hi! so i escaped from the hostel of doom; contrary to my fears i was not stabbed to death in the night by the scary convict-looking men that populated the (grimy) kitchen. i am now in boston after a bit of a mammoth journey, I had to wait in the airport for ages firstly because i left the hostel really early in the morning because it was so gross (flight scheduled for 11.50am, left the hostel at 7.30) and secondly because the flight was then delayed by about an hour. in the wait i had my first cream cheese bagel for breakfast because i was ravenous, having eaten only cashew nuts and yogurt for dinner the night before (was worried that i was spending too much on eating out). like all food i have eaten here, it was good. the bagel had sunflower seeds and honey in it. i had a brief chat with an old black lady in a wheelchair who wheeled over to me and then, when i answered a few of her questions, told me i had a strong boston accent. i was then on the flight, and was kept mildly amused by the american the office, which i think is in no way on a par with the british one. i think gervais' genius doesn't really translate here. then i got to boston, they have an accent here which means that they pronounce 'sure' as 'shoe-er'. a bit like frenchie from grease. was she from boston? the hostel's nice, there are no convict-looking men here as of yet, and no ants crawling by my bed (yes, there were ants. and mosquitoes in the bathroom. and i was half expecting to see a mouse or two in the shower). it's not as nice as the one in central chicago but i feel that that place was unusually good. i had pad thai for dinner from a place a couple of doors down and i'm going to try to sleep properly tonight, because i have not slept well for a good four days or so, particularly not in that last place in which i actually, irrationally, feared for my life (and the two korean girls in my dorm were on their computers until 3 in the morning every night which didn't help with attempted sleep.) oh. anyway i'll stop complaining. i did have a nice last evening in chicago; early on i ran into a fellow hosteller at an open-air chinese music show and we had a little chat about how bad the hostel is, and he asked if i knew much about chile which is where he is from, and i said not really and he complained that most people think that chileans speak portuguese but really they speak spanish. he also told me that gay men always followed him around which he didn't like because he was straight (though i had my suspicions; he was immensely camp). then i saw the sunset with a glass of wine from the top of the hancock tower. the toilet had a better view, ironically, than the bar./ got to go. speak soon.