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!