I'm aliiiive....

...but hilariously fuzzy. I had a pretty good day- I woke up at 7:30 and haven't actually slept in a prone or sitting position yet, though I zoned pretty hard a couple of times. It's like I have a bag over my head or something.

I've gotten to see a lot of my loved ones already, I just made omelettes and salad out of homegrown eggs and veggies, Forrest gave me homemade strawberry jam today, I have had two lattes since noon, I understand the language that everyone speaks, and I can almost speak and write english. I have ridiculous moments of aphasia that have me mumbling horrible nonsense while waving my hands around, but other than that (and writing gibberish if I'm not paying minute attention) I'm doing good.

All of my photos are up in flickr now, but unsorted, untagged, and unexplained. There's all sorts of stuff I realize now that I should have photographed, of course, but there's some good stuff in there. And a lot of blurry night shots. Eheh.

Anyway, more tomorrow. I love y'all!

Woo!

I'm back! I'm jet lagged! I'm at home! Life is great!

More later. Woo hoo!

Still alive...

Some of you will start singing after that title, I know.

Anyway, all is well, packing goes apace, depart Kazan tomorrow morning. Just had my fortune told by and eighty something year old russian woman. All is well. Love!

Wooo.

Classes almost over, tests done, crazy teacher crazy, all well.

All sitting around in a friend's kitchen having a pre-party party, talking linguistics and Russian culture.

Love you all!

Take me home!

Well, I have been informed that I do not win the heat battle. I tip my hat to those of you living in New Hades, formerly known as Oregon. I hope all of us get cooler weather soon.

So ready for this crap to be over. One more day of classes, and maybe a little mini class on Friday, but I'm not really looking forward to it because it's all testing and the mysterious mass media revenge scenario, whatever that turns out to be. I have failed so far in organizing presentations or gifts, and I am rapidly running out of care. ARGH.

These last few days are going to be full of stupidity, not learning. Wah.

On the other hand, Polly, my amazing teacher from St Petersburg, has agreed to hang out on monday, so that's going to be awesome. Woo!

If I don't die of heatstroke on the way home, I'm going to hike into town and try to buy plates today. If I do die of heatstroke, I'll probably stay in bed with the fan on high until I come back to life. No guarantees.

Oh, you'll also be intrigued to know that today I'm documenting our daily life- I took photos of my walk to school, and the classrooms and cafe and things. I'll have to wait until I'm home to upload my photos- it's almost impossible here- but they'll be on my flickr in a week or two.

Well, TTFN my buddies.

Don't you tell me you're hot.

Okay, you folks complaining about the weather in Oregon can just quit it. It is now roughly 94 degrees, there is no shade, and I do not own shorts. At eight AM I was at the kitchen table, while Ilkam fried us up some breakfast, with sweat literally rolling down my back under my pajamas. Then I went to school to sit in close, un air conditioned, nigh windowless classrooms for six hours. So let's conclude, very generously in my opinion, that we are at least even on the broiling heat front. :-P (Also, let us conclude that I really need a shower.)

After lunch I had a few minutes free, and I ran down to the main drag and bought a fan for a dollar from a souvenir stand. Best thirty rubles I have spent in Russia- the afternoon auditorium is an OVEN. I was the only cool person in there today, I think. Win!

Yesterday was fairly pleasant. An old student of Ilkam's came by for a chat, so I made small talk with them for a little while, the passed out in my room. Then, that evening after dinner, I translated the pertinent parts of a kids' music textbook for Ilkam. Or, we did half before I pleaded that I HAD to sleep. We'll finish it tonight.

It's coming up on that wonderful time when we all have to figure out what the heck we're buying for all of our teachers and hosts as parting gifts. We are a very disorganized lot, and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to end up running it all. Same goes for our presentation in St Petersburg. Argh. I'd just let everyone else deal with it, but I actually care if we seem ungrateful and uncooperative.

As far as my gift for my host family goes, I'm thinking plates. There's been a lot of breakage in the last few weeks, and now there's a bit of a plate shortage. I'm going to run over to the mall that has a china store, and see if four plates is going to cost an arm and a leg, or just an arm. (cheap china is beyond hope here, but if it costs less than $50 I'll count myself successful.)

If china is too hard, I'll buy flowers and caviar. The thought will count, at the very least. Ilkam loves to find fault with things, though, so I think plates are safer... she'll probably hate that they're made in china or something, but she'll love that I went to the trouble, somewhere in there.

I hear all the dirty details about all her other students, and what was good or (mostly) bad about everything they did, said, or gave to her, so I am constantly followed by the warped and abridged ghost of myself that is going to remain behind me when I go. She's probably going to talk about how I never 'strolled' (wandered the streets half-drunk with a pack of russian youths... it's a big cultural thing here), always wore long pants, and didn't EAT. Oh, and loved to commit suicide by sitting in drafts. What else, I can't guess. She really likes me though, and says she's really going to miss me when I'm gone. We get along nicely. :-)

Ugh. Grammar test tonight. I was planning to review for it tonight, but the teacher decided to give it to us a day earlier, so I guess I'll review and take it on the same night. There goes my nap. At least it's multiple choice, but really I can't guarantee that I'll get anything like a good grade on it. My brain is overflowing with Russian, and it's a little bit of potluck whether the right info comes up or not. We're all having terrible word and grammar confusion the last few days- it will be such a relief to speak English again, when I don't have to think about four or five grammatical or lexical points to do with every. Single. WORD.

Well, time for me to toddle home, take a shower, and get cracking on the old homework. Woo!

Tick tock

Woo. There's a lot going on over here, and we're all going a little more nuts than usual.

I don't know about anyone else, but the last few days before I leave- on either end of a trip- are always really hard for me. There's the usual push/pull of wanting to go and wanting to stay, but there's also the simultaneous madness of getting ready while keeping normal life going. If you add the two-part leaving process- leaving Kazan, then spending three days in Petersburg before going home for once and for all- and the fact that we have amorphous and disorganized finals this week, then you get a little bit of the stir fry that is the collective CLS Kazan brain.

We have all of three days of classes left here. They were going to make us have classes on Friday, but we all decided that it was moot because by then we'll have done all our tests, and we have our farewell banquet on Thursday night- waking up (probably with hangovers) to hobble to school on short sleep to see all the people you just said goodbye to seemed like an ill use of our antepenultimate day in Kazan, even to the teachers.

The mass media teacher may or may not be planning revenge on those of us who skipped. No one can tell if he's angry, toying with us, or just the regular sort of insane that he is most of the time. We're all worried, also, because we have no idea what we learned in his class, and therefore have no idea what might be on the test- facts about various dirty words? How to look at a website? How to take revenge on the managers of restaurants with bad soup? He taught us so much, how are we supposed to choose? If only I'd learned anything new about mass media in Russia.

(It's hard to write 'mass media,' btw, because in Russian it's an acronym, СМИ, which is prounced 'Smee,' like that guy in Peter Pan. I'm so used to talking about Smee all the time that I forget that it actually means words.)

I'm not pining for home like I was a couple of weeks ago- the wave sort of crests at seven weeks, I think. Last time, I went home in week seven, so it didn't have time to wear off. Now, I'm very ready to come home, and I'm thinking a lot about what I'm going to do there, but that seems more like a reaction to my departure than real homesickness. I hope this is so, since I'm coming back for much longer, if all goes well.

I think, if I win the year in St. Petersburg, it'll be a little easier on a few fronts. Here, it's hard because you don't have time to really put down roots, so you are perpetually a guest and a foreigner, not a resident. It's like the difference between a business trip and actually getting posted somewhere. Plus, this program is so jam-packed, because of the short time, that we're all run into the ground all the time. If I win the year in Peter (In Russia, people tend to call it Peter to save time and tongue knots), it'll be more like a regular school schedule, and there'll be more opportunity to relax, mingle, and set up a real life.

A lot of people have asked me if the degree of disgust with which I sometimes refer to Kazan is something special, or if I just didn't mention it in Petersburg. To be honest, I want to say that I dislike Kazan on a personal level, much as I loved Peter on a personal level, but it's very hard to say.

Kazan is an industrial city, and a very dirty one, and I came during a heat wave in a drought year during an economic recession. What, of the things that bug me, is permanent here and what is temporary? Who knows?

In Peter I couldn't relate to people as much, I wasn't as attached to my host family and I didn't do much by myself or with the people from my program in my free time, but the field trips were all great. Here I've got more friends and a closer relationship with my host family, but my hosts also drive me NUTS often, and the field trips are not nearly as fun as in Petersburg.

In Petersburg I was hit on and followed and actually threatened by men in various states of drunkenness on the streets in broad daylight, but the city was lovely and pleasant to walk in. Here, the streets are filthy and it's hard to breath and it's hot, but I've had no trouble from passersby. (The ethnic minorities and heavierset among us have, though.)

In Peter, the teachers weren't nearly as good. With the exception of our one insane teacher, all the teachers here are AWESOME. Absolutely amazing.

I think the conclusion I have to draw is that people are people everywhere, and that Kazan is full of nice ones, but if I had to pick a place to live on the sheer feel of the city, it would be Peter.

*********

Alright, enough philosophy. Time for adventures!

The Georgian restaurant was fabulous. It was cheap by american standards- we ordered insane amounts of food, and only had to pay about $15 apiece. The ambiance was great, and apparently the bathrooms were absolutely unbelievable. In a country where toilet seats are optional and toilet paper and soap are luxury, I am told that this restaurant had warmed towels. I will look next time.

Georgian food is served family style, and so we ordered two rounds of hachapuri, which is like georgian pizza, chicken tabacca, which is chicken squashed under a brick and cooked to perfection, and about a thousand other things. MMMMM. The service was amazing, especially for Russia, and we all had a fabulous time. We've decided that we friends are throwing our own goodbye dinner there next Saturday, and I can't wait. Mmmm, hachapuri.

We talked ourselves out in English, too, which was awesome. Lord knows what the staff at the restaurant thought, but since we weren't totally hopeless at communicating with the waitress, all seemed well.

Switching back and forth between the languages was very, very hard, and it was frankly a little bit of a relief to switch back to Russian Only the next day.

I met up with a couple of pals and we trolled the souvenir stands on the main drag and got ice cream at the Kazan McDonalds. I didn't really buy much by way of souvenirs- I've decided that I'm not really bringing much back. I don't have the time or the space, and you all know I love you anyway. Right? Right?

My family had left at six in the morning to go to the son's wedding in a village hours away, and weren't due back until Sunday evening, so I just made some rice kasha, napped, and slouched around until about midnight, when I remembered that I had to get up insanely early. So, I went to bed, got up insanely early, and hiked down to the port to get on a boat.

Actually, it was a hydrofoil, and it was to ferry us for 2.5 hours out to a ruined ancient Bulgar settlement, where we would pass the day, and then bring us back.

I slept all the way there, and we had a fairly nice and interesting tour of the foundations of some 800 year old buildings, as well as some tours of the actual buildings. Many of us were scandalized at the amount of reconstruction they're doing, but I decided that getting scandalized was a bad course of action. That turned out to be a good decision for the day.

We then had lunch- weiiird russian food in the great unidentifiable, mayonaise-based tradition of tourist cafes everywhere- and sweated on the beach for an hour until our meteor showed up, kind of late. We loaded ourselves on, settled down for a sweltering two and a half hour trip, and I dozed off.

When I woke forty minutes later, there were interesting sounds coming from the engine room. I went to the 'bathroom' (if you'd seen it, you'd understand the quotes), and while waiting outside the door, I had to keep getting out of the way of mechanics, who were running in and out of the engine room.

So we went slower, and slower, and there were interesting chuggings and buckings and exhaust smells. We finally limped up to a tiny dock in the middle of nowhere, where there were a few dachas and absolutely nothing else, where we sat for half an hour in the broiling heat, uninformed and unmoving.

The engine started, everyone perked up, we loosed ourselves from the dock, we chugged about five feet away from the shore, there were horrible noises, the engine died, folks on shore hauled us back. We sat.

Tempers were not happy with this, and food and water were not in great abundance. Those among us dependent on medications 100 miles upstream got twitchy. In the end, we did start up and made it home only an hour, hour and a half late. Woo! What a great last field trip!

Very, very Russia.

Then I went home, my host family came home, I got in trouble for not eating enough and they tried to feed me sausage that hadn't seen a refrigerator in god knows how long. Again, very Russia. (Food safety, or lack thereof, is a common peeve in our group.)

The wedding was apparently lovely, and Ilkam told me all about it. It sounded like a beautiful couple of days, and I hope everyone involved much happiness. The families were meeting for the first time, and according to Ilkam they love each other. (I think she has a crush on the bride's father, too.)

Woo. I'm gonna miss this place when I go, but damn am I missing America, too.

I've already decided that the first thing I'm doing in Washington is locating a double tall soy latte. Oh yes.

Quickly, quickly!

I believe that I only have about five minutes in the lab before it closes, so I'll try and think up something interesting to say really quickly.

Today we had a holiday! Or, are having it. Martin, our saintly organizer, has arranged for us to be allowed to speak English all today. Not in class, of course, but we can talk to each other as much as we want. Win!

Of course, there are mixed feelings. Some people have already decided that there are circumstances under which they will speak English, regardless of permissions, and others are defiantly refusing to speak or hear English, even today. I can respect both camps. For myself, I usually only utter a few scattered English phrases on any given day, mostly as clarification. I am, however, taking advantage of the reprieve today to gab a little with other people. Some of us girls are going to a Georgian restaurant tonight to eat and talk. Yum!

At lunch the cafe was divided, and everyone had to check what language the table was speaking before they could sit, for fear of offending someone. Politics!

Speaking of politics, last night my host family came home, and I had a very nice conversation about government and politics and things with my hostess. Usually, she just rants about minorities, but we were watching an american movie about the Vietnam War, which kept us on international and state level politics, and away from the jews and Georgians. It was very nice.

I'm wearing a dress today because all of my clothes are filthy and/or hanging out to dry. It's fine, really. Clean clothes soon!

Love you all, must run. <3!

Mrrr

Full of blah today. However, we had a rousing Russian Songs class, with the awesome news that we get an extra Russian Songs instead of a lecture next week. Woo! It was awesome, even if we had to sing the song from the russian cartoon version of the Bremen Town Musicians. The donkey in that cartoon freaks me the heck out.

I forgot to mention yesterday that we got to watch through the classroom window as a procession paraded an icon through the streets, complete with robed priests and censers and a little crowd following behind. Our teacher said it was the second time in his life he'd seen such a thing in Kazan- religious repression was exceptionally effective.

I slept late instead of going to mass media today, and I think it was a good thing. I feel really tired and cruddy, and I did not have to fake a cough when I ran into our organizers. Plenty of coughs to go around. Coughs for everyone! I'm going to go home, make some soup disappear from the refrigerator, and then sleep some more.

It's really freaky to think about, but in just two weeks, I'm going to be home! The math continues to evolve on my flights- I now suspect that I'm going to spend more than a day in transit. I leave St. Petersburg for the states at 6 AM, Thursday, which is 7 PM, Wednesday west coast time. I arrive in Portland at 11PM, on Thursday. So that means... 28 hours en route? Good god. Please, someone tell me my math is wrong!

Only four more days of classes. Jeez! I still speak like a child who is a little funny in the head! Noooooo!

I can't believe how hard and complicated Russian is. Just to give you an idea, here are a few tiny particles of Russian grammar:

The word for dog is 'sobaka'
If you do something to a dog, like feed it, it is 'sobaku'
If someone does something with a dog, it's 'sobakai'
If there is NO DOG at all, then it is 'sobaki'

Of course, if you do something to, say, a chair, doesn't change at all, it's just 'stol.' All words that end in a consonant don't change in that instance... UNLESS THEY ARE ALIVE. But plants don't count.

Last year on a test I said that a bunch of children dispersed and went home. Or, I thought I did. I wrote something like 'razbegali' on the test. This apparently meant that someone rounded up the children, forcibly divided them, and took each one home.

What was the word I should have written?

"razbegalis"

Yeah. So multiply that by about a million, and then weep for me, my friends. Weep.

Rain!

Last night we were treated to a lovely thunder and lightning storm, from about eleven on. It started with big rolling crashes, and then proceeded to pour water in sheets, and then came the lightning. It wasn't a terribly active storm, with a flash and a boom every few minutes, but the clouds were low and even, and the lightning terribly bright, so that when it flashed- even if you couldn't see the actual bolt- the whole sky lit up a milky silver color and seemed to glow for a second before it faded. I turned out the lights, opened the window all the way and sat on the windowsill with my stuffed octopus, just breathing the clean rain-smelling air and watching the sky flash. The thunder was so loud that the whole building vibrated every time it struck.

However, it slacked off enough in the wee hours that I could walk to school today without having to leap puddles. Win! Now it's fairly cool and sprinkly. The not leaping puddles is important, since when it's actively raining the puddles can be six or seven inches deep and several feet wide, and are especially bad at all crosswalks. Since there are often iron railings preventing crossing except at the crosswalk, that can be a problem. All the women in tiny high heels just sort of scamper, picking their way as best they can, and the young men hurdle the puddles. I've seen at least one suited businessman look at one of the worst puddles, steel himself, roll up his cuffs and just wade.

I generally try to jump, if I have to, but if you misjudge, this leaves you standing in the middle of a puddle, wet to the knees and feeling rather foolish.

Whenever it rains during the day, it seems, there's a car accident at the big intersection near my house. The first time, a bus and a car both tried to use the same turn lane, pinning the car against the curb. No one got hurt, but bummer. The second time, some poor schmuck in a little old sedan didn't see the giant hole in the road because it was full of water, and therefore asphalt-colored. An entire wheel sunk in the pothole, and the driver was still making phone calls when I went by, while four and a half lanes of traffic poured around him, honking.

When they finally patched the hole about a week later, they didn't close the road, either. They just put up some cones and started working, and everyone just had to figure out where to drive so as not to hit them. It was pretty interesting watching buses and cars merge, unmerge, and turn- four or five lanes, depending how you count them- while a bunch of unprotected road workrs just got on with their business in the middle of it all.


The city is full of ruined buildings. They're kind of surprising when you find them- the road goes house, house, house, house, rubble, house, house, house... At least part of this is because of the problem with house fires here, and at least part of that is because of arson by greedy developers, it's rumored. It's also interesting to see what becomes of the lots, too. Some abandoned buildings just crumble in state, some descend into a jungle of stinging nettle, trees and grass, and others become garbage dumps. It's a little bit like looking at a dead animal in the woods- here, there's little interference with the decay process, and you can look at how the roof is falling through the rafters, which start to look like half-revealed ribs.

I'm filled with envy because one of my classmates got to eat herring in a fur coat. I've only had it once, but it was damn good. Here's a recipe and some pictures.

All in all, the food here is really good. Even the buffet type place we have lunch every day is pretty good, at least to me. It's tatar and russian food, which means you have to dig to find anything related to a plant that's not cabbage or a potato, and not wrapped in meat, but it's tasty.

However, the parade of "Any why didn't you eat THIS?" last night was a little over the top.

I admit that I took advantage of my alone time to basically live on rabbit food, but even if I had been eating only what was left in the refrigerator, I don't think I could have eaten both blocks of cheese. Or the soup AND the chicken. Gar. And now 'something has happened' at the dacha, so I'll be alone for a few more days, but I've had to swear several promises that I'll eat what's in the fridge. Oh well. Also, my hostess promised we'd wash my clothes when she got back. This would be the third or possibly fourth time I've had my clothes machine washed. It's out with the tub and the handwashing detergent tonight, though. *sigh*

No rest for the weary...

Well, the oomph has sort of gone out of the whole group. We're all making an effort, but it's hard to deny that we're dragging ourselves to class and barely hanging on long enough for the afternoon activities... if we are, that is.

I'm trying really hard, but I'm still sick, and I'm tired, and sometimes I think the program is just screwing with us. For instance, they've given us THREE HOURS of mass media class on Thursday. I don't want to go. I don't feel safe around the guy, I feel freaked out and uncomfortable, and he only actually -teaches- us for about half the class. The rest of the time we talk about prostitutes, details of our personal lives, plastic surgery and who doesn't need breast enhancements... yeah. Once he asked me what position I sleep in. The classroom is small and hot, and I sit in the front row. Fun times.

However, it is our last mass media class.

However, only one other person is going to go.

Until I found out that no one else was going, I felt pretty good about skipping. However, now that only Chad, who the teacher adores and who gets along with the teacher great, is going, I'm not sure whether to show up and get a full half of his attention for THREE HOURS or just to chicken out. I'm pretty sure I'm chickening.

Chad seems fine with the idea of three hours of talking to the teacher. I think I'll let him have it.

Lessee, on the rest of Russia front... not much happening. I have finally stopped waking up at the crack of dawn, which is about 4 AM at the moment, but more like 3 really. However, I am still unnerved by the midnight choruses of stray dogs. Once in a while, there's a woof or a yap, but sometimes that's followed by another, and another, until there are what sounds like a hundred dogs, of all different sizes, wailing and baying somewhere in the distance.

You pass the dogs in the day, and they pretty much ignore you. They come in all the strange shades of a mutt rainbow- beagleish and shepherdish and terrierish. There'll be a whole pack asleep in a square, or one or two snoozing in a garden. They're not usually awake, except maybe the odd one or two. God only knows what they do in the night. Whatever it is, it sounds like the devil is going hunting.

Well, I'll try and get back here with some crazy stories tomorrow.

That is, if I'm not in the hospital from having washed my hair this morning.

I liiiive...

Feeling quite a bit better. I spent two days in bed going "uurrrrrghachoohackwhine" and reading a very good book in ENGLISH. So there. Then I limped to school on Friday, regretting it almost immediately, but after that five of us girls trooped over to the mall and saw Harry Potter. Whee!

Well, that's not a very accurate rendition of the afternoon. I hadn't petted a dog in two months, I was drowning in sweat, and my morals were starting to scream every time I nodded and smiled at an inappropriate comment. I had just found out that I was in for a three hour mass media class with our crazy teacher. I was SICK of Russia and especially Kazan. I actually kicked the door of the computer lab when it turned out to be locked (I tried to get to you guys! Really, I did!) Sick of the racism, anti-semitism, sexism, filth, heat, food, water, language- I was going to SNAP.

I mentioned this to a friend, and she said that she was in the same boat. Apparently, another girl even yelled at someone on the street the other day. (For mocking her for her not unreasonable weight, which happens a lot apparently. I haven't noticed anyone mocking me, but with the scarecrows around here as contrast, few of us fare well by comparison.)

So we got to the theater and bought tickets. The showing (or seance, in Russian, which always makes me giggle) wasn't for an hour and a half, so we all went to the Schokoladnitza (Russian starbucks) downstairs, sat on the patio, got coffee, and talked in english for an hour and a half. We explained the full plot of the HP series, and then griped. And griped. It was wonderful just to complain to sympathetic ears. Then we compared the motley roads that led us to the study of Russian, explored our educational background, and discovered that we are all horrible dorks. Ahhh.

Then we watched the movie, which was very, very good and very well dubbed. I may just go see it again.

Then we left, hung around until someone called emergency services for the girl who had flopped out of the theater halfway through the movie (at roughly 5 pm... gotta love russia) with what seemed to be severe alcohol poisoning, though her friends just thought her unconsciousness was hilarious, then switched back to our iron obedience to the Russian Only Rule, and went home.

I felt much better after that, especially since that night I didn't have to listen to any more stories about 'the jews' from my hostess.

The next day was Saturday, and we had a lovely field trip to a village an hour and a half out of town, where the most famous Tatar poet spent his childhood. I'm not that interested in tatar poetry, since I don't actually speak tatar, but it was marvelous to be in the village. It wasn't that small- 1500 or so people- but everything was one story, with lots of green space, and many buildings over a hundred years old. There were cows and chickens everywhere, but though I saw dog tracks, I saw no dogs.

There was, however, a kitten in the museum. He followed us in or something, and the guide didn't know where he came from or what to do with him... so I scooped him up and cuddled a kitten for the entire tour. Every museum should have kittens. They should give them out like those crappy audio-tour things.

I set him loose outside, and later saw some of his siblings wandering around, so he must live somewhere near there. We had lunch at a sort of kitcheny/restaraunty place, good tatar food, and then I wandered through a little copse of birches until it was time to leave.

Sunday I felt like crap, so I slept almost the entire day, lying in a pool of sweat and coughing. It was fine, until my hostess's son came home and was horrified to find that I was sitting in a DRAFT, in my condition! Drafts are incredibly harmful to your health, you know, even if it is NINE HUNDRED DEGREES out. I'm forbidden to wash my hair, drink anything cold, sit in a draft, or swim. I am commanded to drink hot things and to cough louder. After all, colds aren't caused by germs. That's just supersition. They're caused by chills. Oh yes.

I shouldn't complain, not really. One of our number is diabetic, and she is constantly dodging leeches, water laced with silver, and anything else her family can think up. They've also put her on a diet. The russian idea of a diet is extremely interesting. For instance, milk is bad but cream is good. Sour cream goes on everything, ESPECIALLY if you want to lose weight.

No one knows what to do.

I just shut up and eat what I'm given, since refusing is a personal insult AND causes concerns about my health. Then, when everyone's gone, I live on fruit and nuts and yogurt, which is a vast relief after slabs of meat and nine kinds of milk product, every day. I'm not sure how to explain why I haven't eaten the entire pot of borscht, or the boiled potatoes, when my hostess gets back, but 'I couldn't eat that much in a week' probably won't go down well.

I forgot to mention that Saturday, when I was feeling particularly charitable towards the human race and was reminding myself that everyone was basically good at heart, a truck full of construction workers revved its engine at me as I crossed the street.

Grr.

Achoo.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am sick. It's just a cold, and I hope it's not going to be as bad as the one in St Petersburg, but boo hoo. I may stay home tomorrow; today I wanted to go to our lecture ("Russian culture." It's only an hour long. We're all excited to see how they manage that.) so I came, but Renata has informed me that I look awful and should go home. I'm staying for the lecture, but I'll go sleep after that.

I spent the weekend mostly wandering around the apartment and the city. I bought a really, really terrible young adult vampire novel, in Russian, and have been giggling over it since Sunday. Not only is it ridiculously cute, I get to learn all sorts of handy phrases like "His head was almost completely severed!" and so forth. I'm actually learning a lot of names of body parts- finally, my shameful addiction has a purpose! Tee hee.

I didn't realize I was getting sick for a while because my allergies are so bad here anyway. I'm now taking benadryl and claritin, and still was sniffly before the plague came alone. Kazan was voted the filthiest city in Russia at least once. When I wash my clothes by hand, the water I pour off of the first rinse is the color of beer. Plus, there are no emission controls on cars here- some of the buses may actually be propelled solely by the force of the black smog they pump out. Add to that the mold-coated wall in the closet, and I'm in heeaaaven. Yes.

Everyone is getting excited about coming home, at the same time as we despair over how few classes we have left. None of us think we've improved enough; one poor girl was informed by her hostess that her Russian may actually have gotten worse since she arrived. (I think she's improved a lot, but who knows. I could have gotten worse at listening. >.< )

It seems to me that no one drinks water here. Tea, juice, soda, red bull- but not water. They sell bottled water everywhere, so someone besides us must drink it, but I finally resorted to keeping water in my room, since the communal well tends to dry up for days, leaving just enough to be rationed into tea and soup until someone remembers to order more. I lugged five liters up the stairs yesterday, to find that water had actually been delivered, but I've still managed to drink a quarter of it in just a day. That may seem a little weird, with a big jug of water in the kitchen, but it's pretty much frowned on to drink just water. I came home, frantically thirsty, and poured myself a glass of water. "Why are you drinking water?" my hostess's husband demanded, "There'll be tea in twenty minutes!"

They actually left me with no water that I would willingly drink, this weekend. There was water, which they claimed was clean, but one quarter-full jug smelled of chlorine (tap water=NO) and the other quarter full jug, pulled from a closet, was declared to be "very good for you" water. I will not touch any normal object that is supposed to be exceptionally "very good for you" with a ten foot pole.

In fact, I've learned that if someone tells you very firmly that there is absolutely no danger from such-and-such, it probably means you should be living in eternal fear of such-and-such. Gang violence, racism, bad water... if someone came up to me and told me that I had absolutely no reason to fear ancient Greek myths here, I would start looking for some minotaur repellent double-quick.

Gonna be late to the lecture. TTFN!

On a boat on a boat on a boat boat boat...

Well, I'm successfully returned from my venture on the great river Volga!

It was faaaabulous. I don't know how much I said about my last river cruise on the Petersburg blog, but I was fearing a repeat of that- strange smells, cramped quarters, inedible food, and eternally drunk and rowdy classmates.

Not in the least! The boat was clean and fairly spacious, the food was mostly edible and sometimes good, and everyone was perfectly pleasant the entire time.

We all met up at the river port at about five in the evening on Tuesday, after classes. I and our organizer Martin lived close enough that we took the trolley from home, but everyone else had to pack their stuff to classes and then wad onto a rather cramped bus together. We did have to wait on the bus with them at the port, though, for what seemed like an eternity. In the end, several packages of cookies and some bottles made the rounds, and an exhibition of road trip songs was improvised. We were finally ushered onto the boat, where there was a brief but bloody war over room arrangements, and then we got to do lots of waiting until we took off.

The weather was awful- cold and rainy and windy- so we stayed inside the boat for most of the first day. There was a disco on the top deck, and all sorts of interesting karaoke- and accordion- based entertainments scattered throughout the boat, and we availed ourselves of them before retiring to various rooms to either sleep or talk. I slept, until five in the morning when the sadistic and spastic heating/cooling system in our cabin decided that we had set it to Sahara, and I and my cabinmate were forced to get up and open the door into the hall and then lie, catatonic, in pools of sweat.

The second day was GORGEOUS and poor Martin got a terrible sunburn from sitting on the deck too long. I tried three different times to buy a kite from the souvenir shop, but the people who were supposed to be running it were having more fun at the events than I was, so I was sadly kiteless.

I played a few games of chess, and then my board made the rounds of our group. I chatted with a few russian people, which was my goal for the trip, and had a generally wonderful time. The river cruises are apparently undertaken by Russians entirely for the purpose of meeting people of the opposite sex. (My conversation teacher, when he mentioned that he was taking his wife along, was accused of carrying coal to Newcastle. Or, in Russian, going to Tupe with his own samovar.) My cabinmate, Desiree, was forcibly de-jacketed on the top deck by a grandmother who told her in alarmed tones that if she went around in a jacket all the time, she'd NEVER find a husband!

I didn't have any such problems, unless you count a young russian man named Alex, who was just generally and good naturedly lewd to everyone. I found him entertaining.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that our crazy mass media teacher was a) a chess enthusiast and b) our next door neighbor. Hijinks ensued, but not too bad of ones.

That evening, we got off in Nizhni Novgorod for our three hour tour (I had horrible Gilligan's-island based forebodings the whole trip, believe me) and were led at a whirlwind pace through the Kremlin and downtown, through an artist's gallery, and back to the ship. The guide was a personal friend of Martin's, and very good at his job. He had a magical umbrella that stopped traffic, so we all crossed the street together with great efficiency.

That night was much more pleasant, since we had all found out that if you asked at a front desk you were given a wrench with which to open the window. Much more livable. I talked to Lenar, another very nice Russian man, on the top deck for a while, took some breathtaking pictures of the sunset on the Volga, and then joined the party on the third floor.

We had all brought a little food or a bottle of something, so we wadded a full half of our group, plus Martin, into one tiny little cabin and had a fabulous time. By the time I arrived, with my contribution of mass amounts of dark chocolate, the evening had hit the point at which singing is mandatory. We went through everything we knew in Russian, and after the crowd had thinned a little, we just sat around and talked and sang (in over 7 languages, by my count, including Latin, Latvian, Japanese, Afrikaaner, Chinese, Old English, English, and Russian, and probably more that I've forgotten) until 2 am. Then I went back to my cabin and talked to Desiree for another hour.

On the third day, I succeeded in buying a kite, which I flew for 20 minutes and then promptly lost in the Volga. We were all very tired after the previous night- which had been later and had included more alcohol and dancing, for many- and so there were massive naps and lots of quiet time. We disembarked in Kazan via a boat that could have been the dark, smelly twin of my last cruise ship- just to prove that I hadn't been exaggerating- and then all went home, where it seems that everyone passed out for about ten hours. My hostess and I decided afternoon naps were in order before dinner, and when I woke up to use the bathroom at midnight, she was still sleeping too. It was just that sort of day.

I'll upload photos monday, if I have time. I'm going to see Giselle, and I'm not sure how long I'll have in the lab if I'm going to make it to the show. For now, I'm going to walk home, perhaps buy some ice cream on the way to eat among the fountains, and then SLEEP some more.

Love you all!

Blarrrrgghhh

This could be a post ripe for nothing but complaining, but all in all nothing but piddling little things have been going wrong (knock on wood and spit), so I'll just pause briefly to shake my fist at a week long headache, an allergen-induced runny nose, and a triple (or possibly quadruple) canker sore that caused me to wake up looking like I'd been kissing wasps. I've upped the allergy meds, and I'm going to stop by one of the dozen pharmacies I pass every day for some aspirin, and life goes on.

There hasn't been much going on here, besides the normal exhaustion and breakneck pace. On Saturday, we visited the Raif monastery, one of the oldest monasteries in Russia, but of course nothing but the stones was more than ten years old; it was seized in the thirties, gutted, and used as a prison, torture chamber, tank storage, and young-criminal-retraining venue until the nineties.

The monks have done an amazing job bringing it back; in some places, you can hardly believe that such ruin could have been visited on the buildings. Their main cathedral has better acoustics than the concert halls in the area. It is also home to the smallest cathedral (church? translation is hard, but you get the idea) in Europe; it holds exactly seven people.

We had a great guide, who was filled with faith, grace, and a lovely sense of humor. We only got an hour tour, but it was really fun. He answered questions, sang the praises of those who had gotten the monastery back on its feet, told us all to pray to the icon of Mary because she helps everyone- even Buddhists!- and regaled us with the tales of the frog miracle.

Anyway, that was all... wait, what? You've never heard of the great frog miracle of Raif? Where have you been, under a rock? Okay, America is almost as bad, but really.

It seems that when the monastery was first founded, on the shores of a pristine lake in the middle of an evergreen forest in the untouched countryside of Tatarstan, the monks prayed every night. However, all of the frogs in the lake croaked (or, since they're russian frogs, kvacked) so loudly that no one could concentrate. Finally the abbot prayed that something be done about the pesky frogs so they could all get down to some serious praying, and lo- God shut the frogs up, for good. In three hundred years, give or take, there's been nary a kvack from that pristine lake. As our guide says, man may forget something he did after a day or a month or a year, but God always remembers.

But that's not the end of it! It seems that some french people decided to see what was up with this silly silent-frog legend, and brought some good French frogs to Raif to see what was what. They listened, and of course there was not a kvack to be heard, except from their tank of french frogs. So they poured a little lake water into the tank, and their French frogs issued not a peep. Totally silent.

So that satisfied the French, but not the Italians. They came, listened to the silent lake, and this time packed a few Raif frogs back to Italy with them. There, presumably inspired by the mediterranian air, they kvacked up a storm.

So there you have it. If you love nature but the kvacking gets you down, come to Raif.

I also finally managed to buy a chess set, which I had been trying to do for a week, so that I'll have something to do on the boat. I asked our student ambassador where the heck one is supposed to buy a chess set around here, since I hadn't seen any. She looked surprised, and said very matter of factly, "In a sporting goods store!" Then she gave me directions to one and I left, disbelieving.

Then I asked our conversation teacher, who is an awesome guy and it turns out a minor chess enthusiast. Where can you buy a chess set? "Why, in a sporting goods store!"

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, chess is a sport here.

I made my way to the TSUM (central universal store), which is basically a mall, and there, crammed into a store with a bunch of hockey, basketball, darts, and soccer equipment, was a staggering display of chess sets. I bought one of good quality, with a backgammon board on the inside. I'll give it to my teacher when we go- I couldn't bear the idea of three days sitting on a boat playing with plastic pieces so light that they'd blow away in the breeze. Quality in all things, and that means wooden pieces, thankyouverymuch. *snobsnobsnob*

Aaaand I know that I haven't explained about the boat yet, but I was saving that for last. As our big field trip, we're all taking a three day river cruise on the Volga, to Nizhni Novgorod. We'll only get a couple of hours in the city, since the point of the entire endeavor, to russians at least, is to spend a bunch of time on a boat. We're all a little put out by this, but we're stocking up on goodies and magazines and games, and rejoicing that there will be no classes on the boat.

We're all... so... tired. Last friday, a full half of my class (including me) was late. Even our teachers are getting worn out. Thus, the boat will be for chatting and relaxation. I'll spend some time playing chess with my conversation teacher, who is a fascinating man, and chatting with him, and probably spend an equal amount of time attempting to steer clear of our mass media teacher, who is kind of scary. (All of us are highly entertained by him, since he seems to be a jovial madman, but he's also quite sexist, and a bit lecherous for comfort. His classes are very informative, but usually we're all too mortified to take it all in.)

So, that's it. We're halfway through with our time here, and I'm already starting to feel like I've been wasting all my time here. On what, don't ask me, but clearly I have not been doing enough, because I sound like an idiot! Yeah, I know, I'll always sound slightly brain damaged in Russian. I must have improved, but it's such a hard language. So hard. So many things to go wrong. Yarrrr.

So I'll be back on the interwebs probably on Friday, though there's a slight chance I'll post something tomorrow before we go or Thursday after we get back.

Miss you all! Mwah! (Happy fourth, too!)

I'm back!

I honestly didn't want to go silent for that long. Events conspired, as they say.

All is well, however, and life has been moving along at a breakneck pace, or at least too darned fast for me. We're nearing the halfway point on our stay here, and we're definitely out of both the initial period of ungainly confusion, and the honeymoon. Oh well.

So nothing in itself amazing has happened to me in the last few days. I got half of Sunday to myself, and spent most of it doing things like hogging the shower, running around in all modes of undress, listening to music and reveling in not having anyone popping in to tell me long stories or feed me things. I also did a big fat hunk of my jigsaw puzzle, which lasted all of three days. I have now purchased one so large that I'm being forced to actually assemble it in small sections on the slide-out keyboard tray, because the spread out pieces have consumed the top of the desk entirely. That should last a while longer. (It's also one of those with a devilish water-reflecting-everything motif. Bwa ha ha.)

My hostess's husband is back from the hospital, where he had been for the last twenty days, having an operation on his leg. He's walking much better now and seems to be feeling great. I love having him around, since he's a nice guy, very intelligent, and he cooks on my kind of schedule- dinner is now at seven, whether Ilkam is around or not. Heaven. However, he has a Tatar accent, and tends to look in other directions when he talks to me. Quietly. Therefore, I don't understand him. This has given him the impression that I don't understand Russian, and he translates the simplest things into heavily accented, ungrammatical English. I must get him to stop doing this, since it bugs me for the next half hour every time.

So on to my favorite theme, what is weird in Russia. The Engrish, as always- my new favorite shirt was a collection of disembodied animal heads, tinted bright colors, with "Ahoy, me Hearty!" written underneath in sparkly silver.

I have to say that what takes the weird cake at the moment, and possibly forever, is the public service announcements that play at all times in the halls of the university. They're silent, but there are tvs mounted in all the hallways and lobbies, so you can't escape them.

They just got- or are just now advertising, I'm not sure which- national emergency services here, like 911, only 01. So, apparently in the hope of getting people to actually call the number, the TVs play an undending stream of short reenactments of terrible, terrible things happening to people, and then a reminder to a) not do that and b) call 01 if they do.

So I stand, transfixed, during my breaks between classes as children are crippled for life, people are crushed in their cars, stampedes crush people, elevators cut babies in half (this one is only hinted at), lovers burn to death in their bed, which caught on fire from a badly-tended post-coital cigarette (this one ends with a heart-rending shot of the red rose on their nightstand fading into ashes) and so forth. And since there's no way I can just stand there and watch it all, I go back to class wondering what the hell could happen to the nice old lady ironing clothes while her husband reads the newspaper a little too close, or exactly what the guy with the hacksaw on a pole was planning on doing with those powerlines.

Then, just when I think I'm used to this unending stream of horror, the management realizes that the anouncements are spreading more terror and despondency then wisdom, and the rising suicide rate apparently prompted them to change their tact, because I came in one morning to see lapping lakeshores and lovely sunrises with phrases like 'It's darkest before dawn' and 'things may seem bad now, but the sun will rise again.' These are now regularly interspersed with the death and affliction.

Woo.

Also, our Mass Media professor? Complete madman. I'll have to write about him in more detail later.

TTFN, you lot!

Things that are weird in Russia

Well, I myself am not up to much today. I and Olivia were going to go to a cat show (yeah. A cat show.) and then a movie, but we decided to hang out at the mall until the movie instead. I have successfully purchased a couple of books and a jigsaw puzzle for those quiet, braindead evenings at home, and now Olivia has let me use her laptop while she eats something exceedingly strange and meat-based from the food court. We are unable to identify what part of a chicken is holding it all together, but she says it's tasty. All right then.

So, lacking boring personal news, let's talk about something interesting for once!

Russia is a strange, strange place. I love it to death. Especially:

• The weird English shirts. I see a lot of repetitive ones around town on the girls, usually something you could imagine them trying to sell in the US: "I'm the sweetest trouble maker" "I'm a pop music idol." Inane, but you can get them. I am unable to reprint most of the ones I've seen on men, however, because someone under 18 or with a heart condition may read this blog. Seriously, who decides what to write on these shirts? And no matter how universal English is, I doubt that the people buying them know what's written on them. Actually, I should have titled this part 'weird English in general' because from here I can see a food court menu that, in an attempt to look cool and international, has translated its menu into english as well as russian- I can order a "Doner kebab" and "Wight bean soup". The last one is particularly soylent-greenish.



• The rampant copyright theft. I honestly have been in one store where I'd be willing to say that the dvds and cds are actual original copies. And I was stomping around in outrage when I found a ripoff of the Discworld books in a big-name book store; I don't mind ripoffs of Harry Potter and such, for some reason, but the book with three elephants on a turtle on the cover (instead of four) made me MAD. Huh.



• The customer service. It's perfectly acceptable to hate customers here, as far as I can tell. And apparently it's acceptable to hate the staff right back. Makes shopping an interesting pastime. Also, there are often complicated systems of scrip/payment/receipt-getting/receipt-carrying-back/product-getting, thought I've run into that less here in Kazan. However, we just bought our movie tickets, and there are assigned seats, like in live theater, with different prices for different areas. Eesh.



• The filth. Guidebooks to Russia will often warn you that there's a 'superstition' that you shouldn't sit on the ground here, that it's viewed as unhealthy and you should sit on a jacket or a piece of newspaper or something. My friends, that is no superstition. I would not sit on the ground here if you payed me. Aside from the fact that everything is coated in a fine mixture of dust, cigarette ash, and solidified car exhaust, this is a nation of terrible litter bugs, a dearth of public toilets, and rampant hordes of stray animals. And the standards are different, too. It seems to be a remnant from soviet times, but no one cares about the cleanliness of public hallways here. The apartments themselves are tidy and lovely and everyone is very into remodeling, but our hallway and stairs, for instance, has several layers of dust, paper, mud, oil, possibly paint, and cat excrement on it. And possibly human urine as well. Yeah. The house slippers make sense now. And don't even talk to me about what toilets there



• The fashion. Young women basically dress in a skimpy European fashion, with soe eighties US fashion thrown in. (I saw an 80's themed bar, which cracked me up because the eighties in Russia were not like the 80's in the US, which was what the bar obviously meant.) Older women, however, wear horrid floral patterns, fringe, and a lot of their shirts have medallions, sequins, beads, and other strangely flashy things that unflatteringly emphasize their very Russian waistlines. I have no idea what motivates this. Also, murderously high heels are very in right now. That's fine, but I felt so sorry for one girl I watched picking her way down the street- she was in flats, but something was wrong with the way she was walking. I glanced at her feet, and they were all cut up and swollen in the shape of the straps of some obviously very pretty, lacy high heels she must have worn the day before. I see a lot of foot sores here on the fashion elite.



• The tea. Tea, tea, tea. The first time I came to Russia, I wasn't much of a tea drinker. I didn't drink tea at home, and that worried my hostess no end. She decided I must not like their type of tea, so she started to buy varieties of tea, in hopes that she would find one I would drink. I caved, and was shortly hooked. This time, I came prepared to drink as much tea as was required, and be happy about it. This has made my life much easier. While others quail before the eternal cup- even on the hottest days, hot black tea is the drink of choice- I guzzle happily. One of my compatriots said that he doesn't like tea, at all, and it's driving his hostess nuts. She doesn't know what to do with him. The rest of us, in a sort of stockholm syndrome, are even buying tea for ourselves at lunch.

There's more, of course, but I can only go on for so long at a time. Miss you all! Mwah.

Oh my back....

I did get my fax sent off yesterday... I hope. It took a while to track down a working printer anywhere in this building, and then I left the papers with a disconcertingly high mucky muck who said he'd have it dealt with. Fingers crossed!

I realized yesterday as I trooped out of the house on time that I was sick of Russia. Just sick of it. Everything was weird and annoying and I was done with it. I didn't want to go home that badly- I just wanted Russia to quit being such a stupid place and let me go somewhere else while it was at it.

Luckily, I had the good sense to realize that if I was sick of Russia, I was doing something wrong. Therefore I made sure I had time on the computer, sqeezed as much fun as I could out of our classes, sang loudly in Russian Songs, and then fearlessly plowed through red tape to get my papers sent. That accomplished, I stuck around to go to a classical music concert, instead of creeping home with my tail between my legs.

It was lovely! A famous Korean soprano (who has, by the way, sung at the Oregon Bach Festival, which was weird to see printed in Russian) and a fairly well known Russian pianist performed a selection of classical and opera music from around the world. Lovely, lovely, lovely. And free! Awesome.

Then it turned out that two of my fellow CLSers- Olivia, and a girl named Lydia- were also there. Olivia introduced me to a new acquaintance of hers, a Chinese girl who speaks better Russian than I could dream of, but after a few minutes she took her leave. That left us three Americans with some time on our hands, and so I fought my run-home-and-hide instincts and the disable wave of tired that was enveloping me, and instead of going home to sleep, we all went to a cafe. Socializing win!

Shokoladnitsa is like the Russian starbucks, but it's a little higher-end and specializes in classy desserts and fancy drinks (and, at this location, hookahs and sushi as well.) I decided that I had gone long enough without coffee, and by god I was going to try some Russian espresso. I ordered a latte.

It came with a straw in it and more than an inch of foam on top, but it was quite pretty, and rather tasty!

This means that I have found passable espresso! In Russia! On my way home from school!

I managed to stop weeping from joy after a little while, and we three girls sat around and looked hopelessly at homework assignments and commiserated, since all of us are in hellishly slow processes for various desirable jobs back at home (or abroad, for that matter).

As afternoon wound down into evening, we split up and Olivia and I made our way home. I outlined my plans for convincing my host mother that she should go to dacha without me over the weekend, and we both trembled in excitement at the idea of having an empty apartment to play in again. Personal space! Silence! Lack of Russian commentary! OOO!

Then I went home, did more laundry, and then wrote out an entire hour and a half yoga class, which I obediently followed down to the letter. Ahhhh. My rather rickety hostess came home and scared the daylights out of me by trying what I was doing, in her street clothes and sandals, with her trick knee, hip, and back, but otherwise it was wonderfully peaceful.

I am sore as HELL today.

Needless to say, though,I feel much better.

And that's all, folks! A boring recounting of my day for ya. I promise there'll me more interesting stuff on Monday, or possibly sooner if I get some computer access. Now, off to our week's end meeting, and then into the wild, sleep-infested freedom of the weekend!

Strakhovania!

Gesundheit.

No, actually, that's the Russian word for Insurance. Wooo.

Well, I have lots of time today because I was going to try and send a fax back to PSU, but our person wasn't in the office so I'll have to try again later. I left lunch early to do that, so now I've got about twenty minutes here. Yay!

Yesterday the fates conspired to make me too late to use the computer in the morning (but my kitty was there, so I did get to feed him, so it's not all bad) and then we were informed that we had to stay put at lunch until it was time to leave for the excursion, so we were STUCK.

And you can imagine how thrilled we were to be confined to the cafe while we waited, with bated breath, for a tour of... (drumroll please).... an insurance company!

Yeah. We were all positive it was going to the thrill of our young lives. It was related to our Tuesday lecture on health care, however, so we were pretty much required to attend.

Perhaps I was the only one to feel the cloud pass over the sun when our spry young guide informed us that we were going to walk instead of taking a bus, since it was "very far- I mean close! Very close! And it's pretty, there's a park."

To Russians, Freudian slips aside, 'very close' is anything within about thirty blocks, and they neglected to mention that the park was full of stairs. (Having recently been permanently deprived of my elevator, I have grown to appreciate flat spaces.) I was also almost mown down by a truck that refused to stop for us in the back roads, and instead chose to lurch three or four feet at a time towards us while we scrambled out of the way- I was literally inches from his bumper. Then he passed us and proceeded to tailgate the one other car in sight and honk manically.

We arrived at the insurance company, finally- after passing THREE OTHER insurance companies, just for good measure- and I held out for the elevator while everyone else huffed up four flights of stairs. We were all herded into the company break room to await our guides who were, it turned out, the director and partners of the company, as pleased as punch to have us touring their firm.

After a fairly eye-watering talk on the structure of insurance, the interesting part started- one of the senior partners, bursting with pride, ferried us all over the place and dragged out expert after expert to say hi to us and make chitchat. He showed us EVERYTHING, obviously proud of their accomplishments. It was a very successful Western type of company, and they were right to be proud- after perestroika, there were NO insurance companies in Russia- in the soviet union there were only two. This company was founded 17 years ago, which means that it's been around basically as long as private insurance has existed in Russia. The owner brought back suitcases of materials from the US, which he translated himself, and then set out to creat the modern business model from scratch.

Have you ever read a fantasy or scifi book in which a bunch of magical creatures/cavemen/aliens decide to join the corporate world and do everything by the book? This was that. They were incredibly proud of their break room kitchenette (unheard of in Russia) and their motivational posters, especially one involving two lists- the qualities required in employees, and those undesirable. I was intrigued to see that one of the desirable qualities was 'democracy,' but it was the last one on the list. Hmm.

So we ran up and down stairs- pausing only briefly for the senior partner to throw his chewing gum out the window- and disrupted the workings of the poor pale grunts in IT and made the head economist, who talked like Kermit the Frog, come out and talk to us, and looked at photos of the kids' sports teams they'd bought uniforms for, and the ancient veterans they had given big sacks of vodka and jam to, and other good works, as well as the head of the company winning at darts at a company picnic.

Finally we all crammed into the head of the company's office, and all admired his tchochkes and hardwood floor, then all squeezed into a big, sheepishly smiling group so he could have his picture taken with all of us. I have a feeling that the next tour, if there ever is another tour, will get to look at us on the wall, next to the befuddled veterans and kids playing soccer.

I didn't take them up on their mutliple offers to photograph the riveting hallways of their building, but it was a very nice place, and had lots of windows and fairly cheerful looking employees, so over all it was very fun just to meet all of the people.

Then I went home and slept, slept, slept. We're all out of our mind with fatigue. Now I shall bid thee adeu, and race away because this week we get to sing Russian songs again, and I wouldn't miss it for the world!

Back with a sleepy vengeance!

Well, I'm in a better mood today. Yesterday I signed off of the computer and KICKED BUTT.

I correctly guessed my way through the city to a road that both took me straight to the sports store AND got me home in a very efficient straight line. I braved the confusion of the sporting goods store and bought their one yoga mat (in a very, very girly light violet. Eesh.) then I went home, washed the mat, went to the store, bought laundry detergent and cat food for my cat, returned to the apartment, cleaned the kitchen, did the dishes, handwashed my clothes in the sink, tidied my room, did my homework, cajoled myself into doing some yoga, and passed out. Then I overslept this morning. Eheh.

But bad mood defeated! Just now very, very tired. Going home to sleep directly after our lecture, though lord only knows how long that's going to be.

And did I say cat? Yeah. There's an adorable, friendly, heartbreakingly skinny kitty in our courtyard, and I figure I can at least fatten him up a little before I go home in August. What can I say? I don't have anything to take care of here, and if you know anything about my life at home, you know that that's a big fat change.

The sports store was very interesting. It was a huge building, and called its self a sports superstore, but only two of the floor had actual goods for sale. The bottom floor had boxing gloves, wetsuits (???), tennis rackets, etc, but in surprisingly small numbers and limited selection. Thus the one yoga mat. It was very small compared to most american stores. The second floor, where the big sale was going on, was a little better stocked, with very very expensive american clothes. Do I want to pay $60 (marked down) for a nike t-shirt? No, I do not! I got my mat and left, but not before getting my reciept signed by one of the two security guards. Russia is weird.

Off to lecture! Hugs and love to all!

PS Happy birthday Sophia! YARRR, Annabelle! Hi, Cass and Nurmi and Noni and mom and dad and Susan and everyone else who has left me comments! The first thing I do when I get to the computer lab is sign on and read all of the comments I've gotten, usually twice. It makes me all warm and fuzzy.

My hump my hump...

Sorry for the atrocious Black Eyed Peas reference, if I even got their name right, but I have officially hit The Hump.

Some of you may remember last time, in Petersburg, my reporting that I was in a terrible mood and sick to boot. As I glowered at the kitchen table, dabbing at my flowing nose and feeling like something that had been scraped off the bottom of a boot, my host mother told me that the end of the second week and beginning of the third is always the hardest for foreign students; things aren't shiny and new, but you're resoundingly not at home, and you're tired, and that's when you start hating the food, or you get sick, or everything just seems to SUCK.

Well, that's where I am right now, yet again. Almost everyone else is too. I've been in a gloweringly horrible mood for the last two days, and no amount of cookies and English language books has quite cured me of it. I've finally decided that I don't need any more babying, since that's just getting me behind in my homework. So I'm taking the long way home today to try and buy a yoga mat, and I'm going to buy some handwashing detergent so I don't use all my shampoo on clothes (our washer is now busted) and I'm going to go home and do all the dishes that I left out this morning, as I fled late to class. So there.

Saturday we went to the biggest Sabantui in Tatarstan. Sabantui is a 1000 ish year old festival held at the end of the planting season. In a lot of ways, it's like the Bizarro version of a county fair- same weird tchochkes for sale, same smarmy singers in bad suits, same beating-each-other-with-sacks-while-sitting-on-a-log.... wait. no.

Anyway, you can look at a bunch of photos here. They're out of order and one may be upside down, but they're there.

Then that evening we went to see Carmen at the Kazan opera. YAY! I love the opera, and I don't think I've been since I was last in Russia. Carmen was amazing, despite slightly horrible costuming, choreography and set design- the musicians and dancers were all fantastic, so as long as you only looked at what was important, it was awesome. I almost cried. Twice.

Then Sunday I spent at the dacha. It was beautiful and peaceful there, and I took a few pictures- which you can see here- but I was descending into the funk, and my hostess was not helping. In the end, she stayed at the dacha overnight, and I narrowly escaped having to make my way home alone for the first time at ten at night by the fact that our neighbors were just leaving, heading back to the big city. They kindly agreed to drop me off, and so I spent forty minutes making vaguely grammatical small talk with a very nice older Russian couple. They drove like sane people, too. It was rather pleasant, if a bit stressful, and I arrived home feeling triumphant at having made my way through the trial.

And now computers are in great demand, so I'll be getting going. I also added several photos to the Kazan in general set, which is here. Enjoy!

Quick! Someone send Satan a sweater!

'Cause if it's chilly here, then it's gotta be freezing down there.

It started POURING rain by the bucket last night, and today the city was drowning, and almost cold. It went from 23C, which was livable after temperatures in the high twenties and low thirties, to 12C today. TWELVE. I stood there and stared at the thermometer on the way to school, huddled under my umbrella.

There are drains here, but there aren't enough of them. Road crossing requires some serious acrobatics, and I did managed to step in one puddle deeper than my shoe. Yeah. But I was grinning like a maniac all the way to school- I didn't realize how much I missed rain! I feel like my whole body has rehydrated, all of the sudden. I felt like a raisin yesterday, but now I feel awesome.

Of course, the rain couldn't last forever. Now it seems that the weather has just gone completely off its meds, flashing between blinding sun and ominous clouds in seconds.

Alright, enough about the weather. I have like two more minutes here.

Yesterday my hostess was at the dacha, so I had the apartment to myself. Olivia, who lives next door to me, and I had planned to go to the market, but we didn't have time after the lecture- but we decided to get together in my empty apartment, and have a little no-hostesses evening.

We met up after dinner and went to the pharmacy (where I bought a $15 bottle of sunscreen, which apparently is really rare here) and the grocery store, and then went back to my place to study. HAH! All we did was drink tea and eat cookies and gab, gab, gab. It was marvelous. And we stuck to the language pledge! We really did! Then I washed a bunch of clothes in the sink, since there have been no further moves on the laundry front, and then went to bed.

Today, I washed in the sink because our bathtub is out of commission, made breakfast for myself (WOO! Portions I can actually consume!) and fled to school, late. Thus my only having ten minutes to talk to you guys in. I must flee now! Already late to our Friday recap meeting!

Iiiiiiceee creeeeaaammmm

Well, things are going well here. I got a bunch of sleep yesterday, so today I feel much better. Classes were quite interesting this morning- we had our class on Russian mass media, which is taught by a charming and animated sexist. He's pretty sweet, actually.

At the moment, I'm sitting in the computer lab, where some South African students are fairly opposed to politely waiting their turn- they're wandering around rattling people's chairs and demanding to know when they'll be done. I nabbed the last empty computer about five minutes ago. Ba ha ha.

My hostess is at the dacha again today; she's working hard to de-winterize it and get it liveable, since the Russian ideal is to spend, if not the entire summer, then the entire weekend at the dacha. I've been out there once, but I didn't take my camera- next time, I'll take a bunch of pictures for you.

I don't mind having the apartment to myself for a couple of days- there's plenty of food, and we live half a block from a grocery store, there are two tvs, tons of windows, and comfy (if small) furniture to sprawl on. I look forward to a peaceful evening of playing music, watching crap american movies dubbed in Russian, and doing homework.

If everything pans out, Olivia and I are making a foray to the open market to buy shoes, hats, sunglasses, and whatever else it is that we've needed.

The sun! The sun here is crazy! We're all turning into freckle factories. I have freckles on my HANDS. Since when do my hands freckle? Since I came the sun capital of the entire solar system, I guess. Olivia says she found a store where they sell sunscreen. I plan on buying a gallon.

Our water came back on on schedule on wednesday, but at about nine last night it conked out of its own accord. This morning, my hostess filled the bathtub with water, so we have something to flush the toilet with, but that means no shower. I want a shower. I want a shower soooo baaad.

Have I mentioned that russians love ice cream? You can't walk half a block without passing an ice cream stand, if not an entire colony of them. I caved in today and bought one and- as always- it was amazing. Even the Nestle brand ice cream here is better than in America. So delicious. This love of ice cream appears to have some sort of calorie-burning magic to it, too, since I pass hordes of model-thin women eating ice cream by the coneful every time I step out on the street.

Another weird thing, that seems to have something in common with the gold teeth that almost everyone has, is that a lot of people from the older generation- in their forties and fifties, say- is that they're missing what I would call their wolf teeth. Wolf teeth are small molars in horse's mouths that they take out so that the bit can fit, but around here people smile or talk, and from the side you can see a big gap about two teeth behind their eyeteeth. Why? No other teeth are commonly missing. Huh.

We went on a tour of the Kremlin yesterday, and also a bus tour of the city. I've got some pictures to upload later, but for now I'm going to sign off and try and figure out where we're having our presentation on Russian cinema, since I'm pretty sure they aren't going to haul a tv up three flights of stairs to our usual auditorium.

Love you all! All comments read and re-read, and well appreciated.

Photos!

No real post here today, but I threw together two sets out of those photos and did a little commentary on most of them. So here, enjoy!

Kazan Photos

This, that, and the other

Well, I had hoped to have time to put together a little photo slideshow for you guys, but that plan was, sadly, rather dependent on our lecturer not talking for an extra FORTY minutes.

Ahem.

Let's talk details.

I live in a nice little three room apartment, which is about a twenty minute brisk walk from the main university building, which is in turn about a fifteen minute brisk walk from the building where our classes are. I go past fountains and parks (where I've been warned not to walk for fear of gays... not sure I follow the logic there) and lots of weird buildings on the way, and only have to cross the street four or five times.

And believe me, the less one crosses the street here, the better it is for your health. The crosswalk signal is heeded, to a point, but it tends to be more of a 'now you have to avoid pedestrians, not the other way around' signal. It's not unusual to have three or four buses actually sitting in and completely filling the crosswalk on the main street during the walk signal- you just check the signal on your side, and if it's green you run for it, dodging the still crawling buses and any opportunistic cars on the way.

Anyway, everyone tries to cross with company, for better visibility and legal clout. Watching people cross the street in Russia, I have always said, is like watching penguins in a documentary jump into the water. They don't all go at once- they jostle and crowd and shuffle and push closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, then one jumps in and swims away. Everyone watches. Then if he makes it without getting eaten by a killer whale, the rest go for it in a big group. Replace curb with cliff and killer whale with forty year old Yugo sedan, and you've got the picture.

I haven't been shopping in a store here, besides a quick trip for groceries, but the open market was a wondeful melee of buying and selling- produce, clothing, shoes, hats, fans, you name it and there was a chunk of market devoted to stand after stand of it. And I don't even think were were in the main open market- it was one of the sattelite markets, I think.

The food is good, and as I said, mainly quite healthy, but occasionally it is a little unsettling too. I actually like buckwheat kasha, and I can do any strange soup you throw at me (so far) but the freaky fish last night threw me a little. It was just... a fish. A long, skinny, floppy fish that had been cooked somehow, and was enthusiastically gutted by the lovely, dainty girlfriend of the son of the household. I just about lost it, not while chewing on salty pieces of fish skin, but when she eagerly and generously gave me one of its ovaries. Mmmmm, fish ovary. "Little fishes!" She cheerily explained in her broken English, which she pulls out from time to time for me. It was very salty, but pretty tasty as long as I didn't look at it too long. Blerrrr. She had absolutely no problem eating the other one herself when I turned it down.

(In an aside about the Russian metabolism, which I noted before, she complained that her favorite clothing line does not go down to a size zero, and after weighing herself, sighed and said that she can't gain weight no matter what she does. Goodness.)

I'm in the midst of a strategically planned tactical move, designed to get me the privilege of cooking my own breakfast. It's not that the food Ilkam makes me is bad- quite the contrary, it's very good- but it's how MUCH she gives me! I don't need a big bowl of kasha with seconds if I don't fend her off, along with three pieces of toast with cheese and some halva to go with it. They feed me lunch. I do not need to fend off starvation. And not eating it is just one step closer to the madness that is convincing her that I really do like her food. (Similar to the madness of convincing her that I really don't mind her not waking up at seven AM to make all that food for me, which I am about to attempt.)

Oh, and the tea. Never forget the tea. By my estimate I will drink roughly 40 cups of tea a week. It's tasty.

And what was that I mentioned a moment ago? Halva? What is that?

That, my friend, is deliciousness.

You can imagine my concern when, following a conversation the day before about sunflower seeds, Ilkam brought home and happily presented to me what looked like a cinder block.

"It's sunflower seeds!" she said, "Only this way. They mix them up with things."

Then, as she is cutting it apart- revealing it to have a color and texture similar to what I would imagine a compressed wasps' nest's to be, she says she loves it more than chocolate... only, you have to eat it with tea, because it's very sweet. Sweet?!??

So it was with some consternation that I stared down a heaping bowl of cut up sunflower-seed-wasp-nest-cinder-block-dessert. However, upon tasting it, I fell in love. It's got a little of the nutty richness of peanut butter, but it has that distinct sunflower seed flavor. The texture is flaky and crunchy, and it's sweet and slightly salty. Over the last week I've demolished most of the cinder block myself, much to Ilkam's approbation.

It's pretty sweet for breakfast, though.

The freak heat wave is lightening up a little, I believe, although the classmate of mine who came in with melted asphalt on the bottom of her shoe may be inclined to disagree.

Aaaand... that's it for today, I think. There's more to talk about, because there's always more to talk about, but that'll have to wait for tomorrow or the day after. I'm going to drool my way home to my toiletless house, and probably sleep until evening, because I only got four hours' sleep last night. The bone deep weariness that has been my companion today and yesterday is beginning to pall a little... a nap is in order.

Leave me comments! Send me emails! I'm homesick and it's with a sense of anticipation that I flee the house half an hour early every day just so I can scramble down here and see if anyone has sent me anything. Love!

Send ice!

Alright, the first thing I have to talk about is the HEAT.

When I did my little bit of research, I found that Kazan was in the seventies-eighties for pretty much the entire summer, and fairly dry.

When they sent us the information about our cities and what to pack, etc, they said that no one here wears shorts, especially not girls.

So, when I packed, I brought exactly one skirt, with no shoes to go with it, and a bunch of jeans and t shirts.

Then, when I arrived, I learned that we are in the midst of a crazy heat wave, with temperatures up to and over a hundred degrees fahrenheit. Everyone is running around in daisy dukes, and I'm drooling along in full length jeans and a pool of my own sweat.

Must run (almost literally) to class now, but since there's no running water at home until eight tonight, I'll probably be back to elaborate further, organize photos, and otherwise rationalize staying close to toilets that flush.

Photos at last!

Alright, I'm finally uploading photos. The downside is, I have to hand select each one on and can only upload six at a time. So it's taking a while. I'm about a quarter of the way through, and I don't know when the lab closes.

You can see the photos on my flickr account and I hope to have them tagged and sorted... uh... tomorrow?

Alright, there's a big pile of nearly a hundred photos on my flickr now, make of them what you will for the moment. At least this time they're all right side up... I think.

I think the lab is technically closed now, but I think I can use it for a moment or two more.

All is well with me. I'm already homesick, in a way I wasn't last time. I'm having a blast here, but at the same time as I'm doing all sorts of crazy and fun things, my mind wanders off to people and places and things at home pretty often. I just got out from under the cloud of jet lag, though, so let's see how I feel in a week. :-)

Classes are great- our group has the best teachers, and I like all of my classmates. We even have a decent classroom, which is a godsend. Lots of homework. Boring homework. Very useful homework.

The food I'm being stuffed to brimming with is pretty healthy, homecooked and tasty. Still not enough veggies, let alone raw veggies, but lots of yummy whole grains.

I went to the open market last Friday, and I think it deserves a post all to itself. But for now let's say that if you want anything, it'll be laid out on a grimy table somewhere in the middle of Kazan.

(I was informed today that Kazan was voted the 'dirtiest city in Russia' a few years back, and I can believe it. Filth! Suddenly house slippers and lots of clothes changing makes sense.)

And to further reassure you that I am well taken care of, our fearless leaders flew out from St Petersburg for three days to talk to us and make sure that everything was working well and that we were all right. We even got to speak English for about five minutes.

Speaking of which, everyone is sticking to the language pledge really well. It's a lot of fun to just sit around gabbing in Russian.

I may have located another source of wifi to try, and I may get access to this lab more and more as the regular students leave and we have it all to ourselves.


Alright, I'm hungry and the computer lab is deserted. I should probably start the walk home. I love you all!

In which I hurry.

Oh, there's so much I want to tell you guys about! The crazy food, the crazy buildings, the crazy cars, the crazy people, the crazy plumbing... so much!

I'm a little short on time today, since I've got to finish an essay that's due back in the US, so I'll have to be pithy.

You see great shirts in English around here.

• With cartoon characters:"Stylish confusion"


• "You may think you are free, but you already hooked on me" (seen twice)


• "US Army: statistics for battlefields" (this arranged in artful spirals.)


• Apparently a trend: "Sweet Bunny" and "Sweet Kitty"


• Just now in the internet cafe: "GLUP GLUP GLUP" in lividly striped block letters

And I'd forgotten how much fun the games were. There are the general travel games, the classics- "How many times can I wear this?" is a favorite, along with "What did I just eat?" and "Is everyone in this country nuts?" Russian favorites include "The Game of Change" in which all players attempt to keep as many small bills to themselves as possible, and the person with the most hundred and fifty ruble notes wins, and "Go to the bathroom but don't touch anyone else's filth". For those wanting a challenge, there's the perennial stumper "Convince your hostess that you're full," but beginners should be warned that it is an unwinnable game.

And now I go to try and pound out the last few paragraphs of a paper on Russian immigrants' perspectives, and then trot on home to play another hand of "Convince your hostess".

Poka!
(That's how you say 'bye' in Russian, fyi)

PS photos soon but the lab was closed for a quasinational holiday and the cafe computer doesn't allow outside devices.

I am here! I'm not near! Get used to it!

Sorry, my brain is on a little funny.

Oooooh, goodness. Where to start? I've been trying to get to you guys, but we won't have internet access at the college until tomorrow. We were supposed to have it today, but this being Russia, I should have known better than to believe the guy in charge of getting us logins. (The komputerchik.)

Well, the last flight from Moscow to Kazan was bumpy. Pretty much everyone had passed out at the gate while we waited- I don't think I'll ever know how long we were actually there. We filed on, sat down, and mostly passed out again. I couldn't sleep, so I was up for the cake and tea they passed out- each little cup of black tea had a thin, round slice of lemon floating neatly on the top.

So we thump-a-bumped over a few hundred miles of Russia, and landed at the Kazan airport, which was a tiny little thing. We walked down a staircase from the plan onto the tarmac, then into a little building where they loaded the baggage claim by backing a truck into the room, extending a little conveyor belt out the back and throwing each bag onto that, and then carrying the suitcases from that conveyor belt to the big luggage carousel. We all arrived with luggage and some sanity, despite the confusion over our canceled flight in Moscow.

Then they loaded us up on a tour bus, and started the long business of dropping us off. First we had to drive for half an hour or forty five minutes through the rural areas and suburbs, then they started the big circuit that got us all foisted off on various Russians. Some were met by big smily Russian youths who carried their bags off with a shrug, others were embraced by tiny babushkas, and others just sort of trailed off after a family.

I saw a pack of street dogs that were big and hirsuit and fairly intimidating, but safely on the other side of the bus window. That's the only way I've seen stray dogs so far, and from what I've seen that's a good thing. There was one out in the suburbs that I swear was a wolf.

I got off the bus with Olivia and Martin, who is our site coordinator. (Think den mother.) They live in a building not far from me, on the ninth and twelfth floors respectively, which sucks majorly for them because there was a fire there not long ago and both the elevators are wrecked. Yay for cardio? (I walk the stairs, just for healthiness, but I'm on the fifth floor so that's not so bad.)

Some of you might remember me mentioning that living arrangements are an interesting thing in Russia- if you ask an exchange student who they live with, the answer is often a shrug and a puzzled expression. Someone owns/rents the apartment, of course, but often there's a wide array of relations and relations' relations that move in and out, often on a daily basis. One person, I forget who, lives with 'A grandmother and her granddaughter and occasionally the father of the granddaughter.' There may also have been a boyfriend involved.

My own apartment has a fairly fixed number of occupants. My host family consists of and older married couple, in their late sixties-seventies, and their grown son. They're all super nice and very well educated. Ilkam is a piano teacher, Gl'us was a physicist, and Idgei is a mechanic but was trained as an engineer. Ilkam is a great cook, and Gl'us is very thoughtful and funny. He speaks slowly and clearly, because he has a Tatar accent- he didn't learn russian until high school or college, I didn't catch which. Ilkam spoke Russian as her first language, but I think she's equally fluent and accentless in Tatar.

Dad asked me on the phone what Tatar sounds like, and all I could answer was, "Confusion." It doesn't sound that different from Russian, so it can take a couple of sentences of listening really hard and not understanding a word before I realize that people are speaking Tatar. It certainly doesn't help that they'll switch back and forth from sentence to sentence. The same goes for written Tatar- aside from a sort of schwa letter they sometimes use, it's almost impossible to tell which language you're reading if it's in cyrillic. If I sound things out, though, sometimes there's an arabic word that I recognize. If Russian wasn't so damned hard, I'd try to learn a little Tatar whileI was here, too.

The city is one big screaming traffic jam filled with people and dirt. And puddles, when it rains, WHICH IT DOES. Curse you, wikipedia! You lied to me! I ended up buying an umbrella from Martin the other day when it started dumping rain and I still had a big fat walk home. It's so warm, even hot, that you don't need a coat most of the time- just an umbrella. So there are all these tall, skinny Russian girls running around in tiny clothes and tall shoes and carrying little purses, and full sized umbrellas, even in the sunshine.

Which brings me on to the people. There are three age groups, as far as adults are concerned. There are the young and skinny, who are really really freaking skinny- both male and female. It's like living in a city full of supermodels. All the girls are really fashion conscious, but the guys just sort of slouch around in windbreakers. Then there are the middle aged, who are instantly pudgy and weathered and have thinning hair, and gold teeth. I have never seen so many gold teeth in my live. Everyone has gold teeth! And then there are the old men and women who stump around with big bags of things and walking sticks and look dour.

It's so weird here. It really is different- everywhere you look, something is strange. Like the gold teeth. Or the way that the girl who lets you through the turnstile to get into the library looks at you like she wants to kill you and eat your heart. Or the way the library is run, even- you have to fill out request cards, and a librarian fetches your books from the forbidden world of the stacks. Today I was walking up the street to the university, and there was a woman sweeping the sidewalk with a twig broom. And I haven't even ventured into the street markets yet!

Classes just started today, and so far they're good. It seems that I'm in a more advanced group, and the grammar class today went over some of the things I really need to work on, so that seems good. (There was testing yesterday, which was torturous. Four hours of insanely hard, badly conducted tests in a hot, muggy room, and none of us had slept the night before. Eesh.)

As far as I'm concerned, all is well. *knock on wood and spit three times* The food is good, the bed is comfy, the jet lag is minimal but unwilling to go away- I was sooo tired all Sunday, until I was in bed and then could not sleep. The next day, yesterday, I was sooooo tired again, so much so that I was having trouble staying awake and upright and almost walked off an embankment, about a foot to the right of the stairs. I got home safely, though, and slept for five hours, studied and talked to mom and dad, and then slept for another seven hours. And now today I'm crazy tired AGAIN, despite having slept so soundly that I didn't move all night and now the joints on my left side are all frozen up from being slept on for twelve hours.

Which reminds me, due to daylight savings time I am actually eleven hours ahead of you guys. So flip AM and PM and subtract an hour. Is that right? I don't know. I just know that it's something resembling four in the morning at home, and I can sure feel it.

Anyway, it's gorgeous and gritty and strange here, all at once. I've taken a bunch of pictures, and will take more, but I didn't bring my camera cord today so that will have to wait. This internet cafe is really cheap- about a dollar an hour- and only a couple of blocks from the university. There's also an internet cafe near my house, but I haven't ventured in there yet. So, updates should continue with some regularity now, whatever the komputerchik might do.

Now, I shall spend my last ten minutes on the internet doing... something. (I paid for it, so I guess I have to use it. Comics ahoy!) Then I shall go home, and try not to sleep until bedtime, and will instead do the big fat pile of homework we were given today. Woo.

Love you all. Take good care of yourselves! Only about eight weeks until I get home. Mwa ha ha.

Haiku from a plane

Possibly over
Ireland. Night. Darkness, at least.
What time is it? Where?

Stewardess sleeping
In tent beside my seat. Shhh!
Tired German lady.

What is this 'leg room'?
I have heard lies from first class.
The rich can fidget.

Economy class
Chicken is not Mexican,
Is not Indian.

Was that dinner or
Possibly lunch? Anyway,
Lights out! Sleep, foul knaves!

Sleepless dozing drowse
In darkness- no wait! Lights on!
Guess what? Good morning!

Landing! We're landing!
Time to stretch before our next
Flight... which is cancelled.

Frankfurt boarding gate
Leather chairs marble tile and
No bathrooms. Joy.

Safe in Moscow now,
One flight between me and bed.
Is the floor moving?

Orientated six ways to Sunday

Well, orientation today was looong, chock full of information, and surprisingly fun. I've made a few friends among the Kazan group and others, and I'm very much looking forward to actually getting to Russia.

It's been nice to get to know everyone in English, just for clarity's sake, but the moment our plane's wheels touch down in Moscow, we're bounden to speak only Russian- English is forbidden! Except with you guys, of course.

I'll be getting up at four our time tomorrow, so I have got to go to sleep. I love you all! Kiss my dog for
me, mom.

Wish me a pleasant flight!

On the wings of a parrot.

I can only take it as a good omen that the mascot of my first flight
today- with Northwest Frontier, each of whose planes bears a brightly
colored anipal for your viewing pleasure- was a parrot. Although not
the same species as my own birdie, it seemed fitting.

I departed from my parents in an airport surprisingly busy for five in
the morning, feeling both elated and a bit leery- it all has a
tendency to feel like a big mixup, like there's been aome mistake. But
there hasn't, it seems, since all of my tickets got me on a real live
plane!

I'm in Denver, Colorado at the moment, awaiting my second and final
flight of the day. I'll spend a day and a half in DC, then it's off to
foreign lands!

.....

On the floght here to Denver, I had the pleasure- and I truly mean
pleasure- of riding directly on front of two small childrem who had
never flown before. Their mother was wonderfully calm and well
equipped with snacks, games, and even gum for popping ears. The kids
were well prepared with awe and wonder.

(Okay, awe, wonder, and a loudly smacking juicyfruit scented miasma
that wafted forward like a sentient being bent on fruitiness. But I
digress.)

Anyway, I heard some of the most charming statements I've ever heard
on a plane:

"Are we gonna go up in the air, mama?"

"We're in the air!"

(In tones of wonder) "I can see the clouds!"

It made me remember my first flights, the amazent and the joy and-

(cue turbulence)

"We're gonna craaaaaaaaaaaaaash!!!!!!!"

-aaand the terror. Oh yes.

PS Colorado looks weird from above.

PPS Susan, no proofreading. I'm thumbtyping on a keyboard the size of
a saltine. :-)