Day 25: The day I literally lost myself in a new city.

There are two things I quickly learned about Baltimore:

1) White girls don´t walk around the neighborhood in the dark, especially when they´re on their own and

2) Baltimore is famous for its crab-cakes 

I woke up a little hungover and found a map on the floor that Kitt had drawn for me- explaining how to get to the harbor to buy some so I figured I might as well just go. My plan was to quickly hop downtown, eat some, look for a halloween costume and then meet Kitt around 3pm at her school so she can give me tour. They filmed one season of the US series "The wire" at her school and I really wanted to go there but life is hard and you can´t always get what you want, especially if you have the orientation skills of a potato.

Going downtown was an endless trail of confusion. I followed the map, found penn station, entered the purple circulator and after a few stops the driver told everyone to get off the bus but we were not even near the place I needed to get off. I asked a few people and they pointed me in direction I then just kept walking. Time kept passing and I got really hungry so I went up to a young guy and asked, once again, for directions. He told me to follow him and actually walked about 20 minutes with me just to make sure I end up at the right bus stop. He even gave me a candy bar to eat. We talked about the american school system and his current job situation, which was very bad. A lot people here live in poverty and there are far more social problems then any government could ever solve. I am very lucky to randomly be born where I was born.

Thank god for the help of this young gentleman I finally found myself at the harbor, quickly bought my halloween costume and then went up to "Mo´s", a restaurant some stranger at the harbor told me to try. I got my crab cake, served as a full meal and pity conversations with the waiter because "a young girl like me should not eat out alone because it´s kinda sad". I liked the food. It was interesting but a lot, even though it doesn´t look like that on the picture.

Getting to the harbor was one thing but getting back turned out to be the real challenge. After waiting for a bus that was 20 minutes off schedule I decided to just walk, took a few wrong turns and ended up in the red light district. Compared to the one of my hometown this was actually a very nice one and all the prostitutes wore awesome costumes. A few pimps tried to talk to me and one offered me a job but I politely turned it down and tried to get out of there. Took me another 30 minutes to find the right bus and get to penn station. Now I needed to find out where this school was and I asked someone. The guy said he´d point out the direction for me but somehow forgot to get to that pointing out part and just kept walking next to me, making me more compliments than I could possibly take. I was not only annoyed, at some point I got really angry but he didn´t get that I wanted him to leave. Even as I asked him too. Additionally we didn´t find the school- we just walked around while he sang "Him" songs to me and I don't even like this band… it took me more than an hour until I got him to leave but I was kind of worried that he would get angry at me so I tried to stay somehow polite and this takes time. I found my way to the compound, fell into bed and slept. One of the cats decided to chill with me. We are friends now.

I woke up, went downstairs to Kitt and Nick and heard about a gun shooting that has happened near the compound. Suddenly there were gunshots again and sirens and helicopters- it kept on going through the night. We met a few roommates in the kitchen and decided to cook together. Pasta for 7 people and "smores" as a dessert, yay!

Then we all watched "Nightmare on Elm Street" and decided to go out to drink. After all is was Halloween and a few people dressed up but since everybody had to work on the next day it wash´t a big deal. We had fun though.