A little Memorial Day story about a man and his rifle...

     Since it's Memorial Day I decided to give you a tidbit of family history about a WWII vet, my Uncle Ernest.  This information is the only information conveyed to my grandfather, Ernest's brother, by Ernest about his time in the U.S. Army.  When I say tidbit I surely mean tidbit, because this is a really short narrative; nonetheless, interesting.  
     Two days after D-Day Uncle Ernest was engaged in a hand to hand combat situation with a German soldier, and while on the ground he was stabbed in the throat up through the chin with a bayonet.  Evidently this German soldier thought he was dead because he left him there, and Uncle E was taken to a military hospital.  The doctors were going to ship him home, so Ernest went AWOL to rejoin his unit in France.  After getting stabbed in the chin, going AWOL, and rejoining his cohorts, Uncle Ernest was walking down the street one day in France and felt something poke him in the back.  He heard a click, turned around, and there was a woman with a pistol pointed at him that had thankfully misfired.  Uncle Ernest buttstroked her in the face with his M1, watched her pick up her teeth, and kept on about his day.
     Uncle Ernest died a couple years ago at the age of 84, so I knew him.  I never got to hear him tell any stories, but I do get to hear firsthand accounts about my grandfather's time in Germany.  It's as though I have my own personal historian giving me a very human account of his unique war experience.  These stories help me situate myself in the narrative of history (wow, that sentence is embarrassing).  But seriously, war affected my family and is part of our shared experience.  It also puts things painfully into perspective, and when I'm having a raging pity party about deadlines or my torn ACLs it helps to remind myself of that old mantra, "It could be worse...you could have been stabbed in the face with a bayonet today."    

After a lengthy dramatic pause...

     I discovered after writing blog entries that it was seriously cutting into my sightseeing/reading/partying time.  So I stopped writing about what I was doing and started doing more things.  That suited me much more than my exhibitionist stint as a sub-par travel blogger.  There has to be a better balance--I just haven't achieved it yet.  So here's a small update for all of my devoted followers (the list in whole includes my grandmother and my mom) who have been pining away for an update on all of the super thrilling things I've been up to for the last five months.  One word pretty much sums it up: freeloading.
     I'm 80% joking.  After leaving Morocco, which is when I abandoned online self-worship, I got to see my dearest Cathy in Spain where she is doing super awesome things living the English teacher expat life in Madrid.  Spain was extra comfortable because I could actually order in a restaurant, and as usual I met some super cool people there.  For example, I met a Brazilian gentleman who introduced me to the Portuguese term "saudades," which has no translation in English, and basically connotes a deep, nostalgic yearning for something that you will never see or feel again.  Anyway, look it up and read about it.  It's very interesting.
     After Spain there was Prague for a few weeks.  Prague fun included a lot of really cheap, awesome Czech beer, Absinthe, Australians, Kafka's house, getting paid under the table to teach English, hanging out with old friends, and a lot of eating.  Then I took a bus to Budapest.  I've decided bus travel is top shelf transportation because it's cheap, they serve you free coffee, and you get to see the beautiful countryside.  Actually, Hungary in the fall looks a lot like Kentucky, so I felt perfectly at home.  We made a stop in Bratislava which was nice and nothing like the way it is portrayed in the classic American film that informs so much of America's youth on European culture, Eurotrip.
     At this point in my travels I was feeling confident, so I didn't book a hostel in Budapest.  I got off the bus, took a train to the center of the city.  On the train I met a couple of Mexican travelers and went with them to their hostel.  They were super cool, and became my sightseeing cohorts for Budapest.  Also in Budapest I was able to meet up with an oldie-but-goodie friend I had met in Baku, who studies in Budapest now and took me to see some sights and drink some Hungarian wine in some local spots that were really quirky and cute.  In one little bar we went to we sat in a bathtub.  That is not a lie.

 City Center in Praha

     Some Goulash or Something in Hungary. Delicious and about 5 USD.

Blah, blah, blah, I went back home for Christmas, moved to Florida for a few months to stay with my BFF, hung out in Tampa, Sarasota, and Key West! And now I'm going to be a Teach For America English teacher in the Mississippi Delta.  Mississippi will be an adventure of an entirely different nature, and I will make some half hearted attempt to write interesting tidbits about that, of which I'm sure there will be plenty (plenty of tidbits, not attempts).