Chelyabinsk! Bless you!

I started this post last week. We spent 4 nights and 3 days on the island Olchon in Lake Baikal.  I wanted to write a series of posts that I could then autopost once I had Internet again. But I was simultaneously writing my next two articles for my Chasing Summer column, and I ran out of battery, so I only managed to get the following 2 paragraphs written:

    My friends are awesome. When my status update on Facebook was merely “Chelyabinsk” I got two reactions: one was the title of this post, and the other “xyctzusbsjnj!  See I can punch the keyboard too!” Followed by “Just joking, how is Russia?” When I read comments like that I always feel a pang of homesickness.  I miss my friends, both the ones that are in both my homes, (Newfoundland and Germany) as well as the ones scattered around the world.

     It is what I call part of the curse of travel. As fantastic as it is, you are never completely happy in any one place again. I will be in downtown Stuttgart missing Suzanne, at my favorite coffee shop in St. John's and wish Caroline or Aimee could be there, and then in the middle of Siberia wishing I could introduce Anna to Daniela or Erisa. Travel has brought so many wonderful people into my life, I get greedy and want to keep them!

    My next intention was to finish this in Irkutsk, where we planned to stay overnight and get our Russian registration completed for our second entry into Russia.  When I logged into my email I got horrific news.  One of my dear friends had been run over by a drunk on a motorcycle in South East Asia.  She was there working on her Masters. She is simply a wonderful and fantastic person.  Horrible things happen to good people all the time.  But when it happens to someone you love, you forget the randomness of nature and try to figure out how it could happen to someone the world needs. She is a fighter though, and we believe that though the call was close, she will pull through.  But until she does it is a horrible waiting game.

More Tales Of The Land Of Ice & Rain To Come..Till Then Enjoy A Motorcycle Ride Over A Non-Existent Bridge

Shame on me as I have been completely neglecting the blog since returning to Germany, and there are in fact more tales to come.  But as I am teaching English AND still working on my Masters, AND trying to learn German, AND trying to have some semblance of non contractual contact with the outside world I find that even having 20 mins to sit down and write a post to be a challenge.  I finish my course load at uni next month however, and so I hope to have more time then.  (Plus that means there will be a thesis to avoid writing, and that means I will have tons of time to write everything BUT my thesis!).

But as episode 10 just came in to be translated this morning, I found myself thinking that I could at least share the next Journizer episode here instead.  The bridge that does not exist, and me talking nonsense (I did it all by myself but with help????  I meant I rode the bike through that grass alone but I followed the tracks the boys left.  Arg, something about a camera makes me the dork queen as opposed to the dork princess).  :-P

 

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