May 18, 2003
on an airplane and in Prague

Today I flew from San Francisco to New York to Prague to Cairo. I had a 13 hour layover in Prague so I explored the city a bit. The public transportation was really convienent and easy. I tried to imagine what life was like here under communist rule. I couldn't really.. I did get slipped a couple communist era coins though. That was kind of irritating. What a lame trick to play on a tourist, eh ? I only found out because I had two coins that both said 5 on them but one was bigger than the other. I asked someone why and he told me the big one was the old communist coin and that you couldn't use them. Way lame. It makes a good souvenier though I guess. I don't know very much about the Czech culture other than reading a few Milan Kundera novels. For example, I don't know why Czechoslovakia became two countries after the fall of communism.

I visited the Alfonse Mucha Museum which was totally amazing. I hadn't seen any of Mucha's paintings before, only his graphic posters. He was a damn good painter ! He did this project called the Slav Epic.. all these paintings depicting the life of Slavs and the total span of the paintings was half a kilometer !!! Imagine that !!!!

I slept on the plane pretty much the whole time from SF to NY and NY to Prague so I wasn't totally dead but after walking around Prague for awhile I got pretty tired so I found a park with some nice grass and took a nap. When I woke up I did not know where the hell I was. It was totally freaky. I have never woken up on the ground in a foreign country completely clueless as to where I was before... and I wasn't even drunk....

This morning I heard about the terrorist attack in Casablanca. I would be lying if i said it didn't freak me out a bit. I pretty much ignored the one in Saudi Arabia, because, well, I'm not going to Saudi Arabia. But then there was this second one and the reporters on CNN were making noises about it maybe being a string of attacks. That is unsettling. On the other hand I read a few days ago that worldwide, terrorist attacks in 2002 were about half of what they were in 2000.

Right now I am on the plane to Cairo and I'm switching between being really nervous wondering what the hell I am getting myself into and being really excited and optimistic. I'm sort of wondering wtf I was thinking when I decided to be gone for 3 months. That's a long-assed time if you don't like the place. I'm afraid I'll be disappointed. Not by all the art and architecture and antiquities, but more by the modern daily city life. I think it could have the potential to suck. I'm also afraid of being lonely and not making any friends and most of all, not meeting anyone who will model for me. I have a ton of cool ideas for paintings but I need models !!! Too bad there isn't a Cairo craig's list !!