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!