Month 5: Cheesy makes plans

Ok guys! So now that no one is reading this blog anymore, I have updates!

1 - I found a hitchhiking buddy to get back into the Balkans at the end of June! Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!

2 - I'm going back into the Balkans at the end of June! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

3 - I'm moving to Split, Croatia at the beginning of July for an undetermined length of time. Ću tamo ići to volunteer sa udrugom za pomoć mladima. = I'm going there to volunteer with an organization that helps troubled youth.

Biggest fear: paralyzing boredom resulting from moving from a city of 15 million to a city of 100,000. Best solution: hula hoops, yoga, and rakija. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay! (I can only hope they don't expect me to be a role model for the "troubled youth," hahaha)

Month 5: Cheesy meets rival

Cheesy had said something she regretted. In fact Cheesy often said things she later regretted.

Cheesy's problem was that, once she started something (anything), she couldn't stop. For example: talking, complaining, eating, singing, traveling. Cheesy was an absolute failure in self-moderation (especially given that after doing something obsessively for a while, Cheesy would suddenly stop it completely until some new obsession came along). For a while, Cheesy wasn't able to stop herself from philosophizing about facebook and spying on people, until she crossed the line by criticizing people who give constant updates about themselves. There are lots of people who give constant updates about themselves. Cheesy was beginning to realize that the desire to talk to people was probably normal. So constant updaters were probably socially healthy people from whom Cheesy could learn a lot, ha ha. With that realization, Cheesy's short-lived obsession with the facebook privacy issue ended abruptly.

In the meantime Cheesy had met a friend who complemented her perfectly in the social sphere. Let us call her Tally (since of course Cheesy was still obsessed with the blogger's privacy issue, ha ha). Tally was good for Cheesy, because Tally was always talking, smiling, and laughing. Cheesy was learning from Tally what it was like to be a normal, happy, sociable person. For example, Tally demonstrated that it was possible to live well without changing one's country of residence every few weeks (ha, ha). Tally was also crazy about things like "positive energy" and "cleansing one's aura" and so on. Cheesy was thrilled to have finally met someone cheesier than her. Tally also accepted Cheesy's atheism, which had been making Cheesy feel like a deviant weirdo in Turkey. In brief, Tally made Cheesy feel a little bit less alone, and together they would float for hours through their strange cloud of cheesy energy.

Nonetheless Cheesy's itch to move was getting stronger and stronger. She was surprised at how much she missed the weight of her backpack on her shoulders. She was also disappointed on how slow she was at picking up Turkish - she had learned as much Turkish in six weeks as she had learned of Serbo-Croatian in two weeks (and yes, she was losing her English skills) (and yes, she just said "Serbo-Croatian" even though that's a big no-no) (what was she supposed to call it? She was in Croatia for one week where they told her not to learn Serbian, then she was in Serbia for one week where they told her not to learn Croatian, but in both places she learned the same language, so she had decided to give the finger to politics and just call it "Serbo-Croatian") (oops did she just say too much again? Dear reader, she means no offense).

Cheesy's final thoughts on the matter were about self-restraint. Cheesy believed that when there is an itch, one should scratch. Isn't this the cornerstone of hedonism?

(Too many days, too lazy to count): Out of the silence…

…come some random thoughts from Istanbul.

1. Sorrrrrry! Ok most important update: I made it to Istanbul! Hahaha. Only 5 weeks ago.

The truth is that I was going to give up the blog. As all bloggers eventually must, I had to decide (a) whether I really want to be spied upon, and (b) whether I'm too lazy to provide people with the necessary tools for spying on me. To be honest, for a while I didn't feel like telling people what I was doing. Don't take it personally – if you know me well, then you know I have my moments. If you don't, well: I have my moments. Haha. Then I wanted to write, but so many things had happened and I just felt too lazy. Bad excuses, I know. And know I come out of the murk with some crappy apologies and crappier lists, but hey, no one's forcing you to spy on me anyway J

 

2. Turkish people are tough. I wouldn't mess with them if I were you. (when I hang out with Turkish people I feel like a silly little bird who thinks she knows her way, but really everyone knows she's lost…)

 

3. I think it's possible to get addicted to leaving things. Istanbul is always clogged with traffic and people and noise. It's true that I find it energizing. But I also really miss the rush you get when you're standing at the side of a highway, and there's nothing but the swoosh of cars going by and the future waiting for you at the other end. Is it only proud people who get a good feeling when they abandon things? Because in a way, abandonment is an act of defiance, and proud people are defiant. When you abandon a place or a person, you are saying that you think there are better things out there for you. So are all travelers assholes?

 

4. I get tired of hearing my own voice. Just look at #3 above, it sounds so snobby. So that's my 3^rd excuse for not writing in a while. (I don't think I'll ever understand the people who put a new facebook update every 5 minutes. Don't they get bored of themselves?)

 

5. Let's talk more about boredom. Maybe it's the chronically bored who end up traveling, not the proud. You get bored of one place, you move on. It's easy and it's fun.

 

6. It's pretty frustrating to teach anything to people who don't want to be taught. It makes me wonder – why teach? Clearly these people have better things to do with their time than to learn. I'm not sure whether I'm doing the right thing when I have to force students to learn things for an exam that they just couldn't care less about. In a way I respect them. I don't feel like making them learn any more than they feel like learning. So I wish I could just say to them, "Ok let's make a deal. I'll give you the average grade if you just shut up in class and let me teach the people who care." But unfortunately most 15-year-old girls wouldn't really understand. Especially if I say it in English. (haha)

 

7. Last week it hit me for the first time that I'm in a Muslim country. Once again, a little slow.