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!