missed Coldplay in LA. What?!? Why did nobody inform me they were coming BEFORE I decided to be thousands of miles away? I am perpetually in the wrong place at the wrong time. Case in point:


I finally found a good little fruits and veggie stand. I haven't been eating much else since. It's all really fresh, still got the dirt on it, big fat juicy red bell pepper sweet cherry fuzzy peach type of stuff and I am in heaven. Plus I have always had a serious obsession with grapefruits and the ones here are the fresh loose-peel kind that you can just eat like an orange (LOVE).

Okay, I promised to stop talking about food. Sorry. Zach messaged me the other day, however, talking about $6 glazed duck and it reminded me that I DO have a fellow enthusiast out there. I was not entirely delusional. I will keep my food thoughts in my correspondence with him. He is living in New York for the moment, which is always exciting because now when I visit I will know exactly where to eat.

Here, I am definitely "that girl." The one who just does not compute. Being in a country where you don't fit in at all and don't speak the language is definitely a really humbling experience. You become really okay with being stared at like you're a crazy person and looking (but mostly sounding) like a damn fool.

So let's talk about what really happened over the past few days. That's right, Krakow.


Thank god I made it out alive.

No, seriously. Because guess what?

THUNDERSTORMS KILL PEOPLE.

Six dead, 31 injured. I was woken up several times that night, not by the thunder (which comes after) but by the lightning, because it was so blinding that it actually broke through my sleep and woke me up, and I, in my half-asleep-ness, being really confused, got the living shit scared out of me by the thunder two seconds later. It was an absolute deluge.


But during the day, could we be blessed with such a thing? No. It was hot. Unbearably hot. 38 degress Celsius hot.


But apart from that, Krakow is beautiful. Pictures describe more than words, really. The experience was defined by a lot of gothic architecture, mojitos, strawberry ice cream, and snatches of classical music, old reggae, and expired pop. I still haven't decided which part was my favorite.



Being such a Catholic city, being housed with my Catholic relatives--by far the most terrifying being my fiercely Catholic grand aunt (or some such grand-relative, I was fuzzy on details)--and going into pretty much every church in the entire city just drove home the whole religious question for me. It doesn't help that the book I am reading right now (The Spider's House by Paul Bowles) is also addressing my thoughts and it's kinda like...okay, I get the point. Life is assailing me with it. I have no more conclusions for the moment, however.





By the end of my visit, I basically felt like I would die if I ate any more or walked any further (a good place to be).

It's been a great month, but I am definitely ready to come home.