SO...MUCH...VICTORIA'S...SECRET...

If a whale and an elephant had sex on a beach, who would be on top?

This story starts out with me on the bus to Philly, a stop on the way to New Yawk. the in-bus movie is Sleeping Beauty, the tragic tale of a 16-year-old girl with the voice of a middle-aged voice actress.

It started, technically, July the 10th. Before that, though, my cousin picked me up at the airport and drove me around Washington D.C., which took longer than expected because there was a sinkhole in the middle of the main road between the airport and Washington.

French reggae is wierd.

The first day, I got to the place, and after giving them my stuff, they said I was in El Salvador.

But I was clearly in Virginia.

The guy in charge of El Salvador group turned out to be a Polish guy named Lukasz Maslanka. If you're one of my sister's friends who know Padre Polska, same basic thing.

Lukasz is pronounced Woo-Kash, and he's a really cool guy. He pronounces 'money' as 'mah-nay'.

MONDAY, JULY 11

First real day, we had lunch in Georgetown, and they gave us an hour and a half to be there. I was under the impression that lunch meant casual dress, but we were instead supposed to keep our (suits for guys/whatever the hell they wanted for girls) on. We had to wear those every day. Anyway, I had to change, so the buses left without me, and I had to get a ride from some guy who also drove another kid.

The other kid and I walked around Georgetown, found some Chinese guys, walked to CVS with them, got gum and shampoo, and waited for the bus home.

As I was standing there waiting, someone crossed the street. She looked like someone I know, but she's a little out of context, and she partially bleached her hair. But as I was staring at her, she saw me and started staring back with the same 'I know you...?' look.

As she got a little closer I knew it had to be who I thought it was, so I shouted out "I KNOW YOU" and pointed.

A wise man once taught me the Ham Sandwich rule of writing. The idea is that you make such an engaging story, your reader cannot stop reading it. You're supposed to write in such a way that if your reader had a ham sandwich in the other room, they wouldn't go get it because they want to finish reading your writing. The best example of such a writing is the Torah.

Get it?

Jews have to keep Kosher...so..Ham Sandwich...

I was never able to test that on myself. I mean, the writing will still be there, but I have a dog who might eat my ham.

This entire thing was just to make you keep reading my words before I told you this girl who I knew who was at the thing was Dana Levy, who happens to be rediculously shorter than me.

Well, I was on the higher part of a hill to her.

And I'm 1'1" taller than her.

We got on the buses and went to see some guy talk about how different doesn't mean bad or some badly different crap, but the guy was late, so we were told to share stories about our past experiences with culture shock.

My roommate got up and said he went to some Afican country with a friend, and while they didn't speak Africanse(or however you spell that), that was all a certain storekeeper spoke. So they went up to the storekeeper looking for eggs, but when he didn't understand, the friend clucked around like a chicken and pretended to lay an egg.

The storekeeper guy thought he knew what the friend wanted, went to the back, and brought back toilet paper.

Which they call 'loo rolls' in England?

Eeew.

So why the hell don't they have school buses in England either? How different, and thus bad.

Back to the culture shock stories, I got up there and made a little speech which went a little som-ah ting like-ah this:

"Well I went to Europe last summer...and there's this thing there...they call it Nutella. I believe here they call it...uh...heroin. And they put it on EVERYTHING. Like...EV-ER-EE-THING."

Perhaps it's all in the delivery. I'll be glad to do a reinactment for you.

Anyways, this one kid named Tim, from the always-amazing England, came up to me afterwards and introduced himself, and said I was hilarious and such, and then he left. The next day he introduced himself again, and then later at another party he introduced himself to me again, and the third time I finally got his name to stick in my mind. I already told you about Tim though. This was just the first time I met him.

TUESDAY, JULY 12

Lunch at DuPont Circle meant crazy Baptists(aren't they all?) singing Jesus songs and a double-chocolate yet coffee-flavoured(the extra 'u' is for 'disgusting') milkshake at Krispy Kreme.

We then had a simulation which basically read: "Australia banned Canada's salmon from it's market. If it doesn't unban it, Canada sues Australia for $45 million a year, and Australia will be breaking international law. If it does unban it, Canada bitchslaps Australia's budding salmon industry. What will Australia do? Divide yourselves into the different countries and discuss"

I wonder if Canda will win or not.

I was on Canada's team, so we won. We settled a little more than we had to, though. We said we would write "CANADA" on every Canadian fish package.

WEDNESDAY JULY 13

Saw the national WWII memorial, but my camera ran out of battery power, so I don't have a picture of the awesomazing duck which walked around and the squirrels who didn't run from humans.

Afterwards we went to the Smithsonian area, but because the group I was in was too big and kept losing people and having to wait for them all, we only saw two museums, niether of which was the Air-In-Space("There's a unicorn! In space!" "So?" "What's the unicorn breathing?" "Air?" "There's no air in space!" "There's an Air-In-Space museum!" - Simpsons). one was the Dull Rocks, The Hope Diamond, And Fossils Museum, the other was the National Archives.

Neither was great.

We went to the Museum of Natural History(wink!) because it was close, and because it had the Hope Diamond. We spent a few hours in there, then a few more in the National Archives, which had the also stupid everything-except-that-rotunda-thing-which-holds-every-important-parchment-from-US-history.

Uhh...Good shows on TV now, so I'll restart tomarrow on JULY 14th.

I'll be Bach.