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.