I shake out my pillowcase, change into my pajamas, and just after I put my shoe back in the closet, I spot my nemesis on the side of my headboard. Maybe super worn in Converse shoes don't have a 90 degree angle at the bottom of them like they did when you bought them, but they DO have very flat, no-grip soles...muahahaHAHAHAHAHAH!!! I have spider guts along the side of my headboard and can sleep easy tonight, though I'm really hoping his wife isn't the one under my covers who is now plotting revenge....

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod what do I do??? I saw a spider. I woke my dad up to kill the spider in the corner of my room right up by the ceiling, which he did, and all was disco. 5 minutes later the damn thing is up in the corner between the wall and the ceiling, this time a little closer to my window. I realize that I'm tall enough to stand on my bed and kill it if I can find a shoe that will wedge into the 90 degree angle of the corner...some Converse should do the trick, right? Wrong - I knock the thing down onto the bed I'M STILL STANDING ON, dive for the floor, and see the creepy 8 legged monster crawling all over my sheets before disappearing down the side of my bed that's facing the wall. Shit. I can't very well lean over and watch where it goes or he may crawl back up and try to eat me, obviously.

I give the bastard about 10 seconds while I regroup and figure out how to find him. My lamp! Beautiful - it has 2 light bulbs that I can turn on and use as a flashlight. I start shaking my covers and tapping the bed to see if Mr. Potential Death makes himself known...I don't see him anywhere on my pale sheets and blankets which is good, my bed is my turf, but bad. Mostly bad. He isn't on the wall. Can't see him on the bedframe...no sign of him on the carpet or anywhere underneath the bed. This is where I give it a rest and run to, strangely enough, my blog.

My only guess is that he's under my sheets and going to devour me in my sleep. I've made peace with that and will sleep somehwere else at least tonight, but I'll be damned if he gets my tempurpedic pillow. Time to swat the pillow, shake out the case, turn the pillowcase inside out and shake it, then replace it and relocate.

Why do spiders have to be so eerie? Seriously, can't they just have 6 legs and be insects instead? They're ugly, nobody likes them, and they could never pass for anything but creepy. And they eat those who they could probably make friends with, those bastards. I hate every last one of them. They can be small and harmless (and fast as the dickens), or they can be enormous and poisonous to humans and they equally spark the same reaction in so many arachnophobes.

YUCK! I have a spider in my bed and it's too late to strip it and change my sheets to find it. Every part of me itches and everything I see out of the corner of my eyes is a quickly moving little creepy crawly. Oh well, I suppose it's worse in countries where you live on a straw mat in a hut made of mud and banana tree leaves, right? That still isn't helping me fall asleep tonight though :(

Gotta make this quick - I'm flying to Minnesota and get to see my oldest brother for the first time in over a year!! I land Thursday evening (July 22nd) around 7:30pm, which is funny because I leave Europe about half 12 that same day....gotta love time differences. Seems both Dawn and I will be jetlagged....but I really love flying.

Many more updates, though I can't guarantee them soon.

My mom is the best mom in the world.

I actually have a cool family that I love and that loves me, which means more to me than anything fleeting in my life. Thank you. I love you all.

Many people come to Prague and don't want to leave...many guests who have stayed at my flat, as well as the various travellers at Logan's hostel have a lovely time in this town and resoundingly repeat that they have been so charmed by the sights and nightlife that they have trouble moving on to a new town. I like Prague. I love Prague. I rented a flat and live in Prague. And now I'm stuck here.

One can have a job, pay for food and/or rent, and live quite easily in this city, especially in the tourist season, however it's damn near impossible to save up enough for a plane ticket to any other continent. If I've learned anything from travelling, it's that you always need an extra backup amount of money, enough for a plane ticket and lodging while you wait for your flight. I had this, and then I was stupid and decided to pay first and last month's rent on a flat to live here. I'm thanking myself for screwing myself right now. Really, I am.

On a lighter note, my housemate had the night off work and when she got called in, said she was on a hot date, though her, me, and Logan went out to dinner and drinks. While pub-hopping, she ran into her boss and was busy stuffing her foot in her mouth while Logan and I made friends....Logan eventually went to try to rescue on her from her boss and I, happily sitting by myself with a beer, got hit on. Nothing unusual, as I'm absolutely drop dead gorgeous, but when we finally make our way out of the bar, Tamzin was telling us that the dude Logan and I were talking to (the guy who was disappointed that I had a boyfriend) was a movie star. Who, I'm still not sure - some guy named Rufus Sewell who's in Dark City, Bless the Child, some other bad movies, and is the villian in the upcoming Zorro 2, which I think they're filming part of in Prague. Cool. Jeannie got perved on by Stiffler, I got macked on by Rufus.

Actually, knowing, or at least hoping, that I'll be out of here some time in the near future, we've (we being me, Logan, and our flatmate Tamzin) been having a lot of fun on our days off. Logan finally got paid a few weeks ago so we still have enough to go out and enjoy ourselves here and there.

Where did I leave off? German MTV? Lack of books leading to practice towards my neverending goal of being left-handed? Who can think when they're this tired anyway?

My birthday rocked. I'd say that's all I have to say, but it's not. It started off with me sleeping in...or attempting to, and then having my lovely sister return the courtesy I extended her on her birthday of calling at 7am for happy wishes and chit chat. For the record, I was in Barcelona at the time and had to catch a train and that was the only time that day I would be able to call her, but anyway...

I'm on the phone and my wonderful boyfriend gets home from work (around 8am) bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Since we're both wide awake at this point, we decided it was perfect time for some pancakes with the mystery czech pancake mix (at least there were pictures on the box of the closest thing to pancakes to be found) which turned out to be a success. I skimmed through our german spice rack and realized we had cinnamon. All I have to say about that is yum. I actually had a full belly before going back to bed and sleeping away half the day...or trying to and running across the house to answer the phone for birthday wishes from most of the Schroeder side of the family. Mom must have sent everyone and their dog my phone number. At any rate, it was quite pleasant to talk to the fam, most of whom I haven't heard from in forever, and I still got much needed rest. I just need to note how much I miss my biggest brother who I haven't seen in over a year.

All I asked Logan for for my birthday was to not have to plan anything. I don't care if we sail the world or watch a movie, I just didn't want to arrange it (and didn't want to know what it was beforehand). We started off strolling all around downtown Prague, aimed at one of our favorite bars called Propaganda for some tastey bloody marys but they were closed due to rennovation. This wasn't much of a problem because we were both starving and that stop was right on the way to the surprise restaurant for dinner - The Lemon Leaf. DAMN good Thai food. We accomplished some runny noses and even watery eyes and had the blissful afterglow of spicey food. Mmmm...endorphines....we're sooooo going back there before we leave. You take spicey food for granted when you live in California and have at least a taqueria on every corner...granted mexican food isn't exactly curry, but you get the drift. I found "salsa" at the supermarket here in the international foods section, got the spiciest one available, and it still tasted like chopped up tomatoes, maybe with some salt and pepper. Anyway, it was easily the best meal we've had (treated ourselves to) in the czech republic...I can't say europe because we had THE BEST QUICHE in the world in Paris. It was absolutely amazing and our hearts were broken when we went through Paris the second time and they were closed for the night, but I digress...

The meal was followed by another stroll around the Charles Bridge area just as the sun was setting (we got a great picture of the castle off in the distance, which stands as the only picture taken on my birthday) and then made our way across the bridge to one of our favorite Irish pubs, JJ Murphys, for some guiness and bailey. A little history - Logan got me addicted to this combination, strangely enough, in Seville, Spain because we needed to stay up all night until the train station opened in the morning and figured that the only place people might speak english is an Irish pub, which was pretty accurate...well, they at least understood english. I got my first drinks of the night there and we slowly walked back across the bridge to our flat to meet up with our flatmate to go out for the night. It turns out that we made our way to Logan's hostel to start the night off with some cheap drinks and a lively atmosphere. We met up with the bartender at his bar downstairs (a friend of ours) with the intention of going to a club downtown. When we finally got ready to leave, it ended up that we had a crowd of about 20 people staying at the hostel who wanted to come out and party the night away with us. I'm special...everyone wanted to come out because of ME, I'm sure. That made it all the more exciting, and we somehow walked from Prague 7 to Prague 1 to the club for a night of madness. Nothing notably exciting happened, but it was much fun and many, many free drinks for me. I had a perfect, happy 21st and felt fine in the morning. We both woke up ridiculously early for some reason, and at the same time, so we jumped across the street to our favorite usual place, Cafe Archa, for a hearty breakfast that neither of us could finish. And of course, went directly back to sleep when we got home.

When we both woke up for good the next day, some time in the early evening, we got lunch/dinner at what we dubbed The Lesbian Pizza Place. The only people in there were couples of 2 females...I mean, it could have been a very woman-friendly place, or maybe there were just a bunch of friends that decided to go there on a regular basis to split a pizza, but we took our time in our sleepy, relaxed state and nibbled at a pizza for quite a while and THE ONLY people that rotated in and out of there were females in twos. No thang, they had great, quick service and good grub so we'll probably go back there again before we leave. From here, we decided we were in a movie mood but there wasn't anything new out. We walked away from the theater but ended up walking back because we still didn't want to do much but watch a movie IN ENGLISH so we saw 2 movies we'd already seen (we kinda ducked out of one toward the end to see the other one)....it was a treat but I decided that since Logan had off work 2 days in a row so it was my "birthday weekend" and we had to keep being lazy and going out to eat and such. Good times, and we hit up Cafe Archa again on our way home for a late dinner. All in all it was a fantastic birthday weekend and I couldn't have asked for anything more.

Now I'm soaking up free internet at Logan's work and trying to stay awake with him for his 12 hour shift. They really need another receptionist. Anyway, his parents got here a few days ago, along with his younger brother, and they've been feeding us. They got us berries at a farmer's market and have taken us out to eat at some of our favorite places in exchange for showing them around Prague and getting woken up at 8am. It's been quite nice, but today we're both rather worn out and sleepy, and my glands are swollen fighting off something. Luckily we have tomorrow to sleep and may just treat ourselves to some Thai food for dinner. Mmmm....I'm already drooling.

5 more hours of the night shift, then 2 more hours of staying awake to say goodbye to his parents who are off to Venice tomorrow morning. I hope the night starts to fly by soon....

Much love. Email me.

So anyone can guess that the lack of a computer at my flat, in addition to months of being on the road has made me a bit of an internet whore. We all want what we can't have - in my case, it's news, communication, and entertainment (primarily in the form of reading travelling friends' blogs). Did I put the apostrophe in the word "friends" in the correct place? Whatever. I've been at Logan's work for a record 3 nights in a row with him and people really don't belive me when I tell them that I don't work here. I've been at the desk buzzing people in and the like while Logan spends a good portion of the night steadily drinking in the bar. It's not his fault that crazy Welsh blokes buy him (and me when they come upstairs) beer all night, or that americans insist on him taking shots of absinth with them. I consider it his duties as a cool receptionist to get people to reccomend this hostel to other travellers when they come to Prague. At any rate, I've been told plenty times tonight, last night, and the night before that I'm a good girlfriend. Pat on my back dude, I am. It's great to be an unemployed hobo with a sugardaddy...er something...

I have only 2 things to clarify:

1) I am not a prostitute. I'm a barmaiden who worked until close and is walking the backstreets to get home because it's faster and I'm cold. I'm very adequately dressed and not even looking at you, so just because I am a female and not accompanied late at night does not mean in this sexist country that I am here to provide any services.

2) I do not have fake teeth. You're Brittish and have bad teeth, you dumbass. I've never had my teeth bleached, I don't have dentures, I get my teeth cleaned no more than once a year (which is overdue at present). I brush and floss. Try it yourself.

That said, the weather has been incredible the past few days! I went out to a little park very close to our flat almost every day this week and have been getting a little color on my arms. At night, or even randomly during the day, there are good old fashioned thunderstorms. I do so love the warm rain. It seems summer is finally here and I hope it doesn't go (it's been a tease for the past month). Locals have said the humidity gets unbearable in the summer but so far Logan and I have been just fine, overjoyed, really, with this Eugene summery type weather.

Tourists are everywhere...it feels like I really live here now. It's worse than Dave and Jeannie living in San Francisco because we live IN the most main area of town. 2 steps out of my house and I have a pack of Germans running me over and then turning around to ask me for directions to the bridge. The only time I get out of the main area of town is when I take a metro to Logan's hostel, and guess who stay in hostels?? There are some pretty cool people here though, and no umbrella guided tours (but it's actually kinda fun to join in an english guided one and walk around with some old people to learn more Prague history...not like I've ever done that...what loser would follow another loser carrying high a closed umbrella or an orange flag on a stick? Yeah. Whatever.)

It's a giant pain in the ass but makes me feel really healthy when the fruit and vegetables are smaller, not shiny, and go bad really quickly. Everything's fresh and not full of chemicals so you have to go to the store more often, but you can actually taste the tomatoes, ya know? Just a charming little European detail of life. Like German television. I don't think I've ever strained so hard to comprehend a language so I could get Terrence and Philip fart jokes. I saw the chicken lover episode the other night and just about died - I've listened to so much german I understood it all. And god bless german mtv. You thought American pop music was bad? Oh man, you need a dose of Europop...or maybe you don't...regardless, the top 15 are played over and over and an italian pop song has really grown on me. Did I just say that? We have no cd player besides our little portable ones and not much exposer to even halfway decent music (does eminem's new band ring a bell to anyone??) so our deprived eardrums are warping our brains into thinking some of the trash isn't half bad. Truly, the videos make the songs. And cute little german hosts...okay, we get like 3 channels that aren't czech soap operas and like I said before, no radio, so the german mtv is on in the house way too often and, well, you get used to it, I guess. I'm just making excuses now. I like Haiducci.

Working at First and Last didn't really go well with non-slavic Kat. They severly cut my hours because I couldn't work during times when they would have more czech customers, which is ALWAYS, so they took me off the schedule (some lame claim about rotating waitresses) and I politely walked out the door after my last shift. In Logan time, I've spent all week looking for jobs. In reality, I finished my last shift at First and Last on a Thursday night (okay, 1:30am Friday morning) and walked into O'Ches Friday morning and got a job. I spent all week bored (and reading in the gorgeous sun) because I don't start until today, the weekend. I'm waiting to see how many hours they give me before I run out and get another job. We'll see. I do get a really cool tee shirt though...an Irish Cuban pub. Could you get any stranger?

I've started a pretty consistent schedule (every other day to every day) for practicing writing with my left hand. We've run out of books to read here and don't have money to buy more, so I figure I can make use of my time and accomplish one of my life-long goals. I move to a foreign country and do something I could do anywhere. I'm cool.

Life still changes weekly with jobs, sleep schedules, guests visiting, eating habits and the like. I think by next weekend some of Logan's old coworkers from Stockton are coming to visit...and then the weekendish after that is my birthday. Oooohhh, birthdays. I'm excited that it's just my birthday here and not "my 21ist" in the American way, though I am excited to actually be able to go out to a pub with my brothers and sisters when I (eventually) get back to the states...they've been waiting for years. Not much else to tell around here. There are lots of little differences/observations that I've already become accostemed to. I can make my way around the supermarket, understanding when I'm being asked for smaller change and saying "no, sorry" or giving a mean look (like the person at the counter) at the rude american in front of me in line, so as to sympathize and get a smile when I'm paying. I know how to order dark beer and I'm starting to learn phonetic pronounciation of the language so I can actually read metro stops and street names. I think in a few months I'll be familiar enough to be able to come back to Prague for the rest of my life and have it feel like home. Every place I've lived has some familiar touches, and this city has definately grown on me from when I was stuck with 50lbs of bags in a pub saying "beer" and "thank you" praying that Logan would show up though we had no actual way of reaching each other. Good times. This place is gorgeous. Come visit.

Much love

which I doubt, I am alive. I live in Prague. I work in Prague. I'm under 21 and I serve beer and get a free beer per shift, plus whatever drinks the bartenders hustle up out of boredom during our shifts. It's really fun and a totally new experience. Logan works in a hostel (with free internet, which is why I'm keeping him company for this night shift), and we've already had a guest from America with 2 more coming in a few weeks....plus my birthday coming up in a few weeks. What a world. Who could have told you a year ago that I'd be a bar maiden/waitress in an English pub in Prague. Currently, I'm listening to a bunch of drunk english people in the hostel who are asking me about Logan's parents and are quite impressed that I can type without looking at the screeen with a few fingers missing (they noticed and asked) WHILE holding a conversation with them. Crazy brits. I can't really think of what more to say even though I haven't written since Berlin. I've met some lovely people here, live with a darling welsh girl, and Brad Pitt is really hot in Troy. Food is cheap, Mexican food is nonexistant, and I miss big tubs of peanut butter....though Logan and I have made it a goal to make every european we meet eat PB&J sandwiches, which are our lunches for work. Tamzin's brother brought good coffee from London. Life is good. Don't forget to stop for teatime. Much love, Kat

...but before they do, we´re living it up. 

So last night Nikki got teargassed twice, John and Marty were arrested, and Logan has a hunk of his chin missing due to a bottle smashing into his dome.  Welcome to the May day riots in Berlin...and we were only watching the protestors.  We heard on the news this morning that this was the least destructive, most peaceful riots there have been on May day in Berlin for years...the burning dumpsters and people plow mobiles told us  a little different story, but whatever.  We went out to celebrate our American friend´s 21st birthday and expected mayhem simply because of the date but we didn´t quite know what was in store....truly, all who went with us last night could write a book.  Riots in Eugene pale in comparison.

Anyway, all of you who actually read this read Logan´s blog as well so I won´t go into further detail about our entirely unsuccessful trip to Seville, if you can call like 12 hours in a town, most of it drinking guiness in an Irish pub, a trip.  We got back to (the vortex known as) Barcelona and immediately ran into one of our friends who told us he had just gotten his ticket to Seville because him and another friend were going to meet up with Logan and I.  He was pissed, we kicked it at our old hostel with him to make up for it, and naturally, didn´t get any sleep and almost missed our train to Paris the next morning.  We only spent one night in Paris and wanted to go see a few things we missed the first trip around, but that good night´s sleep was very much in order and we passed out early after a nice walk along the river.  The next morning, maybe it was Tuesday, we caught a train to Stuttgart to stay with our friend Taylor´s relatives.  We pretty easily got ahold of AND COMMUNICATED WITH them, they picked us up at the bus stop, and were extremely hospitable though they had a 3 week old and 4 other children under the age of 14 living there.  Man what a happy, adorable little family.  The kids all got along and were obedient (unlike those damn rugrats on the train) and understood a few words of english here and there, as well as our broken German, so we got to play with and read to little german kids.  The few days we spent there were definatley a nice change of pace from Barcelona and the scenery was incredible.  We went and took a few walks just minutes out of their back door out into the beautiful countryside of the outskirts of Stuttgart.  Really, that was about all we did, and eventually made our way back to Berlin Friday....as you can see, it´s madness at John and Nikki´s again.  We leave tomorrow for Prague and have to be responsible.  Poo.

Time to go see Kill Bill 2 (finally!!)  I´m sure Logan will write more about Stuttgart.  Really, we had a wonderful time and can´t thank Tom and Antje enough.  More later.  I´m alive and didn´t even break a nail last night...and as for Logan, well, his friend is in medschool and we have a good first aid kit.  Don´t worry moms...

There´s something strangely Santa Cruzey about Barcelona that makes you want to sit on a beach all day and do nothing even though you know you should be taking advantage of your time and get touristy shit out of the way...so you can sit on the beach or out in the square watching and listening to performers and relaxing...but you end up spending the whole day trying to get your ass out of the sun and into a cathedral or museum regardless. Especially when you just came from Paris where you did seven million things in 3 days... So we´re still in Barcelona hanging with our hostel crew though we´ve managed to avoid paying for another night´s accomodation with the intention of taking a night train somewhere. Its way too expensive to make reservations on a train to Seville, so sleep may have to be sacrificed with standing near the bathrooms or luggage areas on the train...and there aren´t any available reservations if we hopped a train with our friends to Granada. The plans are still up in the air and we´re hanging around the hostel mooching free interenet and storing our bags in a room here all day. I´ll be shocked if either one of us can be dragged away from the sun and street performers in this little platz until we have to get our bags at 7, but we´ll see. I really enjoying not knowing whats next because its getting to the end of our trip and we really want to live it up. Talk of going to Morocco has been tossed around as well....we´d both get another stamp on our passports and that´s really too cool to pass up. What next what next what next... I found really great butter cookies from america for super cheap that i really miss. Damn they´re good. There´s a HUGE fresh market across the street with everything wonderful you could imagine such as every type of nut known to man and fresh squeezed mango juice, or even, and we got a picture, sheep brains. Yum. I´m talking to girls from Canada I met yesterday at this hostel about Canadian Smarties...like the candy smarties. In Canada, they have chocolate in the middle and a really thick candy coating - like M&Ms but better, so they say. Next person to go to Canada and try those for me gets a gold star. I have no train of thought other than what the hell am I doing inside when there are sun and palm trees downstairs. I like sun. I like Spain. I want to live here and learn Spanish (though no locals actually speak it in this area - it´s something like Catalan and another language(sp)). I could juggle for the tourists and make enough money to feed myself daily and that´s looking quite appealing. Like I said, there´s something very Santa Cruzey/Hawaiiish about Barcelona, and after a beachless summer in Oregon and a rainy winter in Sacramento, I feel like being back where the fruit hangs low and people wear swimsuits all day. We´ll see. Back to my butter cookies...it´s the tlittle things in life...