I just want to fucking kiss somebody. I just want to fucking fuck somebody. Why why why do I not go home with people when they ask me to?

I showed up at school toay to teach my last two lessons and was basically told I was not needed. After sitting around for awhile, no one told me goodbye and I decided to go to the grocery store and that was the end of my English teaching experience. Feeling really unappreciated. On the brightside, a teaching is buying me beer tonight and I probably have a couch for my apartment when I go home.

Waited for my bus for an hour and a half. Decided I needed a break from reading David Foster Wallace the way one takes a break from a lover. The way one says "I cannot go home with you because later I will like you and feelings are just generally unbearable." M heart feels funny like it is not beating properly and I imagine myself passing out on the bus after dramatically crying out for help.

One of my classes baked me a cake. I am going to miss my students so much.

It's my last Friday at the HLW. This makes me sad and this sadness about leaving confuses me greatly because otherwise I am wholly excited to leave.

The Italians are still sitting outside, only this morning in the rain. Perhaps I will take more pecorino cheese samples.

Also I need book recommendations. I only have 3 weeks left of constant reading time.

Really good weekend. Weekends involving dirndl are usually good, but this one was particularly good as it included a pub quiz (which the Hip Hop Jedi lost horribly in everything including team name, but it was still fun and I found out that the Caspian Sea is a real place and not something I made up because we were talking about Narnia), a lunch by the river with a German rap group playing, an empty train compartment to Salzburg with a latte in hand, a wonderful pizza, gin and tonic, dancing, drinking, beer pong, and an omelette breakfast. Weekends have been rather fantastic lately and the weeks horrible, but this week will be wonderful I'm sure. I'm very cheerful today. It's nice.

Finished Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Bridget Jone's Diary (for the millionth time) today. I am not going to miss all my readinng time when I leave as I will have read all the books. There are an appalling number of days left in Austria. Twenty-six to be exact. Think about how many books I could read in twenty-six days. Probably something like Twenty-six. Luckily tonight I am going off to Linz to take place in the Austro-American society pub-quiz and hang out with Maddie and tomorrow I am going to Salzburg with my dirndl to hang out with Maija and William and lots of other teaching assistants, so life should be good until sometime Sunday when I return to my lonely little room.

I get a poem of the week from Knox's English department. One of the poems this week (there were bonus poems) was by Mary Jo Bang. What an excellent name. It's like Mary Jo, plain and boring and from the country, wearing overalls in a non-ironic fashion, but BANG suddenly she's a poet. Here is the poem from Poem of the Week. I quite like it.

Today part of one of my lessons we talked about things people can do in Freistadt:

"They can go to La Dolce Vita."
"What is La Dolce Vita?"
"A club for men who do not find love."
"So it's a strip club?"
"It is much worse than a strip club."

"They can cut the grass."
"You mean mow the lawn?"
"No, like when you drive around on the thing that cuts the grass."
"A lawnmower? So if you had a friend come to Freistadt you would say 'Let's go mow the lawn?'"
"Yes."

"They can drink alcohol in the park."
"This is what teenagers do in America!"

"What about when old people come to Freistadt?"
"They can come here and die."

I have learned so much about the city I've been living in today.

Some of the HLW teachers have decided to call me "Lady Cool" because I look so cool.

I looked up pictures of cute animals to make my blog more cheerful. They were so cute! Here is one:

David Foster Wallace talks a lot in Although of course you end up becoming yourself how books become a substitute for people, a filler for loneliness. I have always been a person prone to loneliness and prone to reading.  I want to blame my parents for paying for little attention to me for most of my life, but that's probably not accurate. I just could talk and talk and talk about my current unhappiness, but I will regret it later. I always feel guilty about feeling unhappy. Guilty and ridiculed as if the moment I become unhappy everyone will know (mostly because I tell them) and will make fun of me. Like "Tasha is a ridiculous person for being unhappy right now" and then in my head I get self-righteous and defensive about my unhappiness and declare "I have reason to be unhappy! My house is foreclosed and I spend way too much time alone and I am homesick" and then I just feel worse because there are so many goddamn reasons to be unhappy right now. I want to post a picture to make this blog more interesting and not just a list of complaints. Though to be fair, I often enjoy other peoples lists of complaints.

I feel significantly better now knowing that I will be in Vienna the 27th-29th. Of my 27 nights left, approximately 7 of them will be spent away. Maybe more. I keep getting tempted to extend my time in Munich at the end, though being alone in Munich in 6 a person door as opposed to being alone here isn't necessarily preferred, but it might be. I will continue considering.

I feel inconsolable. The kind of bad where moving is difficult. I just need to leave. There are too many hours left. I feel fine when I'm with people. Yesterday I went to Linz and William and I went to the lake and sat in the sun and drank radlers and ate Cornitos, which are like bugles and cheetoes combined and aren't really as good as either of them, but they are okay. Then I went out to dinner at Chindia and ate something called Murgh Mikkani. Maddie and I went back to her place and watched tv shows and music videos and I felt fine. Returning this morning I felt utterly atrocious and spent the day lying in bed. This is so terrible. Hopefully the weekend will be good and pass by quickly and all of the rest of the days pass by quickly too.

29 days! Although the number 29 is quite large, it is a relief to be in the twenties and not the thirties. This month feels like a waste of my life.

Read "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake" today. It made me feel really sad. So sad I felt incapable of doing just about everything. I cannot be here anymore 30 days is too long. I grow more melancholic by the day. I need to read something happy. I need to be happy.

Teacher: "Name some African American leaders."
Students: "Little John! Rick James!"

Oh dear.

Just got glared at by a nun. Terrifying. Then she realized that I was not a student and started talking to me about nuns in America.

Some crazy guy thinks the world is going to end on Friday. I hope not. I want to go home before the world ends.

This weekend: Pirates of the Caribbean theme song techno remix. What?

Oh dear. Sorry for my upset posts. I was just drunk and tired.

I am not talking about boys either, but about my dad. But with boys too. I want to put lots of swear words. I am only a little drunk.

Being irrationally jealous. Why why why am I never enough? No wonder I feel I won't get into an MFA program. I am just not enough or I am too much. Why is graduating with latin honors from college not enough? Why is fulbright not enough? What is it I have to do to be impressive?

Steyr is pretty nice. Rather, Steyr is pretty and nice. When you look up Steyr in google images, all you get are pictures of guns.

After crawling through MFA information I have 35 schools on my list that are adequate. Now I have to wade through this information and come up with a mix of approximately 12 (because 12 is the number listed on the Knox English page and I follow rules very well) schools that I would like to go to/aren't impossible to get into. This is ridiculous. I need to fix my writing samples. I need to write more possible writing samples. Anyone want to read writing samples? I don't need you to say anything besides, "Yes, I like this," or "No, this is shit, why do you want to be a writer?"

I almost just wrote the sentence, "When they dragged him into the sunlight, he disintegrated like a vampire."

Shit.

I think I feel like boys don't want me because I've decided MFA programs won't want me as much as I want them and obviously boys and MFA programs are the same thing. I now sit in Mcdonald's researching MFA programs rather than looking at asinine blogs. Rather, I look at asinine blogs for about ten minutes and research until my butt gets tired. Only Mcdo's and MFA programs put a look this forlorn on my face. Also, I finished the Twilight series last night. Anticlimactic. If you are going to write shitty novels/make shitty movies at least 12 people should die. This is how bad shark movies are so successful.

All through college I had the experience of thinking I was sort of cool and attractive and then I would go home and feel like a big loser. Yesterday I found out why this is: Minnesota is the most hipster state. 

I'm reading the Twilight series. Vapid thoughts make time pass faster. I continue to get annoyed with female protagonists. Is this because I am a bad feminist or because the writers themselves are sexist? I don't want to read about love anymore. It makes me think irrationally.

I think about people just to have something to think about. I like the possibility of maybe. People in books kiss and I think about how weird kissing is. Moving our mouths together. I lay in bed at night and think about spooning, but don't know who I want behind me. My comforter feels like a spoon sometimes, a body, and I have to sleep with the lights on because I get scared thinking about an unknown presence in the room.

About 10% of MFA applicants are accepted per year. Shit.

This is what it will take to get me in a swimsuit this summer.

Oh also, Danny and I officially have an apartment! And it smells like cookies in here. Just like my apartment will.

Bears.

If you are curious as to why I have stopped posting writing, I do have a reason. I am changing the entire story except for the first section because I was reading a transcript of a David Foster Wallace class and decided he would not like this story. I am applying workshop advice he gave someone else to my story. This is silly. I will post more probably sometime this week. To make up for the lack of story, I will post pictures of the Cesky Krumlov bears which is undoubtedly better.

I have no contact information for my mother. No phone number, no functional email, no address. I did not think the phrase "everyone remember to call their mothers" could be painful.

I am going to Vienna. Cocktails will be served at 7 tomorrow. I feel like I am going to the Gilmore's.

David Foster Wallace makes me cry so I am taking a break from him.

Reading "Although of course you end up becoming yourself: a roadtrip with David Foster Wallace." It's heartbreaking, knowing that everyone is just as in love with him as I am. Reading about writers is horrible. Everything feels too close. I couldn't sleep last night because I felt like I had pushed everyone I loved away and then realized that I am just in Austria and all of these people still exist somewhere across the sea. Reading bad teen novels makes me need comfort, someone to spoon with. I no longer see myself as a person that other people might love, because I never see people. I don't think anyone is interested in my loneliness, but I talk about it anyway. When I picture America I think of being very warm and watching television for a long time.

Books I have read recently:

Bossypants by Tina Fey
It was funny. It was like watching 30 Rock, only in writing. I didn't think it flowed very well, especially towards the end. I could tell writing sketches was her thing. The best parts were really short sections about her childhood. It was worth it for the laughs.

The Hunger Game by... I don't remember
Okay, so I read the first book yesterday morning and it was really enjoyable. Not good, enjoyable. It's about the future where these teenagers are put in an arena and have to be the last one alive. Then I decided to buy the second book because the protagonist's life was still threatened! The quality of writing decreases with every book and it wasn't very high to begin with, but the second book was engaging enough so I bought the third book and now I am just annoyed with the protagonist. She acts all oblivious, but all these boys are in love with her and she just leads them on all the time. She will kiss them and be like "Oh, I'm confused" and they still love her! In real life the boys would be like "You're kind of hot, but I have commitment issues" and leave her to die in the arena. Every time she tries on a new outfit, everyone, including her, oh and aw over how hot she looks, like she is completely transformed with every outfit change. I told this to Ben Corner and he accurately said "Yeah, because girls never look at themselves in the mirror," and I have to admit that he's right. I do spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, but usually to see how noticeable my squishy parts and pores are and sometimes I get confused when boys kiss me, but usually they move on pretty quickly and I've never had two boys in love with me at once, just two boys in like with me at once and they got over that pretty fast. Maybe I am just annoyed with the protagonist because I see all her narcissistic traits in myself. Here is a narcissistic picture of myself:

I am scared to share my good news because I don't want to jinx it, but when things are for sure I will share.

I found out Osama Bin Laden died and proceeded to think about September 11th and then proceeded to think about everyone in the world that has died ever and cried a little bit and then I thought, "Yes, I am about to get my period."

45 days.