I'm working on writing about my trip to Sochi, really. Mostly, however, I'm sunk into a deep, dark depression and spend a lot of time staring at whatever wall I happen to be sitting in front of. I've been pretty good about not spilling my upsetedness about life into here, but I think I'm going to make an exception today. The cumulation was dying my hair back to blond this morning, realizing that I missed some roots, that the blond dye just got rid of the brown and not the red underneath, and that the ends of my hair are crunchy. Also.

I'm actually upset about leaving Petersburg.

This is a really scary thought. Mostly having to do with the fact that I got used to living here and actually started to like it. The thought of saying goodbye to my host family (at least for a year and a half) makes me want to bawl every time I think about it. Of course, there are a lot of things that I won't miss at all about life here, but it's also that this year of my life is pretty much over and now I'm going to have to make another huge transition. Moving back to Portland for the summer (at least all of that shit's figured out--I found a job and a place to live), and then across the country to Pittsburg, which is another totally unknown quantity. Maybe I'm upset too because I feel like just when I've figured out how to live here, how to interact with people, how to have friends--I'm going home. Which isn't really home anymore either, really.

The other upsetting part is that I don't even know yet when I'm coming back. Since I dealt with buying tickets to Ukraine and France, I asked my father to buy my ticket from D.C. to Portland so I could work on finishing my paper. I thought this was a pretty simple and reasonable request, but he still hasn't done it. He wants me to stop off in Pittsburg and take a look at the city and find somewhere to live, which I'm not really in a huge hurry to do. As far as I'm concerned, I can live out of my car. At this point, I don't even really want to go to grad school. I keep telling myself that it's all going to be fine once I get there and that I'm just in a funk, but the other part of me's not so sure.

I'm not so worried about going to France with my grandparents. They'll probably be snotty about my piercings for awhile (if they have their glasses on and notice), but they'll be fine and they'll pay for everything and I'll probably mostly just get to hang out and read in the sun and eat. Which sounds great. However, I'm way worried about going to Ukraine. Not that I really should be: I've been there before, I speak really pretty okay Russian, and Ukrainians are mostly more friendly than Russians. It's more that I have no concrete plans, no place to stay (although I've been half-heartedly browsing hospitality club), not a lot of money, and no idea about whether or not I'm just an idiot. Let me back up a little. There's a guy. He's Ukrainian. We met in Warsaw, Poland in January. He walked me around when I came to Kiev. We've been emailing, etc. since I got back to Peter. I like him a lot. He's one of the smartest and most interesting people I've met in a really long time. Anyway, long story short, I'm pretty much going to Ukraine to see him. And I'm really not so sure how I feel about that. At first I was really happy and excited, but now I just think I'm stupid and I don't really want to go. But I will go, because I've already bought the tickets and they're non-refundable. I don't know what I'm going to do there for a week since he'll probably be working, but I guess I'll figure something out.

I guess the moral of the story is that change is scary and upsetting. A lot of the time, I wish that I could just live in a box and not have to go anywhere or do anything, or deal with people. Then I wouldn't have to be cranky about spending large amounts of money, and I'd never get hurt or make an ass of myself. Of course, then I'd never have any fun. But I've definitely had more than enough of this shit. I'm tired and lonely and ready to come home, but the end still isn't really in sight yet. Send me happy thoughts.

Bought my travel tickets, turned in the final (for now) draft of my paper, am getting on the train for Sochi in a couple hours. There is also an attractive man sitting across the internet table, and there is an attractive man in Kiev who I will be seeing in about 3 weeks.

Life is pretty sweet.

So, I always find it really embarrassing when I post more than twice in one day, and generally I feel like it's something that people should be ashamed of, but I'm stuck on the conclusion for my paper and since solitaire died with my computer, I figure I can do something slightly more constructive and entertaining with my "thinking" time. Whatever.

I also remembered several of the things that I had been wanted to post about but always forget whenever I sit down to write. Number one: the fucking weather. I realize that this sounds totally banal, but it's pretty fucked. Like, it was snowing last week. Not a whole lot, but enough to drag out the winter gear again. Two days BEFORE it started snowing, it was +15 and sunny. Two days after it stopped: +15 and sunny. This morning when I left the house it was already +10 and sunny and I was looking forward to a great day. By afternoon, it was probably +2 and cloudy. Thanks a lot, Spring.

With the advent of Spring and the hideous Spring fashions, this is a good time to review my Winter highlights. First prize for the most heniously ugly thing I've seen this winter goes to either the girl wearing the Mickey Mouse pants, or the girls with the hairy boots. The boots are awful: imagine that you decided that a baby yeti's feet would make attractive footwear, then cut them off, and wore them around town. Second prize goes to all the girls in the puffy down jackets that end right underneath their breasts, leaving their entire midriff exposed in the -25 weather. Very nice, girls. Way to work on the shrinking population problem by freezing your ovaries! Good work! Last but not least, third prize goes to the goths. Because who the fuck is a goth anymore? I mean, really?

While we're on the subject of blasts from the past: rollerblades. When's the last time you saw somebody rollerblade (apart from Napolean Dynomite)? They're seriously the rage here. People blast down Nevsky on their rollerblades knocking over the little babyshkas, drunk businessmen on lunchbreak, and whoever else happens to get in their path. And for as many people as there are on Nevsky (i.e., a lot of obstacles), I have yet to see one bite it. I'm eagerly waiting. And when that day comes, I will laugh, my friends. I will laugh a lot.

Also. Sex in bathrooms. Is really gross. I understand that it's really hard for young people to find places to get busy since everybody lives with their parents until they're at least 30, but seriously, people. I went to a club a while ago and of the 6 or 7 bathroom stalls, only 2 were actually available for use (the others being occupied by horny young couples and kids blowing coke, although where they get the money for that is beyond me). At the internet cafe a couple nights ago, I walked into the bathroom and there were used condoms floating in the toilet. Now, this might be okay if there was, you know, nowhere else to put them, but there was a trash can SIX INCHES away! Right next to the toilet! This is just unnecessary. Not only do they have to rub in that the rest of us aren't getting laid, but they have to be gross about it too. Ew.

And another thing. Personal hygiene. I feel like this has probably been the subject of at least one other paragraph in at least one other post, but the entire country of Russia reminds me of that scene from the Blues Brothers where they're in the fancy restaurant and the man at the next table asks the maitre'd to be moved. "Frankly they're offensive... smelling." Yeah. I understand that sometimes it's hard to bathe every day. I don't. But I bathe when I'm dirty or when I'm starting to smell bad, not when I've already smelled bad for a couple days, then decided to piss myself and roll around in a pile of my own shit. Maybe throw up a little bit on my shirt. Just for good measure. And I'm ALWAYS next to these people. It never fails. I wasn't sure that the B.O. could be worse than it was this winter, but I think it actually is getting worse as the weather is getting warmer. Maybe because people have less clothes on and the stink is closer to the air or something? Somebody smart tell me why they're so much stankier now.

There's some other stuff too, which I will probably write about very soon. Probably involving upcoming travel plans. (And maybe even mullets...)

I really don't know why I'm writing this, because I don't have any fantastic news or funny stories. Or even major complaints. Life is just... I dunno... life. Pretty much as usual. Except of course more funky. Because it's Russia.

Today in Stylistics class, we learned that slang for the word "super" is "super-pooper." I have never heard anyone use this, nor will I use it. However, it's an interesting and entertaining point of "fact." Also in Stylistics, we're learning how to swear like sailors, although without any actual practice, and without the teacher actually saying any of the words out loud. And she won't even write the full words out on the board. So lame. Luckily I have Russian friends to practice with.

We're going to the resort town of Sochi next week. I'm hoping it'll be warm and beautiful and I can lay on the beach, which means that it will probably be cold and rainy all week. That's it.

Hang tight, kids. It's almost the end!

The days continue to slide by, bringing me that much closer to GOING HOME!!! Granted that this is still 5.5 weeks away, and more if I can work out going to the south of France and Kiev, Ukraine. France, because it's a free trip, and Kiev because... uh... it's a nice city. Really. No snickers about mullets or people whose names start with G, please.

The most entertaining thing to have happened in recent weeks is that I was mistaken for a prostitute! Granted that it was sort of late and I was standing on the corner, but still... Okay. So. I went over to Margaret's to watch "The Blues Brothers." Since my computer died, I have resorted to inviting myself over when I want to watch a movie. Anyway, the movie ended, and it was still theoretically possible to catch a marshutka home, since it was only 11.15. So I was waiting on the corner, watching the traffic so that I could catch the marshutka if I saw it go by, but then this man came up to me. "Excuse me, miss. Do you work here?" I automatically answered "No!" because I don't like to talk to people on the street, but then I realized what he'd said to me. By the time it had sunk in, he had already walked off. At this point, I figured that I'd probably be better off walking to the metro. So I did. I was totally appalled, mostly since I don't in any respect look like a hooker. Maybe my hair since it has a crappy red dye job right now and I cut it myself (but it's grown out really well). I don't even dress Russian, which is already halfway to whore. Whatever. Men are stupid. Oh, and speaking of men being stupid... There's this creepy guy from high school (yes, the sheep fucker) who still occasionally contacts me. Despite the fact that I haven't responded to him in years. Or ever, really. What's the deal? It's so not healthy to do that shit. Anyway. Moving on...

I found out that the big paper that I was supposed to have been working on all semester is going to be due the day after my birthday. Which is pretty much about as fan-fucking-tastic as it gets. So I will be stressed, cracked out, etc. etc. for my birthday and up all night at the internet cafe. At least they have beer, which might make the whole thing more acceptable. Of course, if I was on top of my shit, I would be almost done by now, but I'm not. I'd really much rather figure out my plans for what (who? what?) I'm going to do after the program and where the hell I'm going to live when I get back to Portland. At least I have a job. And! Maybe the best news of all that I haven't shared because there were some complications, is that I got into grad school at the University of Pittsburgh, and they have basically bend over backwards to get me to come. So it looks like I'm making tracks back east in the fall.

I'm not sure if I really have any more news. There will probably be more posts as my life continues to break down, and thus gets more hilarious.

Because I know you all care, I am currently sitting in the internet cafe at 6am, next to a surly looking 16 year old playing some bizarre shoot'em'up, listening to Jay-Z from across the room, and preparing a presentation on AIDS (that I forgot I had to do until 11:30 last night).

This is quite possibly the worst morning ever.

So it was called to my attention that it sounds like I "shat all over Dave" in the last post, which yes, might be pretty accurate. However, bear in mind, gentle readers, that I was, as we all tend to be, actually really excited about the whole thing, even after I found out he was a crazy. Go figure. Anyway, I guess the moral of the story is that you win some and you lose some, and yes, I was probably the asshole in this "relationship"... as well as my last, how many? Fuck counting, it's just depressing.

The biggest news of the last few weeks is that my computer power cord exploded. Actually, almost literally. There was a huge spark and popping noise and a bunch of black smoke. Luckily it was just plugged into the wall and not into my computer, otherwise all my shit would probably be fried. Anyway, when I unwrapped the electrical tape, I discovered that the fat end of the cord was totally blown through and there were also some holes and burned wires on the skinny side that connects to my computer. My host dad, the physics and electrical genius, took a look at it and pronounced it "royally fucked," although not in so many words. He's too cool to be crass. I hauled ass to the only place in Peter that sells Apple parts and they told me that I could have a new power cord that ran on crappy Russian power for $100. Fuck you, Apple! Fuck you for telling me that I shouldn't buy an adaptor before I came! I hate you all! So meanwhile I'm lamenting the loss of my endless hours of solitaire, shitty american music, and being condemned to the internet cafe to write the rest of this fucking paper.

Let's not talk about the paper or conference, shall we? Let's also not talk about graduate school. Or boys.

On a positive note (because those are always really fun...phhbt), I bought euro-trash fabulous jeans at the rinok today for 800 rubles. This is about $32. They are fantabulous. I wish that I could post pictures, but alas, my ability to post pictures to the blog died with my computer. Let me just say that there is pocket detailing and the back pockets came pre-slashed. Please, just imagine the awesome!

Because my highschool is that awesome, we get solicited every three months or so for information about what we're doing. Last time, I said something about how I was hot-air-ballooning to the arctic to establish a colony of three-eyed frogs, or something ridiculous. This time I said, "After a recent brush with the Odessian Mafia involving several kilos of hasish and some handguns, I am on the lam and considering changing my name to Masha Kalashnikova." Of course they won't print it, but it amuses me. Which I guess is really all I can ask for...

...And that concludes this week's edition of all the news and not news that's both fit and unfit to print.

I know that it's been unforgivably long since I last posted anything remotely substantial, but that's really because there was nothing going on. And as much as I like to pretend that my life in goode olde St. Pete is really fun and exciting, I'm pretty much bored out of my mind and want to go home. Looking at my life is like looking at the empty desert highway, except maybe even more boring, because in my life, there aren't any tumbleweeds.

That said, there has been some hilarity (read, pain and angst that is now becoming amusing) in recent weeks. This I'll share, since the other person involved has put himself pretty squarely on the douchebag list. So. About a month or so ago, right after I got back, I met an American guy named Dave, who's here on one of the other programs. He seemed okay, definitely not sketchy, going to grad school next year and into lit theory. (Yes, I'm a dork.) Anyway, he asked for my number, so I gave it to him. Meanwhile, he heads home, I keep having beers with Margaret and crash at her place. In the morning, there's a text from Dave. This is cool--he said that he'd call me, and he did. So we go out and walk around downtown in the snow then get coffee. He's moderately interesting to talk to and doesn't make me inordinately uncomfortable. The next day, he invites me to go to the internet cafe with him. So we go and check email and don't really talk to eachother. Which is weird. But whatever. We hang out a couple more times, walking around the city, going to a concert, etc. but it honestly never occurred to me that he might be actually interested in being more than friends. Actually, this is a lie. It crossed my mind once or twice, but not seriously.

So then, we go out for a beer. And here's the point where everything gets weird. I feel like I'm usually pretty good at weeding out the crazies, at least, crazy in this kind of way, but I got totally blindsided. I'll explain. So we're having beers, sitting and talking, and I'm being friendly or whatever passes for friendly these days, and then all of a sudden he says something about how he's told most of his group that he has a girlfriend. Um, what? Excuse me? "Yeah, I told some people that we'd been seeing eachother." Uh. Uh. Uh. WHAT? Since when does an internet cafe and a couple beers a relationship make? I have to admit that although I'm a little repulsed, I'm also enough surprised and intrigued at what I think is his audacity to just declare that we're dating eachother. So instead of doing what I should have done, which was punch him in the face and leave him with the bill, I decided to roll with it. Because he's not a bad guy. Maybe inexperienced, clueless... But then it gets better. Because then he drops that his friend Tim said, "Dave, be careful. She's from the West Coast, which means she's probably a liberal." Again, the double take. Wait, my being liberal is a problem, which makes you...CONSERVATIVE?! Bingo. Not only that, but he was baptized at 16 or some other ridiculous age when he should definitely have known better. The other highlight of the evening turned out that he was dead set on my taking his last name when we got married. Don't ask how this came up, because I really don't know. I said that I wasn't going to take anybody's last name when I got married, and then scandalized him by the suggestion that he take mine. Fan-fucking-tastic. So, at the end of the night, I find myself with a conservative christian boyfriend and wet pants because I slipped and fell like an monkey on the ice.

We don't see eachother much over the next week or two, which is okay, because I'm not at all sure how I feel about the whole situation. Other than creeped out... Anyway. Moving along to drama. We watch a movie together and he indicates that he might like things to get a little more serious. This is a problem, since a) I have a fairly substantial amount of baggage at this point, and b) he's pretty clueless about what comes after kissing. He said he'd been laid, on numerous occasions, but he sure fooled me. I realize that maybe some of you will say that maybe I should take pity on the poor guy. After all, how is he supposed to get any practice if nobody will give him a chance? I say, dude, it's too late. You missed the boat. That's what college was for. If you're 24 and don't know basic anatomy, you're going to be shit outta luck. I'm not a personal trainer. People get paid to do that kind of stuff. So, to save myself the embarassment of having to tell him that he's not that great a kisser (let alone anything else...), I opened one of the baggage parcels I'm carrying around with me, fully expecting him to run. Leaving us both a graceful way to get out of things. He got very quiet and said that he needed to think, which I took as a sign that things were definitely headed in the right direction...

And how badly was I mistaken... The next morning, I got a text that just said, "We need to talk," which, as everybody knows, means "This is pretty much the end, ultamatums will be laid down, the situation will be acutely uncomfortable, there might be some crying, and you will probably both leave angry." However, this was SO NOT THE CASE. Seriously, what is wrong with guy? He said that he was cool with whatever baggage I was bringing along, as long as I was serious about the relationship. I told him I needed some time to think, since I'd been heading into a funk, and didn't want to totally get in over my head. So he told me to take a week and think about things and then get back to him.

That was an awesome week. Actually, not really. I was perpetually grumpy, and probably in the worst mood I've ever been in in my life. And not only for that week, but for the next one as well. It was awesome. Somewhere in there, I was supposed to tell poor Dave that I really wasn't that interested in dating him, but I somehow didn't get around to it. I was having a bad week or two, and was mostly just interested in not inflicting myself on other people. I did see him once, and was kinda rude, and he got better than everybody else.

There's also a good story in there about when the useless waste of space bureaucrat from Washington came. I digress, but this was pretty awesome too. So, we have this bureaucrat from Washington, Tim, come to visit us twice a semester. He's supposed to listen to our complaints, tell us he'll work on doing whatever it is that we want him to do, and then do nothing. He's an excellent asset to the program. Anyway, I knew the drill from last semester and knew that he was stupid, and the meeting was stupid and it was Saturday, and I had to go into school when I could have been working. So I was already in an awesome mood by the time I got to Nevsky. Then the metro station exit was closed for no apparent reason, so I had to make a station transfer and then the police only had one door to the underpass open, which they were closing on us. The reason for this was made evident by the huge armored cars, crowds of people in black, and riot police, who were all waiting for the dissident march. Which was basically all the people in Petersburg not happy with the current political situation, marching together all the way down Nevsky. So I snuck across Nevsky in between the armored cars and took the back roads. I was sweaty and furious by the time I got to school. Then the fuckhead at the door had to check my student card against a list before he'd let me in. I swore at him in Russian. Then when I got to the meeting late, Tim wasn't even there yet. The meeting with everybody was pretty quick, but then we had the gathering of the year kids who are writing papers. We had to go around and say what we were doing and how it was going and how our advisors were, etc. barf ad infinitum. I haven't really met with my advisor (and by "haven't really" means "not at all") since I got back and really have no desire to. It's too much work and makes me feel stupid. So I don't. And I told Tim that I felt like I didn't really need to meet with an academic advisor to "direct my thinking" because I was perfectly capable of thinking for myself and writing my own paper, thanks. After a few more exchanges in that vein, he said that I shouldn't have come to Russia if I didn't want to write the paper. Which was so ludicrous, I just smiled. It was one fo those amazing moments when I was just able to sit and think, Did you just listen to yourself? Because I did. And You. Sounded. Like. An. IDIOT. To make it that much sweeter, I went home and composed a nasty little letter to send in to Washington with my kick-ass paper (which only exists as an introduction).

But back to Dave. After the awkward interaction, I sent him a text saything that I was sorry I was rude, that I'd been having a bad day, whatever, if he wanted to get together later in the week. He said yes, but then canceled with no explanation. Cool. Whatever. I didn't make any other big efforts, and neither did he, until he texted me to ask him he could borrow my Lonely Planet for his trip to Belarus and Ukraine. I wasn't feeling well that day, so I told him he'd have to wait until tomorrow. And again commences the chain of awesome. We were going to meet somewhere at Nevsky after school. I texted him when I got out to see where he wanted to meet. He told me to come to Nevsky Prospekt metro, which is on the blue line. In reality, he was waiting at the Canal Griboedov exit to the Gostinii Dvor metro, which is the GREEN line. Then he tried to tell me that he was where he said he was going to be, which I didn't really want to hear, mostly because he was WRONG, and so I decided to be magnanimous and just let it slide and not get worked up about it. He took my Lonely Planet, was kind of a jerk about it, and then said he was going home. Man, good riddance of bad rubbish. My new rule is going to be that if I smooch someone, they automatically lose any privilige they might have had to borrow any of my stuff. Seriously. So I sat and was angry for awhile and then decided that I'd try to take the high road (see if I ever do THAT again...) and invited him to come out to the bar with us later that evening. We exchanged some texts, and the long and the short of it was that he had been being a jerk (not that he acknowledged this) because he was just confused (whatever) blah blah blah. So he came out to the bar.

I went out with most of the kids who are here for the year, since we don't have anything better to do than have beers and snipe at eachother because we all secretly think everybody else is ungodly annoying but of course can't say so because we're all still here for another couple months... Oh, the joys of the passive-aggressive society! Anyway, we were all having a good time until Dave showed up. And in all fairness, we continued having a good time after he showed up too. Although he sulked and left early because I wasn't going to talk exclusively to him wanh wanh wanh. And that's pretty much the end of that. Definitely not about the passive-aggressive overly-emotional bullshit.

Life has been full of drama drama drama. It doesn't look like it's going to get any better in the forseeable future, although for different reasons I'm not going to get into...

The last post was obviously a lie. Mostly I am too tired and life is depressing and having to write about it pretty much just makes me want to open my veins. Uh, but I'm still alive and there are plans to start updating regularly again. Or something. Maybe when the sun comes out.