Stoddy, Not Scotty

Back!

2009-12-20T14:41:00.001-08:00

Got back last night.

I'm uploading my funny Greek dog video on YouTube. Whit will be home in less than three hours!

Psyche Out!

2009-12-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

That wasn't the last blog in Greece! THIS IS! That was accidental capitalization but whatever.

Cody, Ricky and I just had an awesome time playing pool and darts. I did VERY well at darts. Well, the third game I sucked but most of all, I did fantastically. Ricky made this really funny comment when I did this really messed up, weird stance while hitting the pool ball. Instead of laughing or saying he thought it was weird, he said, "Cool! How do you do that?!" It kiiiilled me.

It was a perfect guy's night to celebrate the whole study abroad adventure. Still Cody ended our "awesome trip" cheers with "TO BITCHES" hahaha which is what we always toast to but what Ricky said about how great the trip was stuck with me.

Great farewell. I have to wake up in 5 hours or so. I don't give a flying fuck.

Tomorrow!!!

2009-12-18T11:19:00.000-08:00

I leave at 10 am tomorrow. My flight is at 2 pm so I'm leaving early to be safe.

Finished recording Poor Jones today. Spent all afternoon doing that and recording real piano for some other tracks. We also talked to Petros down in the lobby. He told us that in some cultures, when they "fuck" they keep a compass with them to make sure they don't point towards Mecca. HAHAH.

I'm going out to play pool with Ricky and Cody!

THE LAST BLOG IN GREECE! CHEERS! Or in Greek terms, YAMAS (phonetically)!

Ahhhh

2009-12-17T17:30:00.001-08:00

I am shwaisted right now. I won't throw up but I'm definitely drunk. I was just out with Cody, Ricky and Michael. Zoe showed up later after hanging out with Giorgos, a Greek guy from the Nakas conservatory. They saw the movie, Avatar. I thought I knew what the movie was about but I guess I didn't. I thought it had people with super powers in it but I guess there were blue men in it, whatever that means.

Tomorrow is the last day in Greece. I have to be at the school at 11. That is insane. Ricky said tonight that he made new friends in Greece. I told him I was glad he came to Greece and he said the same about me. Awesome.

We watched a lot of a pretty bad movie about Alexander today in our last Greek Civ class and then most of us had lunch at a Gyro place. I had a Greek salad but it wasn't as filling as I wanted ti to be. The reason was because I had a Greek salad when I was little at Jimmy Gonzales's house, his dad made Greek salad and from then on, I wanted to go to Greece. Well, that and the Greece travel video convinced me. My family and I were watching travel videos before we went to Tahiti in about 2001 and Greece was a possibility. I don't know if they knew but Greece blew me away.

See you tomorrow. I record at 11 and then I'M DONE! SEE YOU SOON FAMILY!

Stoddy.

Happy Birthday Whit!

2009-12-16T16:36:00.000-08:00

24 big ones. Hot damn!

Big ass day today. Recording from 6 til 10:15 at a recording studio with Petros. All I recorded of my song were vocals and those ended up not working cause the mike was buzzing. So that was really annoying cause now I'll have to record them tomorrow at the engineer's house. The other recordings went well though, on which I played piano. Ricky got fed up at the end when he was being forced to sing and play guitar on a time constraint. I totally understood. It's awesome how he and I are joking around more and more. Maybe it was because in front of everyone at our last big dinner before Mia left for home early, we were all admitting things about each other, first impressions and such and I pointed at him and said I was SO happy when he first starting joking with me about "funny situations". Cody and I are actually getting along a LOT better now. Bowling actually brought us together considerably as a matter of fact! It was funny. I think it was because we were competing and we can relate in that way haha.

I wrote a random song for Whit and sent it to him just before writing this blog. He's gonna love it cause it has a big inside joke in it. It isn't about him or even about his birthday but it's FOR his birthday. It's called "Behind My Eyes". Attention readers, don't divulge this information once the song is received by the man himself.

Two more full days in Greece. I can't believe it. I actually made it through this semester alive.

This week has turned out to be MUCH busier than I anticipated but that's cool. It's definitely packed the trip with even more meaning. Plus, the more we all go through, the closer we get. At least I think we've gotten closer. Hey, maybe that's really why Cody and I are getting along. We've actually been sharing musical communication rather than only sarcastic words and the occasional beer.

Seth Rogen

2009-12-16T00:41:00.001-08:00

It's 10:40 am at this moment. I wanted to write down my dream, or at least as much as I could remember.

DREAM-

I am in a movie theater. Somehow I end up inside the movie.

I'm in some kind of mansion with a lot of slanted floors. A cleaning crew is going around, dropping bags of cleaning supplies on the floor. I think outloud - "Just like a video game!" and shift perfectly to the left, right or forward to avoid the mounds of clumpy cleaning material all over the floor. The truth was, I didn't want to get that stuff on my socks and get all wet. A guy about my age, says, "Push A!" and I realized I have a controller in my hand. I push it but it doesn't do much. I realize I should have started singing cause that's like my super power, music.

I arrive at the top of the castle, which is where the main lady lives, the head woman. It's risky being around her cause she is like the mafia leader, I am thinking. In the middle of a conversation with me, she pulls out a gun and I'm sure that I'm about to die. The gun turns out to be filled with water and she starts pouring it into a hole where her left bicep is. She continues talking to me like it's no big deal. It is then that I realize she is not human, but a robot. So now I'm in even more of a predicament; I'm standing by the head mob leader who also happens to be a robot. I decide that telling her I am a human might make things worse since she clearly must assume I'm a robot too. I right then and there make up a story about me being a robot. This was an interesting because I really was thinking on the spot -

"You know what's crazy. I'm actually one of the most advanced robots out there, ahead of my time. My model is basically from the future because I'm so advanced and no one has heard of my type." She gives me a impressed look and listens while setting up some kind of light fixture, three lamps hanging from the wall at random spots with straw sticking out of them.

"You know, I actually feel kind of stupid sometimes," I continue with my story.

"Yeah, you feel stupid, of course," she interrupts understandingly.

"Well, because I'm more real than others. I started younger and am able to learn like a human. You know how those old computers sometimes are easier to understand, less frustrating?" She nods. "They solve the problem quicker. There's just one route to get there."

She did not hear the last thing I say and takes out some kind of blow torch, scorching the straw light fixtures with it. The fire blasts over the wall and when she turns off the torch, the lights are left flaming, giving light to the room. We walk out of the kitchen and she tells me not to go back in there without her. I catch the eye of her son on the way into another section and he widens his eyes, mouthing the words, "Do NOT go in the kitchen, EVER. She will KILL you." He waves his hands like an airplane runway guy would, motioning a plane not to land. I nod to him, promising not to go into the kitchen.

I then notice three robot dogs scampering around the room. They don't have bodies, just heads. One of them is a bulldog head. I assume they are robots, haha. I go over to them and say hi. The lady goes away for a while so I stay with the dogs. They start play biting me and then walking all over my head.

Suddenly, I heard a voice from one of the dog heads say, "We have figured out who you are, your machine history, everything." I realize that what they have found out is not my machine history, but my human history. I know then that I have to get out of the castle because my life is in danger. The dogs start biting me viciously, some attacking me from the back. I am trying to guard my neck with my hands and doing my best to have them bite my arms and hands instead of anything else.

I start having a conversation with the bulldog head. He says he must kill Seth Rogan, the guy who played the main actor in the first movie of this series (the robot series I guess). I somehow can see the movie posters of the series and the first one shows Seth smoking, puffing out marijuana, which is covering his face in the picture. I'm not surprised that the part in the series about smoking was played by Seth. I tell the bulldog not to kill Seth because he is actually really funny. The bulldog starts to be a little doubtful because he seems to like the idea that Seth is funny.

That's when I woke up.

A Bowl of Fun

2009-12-15T14:32:00.000-08:00

Last night the boys went out to Sutsu, a bar we often go to, and Alex was with us, A greek student from Nakas. Ricky and I talked for a long time at the end of the night, especially at a different bar called Flower, and Cody and Michael ended up talking extensively. That is usually how it turns out. I made sure to include Alex at one point when Ricky and I were talking about Godfather. He was sort of the fifth wheel and I know how that feels.

Ricky said we should play together in Boston. HELL YES! I said I was honored he asked me. He said he was honored I accepted. I then told him he had a better voice than I do so I should sing harmony over him. He said, "Are you serious?"

It was an awesome musician to musician bonding moment.

Also last night, at the first bar, I actually went over to a girl that I wanted to talk to. I thought she was the third wheel cause her friend kept dancing with this other guy. I was so nervous but Cody kept saying I should do it. Ricky said, "You have four more days left," and Alex ended up coming over to me when I was sitting there on a bar stool, waiting for the right thing to say. He asked me if I needed help. I told him it was ok but then said it would be cool if he helped. He ended up walking away without helping me, telling me that I could call him if I wanted to. The girl luckily sat nearby me on her bar stool. I asked her, "Milate aglika" which means, "Do you speak English?" She said she didn't speak Greak, haha. So I said, "Neither do I!" and we started talking. Then she apologized and said she had to go back to her group and did a switch with her friend who had a pimple right below her lip. Ew, sorry. I talked to her for a while. She was very animated with her gestures, bobbing up and down when ever she didn't know something and out turning her hands while doing a clown face at the same time. After we finally introduced ourselves after about a ten minute long talk, I said I wanted to go back to my group. She seemed a little disappointed but honestly, I was interested in her friend, who, I found out from the pimple lip girl, had a boyfriend. Hmmm that's why the guy I thought was pimple's boyfriend was eyeing me, haha. He was probably wondering why the hell I was hitting on his girl. Anyway, I felt great that I actually talked to the unbelievably hot girl (she told me she was German! That's why I liked her. Explains it all). It was a HUGE accomplishment and I owe it to Ricky, Cody and Alex. But mostly I owe it to this trip, myself and the fact that she sat nearby me without knowing it. Good going self and random occurrences!

Today we all went bowling. It was AMAZINGLY fun. At least I know I had tons of fun. We went to Agios Dimitrios which is at the end of the red line in Athens. It was so nice also cause I felt so relaxed after figuring out all my bank stuff. WOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

I won the first game and Ricky won the second. I got second place the second time though.

What a day

2009-12-14T13:41:00.000-08:00

I woke up and found out that most likely, the wire went through. Then I got an email about a transaction I wasn't happy about. That took up most of my day, skyping in A10 where we all hang out at the school. They have ethernet cables in there. I missed dinner cause I was on Skype with the bank til about 9. Afterwards, I was hungry and wanted to eat something quick in Syntagma. I went to an Alpha Bank which is my bank here in Athens. My mind was mush so I forgot my card pin number for the Greek credit card. I entered the number three times into the ATM incorrectly and then I realized that the machine was hungrier than I was! It ate my card.

That's ok though cause I don't need the card anymore. I need to withdraw all my money from Alpha Bank anyway and I might as well go in tomorrow and tell them what happened. It should be fine.

It's just funny how much bank trouble I've had in the past few days: the Wire that Couldn't, the Mysterious Subscription and the Card Monster.

At least our Greek teacher said to the class, "You'll have to write a song about this..." referencing a topic in Greek. Someone in the class said, "Stoddy wrote a song," so our teacher asked me to play it. I did! It went well and she was wide mouthed, holding her cell phone to tape as much as she could of it half way through.

It's amazing how one problem dissolves once another comes along. It really is all relative.

6

2009-12-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

I wrote this to Amy and decided to post it here:

-----

Well I just got back and it's midnight here. Everybody had different songs and I ended up playing piano on a lot of them, including mine where I'm also singing of course. So I had to stay late today. Our teacher is so crazy too. He always adds these weird drum beats that throws me off. Ugh so tough. My song sounds good though. Except for one of my friends told me today I need to re-record my vocals and listed these specific things. So I might do that. It was tough to hear but possibly helpful.

-----

I changed some of the words in that paragraph but it's mostly the same. And I didn't record my song today but played in other songs. It took a lot longer than I thought it would.

I'm talking to Amy still. She is talking about how she wants me to cook her a dinner when I see her cause I said I like to cook. I said only if she agrees to be my sue chef. She said only if she can wear an honorary sue chef hat. Hahaha.

Tomorrow's the big day. If everything works out as planned then I will consider myself at home tomorrow cause it's so close.

Goodnight.

...

2009-12-12T16:41:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I went out to dinner with Jason, some other Berklee faculty and the 7 others. The dinner was alright. I don't like pork chop that much but it was ok.

Today I found out about some things with the bank and it pissed me off. But my night was good. We went to a bar and had a good time. Mia and Zoe were, pardon me saying this, sexy. I just got back from hanging out at the bar so I'm still...yeah.

Goodnight.

Only a week left til I go home!

Stoddy.

Tired

2009-12-10T18:24:00.001-08:00

Two days ago on Tuesday, I had a final test in Petros's class with the other 7. It was insane. First of all, a lot of the questions on the test came from nowhere. No one in the class knew them. Second of all, about ten minutes into the test, Petros said, "All right, finish already," and started pacing around the room. "I want to go down and play music." We have an album we're doing. But it was weird cause we were all trying to figure out the test. Then he goes over to the phone by the door and sloppily pushes both hands onto the number pad, lighting up every "on hold" button and who knows what. He then turns off as many of the lights he turned on and looks back with a boy's smile on his face. Courtney started dying with laughter. I didn't know what to say. I was dumbstruck.

Today I recorded "Stuttering Jones"! It was great. It's 4:30 in the morning so I'm not thinking straight right now.

Just finished an ichat session with Emily and Althea. It was beautiful. I miss them so much.

Checking out a 5:05 am. Wowza.

Ahhh, Bank Thing Is Done (Should Be)

2009-12-09T15:43:00.000-08:00

Dad - "We had to shut down early today cause we're having a blizzard...no it was fine. It was just work that shut down...But you never know but it's supposed to be fine tomorrow...Minnesota got hit. Chicago got hit. It was one big whopping storm...for the rest of your life it [studying abroad] will just be a memory. You're in a memory. You're inside of it right now."

I'm about to go to bed. My stomach feels normal again after eating all that food. Ahhh. I thought I was food poisoned for a second.

How do I sum up this trip? Help me with this one, Dad. There are so many words so instead of writing all of them, I'll do the opposite and represent a lot with a little -

One more thing: I just wish mom's nose could be pinched.

Moanin'

2009-12-09T14:58:00.000-08:00

The title of this should have been the title of the last blog.

The girls (in our group) had a concert tonight. It was all jazz. They played a lot of the same tunes that were in the first concert, which was about a month or so ago. Courtney sang "Moanin'" in both of the concerts. She's great in that.

Afterwards, we went out to dinner. Jason Camilio is here visiting us and he paid for it with Berklee money. The food was great. I had spinach and ricotta cheese ravioli which was fab. For dessert I had brownies with icecream. Mmmm. Zoe said I should try standup comedy. Huh? Awesome! Wasn't sure how serious she was but I thought, why not give it a try sometime? I've actually thought about it quite a lot before.

Yesterday I went to see Christina again after not seeing her for about two weeks. Her store finally has a title: "CaFemme"! Haha. I like it. I just wish the "fe" in cafe had something to do with men so that Femme would contradict it.

Holy Cannoli. 9 full days in Greece left.

Concert

2009-12-08T14:57:00.000-08:00

I played "Poor Stuttering Jones" today for this "Jam Session" event where teachers performed. The students opened the show with our song from class, the odd time signature ones we had to write for our assignment. It went well except for the middle of the song when the mics decided to die on me and my backup singer, Courtney. It died right at the loudest part of the song so you can barely hear me on the video of me. On the last verse/chorus, I had to project without he mic. It ended up sounding fine. Kind of a cool affect. I love how Ricky sounded on it. His guitar chops are so good.

Mia and I recorded the song we wrote for her dad's birthday tomorrow. It sounds good! She was so happy and excited and hugged me when we finished. It was sweet. I like that giggly, kiddy side she brings out once and a while.

I went up to Ricky and Cody's room and we watched Ricky's "Superstition" video and the "Stuttering Jones" video in which Cody and Ricky also played. I recorded both of them with my camera. The one of my song was recorded by Michael. After watching "Superstition", Cody clicked on the most recent video I made, which is a dog video I made. It's hilarious and it was even funnier since they stumbled upon it. After that, they basically watched all the videos on my Flip camera. It was really fun. Oh my god, I'm so corny/funny in them.

Right now and during the entirety of this blog, I have been hearing people have sex in the room over. I heard the same people before but I always only hear the girl. She's loud as fuck. I think she's in her orgasm right now.

Bare

2009-12-07T14:55:00.000-08:00

This morning I did something that was very stupid. I don't understand why the hell I did it. Right after waking up I went down to breakfast, which is a room filled with hotel staff, random people that live in the hotel for a couple nights and always a few of my friends. Bear in mind that I was groggy because I had just awakened and was probably grumpy and out of it. I went down with bare feet. I thought to myself, "This will be like Shawshank.

'No one ever looks at a man's shoes.' So why would they notice me with the absence of any?" I was dead wrong. I went over to the bread to start making my usual cheese and meet sandwich and one of the head hotel guys came over to me and basically mimed to me, "What the hell are you doing?" without saying more than two words. He pointed at my shoes. His face told me that what I did was absolutely ludicrous and disrespectful. Agghhh. "What was I thinking?" I thought. When I went back up to the room, the card I had in my pocket was the one card that doesn't work. So I was locked out until Michael came up. At least I had time to go back down before breakfast ended. The man was outside the breakfast room again (which is wear I also have dinner every night) and apologized to him again. Once more, he continued to say nothing. All he did was mime again, "What, are you stupid?" with open arms and out-turned hands.

It was so weird. Last night I asked Michael, "Why do you always pull back your sheets before you wash up for bed?" He always does that. I don't understand why he doesn't just pull back the sheets right before he gets under them. The lights are never off when he's going to bed because I'm always going to bed after him. He replied, "I don't know. I just do," in a defensive way. Immediately, I sensed awkwardness and said, "Oh, sorry." He said it was ok. I added, "I didn't mean to be intrusive or anything." Then he said, "It's ok. It was just really random." How was that random? He was doing his sheets while I asked it. I found it strange but whatever, maybe he has a past with it. Maybe he does it cause it reminds him of someone. Or maybe I'm looking too much into it.

Highlight of today:

Mia asked me from the other dinner table tonight, in front of everyone, "Stoddy, my dad's birthday is on Wednesday. Do you want to write a song for him?" She clarified that she wanted to write it with me. I said yes and she seemed SO excited. We got together after dinner and in about an hour and a half, we basically finished it. It just has to be fine tuned. We're gonna record it tomorrow. She wants to send it to her dad on Wednesday through email so he finds it while he's at work. I like that, mix mundane (email) with unexpected kindness (song). "Unexpected kindness" coined by my dad, Gren Blackall.

Zoe's sister loved the song we wrote for her. Her sister is moving to California and Zoe asked me to help her write a song. Her sisters friends put it on in a party to surprise her. Then she heard it later to really listen to the lyrics. I heard that it really touched her. Yes!

I got a 95 on my Greek test! She said my dialogue was very good and well planned out. Something like that. I think a big reason is because I used some lines from my "Omorfia" song I wrote since I have it memorized. HA!

12 days til Christmas! At least that's what I say because I'm going home in 12 days.

A Command (today's second blog)

2009-12-06T14:22:00.001-08:00

See "Lars and The Real Girl". Now.

Woah Momma

2009-12-06T11:41:00.000-08:00

The night of the 4th (Friday) -

I got a noise complaint. I was walking out of the hotel about halfway past midnight to see if I could find a book light or flashlight when the guy behind the counter stopped me. "Sir, SIR. Are you in room 103?" I said yes and he began to tell me how my room has had several noise complaints, from 101 and 1o2. He said that a customer an hour before that had told him "I don't want to stay here. I want to leave because of the noise." He kept saying, "Please find a solution. Just find a solution. You are always leaving and coming in, the door going boom bam boom boom." He repeated that boom thing about three times. It was kind of funny. Then he told me that if I'm gonna talk at night, to come to the lobby. "I was young once. I understand. But find the solution," he ended with. The whole noise complaint thing completely destroyed my night though. I don't do well with that sort of thing. Actually, what helped me was thinking about the evil lady that lived by my family's apartment when I was a kid. I think Terri was her name. She always knocked. I think we got evicted. I'm sad because I really liked that guy who works behind the counter at night. He once changed the channel for me to an English station when I was watching TV in the lobby. I'm thinking now that maybe he just wanted to keep me in the lobby by giving me something I would like to watch on the TV. I doubt it though. He seemed like a nice guy.

Yesterday, the 5th (Saturday) -

I woke up late, around 1 pm. Soon after waking up, I walked to the Evangelismos metro stop and went to the Byzantine museum. It was all right. It was sunny before going in and pouring when I came out so I hid under a tunnel and stayed there until the rain passed. I sat there thinking and even made a little video. When the coast was clear, I walked out the gates and the guard standing in her little watchtower waved to me with a smile. I guessed that she must have thought it was cute or funny that I had sheltered myself and let me stay in there even after closing time. It was only twenty minutes past though. I got back to the hotel and watched a movie called "Ghost Town". It's kind of like "Sixth Sense" but a romantic comedy. It was good. Entertaining. Not fantastic but definitely funny. After that I got cabin fever and left the hotel again. I walked left from the hotel which I haven't done since the first few weeks of living here. I walked further than I ever had before and found so many more places than I had expected to find. I came across a tall hotel that has jazz events every Friday and Saturday at the top. I'll probably go there next Friday. They have Brazilian Jazz then. I also found countless clothes shops, some restaurants, like TJI Friday's, Pizza Hut, Applebees, some bars, cafes and other little stores. It was surprising.

I got back and started watching a movie called "Lars and The Real Girl" which is the movie about the guy who has the life-sized, anatomically correct girlfriend. It's really good so far and can't wait to finish it. Of what I've seen so far, I definitely recommend it. It has the guy from "The Notebook" in it.

Today, the 6th (Sunday) -

Oh today. Sweet sweet today. "One of the best days of my life," "One of the best since Mykonos." Those were two things I said to myself before I boarded the train back to Athens.

Today is the anniversary of a boy getting shot so there are always riots today and tomorrow of every year. That's why I decided today would be my day to get out of Athens rather than stay in the hotel. I was planning to go to Parnitha. I heard it was a great place to go hiking. The mountain is supposed to be one of the highest mountains surrounding Athens. The internet said that "the bus timetable commences at 6:30, again at 8:00 and then at 2:30. So I decided I'd get up at 8 and take a bus at around 9 or so because I figured that the buses left every 25 minutes or so.

That's cool Parnitha is supposed to be great but I didn't go. When I got to the bus station in Vathis square, close to the Omonia metro station (a very dirty square and slightly confusing to navigate for me) and I looked at the bus times, my plans changed. The internet had failed to supply me with useful information. Or rather, wrong language was used. The buses did not commence at 8. The only buses were at 6:30, at 8:00 and at 2:30. So I was about an hour late for my bus. Even though I was pissed that I missed the bus, a warm feeling of relief washed over me because I considered the idea of going back to the hotel and sleeping more, not having to worry about the risks of traveling again. I was sick of traveling. Knowing me, I did not take the easy way out. I went to the train station. I couldn't read any of the city names so I asked the information desk, "What's a town two hours away that you'd recommend?" The first place they mentioned was Halkitha, a place two hours up north near the water. After mentioning it they asked, "Do you want to go there?" I said yes. I got my ticket for the next train out which was in about twenty minutes.

I arrived in Halkitha in less than I thought, about one hour and twenty five minutes. It was sprinkling. The light rain lasted the entire time I was there. The first thing I saw when I got out of the train was a big rusty wheel. The second thing I saw were the big mountains in the distance. I focused on the closest one and said to myself, "I'm want to climb that mountain." I walked all the way around the port and across a bridge that looked just like the bridge in North Boston. There was a mountain road that I had to walk up without any sidewalks until I could find a place to start climbing. There was no easy beginning to the climb because keep in mind, there weren't trails on this mountain. That made things hard. Half the time I could climb up the rocks but at other times I had to brave it and walk through thick, painful brush. I had shorts on. That was a stupid choice on my part but it made it interesting. I climbed all the way up to the highest point and looked down at what looked like an island because there was so much water everywhere. I had thought before that the city was dirty and littered, which is was, but from high up I felt like I was seeing an older version of the city, a cleaner, purer version.

Except for scratching my legs like crazy, I didn't hurt myself once. No mountain lions either. Or snakes. Whenever a bird would fly out from a bush in shock of my presence, I thought it was an animal jumping out to eat me. I soon calmed down though and focused on the climbing. The trip wasn't like cliffhanger or anything obviously. Most of it I climbed with my feet. Occasionally I got on my hands and feet to get a better grasp. At the top, I found a couple areas where rocks were stacked up in the shape of a wall. I found that strange. I even found a dug out area, surrounded by two rock walls that looked like it might have been a tomb. I took pictures of it. I think I was just wishing it was a tomb. I tried to pick up a big rock to drop it in there, with hope that it would break through and I'd strike rich but I couldn't even roll the rock from its place. I found some pieces of rock that looked like pottery too. They had curves and parts sticking out of them that made me think they were formed by man. I took one home. I also too pictures of all this. I'm gonna show John, my Civ teacher who I think has some training in archeology also. I don't think I found anything special though cause there was a telephone pole nearby and some things that looked new, sticking out of the ground.

I went to the edge of the mountain and yelled, reminding myself of Anchor Man - "I wanted to scream it on the top of a mountain." I yelled two things - "YEAHH!!! GREECE!" and "I AM STODDY BLACKALL!!!" Hahaha, kind of cheesy but it felt good. I videotaped the second one.

Going back down was the hardest cause I started going down on a completely different spot so I had to scoot sideways across the mountain, through even more tough bushes, poking and stabbing at my legs even more. It came to the point that I would cringe when anything hit them, which was every few seconds. Finally, when I slid down the last steep decline to the winding road I first walked on, I yelled with joy. I felt so accomplished and happy that I didn't die.

I took an hour to walk back to the train station, got my ticket and still had an hour and a half until it left. I got a cup of sugary tea, which was immensely satisfying and had a semi-bad burger. It was gross but it still did the trick. The best was the chocolate crepe I had after that, straight off the stove. Mmmmmm. Boy did I deserve that.

On the train I finished "Memoirs of an Invisible Man", H.F. Saint. Very good book. I wasn't very pleased with the ending but it was an overall well written and well thought out book. The most impressive aspect about the book for me was how detailed and accurate it seemed.

I made it back, twenty minutes late for 7:00 dinner with my friends at the hotel. I felt so cool that I did all that and was now sitting at such a familiar place, in time to tell about my day. Now thinking about it, the day reminds me of Risky Business or Ferris Beuler's Day Out.

Before writing this, I studied for my Greek language final with Ricky in my room. Cody was there but he was kind of studying on his own. Michael was Skyping with family. I still feel like I have to study but I'm probably prepared for about a B+. I will study some more tonight and a little tomorrow. Maybe I could bring my anticipated grade up to an A-. That would be great. But right now I feel like watching more of "Lars and The Real Girl". By the time I'm done, Michael will probably be closing those curtains, getting his sheets ready, washing up in the bathroom for less than three minutes and then slipping into bed. I really don't feel like studying yet though. I'm sorry, I deserve to watch a little. So I'll make my later self suffer by having him study in the bathroom while Michael sleeps. I'd rather watch the movie while the room is light and I'm on my bed. All right, enough of that. Another AWESOME day. I'm so pleased. My travels are done except for maybe one more trip to the beach, less than thirty minutes away, one of these days to put the cherry on top.

Stoddy.

Birthday

2009-12-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

Last night was a blast. It was John's birthday, our Greek Civ teacher. He invited a lot of his students from his other classes and the eight of us. Sadayah and Courtney weren't there but it was the most of us. I met a ton of girls which was new for me since pretty much the only girl I've had semi-long conversations with is Christina haha. There was this one girl that kept talking to me. I was thinking that she liked me. I wasn't interested in her. At one point, John made a toast and said something touching. I didn't hear the touching part but the girl that I think liked me said, "Oh no, some people are crying. Don't want to be near that." I don't know why this was my response but I said it: "I'm crying from my armpits." She looked at me like I was crazy and asked me what I meant. I said, "Well, I'm really hot. I'm sweating. That was kind of gross, wasn't it?" She said, "Yeah, there's really not a way to get out of that one." It was slightly embarrassing but I didn't really care.

A while ago, John said that his wife, Amy really liked my "Omorfia Mou" song that I put on YouTube and would ask John to sing it to her in the morning. Before we got into the party, John said he wanted me to sing it to her when I saw her. Less than 15 minutes into the party, Amy came up to me and said, "I showed your song to my sister and her response was, 'I want to put him in my pocket.'" An hour later, John passed me, now even more "tired" as we'll put it in this blog, and pointed at me.

"Go sing to my wife, NOW. Come with me." So I had to do it. Cody walked by me soon after and asked me what was going on. Once he heard the news, he seemed thrilled and pulled me forward to the kitchen where John's wife was. I was a little scared, mostly because I wasn't sure if I'd remember all the lyrics and I didn't have a piano to accompany myself with but I was more excited than nervous. Ricky, standing beside me, asked me if I wanted him to provide the backbeat. I thought that was a great idea. Ricky started clapping and I think Cody did some beat boxing. John was standing in the kitchen a little ways away and Amy was leaning against the door frame, too embarrassed to look at me. First of all, I started the song in a much higher key than I wanted to so I had to hit some of the chorus notes in the falsetto. Second of all, I didn't miss a note, my voice was surprisingly clear and full and I didn't forget one lyric. On the last chorus, John joined in between words. I would sing, "Omorfia mou!" and he'd add, "Omorfia" in a voice that I dare say was not very good. It was a very cool moment for me. I looked over and people had gathered around me. Keep in mind, this apartment is like a maze. It zig zags a lot so people didn't have a much space in which to surround me so it was like three stooges in how some were peaking out over others, creating the three hovering heads effect. I mostly noticed all the girls looking at me :). I guess I kind of forgot one lyric. I was going to the end the last chorus early but John egged me on, singing, "Eisai Telia!" so I joined him cause those are the last words of the song.

Afterwards, a lot of people told me that I had a really nice voice. This girl came up to me and said that she really enjoyed my voice. She also told me that she spoke Greek and that it was nice to hear a line in my song that was common in the language. The line she was referencing was "To perimeno pos kai pos," which means "I'm looking forward to it." It's so ironic cause I wrote that song two weeks after I got to Greece. I had had only like one Greek class by then! So naturally, I used my lonely planet phrase book to write it haha. Kind of cheating but hey, what the hell. From then on, I gotta say, the land of conversation was fertile. Does that make sense? In other words, I was talking to these two girls for a while. Michael told me today that while I was singing, a girl said, "OH MY GOD is that him singing? He's even cuter when he sings!" Mmm smile on my face. It was funny cause later in the night, someone brought up my singing and this guy said, "You were singing? I heard that but didn't see who was doing it! You have a good voice." I laughed and said that I wasn't aware how much my voice carried. Everyone must have heard it in the apartment haha. Awesome. Great beginning of the night.

I asked John's wife if there was anymore wine. She just told me to have some beer from the fridge. I guess her friend recently bought some. Ricky asked me where I got the beer. He was nervous to ask if he could have some from the fridge too so he decided to ask indirectly. He went up to Amy and said, "Hey, so where's the nearest place where I can get beer?" I totally relate to Ricky cause I can see doing that. The outcome wasn't the best though. She took him completely seriously and had her friend, the same one that bought the beer for the fridge, help her tell him where the nearest kiosk was. I gave him a smile when he looked back in the middle of being told directions. I told him I'd go with him. We walked out and ended up finding only one kiosk that was closed. Fail. So we walked back and started singing together. This was a very revealing moment for us. We got lost. The closed kiosk was less than a minute away. We started cracking up and getting scared at the same time. Ricky said, "You were just telling me how you get lost when you sing! That's why we shouldn't go together but we should at the same time!" It was funny. We asked these Greek people where the street was that we were looking for but Ricky kept messing up the name and I had trouble too. It was a disaster. They had no idea what we were talking about. Finally, we saw a mattress on the sidewalk and Ricky yelled, "I REMEMBER THIS!" and started kind of dancing while running. I ran with him and cheered. We found our way back and laughed about how much longer it took to get back when we were SO close before. At some point in the night Ricky told me that he needs people like me to get him going. It was nice. I said it reminded me of my brother, how I would make up the weird things and he would add on.

I was talking to this one girl when Michael (my roommate) walked near me, chatting with someone. First he said, "Stoddy's a good guy. Just thought you should know." Then he walked away and said, louder than I desired it to be, "Let's go guys. We need to give Stoddy some 'space'". Hahaha, that made it a little awkward cause honestly, I wasn't trying to hook up with her. I was just having a fun conversation with her. It was ok. We carried on. Then Cody came. Later he told me that he thought I was "workin' my game" and walked away. "But then you went to get something," he also told me later. Ok, so that was the cue to take the girl I was "hitting on"? I guess. Yes, he made out with her outside the apartment. Haha, I don't care at all. I just find it funny. Unfortunately "his game" was destroyed when the girl's friends went and found her, supposedly screaming, "THERE YOU ARE!!! OH MY GOD! WE'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR YOU EVERYWHERE! Oh my god, get away from that guy! HE'S BAD!" They didn't know him at all haha. Well that's probably why they saw him as bad, right? So they took her away. I guess she was just visiting the girls for a few days. It was funny cause Cody was talking about how the girl was kissing normally at first but then suddenly opened her mouth up unnaturally big and "ate his face." Hilarious. I don't know why he would be so pissed about the game-over if he was being eaten but whatever.

Before Cody started his "game", he did the Jimmy character the South Park, the crutches guy. He is so good at that. That's where I first saw him. He was acting as Jimmy at the South Park musical at Berklee. He also did Cartman. Eat-face girl was going, "Woow!" all impressed with the Cartman voice.

Another great part of the night was when James (a guy we met that was cool and said he smoked pot all day, every day haha), Cody, Ricky and I went to a pool hall. It was right near John's place. We were going to go straight home but ended up staying there for about an hour and a half. We played two games and I lost both of them. I was SOOOO pissed. It sucked cause on the first game when I was on Cody's team, I got too shots that were so incredible. They were slops but still amazing. That's why losing sucked the first time. The second time, now on the team with James, I ended up sinking the white ball in when all we had was the 8 ball to hit in. I wanted to break the stick. To keep it fun, we all decided to keep playing even though James and I lost. But guess what? I sank the white ball AGAIN. Hahahaha, double lose. So really, I lost three times in two games. That's rarely done, let alone NEVER. You have to believe me though. I did play pretty damn well. I just made some very stupid shots also. Ok, maybe that's loser talk.

After the games, Cody talked to the bar owners for a long time but I was happy about that because I suddenly could not find my credit card in my wallet. I remembered that earlier in the night, at the party, a felt a card come out of my wallet in my pocket and I just shoved it down into the wallet so I was thinking that it never really clung to it and ended up falling out. I rummaged through it for a while, freaking out in my corner of the pool hall and crawling around. Luckily, I don't think anyone saw me. THEN I FOUND IT. It was shoved down in an unlikely crevice. I was so happy, I lifted it up to my face and almost tasted its beauty. Luckily, no one saw that event as well.

Another ironic thing about the night: Cody lost his wallet! Yeah, I felt so bad. Funny since I had just thought I lost my credit card. Well, funny in the dark humor sense. He called me in the middle of night, at about 4:30. At first I kept hanging up the phone cause I was half asleep. Finally, I picked it up and Cody told me the situation. So I stayed up for a while looking for it in my room but found nothing. We're thinking that he left it in the taxi. And Cody left the taxi cursing about the taxi driver to us cause he left the meter running during our minute of discussing how to pay. He was so pissed about that. If he did leave his wallet in the taxi, he is NOT getting it back cause I'm sure the guy didn't have a very high opinion of Cody. It sucks so much.

Today we had an unusual day. We had class! We never have class on Fridays. It's a special week cause next week is my Greek test, on MONDAY! The class ran from 12 to 2 like usual. Then from 2 to 6:40 or so, Petros had us rehearse our song for the Greek Crossroads class. We actually might perform some songs including mine on Tuesday for Berklee faculty and others. I'm excited! Man, the practice was long though. I was getting so tired but it felt good. It was the longest school day I've had here, in the terms of nonstop class. I actually got pretty upset when Petros asked Ricky to show us the song he had just written so we could rehearse it. Before even hearing the FIRST verse, Petros stopped him and started to suggest changes. He did that the whole time. He didn't even let Ricky play the whole thing through, once. I was looking at Cody, showing him with my eyes how pissed I was. Cody kept saying, "Chill, man, chill."

I said, "Shut up, what the fuck?" to Cody today! YES! It was great cause it really worked. I didn't understand something he was saying and he looked at Michael with a "what the hell" face and started telling me how he was not going to repeat it cause I never get anything. Something like that. So I said "Shut up, what the fuck?" and he said, "I'm just messin' with you Stoddy," and answered my question. So there! I've found out it works to tell him shut up. I've seen Sadayah do it. It reminds me of Brandon with Whit.

71

2009-12-02T14:47:00.000-08:00

I've written 70 blogs since I came here. This is the 71st. Not really a special number per se but that's a lot. Wow. Today I played Stuttering Jones again, perfected some things and my teacher told Ricky and me about his experience in Barcelona. He said that there was a place to see "live sex!" as he put it. He said you could look through these peep holesand you would be facing the "beautiful woman" while a couple had sex. Hahaha ok.

I ate lunch with Ricky at the gyro place we all occasionally go to. I got chicken souvlaki and he got some kind of beef thing with cheese in the middle. We talked about childhood. He mentioned a story about throwing a snowball at a bus and I told him of the time Whit and I got yelled at by our horse owning neighbor for lighting off fireworks. The waiter said I should have had what Ricky got, the beef dish, in broken English. I said, "Yes! Proti Fora, I will have it," haha my Greek was very broken. Proti fora (accent on the 'a') means next time. So Ricky and I walked and took the train home together. It was raining moderately.

I don't know why this blog is getting all messed up. The lines are differently distanced from each other. Oh well. Later in this blog, you will see first blog I wrote when I got here. Keep in mind, I was scared out of my mind when I wrote it. I also had Greek coffee soon after this and I never drink coffee. So that was a huge jolt of energy for a very tired mind. In addition to that, I had some cough medicine before bed because I had been having coughing fits at night for the last week or so before I came to Greece and I wanted to have a nice sleep after traveling for so long. Obviously that did not help me.

I woke up in the middle of the night, petrified to go back to sleep. I was dreaming about the word, "Efharisto", which means "Thank You." The Greek spelling of that is "Euxapisto." In my dream I imagined I was eating the 'u' (Ipsilon) and it made me feel so sick. I know, it's silly but it wasn't funny to me. Later it reminded me of the sponge dream I had when I was little, a sick dream. But the Ipsilon dream made me so sick that I thought I had a deathly fever (and I don't doubt the extreme caffeine mixing with no sleep and my first cup of coffee didn't help one bit). It was about 2 in the morning and I was so afraid of being on or near my bed at all cause it made me think of that terrible dream. I went into the bathroom and looked at myself. I kept getting stabbed with the pang of fear in my stomach and I remember this one moment, looking into my drooping, helpless eyes and thinking, "I might possibly die tonight." I kept thinking about my family and what they would think when they heard that I died on the first night here. On that note, I ran downstairs to the front desk and asked the guy behind the counter. He is a strange man that I still see once and a while and remember this terrible night. This strange man looks at you like he doesn't give a shit and blinks probably thirty times a minute more than he should. First I asked him for a thermometer. They only had the ones that aren't electronic. I suck at reading those. That made me even more agitated. I went into the halfway floor bathroom and left the thing in my mouth for probably four minutes. When I took it out, I didn't see any sign of my temperature, no red line, nothing. I tried it again, waiting longer this time but once again, failure.

Returning to the front desk, even more frazzled and desperate than before, I gave back the thermometer to the same twitchy faced guy and said, "I could not figure out how to work the thermometer. I couldn't see the red line. Do you know what hospitals are the closest to here?" I can't remember what he told me but I don't think it pleased me. If he listed some places, they were either far away or I realized, I can't go to hospital. I went back up to my room, which seemed like the loneliest, scariest, darkest, most unfamiliar place I had ever been in. The only thing I could think of was to call my brother and my parents. I did that. Whit said, "You are not deathly sick. You don't look sick at all. Stoddard, I can tell," and laughed at me. That helped a lot. Then my parents basically said, "'Get sleep' and 'Go to bed thinking of something that makes you happy to get rid of that bad thought'," so I watched the clip on youtube of "13 Going on 30" where Jenny says, "Razzle red," to the grown up Matt and then immediately following that, I cracked my first smile, while alone, that night at the clip where Jenny and Matt kiss near the swing set. I went to bed saying "Razzle red" to myself multiple times. It's amazing. It actually helped a lot. And I'm proud of it! Hahaha, I know silly once again. Talking to my family helped me immensely. I knew once I saw their faces that most of my sickness was caused by missing home.

So finally, here is the blog that I wrote before meeting everyone in the study abroad group down in the lobby and having my first cup of coffee. On the lighter side of things, the coffee was actually the best coffee I have ever had. That's why I was able to finish it. Granted, it was a tiny mg.

------

Arrived in Greece!

I'm so tired. I've been up for 24 hours and that includes 12 hours of traveling...to GREECE! I'm here and the first thing I noticed was that the mountains were amazing! So high and beautiful. The city looks as if a random jumble of buildings were scattered on top of each other by a child at playtime. Oh man I'm so so so tired I can't think and my head hurts. Met my roommate, Michael! We went and got a big jug of water and some snacks. After I get some sleep I'll tell more about my travels.

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It's funny how I went from seriously thinking I was going to die to now, a comfortable moment, typing on my laptop in my rancid bathroom and reflecting about my epically eventful trip. Once again, I do not know why my bathroom smells this way. Also, I am in the bathroom because Michael went to bed and when he goes to bed, I need to either go to halfway floor or my bathroom-office. I'm never too happy about it but oh well, living with someone is never roses and cherry cakes. The other funny thing is, that first blog doesn't seem sad at all but that's because I was trying to enjoy it as much as I could. And the fear really didn't settle in fully until that dream.

Guilty

2009-12-01T13:18:00.001-08:00

I studied more Greek today. I also had a medium thin crust cheese pizza at pizza hut. It was one of the cheapest there but still, I feel guilty. And a big reason I didn't want to do it was because I knew I would have to blog it later. So my hunger trapped me. Does it help to say it was unbelievably good? So much better than the last time I went there? I hope, cause it was stellar.

Halfway through Greek Crossroads of Rhythm and Sound, we all went down to the basement and felt each other. Not really. What we ACTUALLY did was play through some of our songs for the recording. Since recently, it was decided that we are also preforming our songs after a faculty concert on the 9th. Some Berklee teachers are coming to Nakas to give some of us proficiencies and to play a concert while they are here. By the way, I guess the teachers here haven't been great about preparing some of the study abroad students with the proficiencies. Luckily I'm not taking a test because I'm done with all of those already. I actually suggested to one of the guys in the office at Nakas if all the students could play at the faculty concert. He said that since we all have a class together and we are preparing songs, we could do that. He told me he'd ask Petros about it. Magically the next day, Petros is talking about having us all perform like he thought of it. Hmmm I wonder if I had anything to do with it. Let's just say I did. Anyway, today went really well. I felt good about how I led my friends. Petros kept getting all stressed out and opinionated about my song and I listened to him but once he says one of his ideas, he rambles on like we didn't understand him. I told the band what he wanted for "Poor Stuttering Jones" and started it up: "Ok, from the bridge, 1, 2, 3, 4-". I definitely learned a lot from leading a band extracurricularly back at Berklee. I'm glad I did that.

Some other students here don't have their pieces totally prepared yet and some said they don't want to perform theirs but I'm so happy to be doing it! I hope I get a video of it too. It will be great to watch it later and to put on my portfolio.

Just recently, I went and got some yogurt so I can eat it for a midnight snack and/or breakfast and also a tall can of beer. I drank the beer while studying Greek. Ricky sat down a little ways from me, doing his own homework for our Mediterranean percussion class. We laughed when a guy came into the room for a second, looked around, made a little sound, turned around and walked out again. Hahaha. We always share laughs about little things like that. It reminded both of us of this last Monday in Greek class. I don't remember exactly what lead up to this event but some weird things were culminating, including the fact that our teacher had really tight pants that day, and Sadayah randomly interrupted the class, tilted her head and sang two words, "This Christmas" from the song with the same name. Ricky and I bursted into laughter. Oh and we both put our heads back when we laugh. Hahaha I noticed that today.

Side note: I ate the whole medium pizza (keep in mind it was thin crust!) at around 4 o'clock today. At 8, I ate a slab of fish, french fries, lettuce and tomatoes and bread with butter on it. And then I go and get yogurt for later?! What is wrong with me?

Breather

2009-11-30T14:31:00.001-08:00

Dear Evan,

Here are some other things I forgot to mention about the trip:

On Saturday before going out to the parties, Paula and I went to a "World Press '09" exhibition which has a collection of press photos from the year. There are 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners for the photographers who captured the best pictures of important events. It was much better than I would expect it to be. One of my favorites was a picture of eyes, each of a very different animal, to show how varied eyes are depending on the environment and habits of the animal. My other favorite was a before and after photo of boxers on the night of a fight. It's enticingly disturbing how drastically different their faces looked.

Paula taught me how to yodel. I guess that's common in Austria.

Paula knows "The Puppy Song" by Harry Nilsson! No one ever knows about him! We sang the part, "Dreams are nothing more than wishes and a wish is just a dream" together a lot.

One of the first things Paula said to me was that he had always thought my dad was going to become the next Dan Brown!

Yesterday I got back from the airport then pretty much struggled over Greek homework, practiced some piano, realized I should have learned a Charlie Parker song for my piano lesson the next day, had dinner with everyone except Cody cause he was still in the UK, did a little bit more Greek, got fed up with it and watched most of "Risky Business".

Today, I had 40 minutes before my piano lesson after my Greek class ended so I learned "Confirmation", one of my favorite Charlie Parker tunes. I played it in my lesson and he said he liked what I did with it. I was pleased about that haha! After my lesson I had three hours until my History of Music Class and instead of goofing off like most other weeks I told myself to crack down on practicing. I practiced the Toubeleki and the Req for my Mediterranean ensemble, warmed up my voice the way my teacher taught me and then worked on a funny song for Whit that I might finish if I find the time and the motivation. When I got home, I watched some more of Risky Business before dinner. At dinner, Cody talked about his crazy experiences around the UK. He went to Dublin and London as far as I know.

I recorded a piano part for Zoe's Crossroads of Rhythm and Sound piece that she is going to enter into the "Women's Musician Network" competition. She recorded her part first and I gotta say, listening to her play the flute was thrilling. The best parts were the quick gasps of air she took between notes. I've never stood so near a flute player before and it was cool. I told her I might want to write a flute piece sometime and that I might want her to play for me in the future.

I studied a lot of Greek tonight because most of today's class was too ahead of me and I felt uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that when it was time for us to take a break in the middle of the class, I bolted out, ran down the stairs and took a breather outside. I was sick of it. So about two hours ago I wrote out all the past and future conjugations for about 20 verbs then I studied one of the pages in the book that she suggested to look over. Our final test is next Monday. We have two more classes before that. I'm determined to get a better score on the final than I did on my midterm (I got a B).

Finally

2009-11-29T11:04:00.000-08:00

Paula and I went out to two parties.

1st Party -

It was a French Skii party. There were skiis leaning on the door frames and some guests even went as far as wearing skii boots. A French guy went up to me and said he was from a place I had never heard of. I told him my name and said I was from Minnesota. He then explained to me he was joking and that the place he said he was from was a famous Skii resort in France. I said, "Oh, haha ok," but before I could think of a skii resort in Minnesota, he said, "You could say you're from a famous skiing city in the U.S. Like Aspen." So I said, "Yeah, Aspen. That's where I'm from," but he just turned away from me. Ok...

After that I had trouble getting into conversations cause everybody was, well, speaking French. Paula speaks a little French cause she spent some months there for school. She left a crowd of people she was talking to and came over to me. She said, "You gotta follow me around and get to know people that way instead of standing alone." I said ok but we ended up talking just to each other for the rest of the time was stayed at the party. Then I confessed. I brought up childhood and the opportunity presented itself. I told her about the time I sat by her on the risers (which was actually before a recorder concert I think) and that I remembered she was wearing a red dress. I confessed about the note I wrote about her after that night; I told her about how I wrote about her red hair and thought she was pretty. Paula thought the story was cute. After telling her that I liked her, she said she knew from the start. I laughed. Then she reminded me of a letter Michael sent to her. At the bottom of the letter was, "P.S. Stoddy likes you too." I actually think I remember being there, writing it with him. I'm sure we did. Then Paula confessed that she and Michael were sort of an item, in the elementary school sense ("He likes me, I like him. And he gives me heart erasers."). I was a little bummed cause she didn't say she ever liked me that way but I was relieved that after all those years, she finally heard it from me. She said that Michael brought her a red, heart shaped eraser once and then turned red and ran away. That made me miss Michael.

Then something broke my heart. She said when she came back to visit two years later, Michael never got to see her. I vaguely remembered that. After she left, Michael apparently called her and asked her why she never told him she was coming back. That changed my idea of bragging about seeing Paula. Instead, I'm going to email Michael and apologize for never telling him about Paula coming to visit. I could have easily called him but I know I was jealous so I'm sure that caused me to "forget" to tell him. I brought up to Paula the possibility that Michael was mad at me for a while because of this. Anyway, she lifted her glass and said, "To our past." It was a good sewing up moment.

2nd party -

We got there and the cops had just been there because of a noise complaint. The host of the party kicked everyone out. Paula and I then met a guy waiting for a cab and he hit on Paula after she offered for the three of us to share a cab. He asked us to go to a party with him. Coincidentally, Paula ended up knowing the host of that party too and she recognized most of the people at it as the friends of her younger brother. That was strange.

We got back and had cereal together. Throughout the trip, Paula and I shared a lot of interesting conversations about religion, civil rights and politics but most of all, joked around a lot. It ended up being very fun. I'm so glad I went to Vienna.

Vienna Bobanna Feefanna

2009-11-28T08:07:00.000-08:00

YESTERDAY

-Yesterday I took a tour with Paula in this big mansion, "Schonbrunn" and I stood in the room where Mozart played his first concert. WOWZA. The rooms were filled with chandeliers, golden decorations and paintings of those who lived in the masion.

-I went to the MOMUK museum which is a modern art museum. It was incredibly weird. There was an exhibition on gender studies and I saw some crazy art pieces. There were tons of videos, one of them featuring two clothed women humping each other without barely ever touching and another video where a woman said, "Art must be beautiful, artist must be beautiful" over and over again while violently combing her hair with a comb and a brush.

-I met Paula and her engaged friends. I liked them. But...the guy said he thinks gay people can't have the same quality of love as straight people. And that's of course a load of buuuuuuullSHIT.

-I went out to a bar where we saw a Hungarian band play. I hung out with Paula and met some of her other friends. The first friend I met walked with us to the bar and he was really cool. We hung out more than I hung out with Paula by the end of the night and he bought me a drink. Then during the last band that played, a good looking girl from the audience got up and danced. She was great. The guy that came with Paula and me to the bar said to me about the last song, "I really like this...but it's NOT about of the girl." Hahaha it struck me funny. I started answering, "It IS about-" then I stopped cause I realized maybe my opinion was better left unsaid.

Before I talk about what I did today, I remembered something that happened on the train coming to Vienna from the airport on Wednesday. I was sitting, minding my own business when I heard people kissing behind me. I thought it was funny that I happened to be back to back with lovers, separated only by my seat. Then one of them talked. It was the girl. I didn't understand it because it was in German. Then the other one talked. Another girl? Yep, I was an inch away from lesbians making out during the entire train ride.

TODAY

-I went ice-skating with Paula and her younger brother Filippo! And I tried orange punch. They went back on the ice rink as I was finishing up my punch. I took some pictures of them when they passed by. I was taking forever to drink it so I decided to sacrifice the last ten sips for more skating time since we had to leave soon for lunch. When I went back on the ice, I noticed a girl ahead of me, waving her hips as she skated and to be honest, my eyes were fixed on her. I started to skate past her, turing my head and focusing my eyes to see if I was attracted to her face, which would make me feel even better about her ass. Then suddenly I heard my name being called by Paula and Filippo: "Stoddy!" I was caught! I quickly turned and said, "Hey!" louder than I anticipated, scared that they might have noticed me checking out the girl. They asked me, "Were you looking for us?" They must have seen me turning my head, assuming I was scoping out the skating crowd and trying to find them. I'm sad to say I told a little white lie at the heat of the moment. "Yeah, there you are!" I answered. I laughed at myself.

-I had lunch with Paula's parents and grandmother and ate an Austrian meatloaf dish that was decent. I like Wienerschnitzel better. For dessert, I had a dish with pancakes cut up into pieces, surrounding some kind of cream. It was also pretty good. I said it reminded me of a dessert version of shellfish because the pancake acted as a shell around the mooshier insides.

-Tonight I'm going to a French party and then a German party with Paula. She was invited to both by two different friends.

AAAAAAAAAH!

2009-11-26T15:39:00.001-08:00

I just lost my whole blog entry cause the damn ethernet cable came out of my computer again. Paula's cable doesn't snap in correctly in the computer. This entry will not be as long. Tomorrow I'll touch on more.

1. Got lost today more than I wanted to. Even couldn't remember which apartment Paula lived in. Luckily there is only one apartment on the first floor. There's only one other door and it's a psychotherapist's office. At least I think so.

2. Saw museums today. Seeing Klimt's "The Kiss" in person was better than I thought. Stunning.

3. Ate at Tex Mex with Paula. That was my Thanksgiving lunch.

4. My Thanksgiving dinner was at a restaurant near the concert hall where later saw a Haydn concert. At the restaurant, I had Weiner Schnitzel which was delectable. It's like chicken fingers but more tender, like fish.

5. I thought the concert was at 7:30 but it was at 7:00! So I was late and had to wait outside the auditorium for 40 minutes with some other outcasts until the first big applause happened.

6. The first thing I did today was get tickets at the same concert hall for the show later, and go to a church/museum where I got to go to the top. There was an astonishingly elaborate baroque design on the main wall of the church of little baby angles in a cloud with golden rods of sunlight everywhere.

7. The second museum I went to today was the best. There was this one point where I was looking at a painting and I heard two people scream at the top of their lungs, a woman and a man. Then I heard an evil monster-like sound come from the same room and looked over. The lights were flickering. I almost hoped there was a dragon. Or at least a fake one. I walked into the room and there was a sign saying, "Yell as loud as you can, now!" So after I yelled for the first time, nothing happened and couple laughed at me. Another guy yelled and somehow it triggered something, making the lights flicker again. Then this loud noise dominated the room that sounded like king kong breathing in your ear and with every evil breath of this invisible creature, the lights flickered on and off! It was like the room was alive! I yelled after him even louder and the room did the same thing. I had no idea why this was happening in such a garish museum with old paintings and sculptures.

Vienna

2009-11-25T13:29:00.001-08:00

1. I arrived in Vienna. I met Paula. She's still a cutey pie, with her red hair and nice smile. The signature aspect of her face are her dimples. So I asked her how she was doing. We talked, ignoring the fact that we hadn't seen each other in ten years for a little bit, then mentioned it and things eased up a little. I joked with her about how in this case, it's not like, "So...how was your weekend? It's more like, how was your ten years?" We went to her apartment, put stuff down and then walked to a traditional Austrian place to eat. I had this pasta dish with slices of ham, parsley (I think) and really good cheese. Oh my god!!! SO GOOD.

2. We went back to her apartment (which I'm staying in) then went for a long walk with her mom and dad's two small dogs, saw two Christmas markets, the parliament, the emperor's abode and lots of other pretty buildings. When we stopped at his very gaudy coffee shop, with a ceiling that looked like a warped spider web, the dogs were so riled up that Paula kept stopping to reprimand them in German. It shocked me each time, juxtaposing with our jokes and polite conversation.

3. After stopping at the apartment again, we went out to get supplies for a balsamic vinaigrette salad. The best ingredient we put in it was feta cheese with bacon wrapped around them, cooked in a pan of honey and walnuts. KILL ME it was delicious. I had to do one of those stop, close my eyes and process beauty faces. She thought I didn't like it at first haha.

4. I saw Filippo, Paula's younger brother by two years, that I haven't seen in 12 or 13 years! So crazy. A friend of Paula's also came over. Her name is Helena. She is definitely cute. Dimples as well! We hung out. I showed them "Refresh Button" from my album and the youtube video of "Hot Dam Got a Woman". Filippo and Paula said they both have the old version of "Refresh Button" on their iPods. The three of them kept talking in German and I was so lost for a while. Paula kept filling me in but then they watched this comedy clip and it struck me so funny looking at this guy speaking in gibberish (to me), waving his hands and using his fingers as a puppet, lowering his voice, squeaking and getting everyone to laugh. I couldn't believe people understood it haha.

5. Paula walked Helena home and came back to help set up my bed. I'm lying on the fold out couch right now. Tomorrow I'm waking up at 7:30, having breakfast with Paula, then we're going to town and she's going to study for a while until lunchtime. I will walk around for that period of time, going to museums and things like that. I'm VERY much looking forward to that. We're meeting up again for lunch and then coming back. After she goes to work at five, I'm gonna go out and see a concert, probably a Haydn concert at a place that is supposed to be the most beautiful concert hall. That will be nice.

I like Vienna a lot. It's clean and happenin'.

Until tomorrow. I think tomorrow I'll feel more comfortable. I'm still getting used to the whole idea that I never really knew Paula well and now, ten years later, I'm staying in her city, her fold out couch, meeting her friends and this time being the foreigner. For me, travel is always hard at the beginning. But I think I'm starting to get the hang of new thing after new thing by realizing that so many of those "things", wherever I go, are similar to "things" I already know or have seen before.

Paula

2009-11-24T11:43:00.000-08:00

The following segment is something I wrote earlier today, at around 4:30 or so on a scrap of notebook paper:

------

I'm jotting my feelings down cause I just can't stand to wait. I'm so excited. Can't hold it. Guess where I am right now? All my readers (I have a LOT of readers, like two to four or something) will be, or might be slightly disappointed in me. I am in PIZZA HUT AND BABYLON by DAVID GRAY just came on. That makes it even better. But anyway, I'm getting a medium pan pizza with extra cheese (SALIVA!), pepperoni, onions and chile (jalepenos!). I'm so damn excited. I know I'm in Greece + I should be excited by a Greek monument or something but who gives a damn. I'm happy. My readers will like this: It will be a taste of home. What I meant by "Saliva" was that I wanted to drool thinking about extra cheese.

Oh and I got a sprite too! Realize I did not order Coke or Pepsi. No, most of my caffein from now on is coming from tea. That way I won't have soda as much. It's ok sometimes but while I'm here, it's just tea and non-caff. soda from time to time.

Tomorrow I'm meeting Paula at the University metro stop in VIENNA at around 1. I will be staying in her apartment which is in the same complex as her parents' place I guess. She'll be staying up with her parents. I'm thrilled to see her and honestly, I'm at pizza hut partly cause I was so excited + kind of nervous about meeting her. It's been ten years! It's funny I'm most worried about - wait, a woman just teased me! She brought my sprite while holding a dif. person's pizza! FAKE PLAY! - I'm most worried about pronouncing her name. I've been practicing it: "Paoula, Paaoula, no PAoula." I"m sure it'll be fine. There has to be a reason why she was pretty much my first crush ever. Well, she + Amy Deeg. God, I still remember that day when I wouldn't trade seats with someone else in children's choir (music class with Danielson) so I could sit next to Paula. She was wearing a red dress I believe. I remember that beig my first real experience with a little bit of lust. I had experienced crushes before but this had a tinge of "want" in it. To a kid, "lust" really is just wanting to kiss someone. I remember this one time at her house we were jumping on mattresses, I think on the floor + I was hoping by some miracle occurrence that we would run into each other at the lips + "accidentally" kiss. Haha, so cute.

Then I remember her leaving. The last thing I remember is reaching in the cupboard to the left of the fridge, playing with the loads of Tupperware for some reason w/ her. Then her dad came + I watched her being driven away up our driveway while I stood on our Minnesota lawn, mourningly.

MY PIZZA SHOULD BE HERE SOON! The party is SOON to start!!! :))).

Back to Paula, I remember my dad dropping me off at her house once (across Pat Lake which was so crazy!) and I "accidentally" fell out of the car + into the snow. For some reason I thought that was cute, you know "clumsy for you" kind of deal. My dad thought I made a mystake + helped me up quickly, haha.

Then later, in the snow, playing, Paula asked me, "Do you think Michael likes me?" - HEARTBREAK. I old the truth, "Yes," and pretended nothing hurt. And boy did it hurt.

Michael, time to get you back! Nothing against you. You'll always be a huge part of my life but this weekend, I WILL BE IN VIENNA WITH NO OTHER THAN PAULA THUN!

I WIN!

The pizza got her but it had the wrong toppings! Another fake play!

------

End of segment

Keep in mind, on the notebook paper, "I WIN!" was underlined four times. So the pizza was good. It tasted a little smokey but it was tasty. The crust was the best part like always. Ahhh pan pizza. I gave in. I was going to wait til Maine to have pizza hut - won't stop me from wanting it again ha!

So everything was chaotic after I finished eating. Before I start, pre-pizza hut I walked to Syntagma from the school's stop, Penipistimio to look around and possibly eat somewhere. Then I remembered Sadayah telling me about a Pizza Hut in Penepistimio. So I got a cup of tea at Syntagma and walked back to Penepistimio. After eating there, I left the place and realized I left my sweatshirt in Pizza Hut (which looked different by the way - lots of green vegetables and wicker baskets painted on the wall for some odd reason) so I went back and my waitress had kept it for me. That was good. I started my walk home, passed a throng of protesters at Penepistimio and the usual street salesmen selling clothing, purses, scarves, electronics and my favorite, dancing stuffed animal toys and remote control cars that always get in the way, driving right in front of you while you're trying to maneuver your way through the crowd. And keep in mind, these salesmen always have straight faces on. There's always one standing by this weird gangly coyote stuffed animal that just swings its head back and forth, crazily dancing and the guy looks up at you pleadingly in a business manner. Cracks me up. Today, there was something new among the salesmen and flyer hander-outers. There was a woman handing out free promotional yogurt and plastic forks. I said no. Reaching Syntagma again, I remembered, "OH, didn't get my passport from Maria," and since I need my passport to travel, that really wouldn't be good. She had my passport because she needed to take it in to extend my visa. So I started freaking out cause I knew she probably left for the day and I wasn't sure if she kept the passports in her office. While running back to the school from Syntagma which is about a ten minute trek, I realized I also had not gotten my laundry from the laundry place and I was afraid it was closed. So here I was, running through the crazy stuffed animal dancer salesmen, dodging another remote control car that can flip upside down and drive again, wondering if I would have to go to Vienna without clothes. The woman offered me yogurt again. I just ran by her. Finally arriving at the school, I asked the guy who works next to Maria if she was there. He said she left about an hour before. I told him I needed my passport and he asked me if I could come in the morning. They open at 10. My flight is at 10:15. Yeah, not gonna work. I told him that and he reached around her desk and took my passport from the drawer she kept it in. Allowed? I don't know. But thank you sir!

Next step. I ran to the laundry place and luckily they were still open. It was around 6 now. I said Kalispera and walked out. I was so relieved it was all solved and looked over to see a little convenient store. "Ok," I thought and got a small can of Amstel beer. Walking home with my backpack, big wheeley travel pack filled with clothes and my can of beer, I was almost calm again. I had to text Cody and some others to make sure that it was ok I took the passport. Mia said she didn't know if Cody got his passport (I thought if he got his back from Maria, that would mean she was done with them), Courtney said, "I believe he did," but that wasn't good enough for me to finally be relaxed. Arriving at Syntagma, this time a little closer to home, I heard my phone do it's text jingle. It said I had two messages. One of them was from Cody, "Yes sir." YES, he got the passport. I was all set. The other text was in Greek. It was from Vodaphone. That reminded me. "Oh YEAH, I need to put minutes on my phone cause Paula might need to contact me tomorrow. Ok, that means I have to walk back to Penepistimio again or find a Vodaphone anywhere on the way!" But I didn't find one on the way. Once again, I passed the yogurt lady, the crazy stuffed animal guy, the annoying remote control flipper lights-up-its-wheels car and had to shimmy my way through the crowd once more. I got to the store and everything was solved. I added the minutes and I was finally done. This time I was not going to walk home and decided to take the metro. So for the LAST time I squeezed through the Penepistimio crowd, by the stuffed animal santa riding a reindeer, the crazy dancer, purses, scarves, remote control car that drove right in front of me this time (I swear I wanted to smash it like a bug) and the normal, business "what's so weird about me" faces of salesmen. Then the yogurt lady. This time I said yes. I took the double yogurt thingy from her. I like to think that the whole point of it all was for the yogurt. To do the right thing and accept it! Haha. It's on my bed and I'm afraid it's filled with poison. But that comes from hearing when I was a kid that people on halloween put razors in candy.

I won't even get into how the metro was filled with people today. Well, it always is, no matter when you use it.

Insane day. Tomorrow will be a completely different animal.

Blogland Revisited!

2009-11-23T15:53:00.000-08:00

Dear Scone,

I had to wake up earlier today than on usual Mondays. Not that bad (9:00 haha). The other 7 and I had to meet Maria (one of the head secretaries of the boss at Nakas) to go to the visa office. We are all staying here 10 days longer than is required in a visiting visa so we had to extend it. Maria took care of it though so I we all just had to sit there for an hour or so, waiting. I wrote, thought and did some hilmwork (homework). After that, I practiced the flute and piano piece that Zoe wrote for our Crossroads of Rhythm and Sound class. Our teacher (the guy who loves the movie "La Vita e Bella" or "Life is Beautiful" and who is always funny and hyper) suddenly got the idea on one class that he wanted to record all of our odd meter songs that we wrote for the class. My song is "Poor Stuttering Jones" in 7/8.

My piano lesson was cool. He taught me some more cool progressions. Each lesson is anything I want it to be. It just helps to come with questions or an idea of what I want him to show me. Most of the time I think of these questions on the spot haha. But it felt good to show him a song I just wrote "You Always Can Count on a Song" that had two things in it that he had shown me; in the bridge, I use chords that come from basically splitting the octave into three equal major thirds (Bb -> Gb -> D -> Bb) which sounds fantastic for the song, and I also used a phrygian 5 chord instead of a normal one. The notes from bottom to top are F (bass), Gb, Bb, C, Eb, F.

I always have time on Mondays between my piano lesson and Music History 2 class. So I walked towards Syntagma, talked to Ricky on the way (he was heading home) and he noticed I had a chocolate donut in my hand which he thought was funny cause he always sees me with different sweet things, then headed straight to "Public", the video game/book store place. I went to other floors for a little this time. I thought that I saw a sign for music books. The sign said, "Biblia Paithia" which I though might mean kid books but I thought, "Oh that means play cause kids play and that must translate to music playing" so I went up there to look for a Sondheim music book I wanted cause I want to sing "All I Ask of You" for my voice lesson. It reminds me of Luke too. He sang it last 4th of July when I was at Jaimie's family party. His voice sounded so incredible under Jaimie's while I played badminton with Althea and fireworks flew up from behind the hill and into the sky. That was a gooood moment. I hugged Luke after that and told him "thank you" for giving me such an amazing moment. Something like that. But anyway, I got up to the 4th floor and it was a children's floor. Just kid's toys and books.

So I went back down, searched around the bookstore for a while and then went down to the GAME ZONE! Best name ever. There's this escalator that goes through this black archway with that title written above it and mario is greeting you at the top along with some other characters, all lit up with bright, close to neon colors. Mario stands out for me. Every time I say "Ahhhh best place ever." There's even a tunnel lined with pictures of different video games like you enter an ancient video game castle. And in different rooms are all sorts of games you can try on different systems. There are also fun hands on things you can try like today there was a racing car in the Wii room that you could sit in. I sat in it, put my hands on the steering wheel and pointed the controller, which was stuck in the steering wheel to the screen. And it didn't work. Only some of the buttons worked. Then it ran out of batteries. Haha. So I went over to another machine and chose to play a Wolverine game. I don't know, looked fun. He's my favorite X-men character. It ended up just being a demo video. I walked away muttering, "I don't wanna watch a dumb video game movie. I wanna play the damn thing." Hahaha. I wasn't upset, just frustrated. It is ALWAYS a disappointment for gamers all over the world when he encounters a dud (a video in place of an actual interactive demo - Dumb (f)Uck Demo)

After the video game store, which was worth it even though there was a dud cause it's always worth it to be in that castle, I walked back to the school, had my History of Music lesson. I, for some reason, was fighting to even start THINKING about falling asleep. Usually in class you get the nods but this class is ONE on ONE. Just the teacher and me so I couldn't even flinch an eye. So I had to press my eyes open solely with my mind and think to myself, "You even close them for a second and nod your head a CENTIMETER, you are DEAD," so I made it. My head just got a little hot and I daydreamed a couple times. Besides that the class was good! I only missed some small things.

I wrote a song for you today ("you" as in Scone - remember, this letter is addressed to him)! Well, it's actually supposed to be a song "written" by you. I was getting so loud singing as you that our neighbors knocked. Well, they knocked one time when my head was simply against the wall and I laughed once at a movie I was watching. I didn't know my laugh was THAT loud. But since they knocked tonight, I had to go in the bathroom on the floor halfway between the first and the zero floor which is never occupied by anyone at night (or any other time that I've tried) and record in there!

HAPPY D-DAY SCONE!

I love you. You are so much a part of me it's insane.

Stoddy.

----

Back on Saturday, I remember that I sat by the fountain which is in a square right near my hotel. That's the "other Momus", meaning that's the other place I like to sit and write. I wanted to add that cause I wasn't sure if I ever mentioned that area before. The high reaching fountain that turns off and on from time to time for no reason (on them it turned off right at the moment that a little kid touched the side of it so he tried to turn it on again right after - it was hilarious) in the square that Cody, Ricky and I hang out in, either on the benches with cheap beers (we don't sit on actual outside restaurant chairs cause we'd have to buy something from the restaurant) or go in the bar called "Sutsu" which is our most frequented place. The first bar we ever went to was "Palacio", which is owned by a moderately overweight Greek man that was expecting a baby "any day now" when we talked to him last. We'll see him again I'm sure and we'll hear all about the baby. I haven't gone in his place for about a month and a half.

That paragraph was confusing with all its parenthesis.

Dead

2009-11-22T12:31:00.001-08:00

I finished watching Dead Poet's Society. It hit me hard. I almost cried and I realized why after I thought about it.

I was at dinner earlier tonight before finishing the movie and someone mentioned that Jason (one of the guys who works at the international program) will be coming to check up on us and take us out to dinner. I had possibly heard of this happening at the beginning of the semester but I had forgotten about it. So I spoke up, "Really?!" cause I love when people come to visit us. It's happened two times before here: different people from Berklee come and check up on us, either for video documenting reasons, scheduling reasons or for other reasons. Right after that, Mia said "Stoddy, where have you BEEN?" in a way that to me, and possibly only to me, seemed quite hostile. I couldn't think of anything else to say but, "Did he send an email or something?" I guess he sent something about two weeks ago. I said I must have forgotten. I kicked myself for not standing up for myself just a little at dinner. I should have said, "I've been writing a musical." So seeing Dead Poet's really hit me cause of the "Captian, my captain" scene. Sorry Mia, just documenting what happened. This is an opinion article haha.

But hey, dinner was great. Mia leaned over to pick something up at one point and fell off her chair while holding a butter knife which almost hit Zoe. It was funny. We were all laughing and after Sadayah made fun of the sound she made, I said, "Onomonomia."

VIENNA ON WEDNESDAY!

To Clarify

2009-11-22T07:13:00.001-08:00

Socrates supposedly taught students between the ages of 12 to 16 to question tradition and to always think for themselves. But I guess he, along with other teachers, also taught his students other "things" about life. Like sexual things. And I think most of them were boys.

Today is half over but so far I have had fun. I had two gyros at the place called "Pita Pan" (such an awesome name), hid my watch in my pocket so I could ask a random passerby on the street "Ti ora einai;" or "What time is it?", then walked down to the Monastiraki area, found what I wanted then sat in a random restaurant and had a Sprite while a greek band played. It was really good. There was a male and female singer, a guitar and bass I think. I sat there and these girls in front of me, four Greek girls, kept sneaking looks at me and laughing when I would yell, "Wooh!" at the music. Especially when my wooh was too late at one point, after all the clapping had finished. That was the extent of my interaction with them. The Sprite was 3.50 but I considered it paying for watching the band too. It was well worth it, being there for a hour and a half.

I then had a crepe that was good with cinnamon and cream in it.

So I did something Greek today.

Agora

2009-11-21T15:57:00.001-08:00

Saw the ancient Agora today for the first time. Pretty much the birthplace of democracy! Yeah. And I saw the prison that Socrates died in. Cool! Sad. And found out Socrates was kind of a teacher AND a pedophile at the same time! Not cool at all. Sad.

Also walked through the Acropolis museum. John, our Greek civ teacher, took us to these places.

I wrote more of my story/musical and then hung out with Cody, Ricky and Michael again. We watched Eurotrip. Some really stupid parts. Some really funny parts.

Stranger

2009-11-20T16:12:00.001-08:00

I played the piano track for Mia's song tonight, which is for our Greek music class. The class I wrote "Poor Stuttering Jones" for. After that, I played piano for one of Zoe's classes. I had to do a piano track for "All The Things You Are", the jazz standard. It was in 7. Then Zoe came to my room and I practiced with her (she plays flute) on the song that she wrote for our Greek music class. It was a big piano day! Felt good. Oh, then she asked to hear my finished "Poor Stuttering Jones". After that I offered to play her my "You Always Remember a Song" song. She said sure and I did! It was cool. She said she liked my lyrics. But then she asked how all the words related to the story. I told her that I wrote a lot of the song before I knew as much of the story that I know now. She seemed to really like my story idea though! I still have not unveiled the plot yet on the blog because I want it to be more figured out. You could say that my story started as a stranger, she is now an acquaintance and soon, hopefully she will be my BFF (butt f&*# friend).

I forgot to say in the earlier blog today that we went shopping at the Monastiraki metro stop area.

Tonight, Zoe, Michael, Cody and I watched "Stranger Than Fiction". Such a cool movie with its many layers. Mind bending. I like things like that.

Hthes

2009-11-20T07:46:00.000-08:00

That means yesterday in Greek, phonetically (actual spelling is χθες). I sang my new song for my voice teacher yesterday. It went all right. When she heard the main melody of the chorus before I even sang it (I was playing it on the piano when she came in), she said, "Will you write for me? And will you remember your little teacher you had years ago when you have a musical?" It was cute haha. My favorite part was "little" teacher. The hell?

Last night, I watched, "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" which was entertaining then later went to the steam room with Ricky and Cody in the hotel that Ricky works out in. Cody was so drunk before we went out. He was chatting with Michael's boyfriend (on Michael's computer screen). It was funny. So we went to the steam room and drank beer in there. Not such a good idea? Yeah, it wasn't that pleasant cause your body gets rid of so much water and then beer takes its place. After the steam room, we went to Sutsu, a bar that we go to sometimes.

Today Zoe, Michael and I went Christmas shopping! Then we stopped and sat on a fountain while eating a sesame seed pretzel thing (I forget the greek name of it) which was not very good. I had some of Michael's cause he didn't finish it. Yeah, I ate it anyway.

Finished a song

2009-11-18T16:55:00.001-08:00

Yes I did. It's called, "You Never Forget a Song." I like it a lot. It's for my musical. I also wrote on a verse of a song I'm working on with Zoe. She wanted to write a song for her sister who's moving to California and she asked me to cowrite it with her. I was pleased that she asked me. I'm thinking the title will be "California Julia". Not surprising right? It's about how Zoe wishes there were two of her sister so that she could spend time with her in Philidalphia while the other one lives in California - "I wish there were two of ya, Julia".

I just finished watching Good Will Hunting. Second time I've seen it. First time was at Ben Celletti's house. Damn good movie.

Man this bathroom smells sick. Sometimes it just smells absolutely rancid and I know it's coming from somewhere else. It's disgusting. So I'm going to get the hell out of here (I'm in here cause Michael went to sleep and the light of the computer keeps him up), get a spinakopita (spinich pie thing that's absolutely to die for every single time I have it), then come back, wash up and go to...BED!

Today was good.

Saturday and Sunday in Santorini

2009-11-17T15:38:00.000-08:00

Saturday was a crazy day. Woke up at five, took a ferry at 7:25 which lasted 8 hours. I got to my hostel at 4 something and the guy who owns the hostel suggested that I rent a car. I declined and said I'd take the bus around. He said I should see the sunset. It was too late to take the 4 o'clock bus so I went to Perivalo beach which is the beach near where I stayed (Holiday Beach Resort). The sand was black and a lot less messy than normal sand. There were also little white rocks that reminded me of petrified styrofoam. Very cool. I kept a white rock.

I got back in time to take the 5:30 bus. But it didn't come. Ever. I waited until about 6:30 and by that time, the sunset had finished. Yeah, disappointing right? Supposed to be the highlight of Santorini. Well, I'll go back some day. But anyway, SOOO I rented a car! It was this nice, smooth little red guy that only had one fault. It would slow down slightly at random times. It made me kind of sick whenever it jolted like that. I drove up to town, ate at this souvlaki place which was all right, saw the Greek soccer game that was going on in Athens on the TV. My friends were at the game back in Athens which is cool! I got cold and felt like hanging out with people so I went back, hurrayed when I arrived at the hostel cause I did have a scary moment on the way to Fira (where I ate). I stopped abruptly at this one point cause I couldn't see that well and I was at this intersection and I thought I might have missed a stop sign. Sooo, I could have gotten in an accident but the guy behind me must have been watching closely and just went around me. Well, I guess he should have been looking anyway since it was an intersection. But we had the right of way. Doesn't matter. In the past. So I got back to the hostel, yelling with joy and then a little later, walked to the "Young Bar" that the guy told me about. He was so proud of his little bar haha. I got there and met a Romanian girl who told me not to speak Greek cause she doesn't like it. She told me to only speak English. She said it like she was accusing me of a crime. It was funny. She kept giving me and everyone else in the bar a free shot. I got like two free ones until these three Canadian kids invited me over to their table. They ordered a hookah. Tried hookah! Made me SOO light headed. It was crazy. I felt like I was getting really really drunk almost every time I smoked it and then I would go back to normal after it. I also had some beer that night too. So I drank and smoked. Not too much of a healthy night. And let's just say I payed for it a little when I got back to my hostel. Some ash even came out of my mouth. Sorry, disgusting I know. But I gotta document. Reporting isn't always fun.

In the bar, they had the game on. I'm pretty damn sure I saw Cody in the crowd! I wasn't surprised. He was probably attracting attention to himself cause he brought a drum to the game to play along with the other drummers and chanters.

On the way back to the hostel, before I was alone in my room (I had a single) one of the Canadian guys (not the one with an extra tooth above his tooth which was repulsive) said, "I'm ready to have another beer when I get back!" I replied immediately with, "I'm ready to stick two fingers in my throat when I get back!"

I went to sleep that night without brushing or dental flossing. I was out. Then in the middle of the night I brushed when I was more awake. Haha that sounds counterintuitive.

Sunday was a different story. I woke up at 8 and I was out driving by 8:15. I drove through Fira and all the way to Ia. I ended up at the Amoudi Bay. That was incredibly nice, sitting on small pebbles near a tall cliff. The rocks were once again mostly black. I thought of some cool story ideas when I was sitting there. That's what I meant by "enlightenment" in my last blog. So I drove back after that, went into this pretty cool ancient Greek art replicas place, then finally arrived at the red beach where I had to climb over this hill, ending up facing these humungous red rocks. Below them was a beach that I thought looked like Superman's beach cause the black rocks looked blue next to the red ones. Blue and red always reminds me of Superman. Or the two most common team colors on video games. I'm always red. Whit's always blue.

Before I returned my car, I had lunch at the end of Perivolo beach near a large cliff. I had cheese pie and this extremely cheesy Margarita pizza. I didn't feel too well for about half of the ferry ride home. After getting back to the hostel, I realized I hadn't tried food from the bakery near the hostel. I took the car for a quick spin over to the bakery, got this sweet, thin crust pastry thing but wasn't hungry at all so I waited til I wasn't feeling sick anymore in the ferry later to eat it. Along with my cheesy pizza leftovers, which was half the pizza haha. My eyes were too big when I ordered all the cheese in the world. My eyes are always too big.

So that's basically it in a nut shell. Didn't have much time there but I did it. When I got back to Athens, I went near the school and Skyped at an internet cafe with my fam. Then I walked home cause the metro closed. That wasn't bad. Only 4o minutes. I had to keep inventing ways to hold my bag.

Yesterday (Monday) I got bummed about the fact that I didn't see the sunset. Courtney reminded me that I missed the highlight (nothing against her, it just struck me) and these two Nakas Greek students said I should go back next weekend to catch the sunset. Haha, like I'm going back. Yeah right. So I was pissed and didn't come home for dinner. I felt like writing anyway. I went to Golden Chopsticks, this Chinese food restaurant. It was a beautiful change from the food in the hotel. I've eaten there before with Michael and Courtney about a month ago. I had gyoza and a spicy noodle dish with sweet and sour sauce on the side as I requested. Brilliant.

Today was a dangerous day so we all stayed in. I only went outside to get food. Speaking of food I'm starving after writing about the chinese food and the cheese world. Damnit. But yeah, today people were rioting and walking the streets, chanting things in Greek. So I guess this boy was shot last year and some other people were shot the year before. They were protesting about that and also because of some scandal. Not sure of the story. The rumor is that it's also anti-American day today. Not sure I believe that but on the one occasion that I did leave the hotel today, these three men looked at me and one of them pointed, muttering, "American." I looked at him and smiled, not sure what to do. I thought I'd just pass it off as a joke, "Yeah fun and games, I'm an American, you got me!" I didn't say that, I just said that with my face so he wouldn't see that I was scared.

Anyway, I wrote almost a whole song today and more of my story/musical that changes every day haha.

Yes

2009-11-15T03:49:00.000-08:00

Santorini. Beach. Enlightenment! Hookah?

Santorini Tomorrow!

2009-11-13T09:54:00.001-08:00

I saw the acropolis today! Walked around inside it, I mean. It was breathtaking seeing the Parthenon close up. Though there was scaffolding all over it due to repair and reconstruction that will take about 25 years I was told. So I'll go back when I'm 46 and hopefully it'll be scaffold free.

I have to go to bed really early today, at the latest 10 cause I have to get up at 5 tomorrow morning. I'm planning on ----

I stopped writing and now it is 12:02 am hahaha. Didn't adhere to my plan did I? Well I'll probably get to sleep around 1 now and get 4 hours. Whatever. I'll have an eight hour ferry.

Cody is playing Bohemian Rhapsody on the piano right now. Mike is getting ready to go to the steam room with Cody while Ricky works out. Cody's gonna drink in the steam room haha. And Mike's just gonna "chill" (Cody offered that proposition to him - "Mikey, you can just chill"). Cody kind of pressured him into going but they'll have fun. I'm jealous. I wanna go in the steam room! Shut up whiney Stoddy. You're going to...SANTORINI!

Can't Wait For Christmas!!!

2009-11-12T13:34:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we all went out to dinner again with Scott Free after some of my friends had a recital. It was fun. I laughed a lot with Ricky and had some good talks with Courtney. Ricky gets funnier every day. He said something to me that made me really happy. We were talking about all the things you could do in different situations. Like weird things that would make people feel uncomfortable (my favorite kind of humor. Then he told me that in Greek class, he starts cracking up sometimes cause he thinks about what I could be thinking about. So awesome.

I had really good chicken at the restaurant. Everything was good there. I had this amazing chocolate cake slice there too. Scott Free's wife and I talked about musicals then Courtney, Scott wife and I talked about paradoxes and art. She (Scott's wife) said that science and art are actually incredibly related even though people think of them as separate things. I totally agreed and reminded her of how we, ourselves, are works of art and we walk around in this art piece every day. I brought up the golden ratio too.

Oh my god there was a funny moment down in the bathroom at the restaurant. I went down to pee and there was this picture of a boy holding his disgustingly dirty hands (looks like there is shit on his hands) and he is really smiling. Under the picture, it said, "There is an innovative germ ridding system in this bathroom!" I looked on the toilet seat near the back of the toilet and there was a little circle. Above it, it said, "Put your hand over this!" So I lowered my hand near the seat, unsure of what was going to happen. I figured that it would spray out a little cleaning fluid on my hand or something so I could wash them. But I was confused by it was on the toilet seat. SUDDENLY, this little contraption that looked like a plastic funnel tongue, shot out and pointed down into the toilet. I jumped back and yelled. THEN the toilet seat started turning! I yelled again and started laughing hysterically cause I was afraid I was going to be attacked by a toilet hahaha. The seat turned 360 degrees, stopped and then the tongue shot back up to it's original position. I was so confused with what the hell just happened and laughed even harder, looking in the mirror while I did it. I couldn't contain the rapid, slightly frightened and intrigued laugher that was coming out of my mouth. I held my stomach and saw my pathetic face in the mirror, almost defeated by a toilet. I found out later that the toilet seat turns and cleans itself while it does it. I didn't understand why it was turning AT ALL. I thought it was supposed to clean my hands or something, not clean itself. Oh my god. I went back up to the table and laughed to Ricky, telling him he HAD to check it out. He did and said he laughed.

The rest of the day before the dinner, I spent about three hours waiting for the recital looking at things I wanted for Christmas on the internet. It was successful. Well, not completely successful 'til later that night when I stayed up really late in the dark room. I haven't stayed up til 4am in so long and it felt so good last night. The thing is, Michael always goes to bed so early. Well, for a college kid. And I know he was annoyed by my computer light. I was trying to be quiet. But today I brought it up and asked him if I bothered him. He said it did in a nice way. So I'll have to either use the computer in the bathroom or down in the lobby if I want to stay up. Maybe I should get a book light.

It's weird. It really felt good to get like 5 hours of sleep yesterday. Surprisingly, I've been getting decent sleep lately, like 7 or more each night.

Today, I went and saw Scott Free do his music speech on stage. I really liked his piano composition. Before that I waited for about a half an hour to use the internet on the school computers while little kids played games on one and another guy never got off the other one. I saw him type an email and send it, then look at what he sent, read over it again and start another email. It was funny cause I always read over what I wrote right after I sent it.

The metro station was SO packed today. I was afraid I was gonna be late to class. I was late. 2 minutes. But everyone else was 10 minutes or more late hahaha. Cause of traffic. Something was going on. They all like to take the bus but I don't even have the pass for that cause I don't bother. Walking is so incredibly nice so I do that whenever I can. Why not get some extra exercise?

I just saw on Facebook that Sadayah had answered some Facebook question like, "If Stoddy Blackall had the chance to run a full marathon, what would stop him?" and she answered, "Nothing at all." That made me so happy.

37,

Stoddy.

P.S. That's how many days there are left til I see my fam fam.

Delivery Boy!

2009-11-10T14:26:00.000-08:00

I walked in Kristina's today and she said, "Where were you?" I explained to her that I was in my Greek Crossroads of Rhythm and Sound class but then she looked at me from behind the sandwich counter and said....wait for it, "I need you."

Yeah, I was happy.

But to continue, she said, "I want you to hold the umbrella when I go to deliver those sandwiches." She had about three sandwich platters that she had to bring to some place and it was raining really hard. I of course was enthusiastically into doing that for her. She had to finish some things up before delivering them though so I had to sit and wait for a while. Even though I had to go all the way back home and then come to the school again for multiple reasons. But in this case, I was fine with waiting there. I got a sandwich (which she gave to me for free!) and then sat down. I was sitting, waiting for her to say the word and I said to myself, "Please please please don't die on me rain. Do not stop raining." Then the rain basically stopped except for some sprinkles. I was so sad cause I thought I wouldn't be needed anymore. Fortunately, I heard, "Stohdart," and I jumped up. She still had me bring one of the cases so I think she just wanted my company! I walked with her to the delivery place and it started pouring again but we were already halfway there without an umbrella haha. We stood next to a small river at one point (cause it was raining so hard) and I said, "It's an adventure" and she made this excited noise and jumped over the river. It was fun. So then I waited for her down in the lobby of this business place. Well, I awkwardly waited right next to the guard guy that sat there at the entrance desk. She finally came back down and we walked back. She told me about this coffee place that is really unpopular here but a huge chain in Australia. When I got back, we talked a little more and she asked me what else I did aside from Berklee. I told her about New York Film Academy. I then said I wanted a Fanta Lemonade and she said, "See you tomorrow!" I didn't get the hint. When I went up to the counter to pay, she corrected me - "No, I said, see you tomorrow. That means you don't have to pay." As I was walking out she then goes, "Don't catch a cold walking back!" I held up a closed fist and said, "I'll make sure I keep my hand closed so I don't catch one." Hahaha corny as hell but she smiled. It was fun. I love having a friend here.

I played my "Poor Stuttering Jones" song for my Greek Crossroads teacher and he liked it. Later, I went to the practice room that my friends and I share and Courtney played some classical piano and some of her piano/voice songs for Cody and me. Her piano/voice songs were very impressive but MY GOD, she is a voice principle and the classical music that she has memorized is AMAAAZING. I was trying to practice my drum for Mediterranean Percussion tomorrow and was having trouble focusing she is so good. I'm jealous.

After hearing Courtney play, I went to Momus and wrote some more. I added some cool elements to the Amazing Ray musical and now I'm back with the whole, Ray the lesbian idea. I finished a more specific, but rough plot line for Act I.

Stoddy.

Out to Dinner

2009-11-09T12:54:00.000-08:00

A Berklee faculty member named Scott Free (I know, awesome name, right?) and his wife took us out to dinner tonight so we could get free food again! I was excited. I found out about it earlier today. I got Chicken Souvlaki, which is one of my favorite dishes here. It's basically just chicken kabob. Cody's parents were there too. The food was very good and we had some good conversations, especially the ones about scary movies. Courtney was wide-eyed when I said that my mom always says she loves, "Cut-em-up movies". Sorry mom.

Earlier today I played "Sweet Janine" for my piano teacher. It's the new version that I rewrote when I got here. All the verses have new lyrics and the chorus is slightly changed. My piano teacher said he thought it was a hit! He also said he thought it was the most poppy of my songs that he's heard. Interesting. I kind of agree. It really made me happy to hear that. It made me realize that now with the new lyrics, that song is really good and I want to enter it in Berklee competitions.

Before my piano lesson, I met up with Mia and helped her with the song she's writing for our class tomorrow (Greek Crossroads of Rhythm and Sound). We have to write a song with an odd time signature. I'm of course doing a voice piano song. It's called, "Poor Stuttering Jones." Hers sounds great! It's fun playing piano for her.

It's amazing. All my life I have found that I bond the most through music. Since she asked me to play piano for her and give her tips on the writing of the song, I've felt so much closer to her.

Why not Y? That's in my name so I thought I'd give it recognition for once rather than the letter S.

Delphi!

2009-11-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

My Greek civ class took a trip to Delphi. We actually stayed in Arahovna which was a beautiful location. When we first arrived in the hotel on Friday, I escaped for about an hour because we had a while til we left for our Berklee dinner (Berklee pays for our dinners and it's great cause I could get anything I wanted for free!) I sat on a little hill beside the road and looked at mountain reaching above the clouds. For some reason it made me emotional looking at the mountains. I felt so high up, closer to the clouds than I'd ever been. Then I walked down to this bridge, climbed down a staircase and sat by the edge of the mountain. It wasn't a sudden drop off but if I fell, I would have died more than ten times. So if I were a cat, I still would have died. I was safely away from the edge though and was enjoying looking at the distant cars climbing the winding roads across the way. It was so cool to look at the little towns gripping to the mountain face like clinging fireflies. I took out my Greek phone at one point and thought, what the hell, and tried to text mom's cell phone to include my parents in the experience. I texted something like, "It's Stoddy! I'm looking at the most amazing mountain view in Delphi that I wish you could see too!" The text didn't work though. And I was actually in Arahovna at that point. But I think I could see part of Delphi from where I was sitting. So pretend I sent it mom and dad! I tried! So anyway, I climbed over the locked gate of a playground (I thought, why not?) and played on the swing for a while. I got as high as you possibly can go pretty quickly and it gave me more of thrill than I expected. Well, probably because my view was of the bad-ass Greek mountains (I got the phrase, "bad-ass" from Cody). I wanted to swing for a while cause I wanted to tie together my childhood with my adulthood (you know, cause I'm studying abroad I feel like this is a milestone of adulthood). But I'm sure, subconsciously, I wanted to prove to myself as well that I don't ever want to let the kid side die. Or plainly, I just fucking felt like swinging! GOOGOOGAGA!

We went to dinner and ate from shared plates like we did when we went to Nafplio about a month ago. Afterwards, Cody, Ricky, Michael, Zoe, Mia and I went to a bar where the cheapest beers were 4.50 (ugh). It was the cheapest place we could find though and finally settled on it. We had a good time except Cody and I had a little argument. He told me "Don't ever say that again" about something gross or weird I said. I asked him, "Do you really mean that or are you just saying it?" He told me he did. I then told him that I tend to say things that are more gross to him because of the way he reacts (or doesn't react) and he said, "Honestly Stoddy, you really gross me out sometimes." I reacted with, "Well, you're really mean sometimes." We stopped talking about it for a while and later I went up to him and said, "We cool?" He answered with, "We're clean," almost immediately as I finished uttering my words. It wasn't snappy, just direct and confident. Hmm, interesting. We've been a little tense for a while, just never this honest. Really, our only way of connecting is by jokingly saying mean things to each other. Like, he says to me, "I still hate you Stoddy," and I answer with, "Oh really? That's cool. Good. Cause the feeling's mutual." And we just go on and on. Hahaha.

On Saturday, our teacher showed us the upper section of Delphi where there were tons of Greek ruins and "I'm the shit" monuments. What I mean by that is a lot of the monuments were war related, built right across from another monument representing a nation that it beat. For example, Persians against Greeks. I saw the area where the Oracle predicted futures! Oh and there is also a long path that Oracle goers walked along to reach enlightenment. It wasn't only a come and go deal. It was more of a process. I forgot to ask the Oracle anything. I can't believe I didn't do that. But I did drink from the same natural water fountain (the magical spring!) that Oracle goers drank from and cleansed themselves with. Our teacher said it was fresh. So if that was considered magical, hopefully I got some of that magic in me. After that, a group of people went up with our teacher's wife (John, our teacher didn't feel like walking up) to see the area where the Delphic games were played. That was neat to see.

We had a lot of free time after eating lunch (we all ordered separately this time but it was still free!) Ricky, Michael, Zoe and I walked around the town, spotting a lot of wooden canes leaning up against shops and many fur coats and hats everywhere. We ended at a cafe and I got the best hot chocolate I've had this whole time since I've been away from home. I was restraining myself from making loud noises next to my friends. If Whit were with me, I would have let those noises go. But in other crowds, I have to watch what I do haha. In that case, I just said, "This is the most amazing hot chocolate ever," like one or two times and moaned a couple times. I told them about Cody and me and our little argument. Michael got up to go to the bathroom. I figure that he doesn't like gossip at all which I understand completely. The thing with Cody and me isn't big obviously. It's just a small thing that's hard to write about. It seems so miniscule in text but trust me, there's something going on. I think he might have a problem with me. I'm not sure why though. And I get so annoyed when he doesn't respond to me or when he tells me to shut up that I just get weirder around him.

After getting back from our walk around the town, Ricky, Michael and I played games including 20 questions, doodling and having the other person make a picture from it (childhood!), and hangman. It was wicked fun (Brecken!)

We had dinner again on Saturday night, which was pretty good. I had lamb with cheese stuffed in it and french fries. I wanted to try lamb cause I don't like it that much. Yeah, that's the way I've worked here some of the time. Mostly on these trips. In Nafplio I got this seafood dish with muscles, shrip and scallops. Keep in mind I like neither of those. And honestly, I wasn't too fond of it. The lamb was good though! Not great but good. I didn't eat too much of it. Later I said, "I could eat two slices of pizza right now." Of course I would say that, right? Haha.

Today, Sunday, we saw the lower part of Delphi where the training grounds were for the Delphic games. We went back in the bus to begin our trek home. We ate lunch at a rest area where we got to order for free again and spend Berklee's money (feels good) and I talked with John and Amy (my teacher and his wife). Oh and earlier in the trip, Amy told me about a film festival in Thessolaniki which is about two more hours north from Delphi. I might go there two weeks from this weekend. Anyway, driving back home in the bus, near the hotel, there was terrible traffic which sucked but we got back today around 4, which was when he said we'd get back so it was fine. It felt good to get out. I've been getting sick in buses lately. I don't know why. I think it's the fact that it gets so stuffy in there and whenever I start to work on something, it makes me sick. So I just have to sit there and listen to music. And think.

This weekend, on Friday, I'm going with my class to see the Acropolis close up. So it's not much of a field trip cause it's so close but it will be so nice to finally hear an expert talk about it. On Saturday, I'm planning to go to Santorini and stay one night. Everybody is saying that I maybe shouldn't go cause it's windy, cold and pretty much abandoned since the summer is over. My friends went there about two weeks ago and said there was nothing there. But I have to go there. I have to. Hell, I'll just sit by the ocean. That's good enough for me. It's supposed to be the most beautiful place in Greece. Well, most beautiful island according to John. The next weekend after this, I MIGHT go to Thessolaniki like I said. But before that, on Friday, I'm going with my Civ class to the Ancient Agora even though I've been there before. It will be completely different having a tour guide. If I do go to Thessolaniki, I would have to leave on Saturday which would not give me much time. Hmmm might have to go in December. The weekend after the possible Thessolaniki weekend is when I see PAULA! VIENNA! November 25th to the 29th! I just booked the flight.

Long blog, wow. Ughhh that took me more than an hour I think.

Stod.

P.S. I got a 80% on my first Greek language test. I'm not too happy with that score but hell, I tried. And the study sessions were fun with my friends. I'll do better on my next test.

Writing...

2009-11-05T15:34:00.000-08:00

Wrote at Momus, the usual place across from the school with sandwiches, drinks, nice people and free magazines including nudy ones. Having a lot of trouble with the writing. Keep going back to the drawing board. Now I'm writing about a boy who shares his dreams (actual sleep dreams) with a girl across the street who has an abusive dad. It's interesting but no story seems to satisfy me. The story about the guy who has a sex change to win back his lesbian girlfriend was difficult cause I don't know anything about sex changes. Well, maybe by the end of writing all these story ideas, I'll have a lot to pick from and then maybe I can mix some of them together. I've already kind of tried doing that though. Like Zoe said today, I should keep them all cause later it will be fun to look back at them. I'll just keep writing. Keep doing it. I won't give up.

My voice lesson was pretty good today. The best was that my teacher said she missed me during my vacation. I like her. She's funny. She makes funny noises out of the blue.

I'm going to bed. Tomorrow is the Delphi trip. Oh yes I'm excited about that. When I get back, I have to buy my flight to Vienna for the end of November. I also have to go to Piraeus and buy my ferry tickets to Santorini and back. My friends here warned me that there is nothing at all going on there and a lot of places are closed. They seemed surprised that I'm going alone. The island is pretty much shutting down. And they got stranded there for a night last weekend cause the weather was bad. But I have to go. It's Santorini. In the words of "Risky Business," sometimes you gotta say "What the fuck." It's amazing how often I think about that.

RAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

Stoddy.

Family Guy

2009-11-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

I wrote more today and hung out with Michael, Cody and Ricky. We watched Family Guy.

Studying

2009-11-03T13:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the Greek lesson was taxing. She reminded us about the test we are having on Wednesday. That is basically what I did yesterday. I got stressed about the studying I would have to do and tried to get used to being at school again. Oh and now I have the itch to travel even more. I need to see more of mainland Greece and then I have to see Santorini. I'm going to Delphi with my friends this weekend for a school trip! Can't wait to do that.

Tonight a lot of us got together and studied Greek for about an hour and a half. It was actually really fun. Michael, Zoe, Cody, Michael and I studied and were laughing a lot. We decided we're gonna make it a drinking game once a week, studying Greek and drinking whenever we get questions right. Hahaha can't wait for that. Sounds fun. I doubt that we'll do it that often but I think it would be a fun way of studying. For the last hour, Michael and I have been studying even more Greek. It's actually been fun! Studying is fun! YAY! Haha.

October Break (Part 5)!

2009-11-01T07:58:00.000-08:00

I did not go to the Marseille beach on Saturday morning. I ended up going to a halloween decorated coffee shop, waiting, checking out at the latest time, 11:00 and then waiting at the train station to go to Barcelona finally. The train ride was very long and there were these extremely annoying drunk guys at the other end of my car. There was really only one that was annoying though. He was so drunk and kept swearing really loudly, laughing obnoxiously and being plain rude. We were in France most of the time in the train and about a quarter the way through the ride, he brings up to his friends, "Oh, such people are such dicks! Remember that French FUCK that blah blah blah..." Hahahaha crazy kid. He was like a dumbass Jack Black mixed with a misunderstanding Frida Kahlo.

I got off the train in Barcelona and right beside me was Chris, the guy that sat next to me twice in Nice when I played piano. What a coincidence! He was going to the same place! He invited me to hang out with him and his brother that night, along with this other guy they met earlier. I abandoned the film festival, haha and hung out with them. Hell, I would have only been able to see one film by then cause of my train delay. So I decided to choose people over fake, projected people on a screen. We had fun, went to this bar that Mikel (the other guy they met at the hostel) told us about since he lived in Barcelona for a while before. It looked like a dungeon. A cool dungeon with lots of college kids in it. We played foosball at the end of the night when had thoroughly wet our whistles with four pitchers, two of them beer and two of them sangria. Wow, I know. The sangria was very sweet. It is fruit mixed with wine. I think Whit would like it. I bet he's had it. Chris and I lost against Sean (Chris's brother) and Mikel. It was still fun. And sitting around talking about music with Chris was interesting since he is going to live his dream and go to music school for singing even though he's now 24. I think he graduated from another college before. Anyway, there were some people on the streets dressed up in halloween costumes. Isn't that the coolest thing ever? I spent halloween in Barcelona, randomly. Hahaha. I'm so happy. And now I'm safe in my hotel room in Athens again. I got a text that some of the others are stuck on Santorini for the night. Oh man, hope they're ok. But that means I'll have this hotel room for myself tonight. It's nice and quiet. A good contrast to traveling almost every day for about a week and a half. Woooooow what an awesome trip. And what an experience.

Train Problems - October Break (Part 5)!

2009-10-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

I forgot to add that two nights ago, I did meet more people at the hostel. I actually talked to these two girls for a while about travel. This one Mexican girl was cute and said, "beach" like "bitch". I couldn't help laughing the first time she said it cause it was in a sentence like, "It was a beautiful beach." She noticed my laugh and told me that everyone makes fun of her for the way she says things. I said, "No no, it's ok, it's just that one of my friends (Cody) calls girls bitches when he's talking generally. He's like, 'Hey, there's a hot bitch.'" So whenever I or the girl mentioned the beach, we both laughed cause it was like a "that's what she said" joke, where it was always funny in context of the sentence.

Yesterday, I also forgot to mention that I went to the top of this steep hill and had the best pizza, better than the one in Pisa at this little French cafe. It was a four cheese pizza. Ahhhh, to die for. I went up to the guy behind the counter after finishing my meal and said, "I'm sorry I'm saying this to you in English, but that pizza was VERY good." He smiled and told me thank you. Then I remembered shortly after that I knew how to say very good. Tre bon. After walking up the hill, I went back over to this waterfall that I saw as I was coming up and climbed over a railing that was forbidden to get a better view of it and the city. Actually when I was coming up the hill, I tried to go behind the waterfall and even leaped over the locked metal door by crawling up the side of the steep hill and holding onto tree branches. A man was looking at me while I did it but didn't say anything. I didn't go as far as going down into cave-like thing that the waterfall was draping over because I was thinking that maybe there was in fact a reason why it was blocked off. I imagined it breaking and me falling all the way down this big hole or something. Then I wished that I had a girlfriend who pushed me just that much further and said to me, "Nah, just do it. You won't die, haha." I want a girl like that. The idea of a girl like that made me more adventurous and when I was walking back down the hill, I felt like I should have climbed into the waterfall cave so instead of walking just on the path down the hill, I ended up sliding down through this steep, forest like area and ending up at a high cliff area that was a little taller than I expected. I climbed down and hung from my hands, then let go, bending my feet when I landed and just avoiding injury. When I landed, I bursted into laughter at myself for acting so strangely, sitting their for about a half a minute in self amusement. Then I came to this gate that was locked and the only way to get past it would be to walk along this really narrow cement wall that overlooked a fall that would have actually really hurt me if I didn't do it right. But I did it anyway. It really wasn't that difficult, only nerve racking for that second of dangerous concentration; the moment when my body protruded over the edge was scary and sent adrenaline through me, giving me images of my feet slipping and everything going wrong from there. But I ended up safely on the other side. Silly boy. If I were my parent I would have been peeing and biting my fingernails at the same time.

I met three Australian people at the hostel, two of them a couple and one of them a guy that I was going to go to Monoco with yesterday but I decided to just see the town of Nice cause I only had one day. I also met a guy who was really into my music yesterday and kept sitting near me when I played the piano in the main hang zone of the Little Prince hostel. That's right, it was named after the Little Prince! It was called Villa Saint Exupery! I was thrilled when I found that out. On a lot of doors were pictures of different characters from the book! But anyway, I played him some of my songs. And George Winston is his family friend! I gave my information and he told me he would email me so I could let him know when the CD was done. I asked him for his information to be safer so I could send him my CD when it's done or send him an email when they're on iTunes but he said, "No, that's ok. I'll email you." I'm scared he won't. Cause that would just be so cool to know that one of my first customers was someone I met in Nice. He wasn't French though. I think he was American. But he kept saying how he thought I was so good and will definitely make it. That was nice. He said he wanted to go to music school too! I wonder if he'll go to Berklee. He said he's not good enough. Interesting.

So guess where I am. Barcelona? Nope. There was a train derailment today right ahead of me supposedly. So my train got delayed like three hours and I missed both of my connecting trains. It was ok though because I got the chance to talk to this really cute french girl on the train. I kept sitting closer to her through time, finding different excuses. The first excuse I found was when the train stopped due to the accident ahead and people started to get up to buy food from the cafe. I asked these other really cute french girls where they got the food and I enjoyed their smiles as well. I came back and decided to "randomly" sit closer to the first french girl (Alice) OBVIOUSLY just because there was more space there and there were fold out tables at those seats. Good excuse. I saw that she was studying and I said, "Escuse mua, parlez-vou Anglais?" She said "A little." I asked her what she was studying and that was that. She told me about how she was going to be a dentist. We talked on and off for a while. Eventually the trains started to move again but we were on a long detour. Other people got on the train and this one guy took my seat. He moved over and said, "Ok, you? Sit down, you can sit down," in a thick french accent. He was trying to be nice but I didn't want to sit far away from Alice again so I just kind of shook my head and said, "Thanks, um, no that's ok." People got up again to get a free meal from the train since they delayed us so much. I went to the cafe, got some more food, free this time and then I sat right next to Alice because there were people sitting at the more open space area now. At this point I was right beside her. Yes, I had smoothly come closer and closer. We talked about how gross the food was and how it smelled like dog food.

So I arrived in Marceille at about 4:30 and it took me about an hour and a half to sort out my new tickets for tomorrow (I got them for no extra charge after a little explaining which was hard to do with people that had a tough time understanding me) and then finally get a hotel room. I had to cancel my reservation with the Barcelona Hostel by going to a hotel (recommended by customer service at the train station) and using their internet. The hotel was booked so I just used their internet and then the guy behind the counter recommended a cheap place that he said is sometimes dirty. Well, I'm here and it's not bad. I'm using internet in my room which makes me happy. And I'm right next to the humungous steps of the train station! So tomorrow will be easy. Anyway, after checking into my room earlier tonight, I went out on the town. I walked down to the port checked out both the left and right sides surrounding the water. I bought a shitty Italien sub (Italien is the French spelling) and a pretty damn good chocolate crepe. The waitress was incredibly good looking too. Are you surprised to hear me say that? I went over to this building that was title something like, "The Famous Marceille Theater" and decided that if they were showing anything, I would try to see it. But they weren't. I also found an opera house but there was nothing showing. I know, I found an opera house finally! I felt so fulfilled after the invisible opera in Venice.

So one more night on my own on this crazy trip. I'm so glad I did this. So very very glad. And the world can happen in one night. Even when I'm getting in at eight pm tomorrow. But you never know. Anything can happen. So my travels are not done. Oh no. I'm gonna live it up tomorrow. Oh and before I go to Barcelona tomorrow, I might get up really early, like six am and go to this beach that's supposed to be well known and really nice in Marceille. We'll see if I go though. I do not want to miss that train at 12:42.

Love,

Stoddy.

October Break (Part 4)!

2009-10-29T10:16:00.000-07:00

Today I walked to the beach of Nice, France. The city was all right but the beach was very interesting because there was a whole section that I happened upon that completely surprised me. There were hundreds of huge white rocks haphazardly scattered along one stretch of the shore. They were not just normal rocks though. They had no doubt been cut by someone, a artist or a company with some kind of plan I am unaware of, into irregular geometric shapes. All of these impressive pieces of rock were stacked on top of each other and a little further from the shore were big slabs of cubic rock beside a tall cobblestone wall. First I fell asleep in a little crevice of the scattered geometric rocks and then I walked along the cubes towards another section of the beach that was strewn with similar flat sided stones but smaller and each with two rusted handles stuck to different sides. On the way to those smaller stones, I tripped on one of the gaps between the cubic rocks next to the cobblestone wall and landed on my knee, bruising it and only slightly breaking the skin. I hurt my wrists a little but it wasn't too bad. My two pairs of glasses also flew off my head in the abrupt, unexpected act, probably caused by my state of recent nap delirium and a man walked by shortly after, pointing to one of the sunglass lenses that had fallen out of its frame. I said, "I know...thank you," and shook myself out of it, also stretching my fingers and bending my wrist to make sure my arms were ok.

Did I mention that I had hot chocolate before this and at first it was amazing but then I realized that somehow the girl who made it failed to notice that there were several small pieces of paper mixed into the drink? The paper was hard to rip though so I figured that the hot chocolate melted off some of the thick paper cup and the pieces ended up in my mouth. At first I thought they were just clumps of powdered chocolate but soon I realized that wasn't the case. I was reminded of when I was really young and on multiple occasions, either caused by my drive to impress someone like a disgusted friend at school or simply because of my typical curiosity for indulging my senses with new things, I ate little bits of paper.

I went to a modern art museum today. That was interesting. Like usual modern art museums, or any art museums for that matter, I was very unimpressed with some things but really entranced by others. My favorite was a sculpture of man in the middle of the room, caught in the act of dancing his heart out. The great thing about it was that his eyes were closed and his face was unusually placid. It seemed to me that someone with their head swung back and one leg up in the air would at least show some kind of similar, active movement in their face. But this guy was INTO it. Almost like he was meditating while dancing. Maybe a professional dancer.

I didn't get a chance to swim cause it was getting pretty damn cold by the time I was at the beach and ready to relax. The art museum was before I scraped my knee. When I finally got to the regular beach with small rocks (there wasn't a typical sand beach where I was), I just sat there with sorbet and a coke light and wrote musical ideas on the back of my Barcelona Film Festival voucher. I also skipped a couple rocks on the water. It was nice but then it came time to walk back.

I forgot to mention that back in Cinque Terre, at the last beach, I had to swim because it was such a beautiful day and I had told myself that I had no choice but to do it. The problem was that I didn't have a swim suit. So in front of Nerese (pronounced like Maurice but with an "n") and Shelly, I stripped to my boxers. The swim was incredibly refreshing and pretty. When I was finished swimming, I realized after stepping out of the water that I forgot to consider the downside of wearing WHITE polka-dot boxers. Yeah, so they were pretty much see through. Shelley told me that no one was watching and to not worry about it. I pulled part of the boxers away from my skin as I walked out in front of people and picked up my clump of clothes, retreating to an area pretty far away from my friends. My feet were all sandy and I didn't want to get my pants really messy so I had to put one foot at a time on this small rock on the beach so that while I put one wet (but clean!) foot into my pants, the other wouldn't be standing on sand. I had a difficult time doing this and was afraid I would fall into the water and ruin everything. I also figured that Matt, Nerese and Shelley were watching and laughing at me or even rooting for the waves to somehow trip me. I found out when I got back that they were actually not looking my way the whole time. Or so they say. But then after my pants nestled close to my wet underwear after a couple minutes, the girls decided to point at me and laugh about how it looked like I peed my pants. It's true. I laughed with them and was happy that I swam even though I knew this would happen.

Tomorrow is mainly train travel and a taste of Barcelona once I get there at eight at night. Let's hope I can catch some of the film festival then. Saturday is all Barcelona. The day after is my flight back to Athens.

October Break (Part 3)!

2009-10-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

Written 10/28

Tuesday (27^th Oct.)

Tuesday night was a blast. Shelley, Nerese, the guy that they found on couchserfer.net and I hung out in my hotel room for about an hour. I drank beer and the girls drank a bottle of wine. I drank a little too fast and had a little trouble acting normally for a little while. But it was ok. I just tripped on a word every once and a while. We went out to this bar close to my hotel. It was a nice place where the guy plays every Sunday. He’s a singer and a piano player and used to be a pretty successful freestyle basketball player, doing commercials and seminars and stuff. But he quit that. He’s actually really good at music. They asked me to get up and play songs! Of course I played Avery and Hot Damn. I also played Image of You but I messed up tons of cords and lyrics. Then Andrea (the couch guy) and I jammed. He sang while I played piano. He asked me if I knew My Funny Valentine. I said that I kind of did. I started doing something in C minor and he asked me, “What key?” I said, “C minor.” I thought now we were going to do something new and improvised and that he decided not to do My Funny Valentine. But he started singing the song and I only knew like half the cords. Even though we didn’t play it how it “should” be played it really sounded awesome. He has a great ear and changed with the cords I was playing. I kept switching up the way I was playing and it was incredibly fun after not being in front of a piano for so long. I don’t think Andrea was too happy with the fact that the song sounded different but I was doing the best I could. Let’s just face it; I don’t know many covers. Shelley said she really liked Hot Damn and preferred it to Avery, which she said was more typical, “a sad love song”. Or something like that. I didn’t know what exactly to think of that. And she kept saying my music was “formal”. Didn’t get what she meant at all. But whatever. The girls and I were joking around more and more as the night progressed. I mentioned that it felt weird to not have my fanny pack since I left it in the hotel. She made a weird face and said in a funny voice, “I don’t have my FANNNY paaaiiiik, I doon’t hayyve my FAAAANY paaiiiik.” God I was laughing so hard. Then one of those random, improvised a capella songs started between the three of us. I don’t even know what it was about but it was fun as hell. On the walk home, Andrea asked us what we were doing in the bar before we left. We told him about how we break out into song sometimes. So I started another one, beginning it with, “The Unbelievable Wall”. The three of them joined in and we had an awesome time on our trek back to my hotel. I kept accidentally nudging Shelley and every time she would say something like, “Stoddy just had sex with me,” or “Oh no, I’m pregnant.” The last time my arm lightly brushed her arm, she said, “Stop making out with me!” Hahahaha it was incredibly funny. Then it came time for me to say goodbye. They told me to NOT let this pass and to make sure to keep in touch on Facebook. I said of course I would keep in touch! As they were walking away, Nerese said, “And if you get sad tonight, just say Razzle Red.” It was a great parting note. So funny. I miss you Nerese and Shelley!

Wedensday (Oct. 28)

I’m in Nice, France right now. People are swarming everywhere, eating the hostel’s dinner, typing on their computers, reading, chatting and drinking. I’m taking a break from trying to make friends and writing this right now. I did make friends with the family I was sitting with in the train cabin today though! We realized we were going to the same hostel!

I played for about thirty minutes on the baby grand piano here earlier tonight! I was upset that it was as if the sustain pedal were constantly held down but it was nice to play. A French man, probably 60 years old came over to me and we basically played a game of charades as he tried to explain to me what song he wanted me to play. He kept sitting down and very poorly running his hands down the piano before playing the melody he wanted me to play. I found it funny. But I got the hang of the first melody and he was really happy. He then started to play the “Strangers in the Night” song and once I recognized it, I took his place and did my best with it. He was so pleased. I forgot what to do after a little while and he helped me with the melody. He patted my back a couple times after I stepped away from the piano to go get some food.

I met Michael, a fellow lone Australian traveler, Jessica, another Austrailian and this other guy who told me he really liked my piano playing. He told me that supposedly artists can sign up to play music for a set period of time and in return for the show, get a discount on their room. I lit up and asked the front desk. They said that isn’t in affect anymore. It got me thinking that a lot of people must have just gotten up whether or not they had anything planned and no matter how unprepared they were, demanded to get a discount. All right, I should get back to socializing. It’s hard in here. There’s a lot of noise and lot of people. Tomorrow, I’m going to walk about two miles to the beach and hang out there all day, writing, swimming and relaxing. Nice is the place to do it. And I need to take a day off from traveling and just do nothing but think to myself. The day after tomorrow, I’m taking a train to Barcelona to finish off my travels with a little Film Festival. I’m slightly worried about the festival. Hopefully it’s not invisible like the opera. Cause I’m actually not sure where it is exactly. Wish me luck!

I’m getting used to this whole way of life. It’s fun being able to say what the hell, throw caution to the wind and take off to somewhere else. It’s true. Not everyone gets to see the world like this. I’m lucky. And I honestly am really trying to capture all the moments, good or bad, big or small and remember as much as I possibly can. As I might have said before, this trip and everything that has happened before this in Greece and at the islands is like my own story that I’m writing. And I’m the main character. I keep thinking that. So even if I missed a train, a part of me would smile cause I kind of feel like I’m entertaining my readers, or viewers, however you want to put it. That is a big reason why I’m writing this blog too. It’s a good way of reminding myself to treat this experience as a real life story that gets better as I stuff it with more and more interesting things.

October Break (Part 2)!

2009-10-27T10:53:00.001-07:00

Written 10/26

Friday night (23^rd Oct.)

I described us as a stampede of drunks. Yes, I did a pub-crawl in Rome. We all walked to each bar, every trip getting crazier than the next with loud singing, laughing and uninhibited conversation. This one girl kept asking me where I was from and what my name was, like each time she had met me for the first time. It was fun until we got to the last bar and my friends left before me. I was dancing so hard and I had been walking all day so my legs were hurting to an unbearable extent. The dance floor was completely packed and I was getting incredibly tired and fed up with being pushed aside carelessly every second by horny drunks. I didn’t even feel that buzzed even though they gave us a free shot at every new bar and I had about three beers other than that. So anyway, my friends left before me and I had to walk home at three in the morning with suffering feet. At least I had my map, which was very reliable. I got to the hostel and took a shower in a dirty bathroom, then went to sleep.

Moving backwards in time, I met some people before the pub-crawl. One of the guys in my hostel was from Stillwater and went to the same high school as I did! That blew my mind. I didn’t talk to him that much though. I asked him if he knew Mr. Lindsay. He said, “Yes I do know Mr. Lindsay. The bald white guy?” Hahaha so weird! I also met two people from Brazil. They said they wanted to go to the pub-crawl. They came with me to meet Cody and Ricky. Then they ditched us when we got to the first bar. Who knows?

Further backwards in time, before the night came, I walked around Rome for nine hours, saw the Colosseum, the Vatican and all sorts of beautiful buildings. It was an amazing experience. At the end of my journey when I could almost hear my legs whining for the first time that night, I stopped at a fountain that was enormous and decorated with Roman statues and threw a ten cent coin in it. I made a wish.

Saturday night (24^th Oct.)

I will return to a normal flow of events now. I left for Florence in the morning. The woman at the hostel was very nice and told me some places to “please go to” as she put it. I was charmed by how sweet and willing to laugh she was. She told me about a place to go to for the sunset (Piazzale Michelangelo) and raved about how it was so high up and gives you a good view of the town. I lit up and said, “I’m going now!” cause it was close to five. I put my stuff on my bed and walked to see Michelangelo’s David. Ok, I was NOT prepared for my reaction to this art piece. I had just seen the Vatican and was aware of how talented Michelangelo was but oh man, this was different for me for some reason. When I turned the corner in the museum and saw David lighting up the room with its brilliance, I involuntarily gasped and walked up to it with great anticipation to see it more closely. The moment I saw how detailed his hands were, with veins and everything, I became incredibly emotional. I couldn’t stop staring at it and thinking about how I believe I had just seen the most amazing art piece in the world. I felt like I was in the presence of a higher power, the higher power of the art world. My heart sped up and I was so amazed of Michelangelo’s ability to touch me like that. I felt almost depressed that this is what I would have to live up to with my music. I wanted to touch people for thousands of years. Wow.

The sunset from the hill was brilliant. There was a guitarist and hand percussionist playing by the steps I was sitting on and it created a great ambiance. I met some French girls and also found a lost camera. I held it up and asked if it was anyone’s. The French girls just told me to keep it cause it would be taken if I left it. I said that I couldn’t do it but one of the girls took it from me and said, “Ok it’s mine. And now I’m giving it to you.” So I did take it. And I feel really bad about it actually. I should have given it to the hotdog vender guy but what would he have done? :/

I walked home, actually quite lonely. I couldn’t stop running into couples kissing and holding hands, families laughing together and I was alone, walking the streets of one the most romantic cities in the world. I wanted to go to the hostel and go to sleep but at the same time I knew I would be lonely if I did that. I stopped at a pizza place that was empty. That didn’t make me feel too good. I tried SO hard to fight the feeling cause I knew I was in a great city and wanted to enjoy it. But here’s the rub. When I got back to the hostel after sort of getting lost in Florence a little, I met some of the coolest people I’ve ever met in my life: Nerese, another girl named Shelly, a guy named Matt and a girl named Phoebe. At first I was all flustered and I could not find the door that the nice hostel lady locked my big clothes bag in with my computer and everything. They were all chilling in the main area and started laughing at me cause I was pacing pack and forth, looking for something. I told them I was looking for a secret door. This was the start of our friendship. Phoebe offered me some wine. There wasn’t much but it was the beginning of me feeling comfortable again.

Phoebe told us that she literally was tone deaf. She doesn’t listen to music and basically can’t hear differences in notes. It was interesting to the point of scary. We talked til about 12:30am and Nerese and Shelly invited us to go with them to Cinque Terre and Pisa in the morning. I said yes right away. Matt had to do some adjusting with his schedule but he worked it out. Phoebe nicely denied the invitation. But that night was the most fun by FAR I have had on this trip. We had to get up in four hours but we were laughing like crazy and they were giving me the warmest feeling. I felt at home with them and I had just met them. I went to sleep with a smile. It was incredibly nice. Thanks so much new friends. If you only knew how truly lonely I was feeling before I met you.

Sunday (25^th Oct.)

The next day we woke up at 4:30am but then found out once we were all ready to leave for the train station that there was a time change so we got there an hour early. So we sat on the floor at the front of the train ticket line eating breakfast. No one was in the train station. We took pictures of each other and bonded even more.

Cinque Terre was unbelievably beautiful. Tall mountainous cliffs dropping off into the water. It was better than Mykonos in terms of being “breathtaking”. We walked on trails right beside the cliffs, climbed rocks, sat with our feet in the water and ate gelato. We stopped by this place where people had put locks on this gate on the cliff. I figured that iw as people’s way of coming to each other and remember when they traveled tot his great place. I used the lock that I happened to have from the last hostel and put my lock on someone else’s lock cause it didn’t fit around the bars on the gate (so am I committed to someone random out there? Haha). I scratched with my pencil sharpener on the lock, the word, “Yes,” and locked it on the other lock. This was my way of saying how proud I was with myself for really going for it and living my life. It was my commitment to myself and me being proud of how much of a yes man I’ve been. I mean hell, to go to these foreign places alone, forcing myself to make friends is not easy at first. But it’s really MORE than worth it in the end. So I was very proud of myself. It felt good.

We all had some ticket problems. I almost had to pay 50 euros because I forgot to write in the date on my Eurail pass. But he guy gave me a break and had me only pay for a regular ticket, which was like 14 euros. At least it was so much less.

At the last stop in Cinque Terre, Shelly and Nerese starting singing about the “Accordian Girl” cause they had supposedly seen a girl playing accordion for money in Greece when they visited there. But this was the funniest thing ever cause they did exactly what my family does. They just started singing and making funny noises, making up a story about the accordion girl. I joined in and I was in heaven. I couldn’t believe I met these people. Matt was quiet at this point haha. He was a little overwhelmed by the weirdness I think. But don’t get me wrong, he and I joked around in our own way. He’s funny as hell. So the girls and I made up all these songs, one about the boy who ate the ocean, a song about how wonderful rocks are (haha) and one about a guy made of bricks I think. Hahaha it was unbelievable. Oh man, later in the day, Shelly said, “Stoddy you are hilarious. And I mean that genuinely.” She has no idea how nice that is to hear. No idea.

We went to Pisa later that day and saw the leaning tower!! It was awesome. Then we ate the best pizza I have had in Italy yet. After that we finally headed home. I was about to nap on the way home when Matt asked me, “So what was it like growing up?” so I decided that it would be a talkative trip home. It was a great, deep conversation and I really appreciated it.

I about died when the girls started talking about how it’s fun to just make weird faces. I joined in gladly haha. My kind of girls. Oh and they’re from Toronto, near Buffalo New York. That’s not too far from Boston! I mean, not REALLY far. Maybe I can visit them in the future! Oh and then we started talking gibberish cause I said I liked to do it. That was really fun too.

So I decided that I will meet the girls in Bologna on Tuesday and stay at their hostel for a night. I miss them already and having friends in a time like this is really what I need. We’re gonna go out and have fun. That’s all I know. Bologna is supposed to be the party town of Italy.

Monday (26^th Oct.)

I woke up today, saw some more of Italy including the Duomo, which is this circular part of this huge church. It was cool cause there were paintings of heaven and hell on the ceiling but I was in a rush to get back down and the steps were incredibly narrow all the way up so I was a little anxious with how cramped I was with other tourists. I got back down and met Shelly. We were going to see this big house with secret passage ways but it was sold out. We got gelato and the chocolate chip was the best ice cream I have ever had in my life. Honestly. Then we went to this market area and looked around.

I’m on a train now and I have a bad feeling in my gut. I’m thinking it has to do with the fact that I still had to pay 18 euros for my ticket but I thought I would get it free cause of my pass. It was too late to go to the “other” station that supposedly would be the correct one for my pass so I had to stay here. Ugh, it upset me. But whatever, I can’t get stressed about it now. I’m on my way to Venice and am about to see the love duet opera. That is if I make it in time. I hope so. And I hope I meet people at least HALF as cool at this next hostel. After that, instead of going to Paris cause it’s so far out of the way, I’m going to Nice in France. I’ll spend a night and a day there and then go to Barcelona to see the film festival before going home.

I have to say, this break has been a great learning experience, completely worth it for the views, the art, the friends and the ability to travel anywhere but what it’s also doing to me is making me really appreciate my home back in Athens. It’s so familiar and I will be happy when I get back. It’s just that, traveling like this, alone, is a day-to-day thing. One moment I’m having the best experience EVER and the next moment, I feel terrified like a little eight-year-old boy. Sometimes for no reason. But it’s funny. I think it’s true that I am growing up from all this.

Written 10/27

Last night I saw the invisible opera in Venice! That’s right, I never saw it. I could not find the church or opera house that it was supposedly playing at. I even called the place and they told me to go to this church. I got to “the church” and it was closed. At least I didn’t pay for the show. All I did was put my name down. But I kept finding myself making up melodies to a new song I just started writing last night in my head called “Running the Grand Canal”. I ran around for close to two hours through the maze of Venice streets and ended up in this stunning area called Piazza Saint Marco. A long shopping building with hundreds of windows and a tower that beat every Venice building I had seen yet in height. Eventually I gave up when I was already about thirty minutes late and I just watched a string group play some contemporary and older classical songs in the palazzo, which was nice. It was also nice that it cost zero euros rather than fifty! Then I ate dinner at Hard Rock Café. I thought it would be cheaper than the other fancy Venice restaurants. It was cheaper cause I got free refills! That’s right, the sodas were also called Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi instead of Coke Light or Pepsi Light! It was nice to feel American for a little while even though I felt guilty that I was doing it in VENICE. I got a bargained ticket for the water tram home and it was the best thing I did that night. Seeing the view all along the Grand Canal was unbelievable. I’ve always wanted to go to Venice. It was beautiful, otherworldly, slightly smelly, hard to maneuver but so so worth it. Kids, this is what you call “Inspiration”! Write it down! Johnny! Especially you.

Now I’m in my hostel awaiting a message from Shelley to tell me (rhyme!) what hostel they booked me in. I will most probably just have to take a train there and find an Internet café to see if they facebooked me by then. If they still haven’t done it by then, I’ll just have to book a hostel when I get there which probably isn’t the best way to do it. That’s what I’ll do at 11 if no messages show up. It’s past 10:30 am now.

I am now in a hotel in Bologna. I ended up taking a train and then going to an internet café then chatting with Shelley from there. We couldn’t find anything cheap for three so I just got a room for one and they’re doing their own thing. I reserved a ticket to Nice, tomorrow (only eight euros cause of my Eurail pass) and then walked out of the train station, asked about the bus schedule but then was told that the hostel was a walking distance away. I actually got a single room finally at this hostel. I think it might actually be a hotel. But yeah, there is a bathroom that I have to share with someone but other than that it's only me! Oh man it feels good to have my own room. I haven’t had my own room since I left home in Maine! It’s so nice to not be living in the same room as five other people. Or even one other person cause I have a roommate in Greece! So it's been since Maine that I've had my own room. I’m relaxed in here. My bags are just strewn on the floor. Ahhh. Feels good. My socks smell also. And I’m hot. But who cares! I’m waiting for Shelley to get back online so that we can plan a place to meet up at and hang out all night. Tomorrow I have to get up at six in the morning to catch a train (at 7:41) to Nice, France. Yes, I’m going there instead of Paris. It’s along the coastline so it won’t take as long to go form there to Barcelona. And it’s on the coast! And someone at the last hostel in Venice said that there was a great hostel there with nice people and people my age. That's very important to me. But yeah, if I stay out with the girls tonight for a long while, I’m fine with just walking back here at 5:30am, getting my stuff together and walking to the train station which is only like 25 minutes away by foot. We probably won’t stay out that late but I really don’t care. I’ll have a total of seven hours to spend on the train. Yes, I have to change trains at one point but still. Does sleep really matter in cases like these? No. I mean, last night was the first night that I've gotten about eight hours but that was eight hours of torture, sleeping on a mattress divided in three segments, which were set on a metal frame that was not level with the ground and had only like three horizontal rods in it, one of them pushing into my back the whole night.

My favorite city so far? Rome.

My least favorite hostel so far? "The Yellow", Rome.

My favorite hostel so far? "David Inn", Florence. 95% because of my new friends and 5% because of the nice painter lady running the hostel.

The best thing I've seen? Michaelangelo's David in Florence and the view of Rome from Palatine hill, next to the Colosseum.

October Break (Part 1)!

2009-10-23T10:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I got in and was a little scared cause it was so new and I was totally alone. I went to the hostel and wasn't very impressed. I then went out on the metro to a random stop and walked along the river and to a place that was recommended to go to for dinner at Lonelyplanet.com. I ended up at the Palazza Navona. I was starving by then and it was around 10pm. I stumbled into the most beautiful church! It was amazing. Then I ate some very high class pizza and drank some Italian wine. The pizza wasn't great though which was disappointing. Though that was because it had blue cheese in it. I met up with Cody and Ricky after that and we hung out at the Yellow Bar (the hostel's bar) and got to know these two girls that go to school right next to us in Boston, Boston University! So weird!

Today I walked around Rome for about nine hours!! It was soooo sooo sooo fun and enriching. I can't go into details now. I'm going out with Livia and Marcello (I met them here just about an hour ago and we talked about our travels). We're meeting Cody and Ricky at a metro stop and going to The Colloseum Pub. Oh no, I'll probably be out late! But in summary, my day today was PERFECT. I fit in more than I ever thought I could in one day.

UNTIL LATER.

Ugh

2009-10-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

i don't care about spelling or grammar

yesterday i went to my class crossroads of greek rhythms and sounds then shared music with ricky and michael later that night i really like ricky's singersongwriter shit and michael is a great filmscore piano writer it was a good bonding experience then i had dinner with six of the others in the hotel like usual but what do you care thats all behind me and doesnt mean anything cause its over i mean i wish i were still sharing music with those two but im not anymore am i?im sitting in my muggy hotel room alone

today cody said if you wanted to look like Stoddy you have to hold the straps of your backpack with your thumbs away from your chest as you do a dumb look on your face and make sure to always look lost and michael said come on! i really have given up on this study abroad stuff cause i think the events here have ended

ive really done all the cool stuff and now i just have to ride it out and wait til i go back nothing to look forward to anymore

today i went to my greek class it was really really hard and my head hurt afterwards and i was much more tired and she told us about a test we will have soon.do you feel sorry for me yet??

then I went to mediterranean percussion and it was fun like usual cause the teacher is cool but he gave us all this homework blah who does homework anyway

tomorrow all that im doing is getting up early even though i dont have classes which sucks ass then i have to get to the school by twelve and get my bank book so i can get proof that i put enough money in the bank that the school associates with and then withdraw enough stupid money for later then i have to do another god awful errand i have to drag my ass to the vodofone store which is the phone store of the little cell phone i have here that i rarely use and that i only call the other kids on this trip with

i have to go to the store to get more minutes in case i run into an emergency later

oh and then tomorrow im starting my boring one and half week trip to

ROME, FLORENCE, VENICE, PARIS, BARCELONA and maybe MADRID which includes the VATICAN, the COLOSSEUM, A LOVE DUET COMPILATION OPERA IN VENICE, THE EIFFEL TOWER, THE LOUVRE, A FILM FESTIVAL IN BARCELONA, all kinds of MUSIC and even MORE GIRLS of DIFFERENT ETHNICITIES so there's no WAY I can even FATHOM the ADVENTURES I'll have.

so fuck off and go do something exciting for me cause i don't know what the hell i'm gonna do other than pick my ass

WHILE A HOT SPANISH BABE does the SAME THING TO HERSELF BESIDE ME!

my life blows.

Funny Day

2009-10-19T15:22:00.001-07:00

Ohhhh man funny day. All because I was in a weird mood though. I could NOT stop laughing in my Greek language class. One reason was because I hadn't eaten anything and had just walked to school with my back sweating like hell cause it was really hot today (ohhh yes, still hot here). So what made me laugh was this stereotypical page with pictures of different cartoon people and their descriptions in Greek (we were all looking at this page in our Greek books in class). The tall girl was "beautiful", "blonde", "rich", whatever, the nerdy guy was "smart", "brown hair", he had glasses. But then randomly there was this VERY short man who had this SMUG look on his face. He was really fat too. I already started laughing. His name was Avtam (pronounced Adam). My teacher was telling us what the Greek description words meant. The first three were stereotypical, normal things like, "black hair", "rich", "short" and then the fourth one was RANDOMLY, "gentle." What the HEEELL! Why was he gentle? That was not stereotypical of what he looked like. He looked mean like a mafia guy. I thought it was hilarious cause he seems all bad but if you get to know him, that poor guy, he's actually really gentle and sensitive, a loving guy. And most people don't know that about him. God, I was laughing so hard and trying so bad not to keep doing it so I thought of one of my biggest regrets to try to quell the feeling. It worked for a while but then the laughs came back. What did NOT help was when Cody said, "What the hell, he doesn't even have black hair." I looked over at the picture and he looked like he was bald even though the description said otherwise. I thought to myself that the little fat cartoon man was so misunderstood. OOOH my god I went over the edge. I was so glad when it finally reached one oclock because that meant I could take a break, eat something and get my laughs out. I laughed ALL the way to the bank to get money for food. At least my teacher is awesome cause when I got back she asked me why I was laughing so much and I told her it was because of Adam, the mafia character. She laughed a lot and said it was great that I was laughing. I even told her that I laughed all the way to the bank. Hahahaha this sounds like the kid's thing, "This little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home!" Wow, memories.

Tonight at dinner I started laughing cause I thought of something I said the night before. At dinner last night, we were talking about Disney and how they put sexual things in their movies. We mentioned Little Mermaid and how at the end, the priest has a boner. Someone at the dinner table asked "What does the priest have?" I spoke up, thinking that I could ease their confusion about the matter. This is what came out of my mouth: "In the marriage scene at the end of Little Mermaid, the priest has a lesbian."

I seriously said that so I quickly added, "Wait, what the hell did I just say?" and bursted out into laughter. NO ONE LAUGHED THOUGH! I don't get it. I think they were weirded out. I even repeated again what I said, laughing at myself. I said it because of the musical I'm writing about a guy that becomes a woman and therefore is a lesbian who gets back with his recently out of the closet girlfriend. So that was in my mind from writing it and I think that's why I said it at the dinner table. Oh and right after, I was like, "Uhhh Freudian slip!" but I didn't explain so they probably just think I simply have lesbians in my brain all the time. HAHA. So yeah, tonight I started laughing about that, not explaining what I was laughing at cause no one asked (they're used to me haha) and no one said anything. They must think I'm psycho. Oh and I had two really sugary drinks walking home cause I was tired. So I'm still feeling the effects of it now and it's much later. 1:33 am to be exact. After dinner and after some travel stuff I was getting organized, I made a recording for Whit that could be by far the weirdest thing I've EVER done. Whit is probably flipping out listening to it now. And my roommate heard me doing it all. I said to Michael, "You're the best roommate I could have in this group I think cause I bet Cody would have killed me by now." Michael laughed and said, "Yeah, he probably would have." Ohhh no hahaha.

Oh pfff, I forgot something else I did at dinner today. I can't go into many details cause in case the people read this, I don't want to offend anyone but we were talking about these two adults that we just met that have a daughter we haven't met yet but probably will in the future. Cody knows the daughter. I asked Cody at the dinner table, "So does their daughter look more like her dad or her mom?" He said, "Her dad," and I replied with, "Oh good!" then realized how mean it was cause the mom is overweight and the dad is thin and well kept. Cody quickly said back to me, "That's fucked up." Then he proceeded to tell everyone what I had said. At least Sadayah laughed. Everyone else didn't say much. After I kept saying, "I'm so sorry, that was mean, wasn't it?" Cody added, "Yeah it was..." and then later said, "their daughter is a babe." I felt so incredibly bad that I shut up for the rest of dinner. Mia said, "You guys are mean." It just came out of my mouth, what I said. I didn't even think about it before it rolled off my tongue. Damn, hahahaha. Only me.

Fuuuuunny day. And embarrassing.

When I wake up it will be Tuesday. And that is two days away from when I will be in ROME!

The Amazing Stoddy.

Lots to Think About

2009-10-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

Michael and I ate at this cafe we found right near Megaro Mousikis (the metro stop that's closest to the hotel). We each had these two little sandwiches. Ok price. They were simple and good. We had a conversation about movies and talked about the night before.

Last night most of "the eight" went to look for a bowling alley that was supposed to be near Omonia station (I met them at the station cause I was at the school all day writing music on a baby grand that I got to play for about three hours, YEEES, after which I Skyped with Mom and Dad at an internet cafe called Cafe4u). We couldn't find the bowling place so we went to a bar we were at before that was big and fun. The girls left prematurely so Michael, Cody, Ricky and I went back near the hotel and went to a bar there so we wouldn't have to take a taxi home or anything. Ricky and I talked the whole night while Cody and Michael had some kind of wild conversation. Ricky and I kept laughing about how people would suddenly rise from the floor. We found out soon that there was a small elevator platform that would take the bartender down to get more alcohol or something. We called it "The Underworld." Ricky and I also were singing our own melodies to the songs playing. It was really fun. Cody kept hitting me with a bottle in the train and it made me mad so I videotaped him while he was slightly off from the night's events (if you know what I mean) so I hope he is embarrassed by it. I told him I would get him back for the bottle hits. Haha.

Back to the events of today, Ricky, Michael and I did Greek homework on a grassy area near the hotel. We were laughing at this guy lying on his stomach who appeared to not be breathing at all. He looked dead. But I noticed that he had his shoes off and said that he was fine cause who would go, "Oh I'm dying. I better take my shoes off to be more comfortable."

Ricky and I went to the gym. I ran really hard on the treadmill. It felt good. I listened to some rock and jazz to keep me going.

I came back, worked on some music and organized my travel plans. Lots to think about!

New People!

2009-10-16T16:36:00.001-07:00

Zoe, Ricky, Cody, Michael, Mia and I went out to a show last night and saw this guy, George (the English version of his name) play guitar. He's really good! The band was not great. But the piano player was also good. They're both from Nakas. George is really nice and he said he has an album he wants to show me. He also said he's really interested in hearing my stuff too! I cannot remember the piano player's name at the moment. After the show, George got us a taxi. He spoke to the drivers and told them where to go in Greek so we had no idea where we were going. Zoe, Ricky, Michael and Mia took one and Cody and I took the second one right behind them. They took us WAY out. A 20 euro drive. Everyone was freaking out in different degrees. Cody was freaking at first cause he had to pee really really bad when we were in the taxi. When we got out and realized we were in a kind of sketchy, random ass area in the middle of nowhere, that's when things started getting more interesting. Mia started acting like Simba if you told him he couldn't be king. Well, a girl Simba. For a while, Cody, some others and I were singing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody to pass the time. Zoe started feeling guilty cause she felt responsible since she agreed to let George send us away in taxis. But we all agreed on letting him do that. It wasn't her fault. It was the taxi driver's fault. And I even said to him earlier that I wanted to go out. I kept saying to Zoe, "Don't worry, it will be fine." Fiiiinally Geroge shows up, really afraid that he just turned us against him. I assured him it was ok and told him I still was having fun. We headed to the area that we were supposed to go to and it was completely empty. Ghost town. So George was pretty much failing with the whole show-the-Americans-around thing. But I made sure to let him know everything was good. We ate at this amazingly good gyro place which eased the tension of the night.

Today, even though I didn't have any classes, I went to the school at around 2 pm and wrote music until about 8:30. The time slipped by me. It was 6:30 before I knew it and Michael texted me that they were eating dinner at the hotel at 7. I had to tell him that I wasn't able to make it. So I stayed for 2 more hours and then ate at Syntagma (a metro stop pretty near the school). But anyway, I wrote a whole song today. The first song of my musical!

I walked home while listening to Nick Drake which was nice. I had a moment of happiness hit me (a bubble of happiness as I like to call it) while I was walking. I felt so accomplished and excited for what is to come on this awesome trip. And I was looking around at all these people living their normal lives. So weird that life goes on everywhere. And it's more similar than you think even though it seems so different at first. We pretty much all want the same thing. No regrets. Love. To feel accomplished. The list could go on for a while but I believe my point has been made. Haha.

I got home, now with more ideas about my musical, changed around my song a little bit that I had just written, finished watching Corrina Corrina and then exchanged a couple messages with this girl I met on the plane coming here. We were on the same flight to Zurich and we got along really well. Now we're talking on Facebook and what's so funny is that she's studying abroad in Vienna and she'll be there while I'm visiting Paula! (I've decided to visit Paula for the entirety of the November break instead of during any of the October break because it would cost too much and also I really don't have the time for it). But But Sarah, the girl I met on the plane, is going on a trip as well so she'll only be in Venice for about a day while I'm there but still. That would be cool if I saw her. Oh and she will be in Athens at some point! I don't know yet if she'll be here before I leave for the November break but oh my god that would be funny if we met up in both cities.

I leave for Rome on Thursday!!!!

And I'm SOOOOOO excited that I'll just be able to chill in Vienna for a four day weekend with Paula in November. What a change from being on my own for this first break. It will feel nice to know that someone else is in charge and can take me around. Oh, I forgot to say that Ricky and Cody might go to Rome for the whole October break so I might be able to hang out with them while I'm in Rome the first two nights. Then I'll take off to do my own thing! I'm going from Rome to Florence to Venice, then to Paris, then to Barcelona. In Venice, I'm seeing a opera of the best love duets from different operas and then in Barcelona I got tickets to a film festival! I get to choose like 6 films to see from about 25 different ones playing while I'm there. Ohhhhh yes. AND I forgot to mention, in Rome I made reservations to go see the Colosseum and then the Vatican!

Soccer!

2009-10-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

I went to a Greece vs. Luxemburg soccer game earlier tonight at the

new Olympic Stadium (where they held the 2004 olympics)! The stands
weren't that filled up but it was still great to see. Greece won 2-1.

Ricky got a discounted sub from Christina today. She asked him if he knew "Stoddart" and he said yes. OHHH sweet, I can hook my friends up with cheap subs. YEAH I'm the coolest.

Monday and Tuesday

2009-10-13T13:48:00.000-07:00

My brain is completely fried because all day I've been doing things and I just spent about three hours trying to plan for my travels during my late October break and it is HARD to do. I have a headache from being nervous and not knowing how the hell to exactly be a lone traveler. And plus I don't know Italian or French. Spain will be the best cause I know Spanish pretty well. Today I wrote more at Momus, my favorite place at which to relax and write. I bought a soda from Christina and we had a short, funny talk. I said one of my wishes if I had a genie would be that dogs would live twice as long. She said I should buy a dog when I'm 60 so that my dog died with me. I thought it was sooo funny and seriously thought, "I hope I live past 75" but I didn't say that. I also started watching Corrina Corrina tonight on the internet. So good obviously.

Yesterday also I wrote at Momus. Dinner with the president of the school was canceled so we all had the normal dinner at the hotel. I also met a Greek girl and two guys while waiting for my History of Music class. The girl is named Maria. One of the guys is named Chris. Don't know the other guy's name. Yay! I met people!

Weekend in Nafplio

2009-10-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

Highlights:

- The first day (Friday) we ate a lot of food at dinner. That's pretty much what happened then.

- I smoked a cigar when the guys and I stayed in the city longer than the others last night.

- I stood from this really old castle and saw an amazing view of Nafplio this morning.

- Saw an old Greek theater that had unbelievable acoustics today. I sang the first verse and chorus of Hot Damn Got a Woman on the platform in front of tourists and friends. Scary.

New Videos on Youtube

2009-10-08T16:26:00.000-07:00

There are five "Stoddy Abroad - Mykonos" videos on YouTube. Just some short, documenting videos of my trip to Mykonos Island with 5 others from my group.

Go to youtube.com/sblackall

Another two days

2009-10-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time at Momus after class finished at four o'clock. I love my Mediterranean percussion ensemble teacher who's also my teacher for another class called Greece-Crossroads of Rhythms and Sounds. He's silly and will just start singing randomly sometimes. Yesterday he came up to me when music was playing and blew his flute right in front of my face. Then he did his hyena laugh afterwards. And he randomly brought up "La Vita e Bella" (Life is Beautiful) for no reason. I said that was like my favorite movie ever. We connected over that.

Last night, Michael and I hung out with Cody and Ricky in their room. We watched YouTube videos. Two of them were of Ricky's music. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llzJoDcn2Rk to hear my favorite song of his so far. I've only hear two of his songs but this one just gets me. I love his style. I kept telling him specific things about what I like in his song Eucalyptus (the one that I posted the link to) and he seemed happy about what I was saying. Made me happy.

Today, all of us except for Sadayah went to the croissant place. I told Christina that they were my friends after all of them had paid for their subs. She told me I should have said that earlier. She gave me my sparkling Fanta lemonade for free (my favorite soda here)! I mouthed, "Thank you" to her and I went upstairs to sit with the others. Cody asked me, "So where's your ho?" I asked what he said and he repeated it. I laughed and said, "That's the girl. The girl who sold you the subs." Mia said that she contemplated putting her arm around me and really flirting with me so Christina would be jealous. I walked downstairs first when we were done and I went up to Christina and said, "Have a good rest of the day," motioning an air cheers to her with my soda. She stopped me and said, "Next time, tell me that you are going to bring your friends because I can give a discount." I was excited and told Cody as we were walking out. He told me, "It looks like I'm getting subway a lot more often." He still calls it Subway which annoys me but I can't blame him cause it did used to be a Subway. However, now it is owned by Christina. I just wish she would go ahead and name the place something instead of just saying it used to be Subway. But hey, look at what I've got for my friends? A place where we can get discounts because of a crush! A failed crush at that...but you're right mom, everything works out for the best. Well maybe not the best but it still worked out in some way.

Voice lesson notes that I want to put down in stone:

- Taste the notes like they're chocolate cake

- Sing from the lowest part of the body

- Strong without pushing

- Make neck feel as soft as a Tempur-pedic Mattress

I forgot to say that on Tuesday night I was upset so I just went to McDonald's for dinner instead of coming home and having dinner with the other students here. It's ok cause sometimes people skip out. You just have to say you're not gonna be at dinner. Before I went to McDonald's (which was normal by the way - I've wanted to try it to see if it tasted any different) I went to a store called Public. Public is just like Best Buy but this one is even bigger. There's a whole floor meant for Videogames. In my pissy mood, this floor was a dream for me. I stayed there for about an hour. The time slipped away from me as I played racing games, this cool zombie game with the Wii gun and a weird frog puzzle game where I shot balls out of my mouth and tried to match them with the same colors. I have to admit, it felt very nice to play some video games again. I felt younger doing it. And closer to Whit haha. But anyway, when I got to McDonald's, I sat there and worked on a timeline for my musical. The story has changed since then but it seemed effective at the time. Well, until I started doubting the story. I realized I had to just jump in and really begin writing it instead of only outlining it. So that's what I did today for a while at school. I brought the computer and wrote at the school cafe for about an hour and a half. I'm the kind of guy that needs to experience it in the front lines to really do it right.

Tonight, we're going to dinner with a guy that flew here to get footage of all of us on this trip. He has a video camera and he actually video taped us a little this morning in my Greek Civ class. I'm not sure where we're going tonight but I don't think I have to pay for it! This weekend, he's coming with us on the trip to Nafplio for my Civ class. I'm so excited! It's supposed to be a beautiful little town. And it has a lot of history there. Our teacher said we're gonna see THE theater. The one that's been here since 300 B.C. He says the acoustics there are absolutely astonishing. I just remembered something I said to my teacher today as I was walking down the stairs behind him after class. I asked him, "Should we bring shoes tomorrow?" He looked at me with a puzzled expression. "I'm just kidding," I finished. He laughed and added, "No, don't bring your shoes. You won't need them." Hahaha I don't know why I said that but I guess I feel comfortable with him, humor-wise.

Two days

2009-10-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

I accidently missed my piano lesson yesterday because I was too excited about the amazing weekend I had just had, I was happy about how well it went with croissant girl (she got pretty close to me and taught me some Greek words...and she looked hot as hell) and I was thrilled about my new musical theater idea, anxious to get working on it as soon as possible. I remembered that I forgot about my lesson three whole hours after I was supposed to go to it. In the confines of my own practice room, I fell to the ground, imitating how a woman might faint after finding out her husband died of a fainting accident (which would spark a moment of humor quelled by fear), and lay on my back for a half a minute, groaning with disgust for my random, out of nowhere stupidity.

Today I found out croissant girl has a boyfriend. Ok, I'll write her name down. Why not? Xpistiva (Christina). Xpistiva has a boyfriend. I asked her out again today and she told me the news. I was pretty upset from that today. More than I wanted to be. And I realized two people working on my recent album are disappointed with the way I did things. That hurt and confused me.

But today I also worked more on my musical idea. It keeps evolving and hence, devolving in the process. The more I write, the more I take away and end up with barely anything again. That's just the way it seems to work. However, this is exciting and keeps my brain going during the weekdays here. This weekend I'm going on a Nakas paid field trip to Nafplio with my Civ class teacher (with the 7 other students as well) and I am very excited about that. Nafplio is a town about two hours north, I believe. That should be cool because I haven't really traveled yet on the mainland of Greece. There will be lots of learning, eating and having fun.

Stoddy.

The Weekend of Weekends

2009-10-04T12:35:00.000-07:00

MYKONOS MYKONOS MYKONOS!

I had so much fun this weekend, if you tried to jam all the awesomeness of it into one room, you'd have things hanging out of the windows, sticking through the ceiling and poking through the walls. AMAZING. UNBELIEVABLE.

1. Five of us got there and immediately I split up from the group because I had an itch for doing something crazy even though I got less than 4 hours of sleep the night before and didn't sleep at all on the 6 hour ferry ride. I told the other four that I was gonna go jetskiing, which is at a couple beaches over. I went to this little store and asked for bus tickets to the beach but the name of the beach slipped my mind at that moment (Platys Gialos). I remembered the name of the other beach across the island though (Kalafatis Beach) and asked him for a ticket there because I knew there was windsurfing over there. He said I would have to take a bus into Mykonos town which is where we just were when we arrived in the ferry. But then I would have to take a bus all the way to Kalafatis Beach from town. It was already like 2:30 at that point and I was afraid windsurfing would be closed by the time I got all the way across the island but I bought a ticket anyway. It was cheap as hell. When I got to town, I asked around and finally found the other bus station up a hill where I was supposed to take a bus to Kalafatis. Unfortunately, the next bus wasn't until 5 and it was now about 3:15. I was not going to wait that long so I had to find another way to get there. So I rented a 4-wheeler and drove myself! It was so badass. There was a point that I was so thrilled by the absolute beauty of my surroundings, the exhilaration of taking this trip on my own and obviously the excitement of driving fast that I stared yelling "WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO YEEEEEAAAAH! I SOUND LIKE A GIRL!" and then I just went ahead and yelled "I'M A GIRL!!!" even though it made no sense but it didn't matter. I was fucking alive. LIVID. My engine did overheat at one point though and I had to wait by this farm for a while. There were two cows that I tried to feed grass to but they just stared at me, unassuming, not scared, just dumb and interested enough to look me in the eyes. It was funny. The 4-wheeler would not start and I was scared I was going to be stuck there I would have to call the rental place. Finally it worked and I finished my drive there.

2. Windsurfing - This typical surfing dude kind of guy was my teacher. Yes, I decided to get a lesson in windsurfing instead of wasting my time not knowing what the hell I was doing. All I'll say is that by the end of the hour, I was going away from the shore, catching the wind, turning back to shore, going back out away from the shore and heading back to shore without falling once. And it was SO fun! Oh and I asked him if the job ever gets boring or frustrating (cause at the beginning I was falling a lot but I just kept getting back on and either saying, "All right, doing it again!" or started singing a song like "Let It Be" haha). He said with people that take a while to learn it gets frustrating but with me it was good. YAY! I can't wait to windsurf again cause I know how to do it now! SO COOL! One lesson and I could go out alone probably.

3. I drove back to town and we all had dinner. By the way, the island was incredibly beautiful. Driving on the edge of mountains overlooking water and rocky cliffs is breathtaking when you're zooming by with wind in your face. At dinner we talked about what we did. They all stayed at the beach and relaxed. I felt so good at dinner I wanted to climb on the table and dance but I played it cool. I was happier than I've been in a very long time. I was fulfilled. Ahhh. I ordered Ouzo for the first time and it was ok. I don't like it that much but it definitely got to me because on the way back to the hotel in the bus I was laughing at the strangest things to myself. I think it was because I was feeling a buzz on top of being high on real happiness from the day.

4. We sat by the beach for about three hours. I couldn't imagine the day getting better. But it did. It was so fun being on the beach at night with beers in our hands, listening to the waves on the beach and later climbing on this cool tree that you could climb and sit at the top like you were in the Sea God's thrown. I got up there at one point and talked to the others in all these weird-ass voices while they took pictures of me. And yes the alcohol had me in a good place by then.

5. On Saturday, I took a walk to Platys Gialos which I realized was only like 15 minutes away by foot. Now that was a nice walk. The views I saw were the views I imagined when I thought of Greece before coming here. Rocky cliff hills, ocean crashing at the bottom. I found myself stopping and whining like a dog at some points because I couldn't take what I was looking at. I couldn't believe I was there. I finally got to Platys Gialos and they said the wind was going the wrong way so they weren't doing jet skiing. I was upset but I just bought a Bud and sat by the ocean in one of those beach chairs. That was amazingly relaxing. I sat there for a while then walked back towards the hotel. I was told by a waitress that another beach a ways past the beach we lived at might have some other things to do (she wasn't sure if they had parasailing but figured they had some things) but I knew that would be a long walk from where I was. I needed to think of something else to do. I remembered that on the way to Platys Gialos, there was a beach with a lot of naked people on it. I was going to stop there to check it out. I remembered seeing a couple topless girls. Yes, and also some old naked men haha. I got to the nude beach (I found out later that our beach is also a nude beach but I never saw anyone naked there) and sat down on a lawn chair by some naked men and women. Then I said what the fuck and took my shirt off, dropped my swimsuit, and sat back down. I even took off my glasses and my watch. I was completely naked. I even got up to swim a couple times and didn't cover myself as I walked back to my chair. Then I saw this girl walk by and take a gander at my slightly spread legs. She was topless. She walked by again and I was happy. I decided to walk to the end of the beach and strut my stuff since other people were walking around haha. I did that and got back to my chair. Suddenly a man came over to me and said, "Hello." I was confused and covered up quickly by putting my swimsuit over my area. He said, "You have to pay." I was glad that was what he came over for cause if he was going to hit on me I would have been VERY awkward obviously. Finally when I decided it was time to go back, I turned around and pulled my swimsuit back on and then realized that I was directly facing about 4 or 5 old women staring at the bottom half of me. One of them had this open mouth smile that suggested that she hadn't seen a young dick in a long ass time. Hahahaha it was hilarious. I think I just smirked. I was glad I could give that to them.

6. The rest of the day was hang day. I mean hang as in hang out. Not hanging our dicks since that was the subject before this paragraph haha. We, normally clothed in beach attire, stayed on our beach, hit a ball back and forth with these paddles Cody bought. There were some intense rallies. It was fun. We also talked to some girls which was nice. At one point, I was sitting in a beach chair and I found myself right where these people were making a movie so I might have ended up in a scene cause they told me to act normally and not look in the camera. I just kept watching this girl, who was an extra in the movie, throw a ball back and forth with another guy. I was content.

7. We all went to town, had dinner, I had a shot and half of this really good Greek wine. Later, I had some good talks with Ricky (he's a cool guy!) while waiting by the water for a 6th member of our group. She was at the same island with her cousins. We met some other study abroad students from another school who are also studying in Athens and there are like 200 or 400 students in that program. YEAH! Hopefully I'll be able to meet more of them. We got some tips about where to go clubbing from a couple different people back at the beach and from the people we met in town.

8. We went to a club called Scandinavian club or something and it was a blast. I ended up dancing on the highest riser against the wall for like thirty minutes so everyone could see me. I got a couple high fives from these random girls in the club. One of them even got up and danced beside me. Score, haha!

9. One of the members in our group got in sort of a fight which was random but everything worked out.

10. The 6th member's cousins stole a boat supposedly just to have fun. That was a weird story to hear about and I was glad I was not part of it.

11. We took a taxi back and everyone went to bed except for Michael, Ricky and me. We ended up going down to the beach at like 3:30 in the morning and it was HOPPIN'! We danced until 5 in the morning and I met this girl that was interesting haha. A very strange girl. She was really cute with dark hair and piercing brown eyes and kept dancing next to me. Finally I got up the guts to ask her where she was from. She said, "Guess." I swear, it was so embarrassing. I could NOT figure it out and she said at like two occasions, "Fucking Americans," in jest. But it still hurt haha. I felt so dumb. My first guess was Spain and she said she was half Spanish. And half Greek. But every other guess just caused her to drop her head in laughter. She pointed at the poster for the movie that was being filmed at our beach and said that it was on the poster. I was so scared and couldn't hear well that I couldn't figure it out. Finally she told me she was from Australia. What the hell? That never even crossed my mind. Later she was beside me again and I said to her, "Don't tell me I have to guess your name too." She laughed and said, "Guess." Hahaha. So I just said, "Ariel." She looked at me with wide eyes and said, "How did you know...that was my name yesterday, Murmaid boy." Strange haha. But that made her appealing. When we finally left I said, "By Ariel" even though I knew that wasn't her name. Or was it? I don't know.

12. This morning, Ricky, Cody and I had breakfast at the bus station near our hotel. On the ferry back to Athens, I wrote on a little pad of paper pretty much the whole time. I've been on this streak lately where I just write an entire story on the spot and see where it goes. Usually it doesn't go all the way to the end cause I don't like it. But my goal is to make one of these stories into a musical. Today I was on a role. I really like my idea! I'm excited. I decided here that I wanted to be inspired by Greece to write a musical with a fresh, new experience driven story. I think starting over like this and not using any other ideas for musicals that I was thinking about before is the best choice right now. And it's been fun. If all else fails, it's been nice writing a lot anyway. Eventually, I'll find the perfect story and write an awesome musical. I've really been getting excited about that lately. People have always said I should do it and for once I really feel like it's also what I really want to do!

P.S. I also saw the most beautiful girl and the ugliest girl in the world this weekend. The pretty girl walked by me in a crowd of people. Her eyes looked like the inside of one of those rocks that has diamond like things in it when you break it open. She had some freckles on her olive skin face and her hair was dark, wavy and silky smooth. I couldn't believe how amazing she was. Unbelievably, mind-shatteringly stunning. Then at multiple occasions, first on the ferry, I saw this woman with a normal top half of a face but the bottom half was like twice the size than I would expect. Her mouth was humungous and looked like a bee the size of a dog stung her there. I felt so bad for her but then later saw a guy with his arm around her and walking with her. That made me feel better cause most of my hard feelings towards her came from pity. But seriously, she was so intensely ugly. I feel awful saying that but it's true. She was so repulsive that every time I saw her, I literally got sick to my stomach. For some reason, when a mouth is fucked up, it gets me the most. I think it started with the Twilight Zone movie that I watched when I was really young and there was a girl in that movie without a mouth. THAT FREAKED ME OUT. So seeing this woman with such a dysfunctional looking mouth (that I found out later could in fact hold a cigarette) really disgusted me to the core. But to end on a good note, YAY a weekend to remember forever! Haha. What a change in mood. Sorry bee sting lady.

Mykonos!

2009-10-01T14:09:00.000-07:00

I'm waking up in five hours to go to Mykonos tomorrow!!! I'm so excited! Courtney, Cody, Michael, Ricky and I are going, sharing one tiny, awful hotel room that I think is the cheapest living situation you can get there and we're gonna have awesome time. I just know it. Jet skiing and going to an open theater at night where drinks are served nearby or in the theater (I think), clubbing, eating dinner, and maybe wind surfing are possible happenings. Well we'll obviously eat dinner. Oh and I heard that there are a lot of nude beaches. Cool hahaha. But I think most of them are gay beaches or something. We'll see. If my friends aren't around, I might go to a nude beach. That is if it is a mixed beach cause I'm not going to a beach with only naked men haha. Sick.

EP

2009-10-01T01:33:00.000-07:00

I got the tracks yesterday! My EP is done except for mastering. But now it'll be up on my Bandcmap site soon! YAY! That was the highlight of yesterday.

Today I have some things to take care of before my mind is at ease. One of the things is to purchase a return flight from Spain to Athens. All right, I'm gonna walk to school now.

What did I do today?

2009-09-29T16:22:00.000-07:00

I woke up, stuffed my mouth with breakfast, went back to bed, had a dream about a tree falling and almost hitting me, woke up again, showered, walked to school, went to my first meeting of a Greek music class with all my study abroad friends here, took a break from the class and had a slice of spinach cheese pie which is my favorite food here so far, went back to my class, finished class, finally finished writing this new rough musical theater story that needs a lot of work but is fun anyway to write, saw croissant girl who was sick and realized the older woman who works with her is her mom, realized croissant girl is most probably out of the picture because I truly don't believe she is interested, did not get my 5-song EP tracks back yet but will most likely get them tomorrow, took the train and walked to Philopappos hill to see a Greek dance thing but all that was there was an empty stadium and a dog lying down on stage near vacant wooden chairs, we walked and took the train back, I called Tim Mulcahey and Luke Holloway by dialing their number on Skype like I did yesterday with mom and dad, Tim picked up and I introduced myself as Scone, Luke did not pick up and I left him a message telling him he better have his pants on, I watched half of "He's Just Not That Into You" which made me laugh a lot, I talked to Amy Johnston on Skype through video chat, and now I'm sitting here way past my bedtime and hungry as any of the thousands of poor stray dogs wondering the streets in Greece. I also had a damn good Powerade today.

Updated Greek Song

2009-09-28T15:24:00.001-07:00

To those who would like to listen, my Greek song which you can find at youtube.com/sblackall (Omorfia Mou) is now translated into English!

Now that I'm writing, I might as well say some extra things about my day. Hmmm, let's see. I had another chocolate croissant (they never get old), I was told that I speak Greek well by the other older croissant lady (but she doesn't know ANY English so I'm not sure if that's exactly what she said haha), the fish I was supposed to eat for dinner at the hotel went nearly untouched because it was so disgusting, and lastly I got a free water today. How? The Momus store that I eat at doesn't take credit card but that's all I had at the moment but the girl behind the counter who always smiles at me (could be just how she is) just told me to take it. It made me happy.

Off Track

2009-09-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

I can't keep getting off track, where I write about the day before and then put off writing about today until tomorrow. But here goes. I have to tell you what I did yesterday besides writing my blog about the day before.

On Sunday, I woke up at 1:00 after the night of clubbing. I actually didn't have much to drink at the club so I felt fine. I just wanted to get out and be creative so I walked my 40 minute trek to the school with the mission of getting a practice room and writing music. I drank a lot of water to prevent myself from becoming overly thirsty due to the afternoon sun. Being overly cautious, I stopped and got a HUGE bottle of water outside my hotel. I realized I had to pee once I had left but I figured once I got to the school I could do it. The feeling of having to pee increased intensity exponentially. By the time I walked by the Panepistimio metro stop, which is the one I come out of when I take the train, I was bursting at the seems. All I could think of was unzipping my pants. I was dreadfully afraid when to my surprise, the store, "Momus" that is across from the street from the school was closed, as well as the chocolate croissant girl's shop. "This couldn't mean the school is closed. No it COULD NOT mean that," I uttered to myself, speeding up now while fearfully expected to be disappointed. Sure enough the door to the school simply hiccuped when I pulled it and returned to its closed state. I started the pee dance and also probably yelled "Fuck." I walked back the way I came and noticed that every store was closed. I even asked directions multiple times at places that were open, without bathrooms of course, and no one spoke English. I had to rely on my eyes to interpret where they were pointing but that didn't do much good. I was sent to this area near a park by two different people, finding absolutely nowhere to pee. I didn't walk that far but I knew I would not survive if I tried. I kept saying to myself, "I'm going to pee my pants. I know it. If I don't find it soon." I remembered this story my science teacher told my class in 8th grade about a scientist named Tycho Brahe who died of a bladder infection. Even though I know Wikipedia is not considered a great source aside from its usefulness when it comes to references, here is a quote about Tycho and how he is thought to have died:

Tycho died on 24 October 1601 in Prague, eleven days after suddenly becoming very ill during a banquet. Toward the end of his illness he is said to have told Kepler, "Ne frustra vixisse videar!", "Let me not seem to have lived in vain." For hundreds of years, the general belief was that he had strained his bladder. It has been said that to leave the banquet before it concluded would be the height of bad manners, and so he remained, and that his bladder, stretched to its limit, developed an infection which later killed him. This theory was supported by Kepler's first-hand account. (Wikipedia)

When my teacher told me that, I about died from a mental infection. This image has haunted me ever since and yesterday it was no longer the elephant in the back of the room with all the other zoo animals. It was sitting on my face. Or on my groin for that matter.

I decided that I had to improvise. Noticing that the park was surrounded by hedges and ignoring the fact that it was in between two busy streets, I snuck inside. Note that standing anywhere in this park could not completely mask me from anyone outside of it. I knelt down on the grass and realized I had anticipated a more hidden situation. My head was peaking out above the hedges so anyone looking my way would suspect some strange events were unfolding. In order to dilute the strangeness of my position, I pulled out my Memoirs of an Invisible Man book (ironically wishing I were invisible at the moment) and pretended to read it. This, I realized, only made me look weirder. Why would a boy be reading his book at the corner of a rectangular park, pressed up against some hedges. Improvising some more, I held my book in my other hand and took my phone out, saying a couple unrelated words into it like, "Yeah, just bring it over" or something. I don't remember what I said. Realizing this made things even worse, I went back to reading. At this point I was at really paranoid that someone, especially a cop, might pop up and deport me back to the U.S. so I decided to cut off my pee stream once I felt comfortable again. I had to deal with the fact that I would still have to pee a little bit and had to face the expected sting when you cut off too early.

Success! I walked out of the park and sat on a bench with a smile on my face. Now I had to come to terms with the fact that I had nothing to do now that I was by the school. Nothing was open because it was Sunday. I walked all the way back and the pee feeling quickly came back to me. At one point, I walked by an opening in a gate that said, "Cafe ->" so I followed the sign through the gate and peed in the cafe bathroom. Ahhhh the first real bathroom since I left my hotel room. That felt good. Before leaving the gated area, I stopped by this awkwardly organized and clean museum with loads of some kind of religious buttons or coins. I was clueless so I walked out after no more than a minute. Further along my trek home, I bought a soda and then noticed a war jet parked across the street. That was strange. Mostly that I hadn't seen it any of the other times I had walked to school. It was this fascinating war museum with helicopters, different kinds of jets and the shell of a napalm bomb. I touched it. My hand made contact with something that "touched" thousands of people's lives in such a terrible way. It was a weird, awful feeling.

Guess what? I had to pee again. I found this square and walked in because I saw signs for bathroom. Yup, this day was all about my bladder. I was aware of this funny fact. The outside bathroom was of course out of order. However, I for some reason was extremely enthused with the pigeons that were scattered around the square. I ran up to one and yelled, "Jordon! Jewels! What's up? Are you ok? You left me so suddenly back there," I had in mind that her name was Jewels but she liked the sound of Jordon. The pigeon was high tailing it away from me, keeping an eye on me. "Do you still love me Jewels? Come on, I know I was stupid but just talk to me a little. Give me a god damn chance. I'm sorry, I don't mean to yell at you." At this point, the pigeon leaped off the staircase we were on and landed on the grass the lined the edge of a park. I jumped up and yelled, "Jewels, come on!" God, wowww this bird was FREAKED out. It just KEPT going away. In her mind, any minute I was going to eat her. Then I stalked three or four different birds, doing the same thing. I called another bird Gary and talked to him about girl problems and how I wondered if I could crash at his place. He obviously ran the hell away from me too and flapped his aggravated wings. I was getting a huge kick out of this. Don't worry, I made sure no one was watching me and I was obviously aware how weird it was.

Later, I watched "Scent of Woman", a must-see, and then finished watching "17 Again", which was a lot better than I thought it would be after watching the beginning.

TODAY,

I went to school, had my Greek language class and then my piano lesson and went to see the croissant girl. Nothing to add here. She was on the go both times. She asked me how I was. I asked her if she was feeling better. That's it. I worked on original musical theater ideas today in a piano practice room, went and got a beer at Momus while working more on musical ideas and then went to the post office to send Luke Holloway our winning Chipotle gift cards for our Vebby movie. I also met some terrible people working at the post office that were mean to me. Haha, they were just annoying. After that I went to my History of Music History II class. We talked about Italian and French opera. I took the train home and then had a discussion with myself about how I couldn't ever really get outside myself. No matter what you do, you will always be yourself. In my case, I was thinking that I wanted to be relaxed at the hotel dinner with the group, not worried about being late for it. I didn't want to analyze the dinner. I wanted to NOT think about what people thought of me or think that I had to keep the conversation going. I didn't want to analyze the situation and just sit back, say things when I wanted to and to avoid thinking that when someone was quiet at dinner it was because of me somehow. Ironically, I realized that I was analyzing the situation right at that moment and had a brief thought stroke because the fact that I realized I was analyzing the situation was also like me to do because I like to always be aware of myself and what I'm doing. So it was a case and point situation. Backtracking a little, I also felt like people usually see me as a random guy, saying spontaneous things. But even if one day I were boring and didn't say one word, that would still be like me because related to my usual actions, that act would appear as a spontaneous one. BLAGH, mind bend.

So I got to dinner and they told me I was like 40 minutes late plus however late I thought I was. It wasn't my fault. I was told dinner was at 7:30 and arrived about 10 minutes late. In reality, dinner ended up starting at 7:00.

I think this is the longest blog I've written. And I don't know why. Going to the island was a much more eventful and "important" time and I didn't write shit for that. Haha.

Stoddy.

Club Sandwich

2009-09-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Michael and I woke up at 1:00pm and called Courtney. The three of us went to Syntagma square where there was this place called "Golden Chopsticks". Courtney and I shared Gyoza. Mmmmm sooo good. I also had this Thai dish with Chicken, Beef and Pork. It was spicy and amazing. Then we all went to an electronic store called Public. I bought the movie, "Scent of a Woman". I've already watched some of it today. It's VERY good. Pacino is spec (spectacular). Courtney and I bought a late birthday present (a poster) for Michael. I paid for half of it by letting Courtney buy it for Michael and then buying a coffee for Courtney that was exactly half the price of the poster. I announced how awesome it was that with one purchase, I did a separate nice thing for two people at once. After Public, we went to this 7 story bookstore which was cool. There weren't many books in English but it was still fun.

Mia, Zoe, Cody, Ricky and his two sisters, Michael and I went out last night at around 11:30pm We hung out in this really small club for about three hours, dancing more and more as the night went on. I kept saying how I thought that I was in a subway car club because it was so jam packed. It was a club sandwich. So many times this waitress had to say "Sorry!" which every time sounded like she was yelling "Stoddy!" and squish through the croud. I was CRAAAAZY last night, dancing my ass off with my friends. I made friends with some Greek guys and eventually went over to this girl at the end of the room. Cody told me I had to go hit on a girl. I was like, "NO, I don't just hit on random people," but I still went and tried to dance with some. I found this Spanish girl who was cute and started dancing alongside her and her friend she was shimmying with. They were laughing as I was dancing but not looking at me but it was scary cause I knew that they were laughing at me. Finally, the Spanish girl grabbed by hands and let me dance with her. I did my crazy dancing and they were laughing. Then this weird ugly, older girl kept tapping me and bumping her ass against me cause I guess she wanted me. I humored her for a while and danced with her. She turned around and wanted me to grind against her so I did that a little but not that strongly. I turned back to the cute Spanish girl and continued dancing. We talked and that's when I found out she was Spanish. I said I was from Minnesota and we danced a little more. I told her I was going to take a trip to Spain (I'll explain this a little later in this blog) and she said that was cool but didn't seem too enthusiastic. I was afraid she was thinking I was trying to somehow make it so I could meet up with her there when I visited Spain. I'm sure that's not what she was thinking but I'm always thinking of excuses for girls not to like me. Suddenly, she asked me if I was here with friends. I told her I was and the ugly girl bumped me again. I humored her again with another short dance but quickly turned back to the Spanish girl. She leaned over to me and asked me if I could go back to my group. I wasn't sure if I heard her right so I asked her what she said. She repeated, "Are you going back to/with your friends?" I assumed this meant she wanted me to go away and hang with my friends. I'm not sure, now thinking back to it, what she was exactly saying. I'm actually thinking she could have been asking me if I had to go back with my friends and she was wondering if I wanted to go back with her but that was just Cody's theory. He told me that I always had to assume the best with girls, that if a girl says, "I hate you," that means, "I hate the way you dance." Haha, I only laughed when he told me that but started worrying that maybe she was hitting on me. Cody did get me thinking about how I was pretty much waiting for her to say something negative so I assumed the worst at that moment. Let's kind of hope she was telling me to go away because that just makes me too sad to think I passed up such a cute girl. Although, I might not have known what the hell to do if I had gone home with her anyway.

Yesterday before I went out to the club I bought a eurail ticket so that I could take European trains from anywhere to anywhere else for a period of five travel days (not in a row). The days of travel can take place any time within a period of two months. You can also pick up to three countries to travel between. So on my first break from school in Athens from the 22nd of October to the 28th, I'm flying to Rome, Italy (I found a really cheap ticket!) and then after a couple days I'm taking a train to France. After a couple days there, I'm gonna hop on over to Spain to practice my Spanish. Then I'll have to take a plane back to Athens. But that I have not bought yet. And also, I have to find places to stay in these countries. I haven't figured that out yet.

It's actually 7:10pm now but my blog thinks I'm in California or something so if I change the time to what it is here, it waits to publish it until like 10 hours later. I could be wrong but pretending it is 9:00am seemed to work.

Me.

Mission Impossible (Blog Is Rated PG-13)

2009-09-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

So, Wednesday, before I went to the strip club with two girls and other guys from our group, I jammed with Zoe (she plays flute). It was SO fun cause Zoe is really good and for some reason we just click. Flute and piano mix well I realized.

At the strip club, the girl that I got a lap dance from was the first girl we saw get up and strip when we got there at the beginning of the night. She danced to the Titanic theme song. She was definitely my "favorite" one but I wasn't thinking she would be on my lap later. The people at this place were really weird though. This old witch lady with big boobs, probably fake, came over to us and was trying to figure out how big our dicks were by checking our hands. Also she was pinching our nipples to see how aroused we were. They kept asking us if anyone wanted a lap dance. All the while this Nigerian woman was sitting on my lap, trying to get me interested in her I guess. It was not working haha. The witch tapped my roommate's crotch like three times. That was awkward. Finally, while she was leaving, Witch asked again if anyone wanted a dance and my roommate pointed at me kind of as a joke. But I decided to just do it. Witch then came over to me and asked me who my favorite was. She asked me if I liked black or white. I embarrassingly said, "white" cause that titanic girl was white. So that girl ended up coming over and Witch asked me if she was the one I wanted. It was like I was shopping at a sex store for a real blow-up doll. VERY awkward. So I just kind of said, "Yah," and looked down while I said it. I couldn't look at her like a product. So she took me in this back area and started rubbing against me. Then Witch forced my hand on Titanic's boob, saying "Touch, touch and kiss if you want". I was NOT going to kiss. And touching was very weird for me. To be honest, it was not very enjoyable at all. And I think her boobs were fake. They had a strange plastic bounce back effect to them that I didn't remember experiencing in previous encounters with boobs. Not something I'll be doing again.

So on a different date, yesterday I gave the croissant girl a CD with Hot Damn Got a Woman, Avery and Dream With Me on it. She said, "Oh good! Good! I'll listen to it!" while saying good like food is pronounced. It was cute. And then I got a free cookie from her and she said it was from the older lady there. That was nice but slightly weird haha. All I said to her was "Poli Kalo" (very good) after she made me a smoothie. I guess the older lady likes me haha.

Today, I saw the girl again. We were talking and laughing. It was fun. I saw one of those chocolate croissants that I love (AHHH so good!) after having a whole 12-inch sub. I told her I wanted it and she laughed, saying "Now?" I told her that I would wait a little. She laughed again and said, "What, in 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes?" from now, kind of making fun of me. I told her that I would order it in a minute and twenty seconds. She said ok haha. About 10 minutes later, I went up and said, "It's about time. It's been one minute and twenty seconds about 8 times." She thought that was funny. So I got the croissant and she said, "Thank you" kind of quietly. I said, "What?" And she said, "What?" back to me cause she didn't know what I said. I finished the confusion with "Did you say thank you?" She laughed and nodded, then continued "Thank you so very very much." Hahahaha so I said, "You are VERY welcome." She also asked me how old I was. I found out I'm older than she is! She's 20. I thought she was like 24. So I thought we were really hitting it off. And then she made tea for herself and made one for me. FOR FREE! Awesome. It was really sweet. The tea was sweet and she was too obviously. I kept stalling on hitting on her cause I planned on asking her what she was doing this weekend and if she wanted to have coffee with me. But then a whole throng of Greek girls came in and ordered stuff. That was interesting haha. I was surrounded by girls. Then this manager guy was there too. So annoying. I didn't want to have an audience when I hit on her haha. Finally, I decided to face my fears after the girls left even though some guys were still in the room. I went up to her with a water and said, "I'll get this to go." She laughed and put it in a bag. Then I finally uttered the words that seemed to weigh my tongue down into the bottom of my mouth, drowing it - "Ti kaneis to savatokiriako" (What are you doing this weekend?) She said, "I'll be here. Then I'll probably be sleeping cause I don't feel too well. I added the next sentence, "Tha itheles na pas yia cafe," (Do you want to go for coffee?) Then my world caved in.

But before I continue, I'll also write about what happened on Wednesday when I saw her. She asked me to write my name down cause she wasn't sure what I was saying. Then she showed me how to spell her name. It was cool. After that, she randomly goes, "You're name is Stoddy. And my name is possible." I looked at her strangely and said "What?" She repeated what she said. I showed that I didn't get it with my wrinkled brow so she blurts, "I was just kidding, haha!" I still didn't get it at ALL. But I didn't want her to think I didn't like joking around. So my brain was swimming trying to think of some way to come back to her. So I announce, "Well...my name is IMpossble. Have you seen the movie Mission Impossible." Yeah, right, another failure. She said she had seen it but then adds, "But I'm the positive kind - possible." I said "OHH ok, I get it," but still I didn't really get it. After I sat down, I thought about it and figured that she might have been coming on to me. I thought maybe she meant to say her name was "Available." I was hoping that at least. So when I gave her my CD yesterday, just before I left, I said in a shaky tone (cause I was DAMN nervous), "Hey possible, is it possible for me to give you something this time instead of getting something from you?" It was pretty smooth but I didn't say it very confidently haha. I got some advice from my friends here in what to say. Hahaha it was ridiculous sounding though.

Previous story continuation - after I hit on her...

"No, I'm afraid I can't. But I'll see you on Monday?"

I said, "Probably," and said thank you and left. I was sure that she rejected me until later when I thought about it and maybe she just wants to get to know me better. Also, she was feeling sick. That could have been the reason completely. But I went to get a piano room and recorded a song on the flip video camera to let out my feelings. My voice teacher sensed I wasn't feeling too well and asked me how I was doing. I kept saying, "I'm good," but she must be great at reading people cause she seemed to doubt me. So I told her I was having girl problems. She told me that Greek girls are very friendly so it's sometimes kind of deceptive. But she said to keep going there, to keep showing my face and things might change. She also asked me if I have always felt like I'm from a different planet cause she always felt the same way about herself. I said yes and told her I knew exactly what she meant. Haha it was cute of my teacher. She's an amazing teacher too. I'm lucky. I hit the jackpot with classes here.

Silly me.

Shorter and Shorter

2009-09-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

These blogs are getting shorter and shorter. It's 3:40 am and I've gotta go to bed.

I had Greek Civ class with the other 7, recorded a video of my Greek song on Youtube that I still have to translate so wait another day to watch it if you wanna understand it (the video's called "Omorfia Mou"), I saw the croissant girl again, I ate dinner with a lot of the others like usual and then I hung out with Ricky and Cody. It was actually really fun!

Wowza

2009-09-23T17:06:00.000-07:00

I'm under my covers so my roommate doesn't see the light from my computer. It's 3am right now. I had a crazy day today. Sang a lot, recorded a video of my Greek song but failed at it. I'll do it again soon.

Talked again with the croissant girl. She said some funny things. I'll explain tomorrow. I'm trying to type quietly.

6 of us went to a strip club tonight. I got a lap dance. All I'm gonna say. Not much more to say.

Cheers,

New [Greek] Song!

2009-09-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

To clear some things up, I did end up dropping out of my flamenco guitar lesson and replacing it with piano lessons. So now I have piano lessons and voice lessons. I love my classes. Haven't had my Mediterranean drum class yet. Can't wait for that.

Michael and I went to the croissant place again today while we were waiting for our laundry to be done. I wanted to show him the chocolate croissants and how good they were. BUT THEY WERE OUT! NO! Anyway, I found out that the place used to be a subway. It still has sandwiches but now has Greek food products too. Also I found out her name. I told her my name too. She was confused by my name so I said, "It's like Study but with an O." And now she knows that Michael and I play piano and go to Nakas. She said she has a friend who plays piano and told us that she likes piano. I asked her if her friend writes music and she said yes. She then asked me if I do and what do you think I said? Yes haha. And I said Michael does too. After talking to her and hanging with Michael, I went to a practice room and worked on my music. I FINISHED MY FIRST SONG ENTIRELY IN GREEK! Then I met up with Cody and had some food and refreshments with him. I walked home (a 40 minute walk) which is what I'll do most days, worked on more music, went to dinner with the other seven, came back, worked on more music and then had dinner with the other seven kiddos. After dinner I hung out in my room, working on MORE music and trying to watch something on my computer. But to no avail, it looks like I can't watch anything because I'm not in the U.S. That's nothing new though. It's reallllllly annoying.

I came by the used-to-be-subway later with my suitcase of clothes and the girl asked me where I was going. I said that it was just my laundry. She inquired where I go for laundry and I said I didn't know but that I could get clothes cleaned for free there because of Nakas.

Yddots.

Piano lesson, History of Music Lesson and Perfection

2009-09-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

I had my piano lesson. I played him "Hot Damn Got a Woman". He liked it and laughed. He assigned me Satin Doll to arrange. While waiting for my one-on-one History of Music II lesson, I ate a chocolate croissant and another similar bread-like thing with ham and cheese for lunch at my favorite snack/bakery place I like to go to and asked the girl behind the counter who's always there, "Pos Lete Perfect?" which means "How do you say perfect?" since I had 4 euros and it cost 3.90. She looked at me with a dumbfounded, shocked face. She replied,

"What..."

I said it again in English since she speaks both languages perfectly, "How do you say perfect in Greek?"

She paused and finally said, "Telios...but you just told me I'm not perfect. You said 'then [something] telios' which means 'You're not perfect.'"

I was so confused because I knew that 'then' (that's the English phonetic spelling of it) means 'not' or whatever but I don't remember saying that she wasn't perfect. I WAS TERRIFIED. EPIC fail.

"No...what? I said, 'Pos Lete', meaning, how do you say, right?" She asked me if she gave me my ten cents back (probably to change the subject) and I said yes. I said I'm sorry twice and that I totally didn't mean for it to come out that way. She told me not to worry about it.

I finished eating my two pastry things and looked up 'perfect' in a Greek dictionary to make sure I knew the word. And I had already forgotten it. When you're under pressure like that, you don't remember what people say. At least I don't haha. I already knew that putting "Esai" before "Telios" would make the phrase "You're perfect" in Greek so I was all set. I was hoping that I wouldn't do some other stupid thing but I knew what I had to do. I picked up my tray and brought it to her while saying "Poli Kalo" which means "Very good" (She taught me how to say that a week or so ago). She said I didn't have to bring the tray to her and could slide it up against the wall where the other trays were. DUH. Ugh, another stupid move. I put my tray away.

"Whatever", I thought. "I'll say it as I'm leaving". I started to walk out and looked over at her. She had her hand rested against her palm and was smiling at me. OH yes. I announced to her, "Esai Telios" ("You're perfect"). She said, "Thank you," in a happy, smiley voice. I turned away and forgot to say "Parakalo" or even it's English equivalent, "You're welcome" but at least I did what I had to get done considering the hole I dug for myself. In my opinion though, I didn't only fill that hole back up - I created a mountain in its place! Just think, somehow an opportunity opened up for me to tell her she's perfect! Weird. Weird weird weird. Awesome awesome awesome.

The history of music lesson is going great! It's telios! It's SOOO nice to have a one-on-one history lesson since I've always struggled with ANYTHING having to do with history.

Good old Stod.

Videos

2009-09-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

Go to http://www.youtube.com/sblackall and see some videos I took yesterday on the trip to Aegina. They are not that detailed but they're something! The videos are titled Stoddy Abroad (Episode #1, #2, etc.)

Aegina

2009-09-20T14:46:00.000-07:00

We. Went. To. Aegina. Today.

Amazing.

Since I don't feel like writing at this moment, I will give a quick summary and then post links to videos that I recorded today on the island with my little video camera. Those will be available sometime tomorrow.

1. We ate lunch. I had pizza and calamari. Not as good as Austin's homemade stuff but good. Pizza not that good either. But on island so everything still great.

2. 6 of us were on trip: Cody, Michael, Courtney, Zoe, Ricky and I Rented 4-wheelers. Courtney and I shared one. Michael and Cody. Zoe and Ricky. I drove the whole time and absolutely LO

OVED it. The blank line stands for a million O's.

3. We stopped at a beach and swam. Some of us stood on a tiny rock island that was sharper than I predicted. I sat from the highest point and sang "Colors of the wind" and "Part of Your World".

4. After driving for a while towards the marina with possibly jet skiing in mind, we stopped at a hotel for refreshments. It got late so we drove back because man who rented it to us gave us a deadline of 7pm. So we'll have to save jet skiing for later. Sad. But anyway, Courtney and I got back first, others got lost and arrived later. Driving really made me feel like a man. Haha.

5. Ate dinner. I had pizza and beer now that driving was done and legs were hurt from driving long.

6. Took ferry home. It was beautiful. Listened to part of "Dark Side of the Moon", Santana's "Song of the Wind" and "Blues for Salvador", Joni Mitchell's "All I Want" and "My Old Man", Van Morrison's "Day's Like This".

This weekend was RAD. But today topped it all. Best day yet.

Me.

DANCE

2009-09-20T00:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Michael and I went exploring. We took the metro to distant places and found a place called "The Mall". It was a big, 3 or 4 story mall with a movie theater and arcade. Reminded me of Camp Snoopy in Minnesota.

Last night, we all went out to Monastiraki with the desire to go clubbing. By the end of the night, I was dancing with a 5 or so group of Greek people about my age and about 3 German kids. Then Mia, Cody, Michael and Zoe joined in. It was a blast. At the end of the night, Cody, Michael and I walked home while the others, those who stayed out as late as we did, took a taxi. We thought the metro ran all night on Fridays and Saturdays. GUESS NOT! I walked home as sweaty as a fish.

Caught in the Rain

2009-09-18T15:26:00.000-07:00

I was on one of the highest hills, Lykavittos hill, in Athens when the storm started today. The storm consisted of minor flooding, LOUD thunder and lightning, and heavy, heavy rain. The rain was so strong, it looked there was a river going down every steep road. I was up at the top of the hill where the telephone pole was when the storm started and had to walk down some metal stairs. Scary. But walking home was fun, the getting drenched part, not the fact that I got lost again. My map also turned into a ball of paper cause it stuck together and then fell to the wet pavement, rendering it useless. My camera was also slightly injured. The screen is a little messed up but it still works.

My voice lesson is gonna be AWESOME! My teacher is great! She asked me to play her a song of mine. I played Avery and she LOVED it and said she has a good direction in mind for the voice lesson. She kept saying I was really talented and should definitely keep going with writing. YAY! I'm excited.

Tonight was movie night with all eight of us. We watched "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". I've seen it three times and by far my favorite part is when Paul Rudd acts like he hasn't thought about how old he actually is for years. You'd have to see the movie to know what I'm talking about.

Sssss.

The Plaka

2009-09-17T11:35:00.000-07:00

I walked around the Plaka, where the Acropolis is, again. Michael, Courtney and I had lunch at this really good place and then Michael had to go to class. Courtney and I walked through some stores and soon after, came home. We all ate dinner together again tonight. Except for Zoe. She's feeling under the weather which sucks. But tonight was awesome. We were all laughing and being very loud just like college kids should be. I like these people I'm here with.

I also put up a video of me on the Philopappos hill on Facebook.

S-boy.

2009-09-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

I put up pictures!

http://www.facebook.com/stoddy.blackall?ref=profile

Star.

Socrate's Game

2009-09-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

Today I was going to throw caution to the wind and take a train up to Nafplio, a city two hours away that I heard was a must-see from my Western Music II teacher. It ended up that the train was leaving in a minute and I was just going to miss it. The next train was in four hours and by then it would have been too late in the day so I passed on the awesome idea of a getaway.

I decided to do something possibly even cooler. I stopped at the Acropoli metro station where the Acropolis is, yes. Awesome, right? I know that for my class at Nakas, we're going to take part in an informative tour of the Acropolis so I passed on that for now. Instead I went on a mission walk to find the Ancient Agora, which was allegedly the stomping ground of Socrates where he would strike up insightful and philosophical conversations with people in the market place. I went around asking everyone, "Milao Agglika?" which I thought meant "Do you speak English" but now I know why a lot of people were laughing at me. What I actually was saying was, "I speak English?" Hahahaha oh man. But it worked. Many of them either misheard me and figured I was saying "Speak English?" and said, "Yes." Anyway, I asked those people that I stopped where the Agora was. I must have asked more than ten people and they sent me everywhere around the area of the Acropolis. I walked for more than an hour and a half under the tackling late afternoon sun, looking for it. At one point I struggled up a grassy incline complete with rocks and chasms only to find myself back where I started. I became incredibly thirsty and yearned for the Agora like nothing else. And water, which I found multiple times. Finally, I arrived at the Ancient Agora, now a broken village due to the Persians. I had to pay two Euros which was way worth it for me after all my work. I went into the museum to read about Socrates for a while and then walked through the ruins until I found a perfect place to sit. While resting my back against the same ancient stone that Socrates one day might have even sat against and read my book of philosophy: more specifically, Matrix and Philosophy. Haha, not exactly ancient philosophy but still...pretty cool, right?

Oh and another piece of news. I saw the Olympic stadium. The old old old Olympic stadium, not the new one. Where the first naked men flaunted their manliness in competitive games. Wow, today was a big day. A masculine, introspective hell of a big day. I think that makes up for not going to Nafplio. But I'll just go this weekend. On the day that I don't go to Poros (not Paros - I think that's a different island). Ha, Greece is fun.

S-MAN.

Planning

2009-09-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up feeling a little sick but I had planned to go to breakfast and meet with Courtney to plan our trip to Hydra, a Greek island, so I got up. We met and decided not to set anything in stone 'til Michael said he was for sure coming with us. I went back to my room and fell back to sleep until 12:55 and I felt better already. I went to the school and had some lunch at this small sandwich shop near my favorite bakery shop. The guy there behind the counter was weird and said I had to be extra careful in Greece being a visitor because store owners could trick me and ask me to pay more than I had to. It could have come across as a considerate remark if he hadn't said it in the creepy way that he did. Then he asked me if Minnesotans would be nice to him if he decided to stay there when he visited the U.S. I said "Yes, they would" and he smiled but I wish I had said, "Absolutely not." He also wrote the name of a documentary that I "have to watch because it has a lot of truth to it and make sure to tell the others about it." How the hell did he know there were others. Strange. The documentary is called, "Zeitgeist".

I had my Flamenco guitar lesson which was intimidating but I think I'm gonna go through with it. I stayed around the school for a while afterwards because I wanted to ask Maria, the receptionist lady for the head guy at Nakas, about other private lessons I could take, possibly in piano (I might still ask her anyway tomorrow even though I'll probably keep the guitar lesson). My guitar teacher would not leave her office though and I didn't want to go in there and possibly mention dropping his class in front of him so I never ended up walking in after many times of passing by the office and glancing in to see if he was still there. I even found a back way a couple times so he wouldn't notice me spying on him.

I walked home instead of taking the metro. The walk wasn't bad. Only about 25 minutes or so. From now on I'll walk home if I have time before dinner back at the hotel. Speaking of dinner, at dinner tonight, Mia said that she went to Hydra today but said that it was pretty boring and that one day was enough to stay there. Courtney and I were talking about going for two days. Mia also said that Paros was a cool island with a nice beach so Courtney and I are going there on Saturday. We're taking a fairy in the morning and staying 'til the evening then taking the fairy back. At least that's our plan.

I feel a lot better than I did this morning.

Star.

4

2009-09-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

Did list

1. Ran up Lykavittos hill, the same hill we all walked up the other night. It was very tough. After 20 minutes and finally reaching the top, which was very rewarding since I could see all of Athens from that high, I had to stop with fear that I might faint. Soon I want to be able to run up that hill and all the way back down. After walking down the hill, I got lost and found my way back to the hotel with a map.

2. Showered, took the train to school and stayed around there for three or so hours until my 6 o'clock History of Western Music II class. I had a two chocolate croissants at this bakery place (SO GOOD!) and did some more Greek language practicing on people in stores.

3. My music history teacher is awesome. All the kids in the class are unbelievably cool. They are also all male. And handsome. And surprisingly full of themselves. And me. Yeah, I'm the only person in the class. Weird, right? That's cause all the Greek students at Nakas speak Greek obviously. Why would they want to take an English music history class? That's what I figure. And not many people go to this school. And no one else in my group are taking it. So, this'll be interesting. Well, I'll learn a lot I guess.

4. Got home and received a package: a deck of cards, 56 of them, each of them being a free burrito coupon. They look and feel exactly the same as good playing cards but they're for Chipotle. I died of happiness when I opened it. And I'm so excited! Luke Holloway's and my winning chipotle video is up on mychipotle.com!

The Beach of Living

2009-09-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Evan,

I went to the beach today with the gang. We took about an hour ride on the metro and tram. We couldn't find the blue flag beach so we settled on this rocky area right near the highway. Not as nice we expected. But the water was slightly saltier than we're used to and refreshing. And Greek. Everyone else seemed to have no problem floating without treading water since the water was denser but I had more trouble. I would bob up and down. They laughed at me. We ate lunch at TGI Fridays which was good and nostalgic. Then realized we had been at the wrong beach before and walked over to the blue flag beach. It still wasn't as good as we expected but we hung out on the sand and occasionally washed the sun off our backs in the water. At least from the water, the gorgeous mountains could be seen in the distance. I didn't even see them until Cody pointed them out. The best thing about the beach was lying on my stomach and swirling my feet and hands in the mounds of tiny rocks. I remember saying, "I feel like a little boy again." Cody said, "You ARE a little boy." The worst thing about the beach were the cigarettes that I kept finding as I churned the sand with my sand speckled fingers. It ruined the mood. I can't wait until we go to Sifnos. That's the island we've all decided to go to. We're gonna try to find a hostel and rent out two rooms for the weekend, one room for the guys in our group and the other for the girls. Sifnos is supposed to have good music and it's not too popular while still having a good reputation. And I'm sure the beach is to die for. Seeing Athens from two high hilltops has definitely given me a taste of the "I'M ACTUALLY IN GREECE" drink but I don't think I'll truly drink it all until I'm on Sifnos.

Star.

Forgot to say...

2009-09-12T14:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I did not only go to the bar haha. Earlier in the day we got off at the Acropolis metro stop and walked around the market place which was a nicely quaint area. We had lunch together and I got Moussaka. I gotta say, I didn't like it that much. I liked it all except the eggplant. Then we let Courtney get us lost because she asked directions in Greek and didn't understand the response. And to that I say, good for her. She has guts.

Short but most definitely sweet

2009-09-12T14:46:00.001-07:00

I climbed to two steep hills today. The first time in the late afternoon with my Roommate, Michael. UNBELIEVABLE. Later at night with my new study abroad friends. Seeing the whole of Athens from one spot really is almost too much to handle. And then seeing it again at night with all the lights from the buildings takes it a leap further. I said at one point, "I feel like I'm in a plane that's not moving."

Bedtime. Going to the beach tomorrow! EXCITED.

A Sitcom Night

2009-09-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

Tonight, we went to the same bar that Cody, Michael, Ricky and I went to last night. It was really fun. Cody, Michael, Ricky, Zoe, Mia, Courtney and I sat around a table and once the ball got rolling, we were goofing around and laughing a lot. I wish Sadaya were there cause then that would have been everyone in our group but it was still really awesome. Hahaha Cody is soooo funny. He always joke-hits on Courtney so at one point he handed her a potato chip as a way to "hit on her" and she took her fist and smashed it. I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe.

One more thing. Earlier in the night, all eight of us were together and we watched a lot of my movies - Hot Damn Got a Woman, Be My Valentine, I Have Nothing (My Parody on Whitney Houston), I Wanna Go Out (Yes they saw our video mom haha), Choking out Faces and The New Neighbor. It was really fun cause there was a lot of laughter and Ricky said to me, "You know what's really cool? From seeing your videos, I think I now can say I actually know who you are."

Cody described all of us at the table as if we were in a sitcom. He said I was the goofy one who'd say something random and everyone would laugh at it even if it wasn't really funny cause they would just say, "That's Stoddy!" Michael would be the quiet one that would every once and a while say the perfect thing or do his funny two-thumbs-up move. Cody said Ricky was his roommate, the sidekick. Zoey was the really quiet one who wouldn't say anything and then suddenly blurt out something in Greek and Cody would think "Wait, did she just talk?" He described Mia as the feisty person would lays down the law. Courtney was labeled as the geeky intellectual in the group who could get us out of any problem. I told Cody he was the outgoing jokester or something like that. The truth is, he is the glue that holds us together. He left to go to the bathroom at some point and the conversation died for like a minute, haha. It was sad.

Tomorrow, Saturday, we're all meeting at 10:30 and eating breakfast in the hotel lobby. Then we're gonna go to the beach if it doesn't rain. I HOPE IT DOESN'T RAIN! The weekend after that we are probably going to at least two of the Greek islands. The nearest ones are Makronissos and Kea. I'm thinking those will be the ones.

O Mikros Prigipas

2009-09-10T15:13:00.000-07:00

I bought "O Mikros Prigipas" which is "The Little Prince" in Greek! I also bought an English-Greek and Greek-English dictionary. I walked into a book store today and said to the lady behind the desk "Tha ithela aghoraso ena lexiko...anglika-elinika" which means "I would like to buy a dictionary...English-Greek." I actually wanted one that also went from Greek to English but I didn't think too hard about that fact at the moment. I was too concentrated on getting the Greek words out right. I stuttered a little but it felt so good to actually talk Greek with someone. But anyway, I had a reason to buy the dictionary other than the obvious fact of having a useful reference. I've started to translate Little Prince! I won't do it all obviously but it's fun having one of my favorite books in Greek be my teacher for the Greek language. Less intimidating than a textbook.

I also attempted to speak Greek while buying a pastry at a bakery (I said "Tha ithela aftos" which I thought meant "I'd like that") and I said it quickly and confidently but I realize now that I think I said "I'd like he". I'm not sure though, haha. Later I stopped at a snack and drink shop and got a Coke Zero. I said the same thing while pointing at a Coke - "That ithela aftos". She knew I didn't know Greek. At the end I said "Efharisto", which means, "Thank you". She said "You're welcome" but then soon after, to humor me, said in a joking and drawn-out, make-fun-of-American way, "Parakalo" (You're welcome) and smiled. It was all in good fun though. I liked it. A lot.

S-man.

P.S. Cody called me "Stodmeister" tonight. I told him that so many people have chosen that nickname for me randomly and without influence from others. I deduced that it must just be a good nickname for me - my universal alias. Haha.

P.P.S A little piece of info from a couple of days ago when I went through airport security (for the second time after traveling 7 hours from Boston to Zurich, Switzerland!) I was SOOO tired that I accidentally groped one of the security women who was stacking the bins (the bins that hold the stuff going through the X-ray machine). I was just trying to reach for my bag which was near her chest! I was nervous because I didn't want to act all tired and loopy so I was trying to move with confidence. But lo and behold, the back of my hand totally rubbed against her right boob.

Out tonight!

2009-09-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

I went out with Cody, Michael and Ricky tonight. We walked around to different bars/clubs and all of them were PACKED and really small until we found the complete opposite: an open bar that was completely empty. We all had some beer and talked to the bar tender who was funny and kept making fun of us depending on where we were from. For example, he said Ricky (born in Guatemala) must be a good swimmer. I didn't get it at first of course (because I didn't hear it correctly haha). Nevertheless, tonight was really fun and put a glorious cap on the night. It was really fun and relaxing. We also found out that the bar tender's favorite island is Mykonos Island. He said it was 5 hours away by speed boat. I have to go there! I really hope I do.

My first full day in Greece

2009-09-09T14:59:00.000-07:00

Dear Evan,
Dinner was great! I had Mythos which is a Greek beer! It didn't taste too distinguished, just a little more sweet, I would say. I brought my little Greek phrase book and that caused some laughs when the guy next to me, Cody used the "pick-up lines" section to "hit on" one of the Greek faculty members at Nakas who was sitting at the end of the table. It was funny haha. The head of the school hugged everyone at the end and kissed all the girls' cheeks. I voiced the fact that I was upset he didn't kiss my cheek to Mia next to me haha. On the way back, a 25 minute walk, I talked to Courtney which was also very fun. We talked about jetskiing, waterskiing and other water sports for some reason. Here and out,

Stoddy.

Dinner tonight!

2009-09-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

"Tha ithela na paragilo ena nifiko" means "I'd like to order a wedding dress."
I thought that it'd be so funny if I told that to a waiter while pointing at the
menu, all the while with my innocent unknowing face on. Speaking of
ordering, I'm going to dinner tonight with all the people on this trip. We
all have been hanging out a lot. Today we actually went out for lunch and
dessert and now we're going to dinner with the head guy of Nakas
Conservatory in Greece. Earlier today there were a lot of awkward
silences because no one knew what to ask him about the school. I can tell
he's the kind of guy who likes to be asked things so I'm gonna tell him
my travel plans and ask him to give me suggestions about the best way to
do it. This is what I've decided to do (the plans might change but it doesn't
hurt to have a goal). I'm goin' island hopping! I'm gonna go to the closest
one which is only aboutan hour and a half away by boat and then hop all
the way along on different islands until I get to Santorini, my ultimate
desired island. I might go with a few people. I know others want to see
some island action. But I'm thinking they'll like my idea of seeing around
8 or nine of them! All right, dinner time!

Things are getting easier :)

I've said "Efharisto" (the English character way of spelling it) to a lot of
peopleand they replied right away. It means thanks. They said right back
to me, "Parakalo" which means "You're welcome". Just that little
communication has made me feel so good. You were right Whit.

Arrived in Greece!

2009-09-08T09:07:00.000-07:00

Lying Down

2009-09-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

I'm lying on the couch right now, listening to the nearly final mixes of the songs from my EP (short album). In a week or so, check out my website (stoddyblackall.bandcamp.com) to hear it! The album's called "Refresh".

I never said why I'm on the couch. Well, I've been sick for more than a week now. Hopefully I'm on the tail end of it now. I bet by Friday, I'll be all better. Last night I slept all the way through the night. That is amazing for me. I slept from 4:30am or so (yeah, stayed up late again with my mom, watching reality TV shows haha) and woke up at 1:30pm when my alarm went off. Who knows how long I would've slept for if I hadn't set an alarm.. Wow. I'm shocked.

5 days from now, I'll be about to take the first plane out of Boston, which will arrive in Zurich, Switzerland. Then I'll take a plane to Athens, Greece from there. I can't even fathom what this experience will be like. I'm just hoping that it will be similar to all those other people that study abroad while they're in college. People like my cousin, Brecken or my Dad. Especially my dad. He always has these long, drawn out stories that are so interesting and memorable. Some of them are not happy stories, however. But most of the stories I hear about studying abroad always end in, "That was the best experience I have ever had". I hope I can say the same thing. I'll do my best to make that happen.

Star.

:

2009-09-02T00:19:00.000-07:00

Dear Evan,

In about 6 days I'll just be arriving in Greece. Here are my feelings about it in emoticons -

:) :/ :0 :6 ;)

At least there's no :|

Star.

Maine!

2009-08-29T00:25:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh in my bedroom. Maine. So nice and clean. It's incredibly how AT HOME I feel tonight. I haven't been here in so long and it's great to have a taste of the summer I really didn't have this time because of classes and everything at Berklee. I mean, don't get me wrong, I had a great time this summer but I'm gonna eat this week up. I'm still unwinding though, wow. Agh, I'm working on it. My EP (my short album called "Refresh") is still not finished and I just want it to be done and the best that it can be. It's frustrating with music or any other art that I have created how imperfect it always seems. But the beautiful thing is that I am getting closer and closer to how I want my music to sound. It's getting nearer to how I hear it in my head when I'm writing it. Although fine tuning is much more frustrating than the first young stages of sloppy tuning when I didn't have as many tools. Now almost everything is here for me and I just need to find the best way to use it all. Then again, it's not all here for me yet. I'm trying to learn how to produce and mix myself well so that I'll have more power and can mix anything I want. The fine tuning will be tedious, yes, but I'll have both horse reins in my hand.

There's my spattering of ideas for the night. See ya went the sun decides to show it's shy face again!

Stoddy.

Last day in 1175

2009-08-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

This is an epiphanic moment for me. It's amazing a big event can be made out of sitting in a small, moderately messy room complete with three empty glasses on the desk, open drawers and books ready to fall of the shelf. This is the last time I'll be in this room after midnight. I will never live in 1175 Boylston again. All those late nights, working hard, writing music, editing my short films or sitting bored, too scared about my future to do anything about it will never reoccur at this very spot. On those intimidating, frightful nights I usually found myself leaving and taking a semi-dangerous walk down Boylston, passing begging drifters who always made me feel careless and spoiled and into Shaw's where chocolate milk temporarily eased my mind. I often walked back with a dread that had no home, no reason but still interrogated me, going as far as to stop my legs from walking any further once I reached the steps and convincing me to wait another five minutes until I "figured out" whatever I needed to solve. Then there were those days that even the sunlit sidewalks outside the doors of 1175 Boylston seemed given to me, not by a god or anything someone might call a higher power but by perfection, an ideal I had suddenly come a step closer to. Even the McDonald's at the corner or the Burger King a block away, even the intrusive signs looming above me, whining like children to be the one to persuade me: they were all welcome. Life was put together. It all made sense. And I would come home to my small, approx. 15 by 12 room and feel safe, happy and comfortable. Whether a teacher recently told me my songwriting was up to par or I believed I had a chance with my current crush sitting by me in class, those days ended under this roof. Less than two steps behind me sits the invisible bed, the futon that disguises itself as a chair so that anyone new who comes into my room always asks, "Wait I don't get this. Where is your bed?!" One of these people was Whit, my brother. I always get a kick out of it and wait a few seconds so that they feel stupid or simply dumfounded as if they got the chance to stand on stage at the Carnegie Hall magic show.

My nice Roland piano at this very moment, and like always, seduces me when I catch a glimpse of its shiny keys and buttons that have given me so much promise and purpose through hours of awarding struggle. Goodbye to the posters on my wall, Pink Floyd "The Wall", The Bealtes "Abbey Road", Pink Floyd "Dark Side of The Moon", a sexy picture of Scarlett Johanssan which is basically lifesize, a black and white Beatles poster that has a unique endearing quality about it, and yet another Beatles poster, the most colorful of them all. I will keep these posters but they will always remind me of this pathetic room. It is cozy and now part of my life but I will never desire a room like this again. I will strive for bigger, expansive rooms if I can get them, more accommodating, livable. But like many things that get left in the past, becoming only furniture in your brain's memory cavity but nothing more, I believe there will be times that I desire backwards, wish for the days of smaller things, more tangible problems. It's funny how the older you get, your problems don't necessarily get harder. To a child, a big problem might as well be a ripped doll that will no longer say "I love when you hug me!" The older a person gets, I think problems just get further away, harder to understand, to grasp. Problems become more abstract. And I think when I'm bombarded with tangable, stupid problems like ripped dolls, a sea of abstract difficulties and everything in between I'll be struck with nastalgia and like everyone else on this Earth, yearn for the youth I can't have. So this is why I feel a strong sense of passionate dependancy for this room, an affection that has no real logical grounds. I will miss it dearly because it represents everything this last year has meant for me. Everything from meeting John Mayer to playing on stage at the Berklee performance center to submitting a video for a Chipotle competition with Luke Holloway, to working out at the YMCA, to playing music for bigwig Sony entrepreneurs in my Singer/Songwriter workshop class. However, this room would have barely any significance at all if it weren't for my two roommates, Tim Mulcahey and Luke Holloway who lived next door to me all summer and Tim who has been my roommate for even longer. Both of them make this apartment what it is. They make it a landmark in my life, a milestone. Without these two guys, my best friends, I wouldn't be the same person I am now. And this room would only know me. Hey room, aren't you glad you've met my friends and all these memories? I bet you are. And I'm sure you have thousands of other stories that I don't know about. I'm glad I could add to them. I hope they made you smile. Cause even though you aren't great, you still make me smile. You always will.

I'm off to Greece in a week and two days! I've studied some Greek in these last weeks! I hope I'm ready for this leap into a crazy life change! I know I am. Whit did it and with more grace than a cat springing up to a windowsill. So pretty much, he just did it and wondered why we were concerned in the first place. And that's how I want to be.

Go to:

http://www.youtube.com/user/sblackall

And check out my new videos!

2009-06-03T15:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Evan,

Emily Goldstein and I started writing a song about a skydiver. The entire song takes place while the skydiver is falling through the air. The catch is that his parachute won't open. Well, it's rather an anti-catch since there is nothing to catch him, ha! Ironically, all his life, he never felt like he had both his feet on the ground. He never quite grasped his purpose in life. And during this fall, he experiences an epiphany, helping him to discover his true place on this Earth. By the time he hits the ground, he makes the most profound realization, giving the end of his life an almost calm, yet tragic bang. At least that's my idea of it so far. We still have a lot of lyrics to write but I'm excited to watch it grow into an adult. At the moment, it still has a diaper on.

After the co-write, I went to Chipotle and got three veggie tacos with sour cream, hot, medium and mild salsa, lettuce, cheese and tabasco sauce. They were amazingly good. Oh my god. I'm listening to my entire music library right now on random and my song, "I Wish You Weren't Sad Anymore" came on. It hit me hard. This is the song I wrote for Britta Anderson when I was going off to college.

I played my new song, "My Image of You" for my class called Singer/Songwriter Workshop yesterday and it went really well! They said that it reminds them of musical theater music AND Beyonce! That's a weird mix, right? My reply to that was, "Well, I've been listening to a lot of Whitney Houston, hoping it would show up in my music." I got a laugh from that. The class goes like this: Every week there are four songwriters that go up and perform for the teacher and other songwriters in the class. There are about 12 total. The one up at the piano or on the guitar plays his/her song and the class critiques it. Then he/she plays their song again with adjustments or not. I love it. John Aldrich teaches it. He is a GREAT teacher and wonderful guy. I'm excited about this semester. Most of my classes center on Songwriting. All BUT my voice lesson. Wow. So I'm taking 12 credits of songwriting classes. Crazy. LOVELY.

I'm excited about my life. If it can have songwriting in it, I'll be ecstatic. That will mean I have come to my epiphany before falling without a parachute. Oh wouldn't that be nice?

Love,

Stoddy.

Mieka

2009-06-01T17:12:00.000-07:00

I love you. I always will.

This is for Mieka.

Stoddy.

Evan

2009-05-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

I was at a crime scene today. Well, sort of. This is how it started:
I was walking by the Charles river near the Harvard bridge when a young man sitting by a tree saw me and asked me, "Do you want a shot?" The first thing that came to my mind was Heroin. I said, "What? A shot?" He repeated, "Yeah...a shot of whiskey." I said no thanks. Then he talked some more. "I'm thinking about killing myself."
"Really?" I replied, realizing I had just stumbled upon an unforgettable situation.
"Yes," he coldly responded, pulling a whiskey bottle out of his black, felt backpack.
"When are you planning on doing it?" I asked him, still standing a few steps away from him.
"Tonight," he uttered in a matter of fact tone, drooping his head under the shelter of the leaves above him. The gray clouds and light sprinkle of rain was the least of my concerns in front of this mystery man, who was in the one place where nature could end his misery if a storm decided to strike the tree.
"How old are you?" I continued, still doubting the safety of the situation.
"27. Come on man. Sit down. Let's talk." Given that I had already almost left when I saw him reaching for the whiskey bottle, frightened he would take out a gun, I was trustful of my instincts and stayed standing.
"Sorry man. I think I'll just stay where I am."
"Ok. That's all right." I felt something profound was in play here and decided I would stay with him for a while at least and asked,
"Maybe you can call a hotline even though you might think that would be stupid." He did not reply and asked me to sit down again and join him in a drink of his tall, yellow bottle of depressing whiskey. I declined his offer once again. I continued with the curiosity and inquired, "What's bothering you? What's the dilemma?"
He said, "I know it's cliche but...there's no point."
"Yeah it's cliche but that's because everybody says it, because it's true. There isnt a point," I threw back to him without a thought to what the correct thing was to say. I wanted to be real, a fleeting friend.
"I don't have anything tomorrow. There's nothing for me," he droned, begging me for more conversation from his sunglass hidden eyes.
"Tomorrow's shit. That doesn't mean anything. A year is what counts."
"Are you a day by day kind of guy?" he asked me, seaming to contradict what I had just said.
"Yeah...sometimes. I climbed a tree today." Evan, whis is what I decided to call him later upon reflection of the moment, cracked a rare smile, giving me strength and hope to continue fueling his confidence or purpose or whatever the fuck was going on in his brain.
"Where?" he genuinely wondered of me.
"A little ways over there," I said, pointing away from the bridge, further down on Mass Ave and into Cambridge. "By a tall windowed building. I mean, who climbs trees anymore?" I observed, proud of myself for being honest and pouring my true self out to Evan (Evan Trevor is the full name I decided for him).
"Come on, sit down," he pleaded to me again. My trust for Evan had built up to a reasonably safe point by now and I saw little danger in taking a seat, but also keeping some distance from him. He offered me a drink again and I said no once again. "You don't drink?"
"No, I do. Sometimes. I just don't know you," I repeated, since I had said the same thing to him before when he had asked me to sit down for the second time. Before, he said, "Well I don't know you either." This time he only shook his head, not as much directed to me, but more so in the face of life and disapointments it had thrown to him over and over. "So what's your thing? What do you do?"
"I'm a musician. I'm a singer/songwriter. I go to Berklee College of Music," I told him. He seemed impressed.
"What sort of things do you write?" I talked about Hot Damn Got a Woman and how I like writing serious songs but also humorous ones. "How do you plan to get the stuff out there in a place like Boston?" he tested me.
"Well, I'm afraid. Some people pretend not to be but I'm scared so I'm thinking about mixing medias. I make movies too. Cartoons and movies. Why not double my chances and write music for cartoons? Something like that, you know?"
All he said was, "You're confused. You're confusing yourself. You sing right?"
"Yeah, and play piano," I responded, and that topic ended there. I said I loved writing so much and he said he loved writing as well. I asked him what he did specifically; did he write books, music, etc.? he said, "I write poems." I lit up and told him how great that was and how much I love poetry. He reached in his bag again and pulled out the bottle. I was still worried that Evan might pull out a weapon and decide to kill us both but this guy was proving to be only a desperate boy without purpose. Or that's what he believed. I still refrained form drinking with him; hell, what if he wanted to poison us both instead. His disapointment in my refusal surfaced again but I stuck to my decision.
"Do you go to college?" I asked him. he said no but that he did go to college before and that he majored in fashion design. I showed my honest interest in that profession, not personally but in the case of respect for art. Then he admitted he was bored of it. I told him it wasn't too late to start something else and he agreed.
"See, I'm glad we talked," he said. I felt the same way and let him know that. I was glad too. "You're not a mad person, am I right?" he asked me after I had said earlier that I like people unlike most and that I feel there is alot of good out there. I told him I am not a mad person. Somehow we got to the topic of beauty and agreed about how wonderfully stunning the Charles looks from the bridge when it's dark or in the morning. His thing was waking up at 5:30 am and looking at the Prudential and the John Hancock by the water. I didn't know what the John Hancock was but I agreed. I said I loved the ripples in the water and that I was on the way to the boat house to see if I could rent a boat sometime. His eyes widened as if he thought I'd ask him to go with me. I did not ask him that but enjoyed his pleasure or the glimpse of it that I had just witnessed.
"Do you like...haha," he stopped and stumbled over his drunk words. "Do you like whatever?"

I laughed and replied, "Yes. I do." After a while of thinking, I said, "I like spontaneity if that's what you mean." He didn't hear me. Or at least he didn't say anything back to me.
"Have you seen Waking Life?" I wondered. He said no. I was right to think he liked philosophy so I reccomended it to him. He asked me if I had seen a movie with Johnny Depp as a poet. The movie is called "The Libertine." He described it as sexual. Evan asked me over for drinks and music and said he lived right at the end of the bridge, on the Berklee side. I just made a "no" sound and avoided any response.

THEN the cops came. Well one came first. He asked Evan if he had said he wanted to kill himself and that he fit the description: a white shirt, 5'10" and 154 pounds. Evan claimed that he had the wrong guy and would not give the cop his name. He kept saying he was going to head home but the cop said he didn't have to worry because he could go soon. A cop car parked by a tree and a clown car amount of cops came out, gathering by Evan. The first cop asked him if he knew me and I'm glad he said we had just met. Another cop asked me the same thing and then he went over to Evan. The frist cop came over to me and asked me if Evan had said he was going to hurt himself. I said in a quiet voice, looking over at Evan to make sure he didn't see me and said he had talked about killing himself, and tonight. The cop brought me over to his car and wrote down my information. I waited with another cop after that and we talked about the situation. He, along with others, thought I had called the police about him. But I had not. I have no idea who did. He told me I could go. I walked away but came back, approaching the first cop, asking him if he thought I should go with "Evan" to the hospital. He said they were only going to see if he was fine to go free. I decided to leave and avoid any other complications. The cop thought that I thought they had written me up for doing something wrong. No no no I just cared for the guy and thought he was probably lonely. Another cop said that it's hard to know what's right in situations like this after I told him that I didn't know if I shoud have called the police or not. Honestly, it never even crossed my mind.

***

On the way home, I saw a group of people with a camera and they asked me if I would take a picture of them. I was more than happy to and they laughed and said they lived there and that this was just a paraody. I took the pic from way up high, exlaiming, "Oh yeah!" They asked me to take it from up high so I woud get the Mass Pike in frame. One of the guys laughed at me. I also noticed two guys singing and playing guitar near my apartment, under a tree. "What a strange but distrubingly wonderful day this has been," I thought to myself. I looked up, spread out my arms and let the rain tackle me. Well they were only sprinkles.
I do like whatever. I love it. And it's about fucking time to stop being confused.

GOOD LUCK EVAN!
THINK OF ME.

-Stoddy.

Midday Musings

2009-05-13T14:23:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting in the living room of Whit and Kevin's apartment, listening to Whit say, "Yeah yeah yeah," over and over again. He's listening to his supervisor give him critiques about his student teaching. Tonight Kevin wants to take me out. Oh no. He's napping right now and said he's gonna get up in a hour or so, do some homework and then discuss his plan with me. I think Whit has to go to bed earlier so Kevin wanted to have an outing after Whit nods off. Yeah I know, nice of him, right? More details later.

I got back from Mother Bears with Whit and Kevin an hour ago. It was SOOO good. Whit and I shared a 14 inch pizza. My side was pepperoni and cheese and whit's side was just cheese. Amazing.

I like this whole blogging thing. I was definitely inspired by Whit's blogs in Costa Rica. I had only read like two of his entries before coming here but I wanted to be more knowledgeable when I got here so I could be in the loop once Whit started telling me about his experiences. OH OH, that's what's happening tonight as well. Whit's gonna show me pictures and videos from his trip. I'm excited.

Star.

P.S. Check out Whit's blog at costa-rica-whit.blogspot.com. It's very amusing and clever.

The First Morning

2009-05-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

May 13, 2009

The First Morning

According to dreamviews.com, having your teeth fall out in a dream is a sign of “excessive worrying”. Last night, I had a dream about that very topic. Though I don’t necessarily believe in the complete accuracy in analyzing the meaning of dreams, I find it weird that it happened on the first night of eight that I’ll be staying at Whit’s apartment in Bloomington, Indiana. By the way, I’m sitting alone in his apartment while he’s out doing his schoolwork. No problem. Every day, blogging is what I'll do to pass the time. Along with preparing for my gig when I get back to Boston.

My dream:

I’m picking at my teeth, noticing that there’s a small, sharp area on one of them. I go to the bathroom and notice a hole in the bottom front tooth where the permanent retainer is (it actually broke recently!) and run out in front of the people in the living room. I distinctively remember Dad, Whit and a girl being there but there are a lot more I don’t remember. They are gathered around me in a wide semicircle. The girl is the nearest to me, to the left. She’s a girl I’m interested in. I don’t think at first that she is there and whisper to myself, “I really like Emily”. Then I see her to the left of me (there is not an actual Emily that I like – I fabricated her in my dream) and am scared that she heard what I had said. I announce to everyone, “I think I’m missing some of my teeth! Well, there’s a hole in one of them!” I put my hands up to my mouth and suddenly a big molar and a couple little teeth land in my hand. People gasp and hold back their laughter. I’m devastated that people think this was funny even though in a movie it would be funny. Cause I did just say, “I THINK I’m missing SOME of my teeth!” which was incredibly understated. I freak out and more teeth pile into my bowl of clenched hands. I move my jaw to make sure that this is actually happening and it feels like there are only three or four teeth left. Dad looks at me and starts messing with me. “Stoddy, there is a specialist that I know who would be happy to help you…” continuing with almost sensible things but saying them in a mocking voice, like a James Bond character or something. I yell at him that this isn’t funny at all and Whit stops me, “Stoddard, he’s just making things easier!” And so on. Yeah, a nightmare complete with public humiliation and deterioration. Not fun.

I took a shower this morning and was thrilled by the showerhead’s power. It felt as though a thousand cartoon needles were massaging every corner of my body. Very nice. But then I ran into a dilemma after coming out of the shower. A towel had fallen on the ground without me noticing it. Now, in the circumstances of being a guest at another apartment, the worst thing that can happen is this very thing. Especially when there is not a washer and dryer in the apartment and it is raining hard outside. The first thought that goes through your mind is, “Oh no, I should pick that up,” but then you realize the paradox. If you hang it up again, the owner of the towel will not know that it had recently been on the floor, now covered in small hairs, dirty water and whatever else grows in the grout between tiles. In essence, you are deceiving them. This action you will have to secretly regret, since they will probably never find out that they dirtied themselves up because of something you did. The other option is to keep the towel on the floor to avoid towel deception. This move will blow up in your face immediately because the owner will come trotting in and think that you had used their towel, leaving it on the floor afterwards like an insensitive jerk. That or they will assume you knocked theirs off the hook and were too lazy to pick it up but forget to realize the consequences that would have ensued for their own hygiene if you had in fact did that. So there really is no way out in this situation. In my case, I hung it up. I could just tell Whit what happened to rid him of the deception entirely.

In other stories, I just heard the biggest thunder strike I have heard in years. And immediately following it, a car alarm went off. Ooooh, did a car cut in half??? That’s what I kind of hoped. Speaking of that, yesterday Whit picked me up from the airport and we had a nice long drive since he took us in the wrong direction for a few miles I think haha. Don’t get me wrong, it was a fun drive and I wouldn’t have asked for it to be shorter. We talked about music, the funny jokes we have with our roommates, Costa Rican ketchup (it’s pink!), other shit and I told him about a funny-as-fuck event that took place only a few days ealier. Would you like to hear about it?

I was sitting outside a Berklee building on Thursday, May 6th when a random, not-so-attractive and overweight man with bad teeth came up to me and blurted to my face, “WHATEVER!” in a sarcastic tone. He followed with a laugh and the statement, “Don’t ever say that, all right?” I paused and said, “Yeah, ok hahaha.” He then walked away and told me a very “beneficial” piece of advice: “Stay on track,” laughing afterwards as well. I humored him by continuing to laugh. He finished with, “Thanks,” which I assumed was an appreciative thanks for listening to him and tolerating his serious fucked-up-ness.

When we got home, Kevin, Whit and I played a couple rounds of Halo then went out to a restaurant called Scotties where I got a spicy burger, Kevin got a pizza and Whit got a burger too, I believe. Whit told me to get the waffle fries with cheese on them (nacho cheese to be specific!) and it was AMAZING. After we got home, we got ready for bed and then we played more halo haha.

Oh and by the way, there was no relation to the thunder strike and the drive with Whit. I was just trying to link the two topics so I didn’t have a random, one-liner about thunder that didn’t belong, squished between all the other fat paragraphs.

Star (as Kevin, Whit's roommate calls me because in high school, Whit's and my jazz band leader misheard Whit when he mumbled my name, "Stoddard!")