I woke up with a wicked hangover, completely forgetting that I was supposed to go to the movies with Jenna at 11, but did manage to be up and moving for the 1pm movie. I also met Jenna's roommate Autumn, who's here on a Fogherty fellowship and doesn't speak much Russian. She seems okay--probably nobody I would ever call up and say "Hey, let's hang out!" but fine to talk to at a party or something. Anyway, the occasion of going to the movies was prompted by the British film festival at Dom Kino (advertised as MOVIES IN ENGLISH!!!!!), and movies in English without horrific dubbing are few and far between. I missed the movie about some kind of festival while I was busy being hungover and talking on the phone with Katie. We saw Kinky Boots, which was much better than I expected. The blurb was something like "A shoe factory in a conservative town in Northern England is saved from bankruptcy by a cross dresser" and didn't inspire much confidence, but it was a cute little feel-good film with really great music. And it was in English. Which was the best part of all.

I hung out with Lena for a little bit since it was her last day for two months. I didn't finish the hat, which makes me sad, but now I can finish it and take a picture. Anyway, I'm sad to lose my one Russian friend.

Then I went home and nobody was home then either. So I hung out for a while being grumpy by myself, and then fed myself and debated calling Meg and saying that I was too tired to go to the concert. But then I decided to go, because I was lonely all by myself watching MTV, and there's only so many bad dubbed movies that I can watch, and they have only have about 20 different music videos in rotation. So I went to the concert. And I was actually very glad that I did, because it was pretty cool. One of Meg's friends, Jennifer, sings in a couple of different bands, and the one that we went to see is called "JD & the Blenders." They do a lot of old soul stuff, like James Brown and whatever. Which is just good music, and watching Russians try to dance to stuff like that is well worth whatever cover they're charging.

Watching Russians dance is really strange anyway, but they haven't really figured out the whole moving the hips thing. They really want to dance to this stuff, but it's just so strange to see them bopping along with their bodies moving as a unit from the hips to the shoulders. Of course there are bad dancers everywhere and I'm definitely one of them, but still... Anyway, I guess all I'm really trying to say is that I'm endlessly entertained watching Russians dance.

Meg also knew some great bar snack that's sticks of bread fried in garlic, oil, and salt until they taste like croutons. Throw some cheese on there and it's about the best drunk food ever. Well, short of the Hot-Cake House, and you should never eat there anyway unless you're drunk off your ass. I feel like half of what I write on here is about getting drunk, or how much I wish I could be getting drunk, and it makes me feel like a lush. And that's not really the way it is. I'm way more sober than I am drunk, and I still don't particularly like being here and having to be responsible all the time. I think it's more the inability to let loose here that gets me, more than anything else.

And being responsible, I had only one beer and went home on the last metro instead of hanging out with Jennifer after her show. I really really liked her. She's an ACTR alumna who ended up staying in Petersburg. She's in her early 30s and she's got her shit so much together, it's cool to talk to her. She actually reminds me a lot of Stephanie, who I babysat for a bunch last year. Good people all around.

Today was not nearly as much fun because we didn't get to watch any movies. I'm all about watching movies. So instead of paying attention in Politologia, I unravelled the tassels of my scarf that have been scrunched up and nasty for the last year. I'll start paying attention when it starts being interesting. And with the verbal tick that prof's got, you really don't miss much of anything. I feel like a real asshole, but I'm absolutely incapable of making myself care about that class. I really hope I don't have to take it next semester. I don't know how or why it's so boring, but it's so painful. And speaking of painful...

So I'm in the stupid class, which isn't necessarily a bad thing--for the first time ever, I'm in a Russian language class where I actually understand what's going on. This is actually a lie. I understood most of the grammar in third-year, I just couldn't apply it. Anyway. There are four of us in the dumb group. One of the other girls is clicking along about my speed, which is great, but the other two spend most of class sitting there with their mouths half open catching flies. They're so lost. And have horrible, horrible accents. I know none of you (except maybe Alea and Zhenya) speak Russian, but I swear to Christ that if I have to hear "Ya zhi-voo vee ROO-see-u" or "Ya del-AL-a" one more time, I'm going to pop my eardrums. Granted that my Russian's not great, but I can at least read the text and put the accents in the right place. And how do you get out of second-year saying "del-AL-a" anyway? What. The. Fuck.

For the first time ever, things are moving too slow. I never ever thought I'd say that, but it's true. I talked to Margaret about changing classes, and she said that she'd see what she could do. Because it's not really cool that I'm bored. I know the government's paying for most of my tuition, but I'm paying for the rest. And I'm not so down with $6,000 of bored.

I realized recently that this journal thing is getting weird. Not so much the actual writing, but it's the thinking about writing that gets me in trouble. Well, not in trouble, but thinking about what I'm going to say and how I'm going to say it takes up so much of my day, I'm really ashamed. I'm also ashamed to say that I spend a lot of time thinking about how to say my favorite English phrases (like ass-clown and butt-monkey) in Russian. Seriously, the entire ten-fifteen minute walk to the metro this morning was spent like this: "Does ass modify clown? Or does clown modify ass? Can I just moosh two nouns together like that? Does that work in Russian? But what if the clowns like asses? There's some kind of consonant-vowel cluster that indicates that something has an affinity for something else and I can't remember what it is! Why am I so dumb?" I'm the biggest dork ever.

I'm also very puzzled by the kiosks they have here. Kiosks are all over the place, and every single one is like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. I'll come back to this in a minute, and all will become clear, but first, what is a kiosk? It's a small hut type thing with a tiny grouchy lady inside that sells everything EXCEPT what you need. It's really amazing how this works. They also don't really have any windows, and to ask the lady inside for something, you have to crouch down to this tiny window about the size of your palm, located about waist height. The whole dialogue takes place with you in this contorted position, with you looking up at the lady who has some kind of monster stool that she sits on. The dialogue usually goes like this: "Y bas est' ...." (Do you have... insert your noun of choice here). Then you get the answer in a particularly nasty tone: "Y nas niet" (We don't have it), or if you're really lucky, you just get the "Niet." Anyway, kiosks are like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory because even when they're open, they're always closed. There's just that one little window, and I've never seen anybody go in or out. And I've never seen any kind of re-stocking. This leads me to conclude that the kiosks are magical places that always have things, but only things for Russians, and never for Americans. And furthermore, the things that they have for Russians always appear spontaneously. Maybe they have something to do with the grouchy lady. I don't know. This is a great mystery.

Today was also Candice's birthday. Candice is a grad student at UW Seattle in their Slavic languages program. She's pretty cool, even though she's from Texas. She had some typa dinner&drinks thing at a swanky café near the university. I was super cranky by the time I got there and did not have a particularly happy time, although I did eat half of a drunk pear. I'm not sure what a drunk pear is, but it was kinda boozy and tasty. I was cranky when I arrived, first of all, because I took a short nap and woke up totally disoriented and fucked in the head and I had to go out to this party thing. I was tired and wanted to stay home. I was also cranky because I was supposed to go meet up with Lena before I went to Candice's shindig to sign some stuff and give her back some movies that I borrowed, but by the time that I made two metro transfers and went 20 minutes out of my way to meet her, Lena decided that she just wanted to go home and that she didn't want to meet up after all. So I went 40 minutes out of my way for nothing, and I was lugging around all this crap I was going to give her like an idiot. And then the café was expensive, and I couldn't get drunk because I had to get back on the metro, and, and, and, and...

Anyway, I decided that everyone else could go fuck themselves, and I was going to buy some g&t in a can and get smashed by myself at home. And buying the g&t was quite the experience. I went to the 24 hour producti on the way home and had to wait in line with a bunch of gross men. When it was finally my turn, I asked the lady for two big gin and tonics. She looks at me and then asks if I want tonic water and points at it. At which point, I said as politely as I could, "No, I want two big gin and tonics." She raised her eyebrow and pointed at the cans of gin and tonic and asked "How many?" Just give me my booze, you stupid. Fucking. Whore. I know that I have an accent and that it's mildly taboo for a chick to drink hard liquor, let alone buy it for herself, and let alone ask for two, but I don't need your fucking commentary on how I'm going to go straight to hell, do not pass go, do not collect 200 rubles. Fuck you. Drinking on the street is illegal (even though everybody does it, especially at 9am while walking their dogs) and I was sorely tempted, but I was able to restrain myself until I got home and could have the phone and do long-distance drunk dials to my heart's content. Éva, I'm sorry I harassed you—I was pretty gone by the time I got off the phone with Rob. It ended up being a pretty fun night all alone in the apartment.

School today was pretty much only bearable because we got to watch a movie in Politologia. For those who are fans of Bulgakov, we watched this Italian version of The Master and Margarita. This is a tough book to read, let alone to translate into film, and I was really impressed. I can't say that I particularly liked the film, but I was impressed by the faithfulness of the adaptation and some of the other artistic choices made a lot of sense. Apparently the same dude who directed The Idiot tv series also did The Master and Margarita last year in a ten hour series. I would love to watch this if I can find it with English subtitles, because I'm not cool enough to understand most Russian conversation.

I do watch a lot of tv, though. Mostly because my host family hasn't been around much this week and it's very lonely in the apartment. They combine VH1 and MTV into one channel, and I watch a lot of dubbed shows and music videos. There's also a soap opera that I really like: it's like the worst of American daytime tv, but worse, because it's Russian and they're still figuring out the whole soap opera thing. It's called Five Minutes from the Metro, and it's got to be one of the worst show's I've watched somewhat regularly since Who Wants to be a Superhero? and I only watched that because it was on at the bar. (I'm not going to talk about the fact that I would go to the bar so that I could watch tv...) Katie, they also have Cash Cab here—it's just called Taxi.

I still didn't have cell phone service when I woke up this morning. I saved my receipt (you have to save all your receipts here, so that when shit goes wrong, you can have something to wave in their faces) so that I could go back to the store and demand that the 200 rubles I put on my account actually be put on my account. I left early for school so that I go to the store before, but the store was closed at 9am, even though the sign on the door said that it opened at 8. This type of situation calls for the typical Russian Ny, shto delat? (So, what are you going to do?) accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders. While I'd like to say that I can be philosophical about these things, I was pretty fucking pissed at this point. It only started working around 3 today, roughly 22 hours after I paid for the service. And as pissed as I was about the whole thing, the only thing that I felt when I saw the service bars was relief that I wouldn't have to go deal with the unhelpful people at the phone store.

Thank God for small favors.

Tonight was also the gallery opening for Lafleur's photo show. It was a decent time: I met Meg's friend Jenna again and hung out a little with her and Lafleur. It was however marred by the presence of Claire. And because I'd had a beer and was just about ready to tell her where she could put her nonexistent boobs (She likes to show off her bra and talk about walking around in her boots and underwear. Seriously...) and her anorexic issues, I spent a lot of time wandering around the gallery, talking to Jenna, and not being around Claire. It was good to see Lafleur again and she seems like she's doing okay, or at least better than I'd heard she was doing before. Which doesn't say much, but anyway... Yeah. I was also expecting more hipster artist types. I'm very curious about the phenomenon of the Russian hipster and I have yet to meet one. They're probably just as pretentious, obnoxious, and as full of shit as the ones on Portland...but they're Russian! The "other" is only cool until you figure out that they're just as lame as you.

All things considered, it was a pretty decent day.

Today was a boring excursion to the naval base of Kronshtadt, but I took lots of pictures. Kronshtadt used to be a suburb of Petersburg, but now it's part of the city proper, even though it's an island, pretty much in the middle of fucking nowhere. Actually, it's not in the middle of nowhere. It's surrounded by huge blocks of Soviet housing which are horrifically enormous and depressing. It's also just disturbing to me that I live in a city with at least 5 million other people. Anyway, it's a naval base that you can't go see (or we couldn't see because they didn't take us there), so we wandered around and looked at the parks and a couple monuments and some boats. I spent most of the day wandering around with the cool Laura (so that she can be differentiated from the annoying-because-she-tries-too-hard Laura) from Wisconsin, who may turn out to be almost as snarky as me. This gives me hope for the semester. But anyway, yay Kronshtadt! Yay pictures!






And at this point, I have to say again how much I hate this bitch Claire for no good reason. Look at the hat and tapered pants. Isn't that reason enough?



And no, I don't think she knows that I took pictures of her and that I hate her publicly on the internet. However, I discovered some other things that add up to more black marks for her. She reads the dictionary. And she has not only changed her first name to be more Russian, but she also changed her last name. Seriously, what the fuck? You don't get to do that shit for no good reason. You should be in the fucking witness protection program for that stuff. She also has this corset that she wears sometimes. I really hope that one day she'll wear it on a Wednesday so that I can secretly take a picture of it. Anyway, corsets are for people who have breasts of some kind. She doesn't because she starved them all away while she was being retarded and now her ribs stick out more than her chest. There's nothing there! You just look like an idiot! It mostly just makes me irritated that I can't tell her that she looks like a dumbass because she'd probably cry. And I have to pretend to be nice for three more months.

After the excursion, I went to the phone store to buy more minutes. This was supposed to go directly onto my account (and there's really no excuse since they had a computer at the store), and I was expecting to have cell phone service after about a half-hour, but it's been about five, and I'm still waiting. Fuck Russia.

Well, something did indeed happen, but it wasn't exactly fun. Don't be alarmed, nothing happened to me, but there have been some disturbing events in the good city of St. Petersburg. Last night, an Indian medical student was stabbed to death outside his dormitory, presumably by one of the many fascist groups here. This is really super fucked. Not to mention scary. I feel fairly safe since I appear (at least potentially) ethnically Russian, but that doesn't mean that something similar couldn't happen to me.

The fascist neo-nazis are really really big here. Interestingly, they seem to target mostly the young men (and we're talking young--fans seem to start about age 10 or so) and play to the xenophobia that's been stirred up recently. These guys are mostly so fucking scary because they're well organized. They had a rally a couple days ago (knowing that they were going to stir up the anti-fascist groups), and the end result was a good-oldfashioned street brawl when the anti-fascist group arrived throwing punches. And even though the anti-fascists have the might of ideology on their side, they still come off like the assholes for not having a permit for their own demonstration and for busting up the other guys.

Black marks for everybody.

So remember how much trouble I had with my cell phone a couple weeks ago? It turns out that I ran out of minutes. This shouldn't be a big deal—you just go to the store and buy a phone card, call the number on the back, and they put the money on your account. However, as it turns out, they shut off my reception when I ran out of minutes, so even when Meg said that it should be a free call and that she still had service when she was out of minutes, this was a big fat lie and I now don't have a phone that works because it's too late to go out to the phone store and put money directly on my account. I'll have to go after the excursion to Kronshtadt tomorrow. Blyad.

I saw a mother and son with matching mustaches on the metro yesterday.
Today, pretty much the only thing of note that happened was that I got a hive on my lip again. As most of you know, I've got this weird auto-immune disorder that basically means that I'm indefinitely allergic to myself and I have hives a lot. This is pretty much all fun, all the time. However, I've been doing much better the last six months, and Russia's been good for my health. Anyway, because I feel like a huge idiot when my lip swells up, I took a picture of it.


And while we're on the subject of pictures, there will very likely not ever be any pictures of me here, since I wholeheartedly believe that digital cameras were invented so that ugly people could reveal to the world how hideous they actually are, and to show those who are at least moderately attractive at our worst. But there will pictures of parts of me (no, Dennis, probably not breasts, but we could discuss...) if they acquire interesting hives or bruises.

I feel like I should write more and put in something amusing or entertaining, but nothing happened and I'm feeling uninspired. Maybe something fun will happen tomorrow.

So, kids, the way this works is that I'm really cheap and I don't like paying for internet every day. So I only check my email and will only update my blog once a week. However, there will be several entries going up (pretty much about the last week's worth) every time I drag my computer to the café and pay my $4 for an hour of wireless. So. For your greater procrastinating pleasure, you should go back and figure out where my story left off last time. I also threw up some more pictures on some of the older posts.

As it turns out, I didn't actually get to post anything to the blog yesterday because wifi wasn't working. Although, I have a sneaky suspicion that it was actually working at CaféMax, but the lady just didn't want to make any change for me. And I never made it to look for movies. Instead, I bought more minutes for my cell phone, and then decided that I deserved a blin with mushrooms and cream for my hard efforts. Not really, but it was a good excuse. Then I went searching unsuccessfully for wifi. The big success of the day was exchanging the knitting needles.

I'm going to be boring and spend a little bit of time talking about the process of exchanging the knitting needles, because it made me feel awesome about Russia. I spend a lot of time talking about how much everything here sucks and how much I hate it, and not much time talking about the good stuff. Mostly because it doesn't make for entertaining reading or writing, but that's kinda the way it goes. Anyway. So, I went into the shop with my receipts in hand, fully expecting the lady to be like "You want to do what? NO!!!!" so at the very worst, I was just going to have to buy some more needles. But this lady was so helpful and so sweet. I explained that had bought the needles the day before, but they were the wrong ones, and then I got stuck on the word for "double-pointed." This made me feel like just about the biggest idiot ever, because I'd gone and looked at the needles two seconds before so I'd know what the word was. Luckily, she knew exactly what I needed, and even asked me if I needed a different size and was very concerned when she couldn't find ones the same exact size. "Are you sure those are going to be okay? Really?" Yes. Whatever. I'm just making a hat. A half-millimeter size difference isn't really going to make that much of a difference. But it's sweet of you to care. So she let me exchange the needles with absolutely no fuss. It was amazing.

I went to Phoebe's house last night for a Love Actually party. This was expected to be a rather small gathering of kids with some beer and wine, and Love Actually in Russian until everybody got sick of it and wanted to switch to English. It turned into a rather large party, with over half the group--maybe twelve of us--jammed into Phoebe's tiny kitchen with people not being allowed up to the apartment unless they had booze with them. I managed to drink all three sizes of Heiniken last night, along with a gin&tonic in a can. I've been very curious about the gin&tonic in a can phenomenon since I arrived, because it sounds like one of the most vile ideas ever. Contrary to expectation, that was some pretty tasty booze. I'm sure they use the type of gin that makes you blind if you drink it straight, but they mix it up with so much lime that it tastes like you're drinking gin and Sprite. Mmm, mmm, good!

I also learned that sending drunk people out to buy more booze is pretty much not a good idea. Or rather, sending me out drunk to buy more booze is not a good idea. Because, really, I like to drink. I like to drink a lot. I like drinking really really a lot, and when I'm drunk, I want a lot of booze. Anyway, I bought more booze than I should have and ended up drinking all of it. Which was pretty amazing going down, but I'm hurting this morning. And I really really miss PBR. As gross as that is, I really do. I would break somebody's leg for a PBR. Although I got to go to the grocery store in the basement of the mall with the gun kiosk just inside the door. Would you like a semi-automatic assault rifle with your bread and cheese, sir? We got it all right here!

Hey, Rob! Guess what else I saw at the store last night! BACON FLAVORED CHEETOES.

Anyway, I really wanted to take a shower today, but apparently it's just not in the cards. The gas water heater won't light, and I'm afraid of blowing myself up if I try to light it too many times. I guess I'll just be gross a little while longer.

I've been doing really well with the whole not smoking thing, although the last week has been really tough. I watched this great little movie called Manga about a young and confused low-life dude with a crush on a model and what happens after he climbs in her bedroom window. It was a fun movie, but everyone smoked all the way through, and I've never wanted a cigarette so bad in my life. After that, I've been walking really close behind all the smokers I can find.

I want to go to the internet café, but I have hives on my mouth and I look stupid. I've only had hives one other time since I got here, but I've got them now. But only around my mouth and on my lips. This makes me look like a really demented and much less attractive Angelina Jolie, because usually only one side of my lip will swell up. I'm dirty and I have ridiculously poofy lips. Life is fan-tastic.

Last night I went out for beers with some of the other American students. I don't particularly like a lot of the other Americans, but I'd only had one beer since I got here, and going out beats sitting at home on Friday night. Anyway, I figured out the hard way that Russian beer has a little more booze in it than PBR or High Life. And two half-liters of beer gets you way more drunk than two pints. It was the most fun ride home on the metro that I've ever had, though.

While I've been catching up on the events of the week, I've been watching music videos, and the one that was just playing showed a couple of girls who get sick of being propositioned/molested/sexually objectified by their male co-workers at the office, so they strip down to their underwear and beat up all the men. There's also a Snicker's ad on tv with a Monty Pythonesque knight and minstrels. But a Bloodhound Gang video just came on. Weird.

Anyway, the agenda for today is to try to find this place that may or may not sell Russian movies with English subtitles and then to try to exchange these knitting needles, and then to hit up the internet café and throw all this stuff up on the blog.

Most of the time, I feel like I live in a comic book. Life just has that unreal quality to it. I still find it hard to believe that I'm actually in Russia, even though I'm surrounded by Russians speaking Russian, and me, speaking Russian, all the time. I still just find it impossible or unbelievable or something. I dunno. It's getting more real, though. It's not quite as much of an effort to speak Russian all the time, and I still get tired more quickly, but things are getting better. This morning as I was walking to the metro, I didn't find it at all strange that everyone was speaking Russian like I usually do.

Baby steps in the right direction.

I was also able to talk to Meg for at least an hour only in Russian. She talks more than I do, of course, but I can still hold up my end of the conversation. That's progress. Like whoa. At Reed, I could barely string sentences together. I actually surprised myself at the ACTR recording session before we left when I talked a lot to the tester-woman. I'm pretty sure it's the not being on meds. Classes are work now because it's hard to focus and pay attention for that long, but I can actually talk to people. I'm sorry to keep going on and on about all this, but I'm partly still trying to convince myself that coming here was a good idea, and this (hopefully) confirms my decision.

So, I wrote earlier about the bitchy lady from the school cafeteria that the American kids call "Sunshine." The one that doesn't like to give out the omelets? Right. So, there's supposed to be a "party" in the beginning of October for all the foreign students studying at Gertzen to get to know each other. This means that all the Americans, Finns, Germans, and Chinese are going to do skits or some kind of song and dance and then stand around awkwardly. Each group is preparing something in their razgovornia practica class, and we decided to do a skit about what it's like to order lunch in the cafeteria. Although, it was funny, because as soon as we mentioned the cafeteria, the professor's eyes got really wide and she goes, "Oh, they're really evil in there." Anyway, guess who's Sunshine?

I like to think of this as a compliment to my carefully cultivated Russian personality rather than an insult.

After school, I talked to Meg for a while and then went to buy knitting stuff so that I can make this hat for Lena. For those who may have forgotten, she is my fabulous tutor, who is leaving. Not Prof. Lena from Reed. Meg told me about a knitting shop just off of Nevsky, so I headed over and was both unpleasantly and pleasantly surprised. Unpleasantly, because they have all the yarn behind a counter where you can't touch it (or walk off with it, I suppose) and it was small and crowded. However, when I finally got the nerve to elbow my way up to the counter, the woman was super nice. This was a pleasant surprise, because most of the people in the customer service industry seem to take pleasure in being as rude and unhelpful as possible.

So I finally got the yarn that I wanted after a couple false tries. I don't know if it helped that I was standing there with my little dictionary trying to figure out what exactly I was buying or what, but she was really kind (she didn't get pissed, but corrected me) when I asked for a blue yarn and used the word for light blue rather than dark blue. She even put up with me being a tard and forgetting that we're not in the US, and that there aren't US sizes for the needles here, so when you ask for an 8, you get 8mm needles, which are fucking huge. So she brought me smaller ones, and then still smaller ones in a couple different lengths. Anyway, since buying anything here is a terrifying experience, this made me feel really great about the whole thing.

Of course, when I got home, I realized that I bought the circular needles that are 100cm long. So I have to go back and try to exchange them for smaller ones or double pointed ones. I'm such an idiot.

Today, I met up with Lena again after not seeing her for three days. This doesn't sound like a long time, but we'd been meeting up almost every day, so it was a pretty big deal that we hadn't hung out for a while. Especially since she's leaving. She's for sure going to the Netherlands on October 1. And she'll be gone for two months. I'm going to make her a stocking hat and see if I can find her a Tarkovsky movie with English subtitles for going-away podarki.

We finally made it to the Filonov exhibit at the Russian Museum. Let me just say again how much I love having a student card in Russia. I went to the Russian Museum, one of the best museums in Russia, for 30 rubles. This is roughly $1.15 US. I can go to movies for $2. Awesome.

But the Filonov exhibit was really awesome. I'm not a huge fan of Filonov, but it's always cool to go and actually see for yourself all these paintings that you've seen in books. They had all the Filonov stuff in a couple of dark rooms with the walls painted black, with the paintings spotlighted in white light. There was also "futuristic" music playing in the background; some kinda clanging boinking stuff that made me feel like I was either in space or in a 1920s Soviet factory. Both work. Maybe I'm a heathen and have no taste, but I actually liked most of Filonov's sketches or drawings with pencil and watercolors better than his larger paintings. They were very crisp and looked like the were torn out the pages of some kinda bizarre comic book. Anyway, very cool. I'll see if I can find some pictures on the net. I also found one painting of his that I really really like a lot. I would tell you what it's called, but it's Untitled. I'm going to see if they make prints, but probably not. That's just the way my life works. This is not the painting, but this is an example of Filonov's style:


We stayed in the Russian Museum until it was just about time for the militsia to kick us out and then we went and got food at a cafeteria and hung out in the park until it got cold. Then I went home, did homework while watching tv, and went to bed. I realized recently that the tv has looked so weird lately because they fixed the color tube and everything is now no longer green. And it took me a couple days to figure this out. Wow.

Today, we went out to Petergof, and I managed not to get lost on my three metro transfers to get to the meeting place. Considering that I get lost almost everywhere I go, this was a major accomplishment. I have to factor in time for getting lost every time I go out somewhere. It's pretty ridiculous and I can't wait until I know my way around better.

Anyway, we went to Petergof; which was the summer palace for Peter the Great. It's modeled on Versaille, and has a fuck-ton of fountains and parks. And a lot of palaces. It was raining, so everything kinda sucked.

I never really know what to say about stuff like this, so maybe I'll just throw up a couple pictures for you guys to look at. They're all outside because I didn't want to pay $4 to take dark, blurry pictures of the inside of the palace.






When I got home, I realized that I still had to do homework for the political science class. Homework here usually isn't that big of a deal--one or two exercises and a half hour later and you're done. The poli-sci prof had assigned us an article to get off the internet and read, and then write a one page response. He said that the article would be 2–3 pages and pretty easy. This essay turned out to be 10 pages (and we're talking Russian pages, not the sissy American 8.5x11) and one of the hardest things I've ever read. I have trouble reading Russian quickly on paper, and I can't read it silently on the computer at all. So I had to sit there reading the entire thing out loud to myself and kicking myself for not at least looking to see if there was an English translation online that I could have checked my understanding against.

I'm pretty ashamed to admit this, but I was so frustrated by reading this article and the fact that the professor lied, that I cried and had to call Rob. It was pretty awful. Politologia has now definitely replaced razgovornia practica as my least favorite class.

*Gross warning. Skip this paragraph if you don't want to hear about my infected nose.* Anyway, my nose piercing got infected, or, rather, I didn't take care of it and a bump of nast built up. This is super gross. I wasn't sure what to do, but when I had to take my piercing out for graduation, the dude at Black Hole who put it back in said that re-piercing (sticking the needle in again) cleaned shit out. So. I lanced my nose ghetto-style with a safety pin. And it was seriously nine different kinds of gross. But now the bump is smaller, although my nose looks disgusting. Oh well. It'll heal.

Sorry about that last entry; i just read over it and it's not even "well written" to make up for the lack of exciting content. But man, that was such an unsatisfying experience at McDonalds. That still makes me slightly angry. Fast food is supposed to be satisfying everywhere. I guess I'll just have to adapt myself to un-crispy chicken sandwiches with super sweet mayo.

So because nothing interesting happened today, other than my being sick from eating something wierd. I think this was from the soup that I had at the school cafeteria. So I stayed home and then went to the internet café. But anyway, because I have nothing really that cool to talk about, I'll do a little discriptive writing.

Somewhere in the last couple days, I realized that I forgot to write about the experience of trying to buy a metro card for the next month. I was successful--after a while, but it was a puzzling experience. So, being a student in Russia is about the coolest thing ever (other than in being, you know, Russia) because you get crazy discounts. At museums, movies, the metro, whatever--you can usually get in for free or about a third of the adult price. So anyway, there are student cards for the metro, and theoretically, even as a foreign student living in Russia, I'm eligible for a student metro card. So I tried several times to buy this student card. And there usually aren't any problems. You show them your studenckeski billet and your passport, and then they give you your card. However, because my passport is not Russian, my passport has too many numbers for them to enter into the computer. This resulted in much confusion, both on my part, and the part of the poor metro ladies, who were actually pretty nice to me. However, when they determined that they couldn't get me into the computer, and nor did they have any record of me in the computer, they would give me the phrase "eto nevozhmozhno," meaning, "it's impossible" and followed this with an incomprehensible list of things I had to do and documents that I had to take to a certain place at a certain time of day. So I said fuck bureaucracy, caved, and bought the normal non-student metro/avtobus pass.

And talking to Meg later, she said that Gertzen doesn't have that student arrangement with the metro. Or, rather, that Gertzen does, but our program doesn't. So I can't get a student metro pass after all. Bite me.

This also seems like a good opportunity to talk about the metro. Forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but Russia has just about the deepest metros in the world. This means that at any given station, you have at least a two and half minute ride, maybe three minutes, down from the top of the station to the trains. I calculated that I spend at least ten minutes a day standing on the escalator. This is just if I go to school and back. If I go anywhere else, that's another ten minutes. This is a long time, and there are not a lot of options for entertainment. The most popular, in no particular order, are: making out or being "cute" (barf), talking on your cell phone, texting on your cell phone, talking to friends, staring at the wall, and people watching. I usually choose to people watch, but it's a very peculiar kind of people watching because it involves the three most important Russian facial expressions: the disinterested stare, the disinterested glare, and the glare of death. Reed schooled me well in all three.

Anyway, for people watching, you have to cultivate the disinterested stare, which is the one where you look straight at people but manage to look like you're looking through them. Then, if you accidently make eye contact with someone, you need the disinterested glare, which is the one that says that you're mean and unapproachable. If you get a smile, then you have to break out the glare of death that says, "if you even think of talking to me, you and all your nearest relations will die Chechan style."

The metro is also a great place for observing Russian style, and feeling fat. The Russian men usually have some type of mullet, which is way in fashion, and carry purses. The women are very fashionable, and all have legs about the size of my arm. And I'm really not kidding. It's gross, but it still makes me feel like a cow every time I leave the house. Although they also favor the kind of hair colors that you know only come in a bottle. I also look at body piercings. A lot of the men have one or both of their ears pierced, but not a lot of them go for plugs. Women usually have their ears pierced, and sometimes their nose (almost always on the left side), and the lip piercings up by the nose or down by the chin are really popular with the kids. But another word on the nose piercings, because I'd only seen a couple unattractive ones until I came here. The Russians haven't really figured out where to put the screw so that it's attractively positioned--it seems to just be jammed in on the side of the nose somewhere, whatever. It also doesn't help that most of the chicks go for the nose bling rather than something small. Unfortunately, instead of looking good, it looks like they have some kind of bizarre glittery growth on their nose. I guess it just makes mine look so much better in comparison. Or something.

Another interesting fact about the metro escalators: the hand rail moves faster than the step part. I'm not quite sure how this works, or why they would be on different speeds, but they are.

I forgot to say yesterday that I met one of Lena's friends who gave me a great compliment. I like that Lena doesn't automatically tell her friends that I'm American, but lets them find out the hard way when I look at them blankly after a particularly fast and slang-filled burst of Russian. Anyway, this girl exchanges names with me and then asks where I'm from. After I have to admit that I'm American, she looks at me and goes, "Really? You don't look like an American..." I'm not quite sure what that means, since she could tell that I wasn't Russian, but at this point I'll settle for not being an ugly American.

Tomorrow we're going on an excursion to Petergof, so there will be pictures.

I spent most of yesterday trying to get myself out of the house and down to the Metro station to do errands like buying laundry soap so that I can have some clean clothes and food for lunch next week, and going into town to do things like check my email and post inane ramblings to my blog. The only really exciting thing that happened yesterday (other than dropping food on myself) was looking for a place to buy knitting supplies and then having it not exist. That was it.

Today, Lena and I were supposed to go see the Filonov exhibit at the Russian Museum, but it was closed. Again. So instead, I met her way to the south and we went to the airport together so that she could check on tickets to Amsterdam. This was really boring. I was already fried by the time we were supposed to meet at the museum, and I was really not feeling the having to stand in line to go through security to sit in one of the plastic chairs for a half hour while Lena argued with the ticket agent.

But then we went to McDonalds. Which was an experience. Pretty much the only thing that was the same about it, other than the fries, was the experience of feeling stuffed and disgusted and greasy. There's a feeling in your stomach that only McDonalds can give you, and it's not exactly a pleasant one. I was dying for a diet coke, but I forgot that they don't serve any drinks with ice here, because you can't drink the water. Well, you can drink the water, but you'll get sick like whoa. So all in all, it was not a very satisfying day.

Today I defined the word androgynous, explained how birth control works, and described the Native American Indian reservations. In Russian. I win.

To be a little more specific than that, I went and visited Lena in Pushkin, the town formerly known as Tsarskoe Selo. Pushkin is a suburb of Petersburg, about a half-hour to the south, on the electrichki, the electric trains. Lena told me to get off at the first stop, which would be called "21 kilometers." Too bad that this was not actually the first stop, as I got off at the third being very confused. Then she told me to get back on the train and go another twenty minutes. I'm glad that she puts up with me being such a tard because I got lost after I got there too.

She told me to go to the left, and look for a building with a green roof like a castle. I didn't see it, but figured that maybe if I kept going to the left, I'd run into it eventually. However, eventually turned into a shoe store and a bus station, so I had to walk back a while the way I came. I found it eventually, but found out that "go to the left" and "go up the street on the left-hand side" are the same thing.

At Tsarskoe Selo are two palaces (the Catherine Palace, and the Alexander Palace) and two parks (the Catherine Park, and the Alexander Park). Imagine that. The Catherine Palace is the blue one with the Amber Room and the Agate Room that all the tourists, like myself, want to go and see. But when we got there, the Catherine Palace was closed for repairs. So instead, we walked around the park and talked about our families, and fashion, and more serious subjects like the Indian Reservations in America. This is the Catherine Palace, Lena, and the lake in the park.




We also went through Pushkin's dacha. Which was surprisingly large, considering that most dachas today don't look like they have more than two rooms, maybe three at the most, but I guess in comparison to the palaces, and Pushkin being the national poet, maybe his dacha wasn't so big after all. It was cool to look at his books and papers. I'd forgotten that he mostly wrote in French (which was stupid of me, because everybody and their mother wrote in French then), but most of his books were in French too.

We headed back to Lena's apartment for lunch and I met her mom and her grandfather. We hung out for awhile and talked about music and showing pictures of friends, and I saw some stuff her boyfriend had done. He seems like a super good guy, and it makes me really sad that Lena may be leaving in October. If she can get a ticket.

Thursdays and Fridays bite a lot of ass. Mostly because of Politologia. The prof has this weird verbal tick that causes him to repeat the last word or phrase of a sentence several times. He also uses a laptop and projector, but then puts everything up on the projector in fonts that are too small to read. I'm also not a fan because we had to do presentations the first and second days of class, which he videotaped, for us to watch on the last day to "see how much we've improved." Which is actually both a scary and depressing thought, not to mention embarrassing.

Anyway, I was really going to talk about lunch at school. Because it's really funny to me that people get so worked up about the same old shit every single day. So here's the deal. Because we only get 50 minutes for lunch, it doesn't really make sense to leave the school, so we go to the cafeteria. However, the lady that takes the orders is a pretty heinous bitch. It's the kinda thing where you'll go up and ask for an omelet and she'll tell you they don't have any, but the next kid who asks for an omelet will get one. Getting change back is a real hassle and she always acts like she's doing you the most enormous favor to give you back ten rubles. After two days of that, I figured out that I could eat better and cheaper and not have to deal with the bitchy lady if I brought my own lunch.

Everybody else still waits in line and then gets worked up about how rude this woman is. I don't understand. These are all reasonably smart people, and there are 24 hour grocery stores all over the fucking place. I dunno. Maybe it's just for the sake of having something to get worked up over. And it's a really good excuse to talk in English. Lexi is counting the days until her Russian is good enough to bitch this lady out. Whatever. This just confirms what I already knew: people are pretty much dumb as rocks.

After school, I went with Lena to get my SIM card fixed (again). This actually went pretty smoothly, except for the waiting around for half an hour for the disappearing and uncommunicative sales clerk part. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that my SIM card works and my cell phone works so that if the police want to take me away, I can say, "I think there's some mistake. Let me call my consulate." Then comes the part where they smash my phone, put me in the car, and I'm never heard from again... But looking on the bright side, I can now harass Meg 24/7.

With a working cell phone in hand (or backpack. Whatever.) we headed out for an art show that was opening. But when we got there, it wasn't ready and wouldn't be ready for awhile. So we checked out the gallery upstairs which was pretty cool and then split to get to the theater. And I figured out that what the Russians call "theatre" is pretty fucking broad. When I think of "theatre," I'm going to a play. But this was modern dance. And Indian dancing. A lot of Indian dancing.

Let me explain. So there's this dance and music festival, and the Indian consulate somehow got involved and ended up inviting a troupe of traditional Indian dancers. And their two musicians. Which was really cool and interesting for about forty-five minutes. But then they kept going. And going...and going... and there was finally an intermission after two and a half hours. We went back in, thinking that we were going to be done with Indians. But no. There was more Indian dancing. But then there was an awesome Russian modern dance troupe that alternated with them. And the Vertical troupe was pretty cool. They had one piece where they were dressed in black suits and shaved heads, and they're all super pale because nobody here ever sees the fucking sun, and they came out of the back of the audience and did this lurching-falling-climbing-crawling type thing all the way to the stage. It was really uncomfortable to watch, but it was also super cool. However, this was way cooler than their next number which also involved the lead Indian dancer (who was gay and had really funny English and some fantastic interactions with the interpreter) and six men in white thongs.

It was a very long performance.

But walking home from the metro, I had a really positive experience with a Russian dude. Nobody has talked to me on the street here, other than to ask for directions once, and then another time to say "fuck your mother." So this was pretty cool. I was walking back from the metro and it's late, about midnightish, and it's dark. I'm going down the path (thankfully the streetlights are on this time) and I hear somebody behind me. Normally this doesn't really freak me out, but it's dark and it's late, and there's nobody else around. It turns out to be this guy who just wants to make a little conversation. And it was totally normal conversation. Like "Wow, it's really cold tonight..." "Yeah, it sure is." "Are you from somewhere warm." Uh.. "Actually, I'm from America." (Because it's always warm in America...) "Wow. America! Where?" "The Northwest." "Really? I'm from the north too! Do you know where Korelia is? I'm from Korelia! It's like we're countrymen!" Yeah, sure, okay. And he wasn't creepy, and he didn't ask for my number or anything. It was awesome.

The title of today's rant is either "Russian Bureaucracy" or "Inconsiderate People." If I was smart or a writer, I'd think of some clever way to combine them. Luckily (or unluckily for you if you're reading this), I gave up almost all of my pretensions to some kind of literary merit a long time ago.

After school, I went with Lena to try to get the SIM card stuff straightened out. It's registered in her name, apparently because there are less hoops to jump through, but all the other Americans got their cell phones okay, so it probably was more of a hassle than it needed to be. Anyway, we started out by going back to the place where I bought the phone because Lena didn't believe that there was something wrong with the SIM card. The guy at the phone place pulled out my SIM card and put his in, and the phone worked fine.

Then we went back to the place where we bought the SIM card. They told us that they didn't know anything about it, and that we'd have to go to the Megafon store down the street. We go to the Megafon store and wait in line, and wait and wait and wait. When it's finally our turn, the girl looks at the computer, and says that everything looks okay and that it should work. Lena says that she knows that everything looks fine, because that's what they told her on the phone last night, but the SIM card doesn't work. So the girl does some more digging on the computer and consults one of her coworkers, and then finally tells us that when the people at Ultrastar were writing out the contract, they didn't match up the right phone number and SIM card. So we have to back to Ultrastar for them to fix it.

When we walk in to Ultrastar, the seventeen year old in charge of customer service looks at us like we're nuts. Then he finally looks at the phone, looks at the contracts, looks at the phone, and finally acknowledges that the SIM card does not, in fact, actually work. So he disappears for a while, and then looks at the computer, and then disappears again, and then reappears and starts writing out a new contract. As he's doing this, his phone rings, and he proceeds to fill out the new contract while talking on his cell phone. He finishes the contract, and makes us wait while he finishes his call. Then he has Lena sign the contract and tells us that the phone should work later that night, and if it doesn't, to come back tomorrow.

So all in all, we went to four places, spend most of the afternoon waiting in line or waiting for something to happen, only to find out that nothing will probably actually happen and we'll have to go through the same thing again tomorrow. Welcome to Russia.

I had to hustle home a little bit because we were having a little dinner party. Lydia Borisovna is very concerned that I haven't been spending any of my time with the other Americans in my group. I'm not very concerned, because frankly, I don't really like most of the other Americans in my group. Or I like them fine, but I don't particularly want to go out of my way to spend more of my time with them. Anyway, she was super worried, so she wanted to invite them over for dinner. So I invited Emily, Laura, Lexi, Clark, and Eric. Emily and Laura were on time, and Eric said that he'd be coming later, but Lexi had texted Emily saying that she was going to be a little late. Clark had called Laura about five minutes after we were supposed to meet to say that they'd be there in about fifteen minutes. Forty-five minutes later, still waiting at the Metro station, we discover that Clark and Lexi had decided to walk. It takes about an hour to walk from downtown to my house. Why they didn't call to let us know not to wait, I couldn't tell you. However, inconsiderate people. Yeah. Between waiting at the Metro station for an hour and dealing with the SIM card stuff, all I could do was laugh.

Anyway, everything was fine, and my phone still doesn't work. Back to Ultrastar again tomorrow, I guess.

Wednesday is excursion day and no classes. Yay! Today's morning excursion was actually pretty lame. On our Excursion List, it said "American Consulate," which everybody took to mean that we were going on a tour of the American Consulate. Which actually sounds kinda interesting and like it could be cool. However, this was actually just a lot of walking to have Meg be like "Look! There's the American Consulate! If you ever get in trouble, there's where to go! Okay, free time until 1:30!" There was one of those looks of disbelief passed around, you know, the one that's like "What the fuck? I just walked for forty-five minutes to look at the outside of a building?" Yeah. Pretty much.

I had lunch with Meg and we had sushi. It was really good, although expensive. I guess you get what you pay for though, because it was tasty and I didn't get sick. I'm always totally sketched out by the fish here. I'm sure that most of it's fine, but I'm not eating anything raw that looks or smells like it wasn't caught that day. We got a boatload of sushi (I'm not kidding--it came in a boat) and had seaweed flavored green tea. Yum.

In the afternoon was a canal trip. We all piled onto one of the canal boats and got an hour tour of the canals and the Neva, with a guide pointing out the major sights along the way. The weather was really nice (it'd been raining for a couple days before), but it was sunny and pretty warm. Lydia Borisovna told me that'd I'd freeze, so I brought a sweater, and my scarf, hat, and gloves with me. And my zontik, just in case. So because I'd brought almost every warm article of clothing I own with me, I only needed to button my jacket. Then I had to schlep everything else around in my ginormous bag the rest of the day.



After the boat tour, I met Lena to go buy a cell phone. Because I'm cheap, I didn't really want to buy a new one for an arm and a leg, when I could save a little money and get a used one. There's a bunch of used Nokia's around, and I found one with some kind of guarantee for a month or something. I figure that I'm not actually out more than forty-five bucks if it breaks though, which is the good news. And when the kids who are only here for a semester leave, I could take one of their phones if it turns out that mine's a piece of shit.

Phones here work the way that they do everywhere else except America. Meaning that here, you buy a SIM card and the phone, either together or separately, but you only buy as many minutes as you need. You pick your carrier, but there's no monthly plan. When you run out of minutes, you go to the store and buy more. SMS's (text messages) are usually a ruble or less, with all incoming calls from any carrier free. Outgoing calls are more expensive, usually 4+ rubles a minute, depending on who you're calling and all that stuff. It's a convenient system, unless you run out of minutes when all the stores are closed.

So all was well until I got home and put the SIM card in the phone and tried to get it to work. The phone would accept the pin number, but then it would say that the SIM card wouldn't register. This made me less than happy, to say the least. I spent some time on the phone with Lena, trying to make everything work, but it didn't. Tomorrow we'll have to meet and go back to the store where we got the SIM card.

School is school. Nothing is very exciting about it. As I'm sure I already said, I'm in the stupid class. Which was fine with me until today. Because today, in the practical speech class, one of my classmates attempted to explain the inner workings of voting, the Senate and the House, and the Presidential veto. This wouldn't have been so bad if he had actually been a somewhat competent speaker, but he's not. I had to feed him the word for "important" six times and the word for "power" three times before one of the other girls yelled at him to write them down. And this went on for twenty-five minutes. Meanwhile the professor was sitting there with a vaguely quisical look on her face, which only encouraged him. It was really awful and made me want to die.

After school, I met up with Lena and we were going to go to the Filonov exhibition at the Russian Museum, but it was closed. So instead, we toured the Church on Spilled Blood, which is the one that looks like St. Basil's in Moscow, but is all blues and greens and golds on the outside instead of lots of red. It was super beautiful inside and had just recently been restored.
I'm not sure how many of you have ever seen the inside of a Russian Orthodox church, but typically, the inside is covered with frescoes from floor to ceiling, including the columns, which are usually square. On the back wall near the entrance, is a painting of the last judgment. On the ceiling, the main dome is always Christ the Pantocrator, with his hand raised in benediction (you can tell how old the church is by whether Christ is giving the blessing with two fingers or three). If the church has smaller domes, those also have pictures, and are usually Christ as a young man, Christ as Emmanuel, John, and the Virgin Mary. If it's a working church, the alter (where the transubstantiation happens) is hidden from view by an iconostasis: a big folding wall with icons set in it. In a working church, the doors of the iconostasis are closed, but if it's a museum, they're usually open.

The Church on Spilled Blood is built on the site of where Tsar Aleksandr II was blown up by a terrorist group in 1881. Inside, they have a little mausoleum type thing that houses the part of the street where he died. Since it's a more modern church, all the frescoes are done in a very western style. The frescoes are also distinctive because they're actually mosaics, rather than paintings. The colors are absolutely amazing, and are actually overwhelming, just because there's so much going on everywhere you look. I can't even begin to describe it. I may go back with my film camera and pay the extra money to take some pictures. I'm not a big fan of the westernization of Russian icon painting--I really like the very stylized and not-true-to-life look. I'll look on the internet and see if I can find some examples. Anyway, it was still really cool.

After the church, we met up with her friend Philip, who looks like a slightly more gangly blond Darren Platt. There was a sort of familiar grubbiness about him that was very comforting. I know that's gross, but it reminded me of home, and Reed in a good way. We walked around and a guard let us into the Hermitage garden even though it was closing time when Lena and Philip pulled out the "but she's American" card. It was pretty cool. Part of the building is arranged in a square, making a mostly enclosed courtyard. In the middle is a circle of grass with a big fountain and some benches and you can look up and see all these bronze statues on the roof of the Hermitage. Then we crossed six lanes of rush hour traffic in the Russian way (not in the crosswalk, going whenever the fuck you feel like it) and sat in the park across the street.
Then I went home for dinner, read in English for awhile, and went to bed.

School, and then home. I really like the grammar class, and the professor is really nice. Actually, all the professors are really nice. I just like some of the classes more than others. I'm not a big fan of the practical speech class, but I like phonetics.

Tonight, Meg came over with Natasha, the homestay coordinator and gave me an explanation in English about how to use the gas water heater. She had to go around and do this for everybody so that we know, in English, how to not blow ourselves up. Lydia Borisovna had already showed me and made me practice how to do it, so I did fine. Lydia Borisovna was so proud: "and she even knows how to work the stove!" My parents have a gas stove--that shit's not rocket science.

After that, I went out with Lena and her friend Ivan, and we walked around the city for awhile. They looked for a rooftop to sneak up onto and sit, but all the ones that they knew were locked, and all the ones that were open required a ladder. Ivan is tall and gangly, mumbles, and has bad breath, but seems like an okay guy otherwise. We walked around for awhile and then Ivan got bored or something and wandered off. Lena and I walked on and she showed me the oldest railway station in Petersburg and ran into a dude named Philip that she hadn't seen for a couple years. The station is super old and really beautiful, and they've kept all the decor in the art-deco style from the last time it was remodeled. They've also got some really amazing stained glass windows.

Then it was late and I went home and went to bed.

I had some major culture shock last night, I guess. Oh man. And it didn't get any better when I got up this morning either. But one thing at a time. Last night I went to a going-away party for one of my tutor's friends. I was tired and nervous and not really feeling all that into meeting and interacting with a bunch of new people in Russian. I didn't want to drink, and I didn't want to get high (which I'm technically not even supposed to be anywhere near), so I sat in the corner and listened and drank tea. I met this Russian-American girl who was really drunk and really wanted to be friends. Which was sort of unfortunate because it was loud and I was tired, and I could only understand about every 10th or 15th word. Then Lena peaced out early and left me in the care of the incomprehensible Russian-American. It ended up okay when she switched to English when we left the party. She had moved to St. Petersburg six months earlier and had lots of good tips about how not to get mugged or harassed, such as "don't dress like a whore and go out on the street at night by yourself." Anyway, when I asked her about the dogs, she said that the dogs were fine--it's the people that you have to watch out for. Great. Thanks.

So I went to bed last night telling myself that everything would be better in the morning, because it usually is. But I woke up and was unexpectedly all by myself in the apartment, and I started to bawl. When I calmed down a little bit, I tried to call Rob, but the phone card didn't work. Which resulted in another round of frustrated tears and a 10am call to Meg: "I'mhavingacrappytimeandIwanttocallhomebutIcan'tbecauseIcan'tgetthephonecardtoworkwanhwanhwanh." She was pretty cool about it and told me to just go out and buy another phone card. Which I did, and then I figured out why my other phone card hadn't been working. Russian phones have the peculiarity of being both rotary and tone dialing, and are automatically set to be rotary dialers. If you have to enter a pin code, you have to press the star key to toggle to tone dial. It said all of this on the Russian phone card (in English). But anyway, I was able to make my very important calls to people who probably don't miss me as much as I miss them.

This afternoon, I tried to take my computer with me to use wifi and post some pictures and all these rants to a blog. But when I got to the internet bar, wifi wasn't working. Maybe in an hour and a half, they said. I didn't want to wait, so I paid for a half-hour on the public computer and dicked around a little bit. So everybody will just have to wait for updates and pictures and all that other fun stuff.

School again tomorrow. Blech.

Oh my god, I've only been here a week and there's still nine more months to go.

Catch up time, I suppose. I have to say that the first week of classes has gone pretty quickly and that I feel like I'm speaking better. However, it's slightly discouraging to know that this is only a temporary state on the "W adjustment curve" and soon I'll feel like my Russian has actually regressed and that I never should have come. So I'll take the feeling of accomplishment while I can. Being forced to practice and speak all the time has actually done a lot for vocab retention and even just general facility of speech. Cases and occasionally tenses are still problematic, but even those are getting better.

I guess I should probably describe school for the rest of all y'alls at home. The program that I'm on has its classes in one of the Herzen University buildings behind Kazanskayia sobor, a huge cathedral in the middle of downtown Petersburg. It's an old, pretty run-down building that also has the dorms and university hotel in it. Like most buildings here, it's arranged in a square with a courtyard in the middle. This is actually hugely inconvenient because in order to go to class, I have to enter through the hotel, show my studentchesie billet, and then go outside and through the courtyard to get to the classroom section of the building.

I've got class from 9:40 to 3:10, with at 50 minute lunch break. The way that Russians serve food, this means that by the time you get your food at the cafeteria, you've got about five minutes before you have to be back in class. Anyway, I haven't had this much class all in a row since high school, let alone that many hours of class in another language. I have trouble concentrating for that long when the classes are in English. The whole situation is even worse since I discovered that I can't speak Russian when I'm on my meds. So I've been trading my concentration for speaking practice. Whether or not this is a good bargain remains to be seen, but I'm hoping that it'll work out okay.

I've got five classes: practical speaking, grammar, phonetics, politics, and film. I successfully switched out of the language/culture class, and hopefully the film one will be better. I go to class four days a week, and on Wednesdays, we have "excursions" around the city. This week, we had a brief tour of the university and an incomprehensible tour of the small university library. Then we went to the EuroMed clinic to have blood drawn for the HIV test. Apparently the test that you get in the states to get your visa doesn't actually count in the eyes of the Russian government, because you have to get another one when you arrive. Yay. At least I don't have to worry about being deported. I tested out okay in the states and I haven't slept with too many sketchy guys since... Anyway, this clinic is where Meg has to take me if I get sick or hit by a car, or break my arm or something. They gave us a tour, almost like they were trying to show us that even though this is Russia, the clinic practices Western medicine. "Here are all our machines! Look! It's just like at home! You're totally safe here!" Whatever--I still got a big-ass bruise from having my blood drawn. I'm not sure why they had to use the inside of my arm--it's usually a finger-prick. Whatever. I've given up trying to use logic on most situations I find myself in.

I live on the eighth floor of an apartment building on Vassilevsky ostrov, one of the islands at the mouth of the river Neva (with the accent on the "ah," please) and the Gulf of Finland. I have about a ten minute walk to the metro, maybe seven if I'm really booking it. Anyway, about a half mile each way. On the way, I have to pass through a vacant lot that's undergoing some kind of remont (remodel) that seems to be stalled. The entire city is forever na remonte. In this vacant lot is a pack of dogs. I'm not sure if they're wild or quite what the deal is, but they definitely live in the lot. Now, as most of you know, I don't really like dogs. I'm not an animal person in general, but dogs kinda freak me out. Some dogs are okay, I'm cool with Lennon's dog and Isaac's dog, but that took a while. So having to walk through this vacant lot with a pack of dogs is probably my least favorite part of the day. Especially because these dogs seem to be multiplying. At first there were only four. Today, there were six. That's a lot of dogs. I know it's irrational, but I'm seriously afraid that they're going to attack me one of these days.

Also on Wednesday, we met our Russian tutors. These are people that the university hooks us up with to (heh heh) "use however we want." But with the caveat that the tutor program is not a dating service. Anyway, the tutors are supposed to talk with us and help us with homework and stuff like that. Basically, they're getting paid to be our friends. My tutor's name is Lena, and I actually really like her. She's about my age, maybe a year younger since she still has one more year of university. She's an only child living with mom, and is dating a 38 year old artist, who's divorced with a kid. I should be so lucky. She's pretty cool--she's really into literature, very well read, and speaks good English (but not with me). Some of her friends (which I found out later was actually just one) were putting on some kind of music festival, so we went to a club yesterday and saw a couple bands from Rotterdam. The opening act, Ella Bandita was awesome. Kinda like Peaches and Sara Lafleur. But from Holland. She was endlessly amused by the word narcoman, since it sounds like some kind of superhero, but is actually a drug addict. Anyway, she was cool. Rob, I think you would really like her. If I remember right, her first album is called "Love Juice," referring not to sperm, which tastes nasty, but to female ejaculation. Yay Holland! The second band, Feverdream, was billed as noise, but it was not quite what I was expecting. I dunno. When I think of "noise," it pretty much just means that shit that Eric from Commons does and a lot of screaming. These guys were pretty okay--much closer to whatever crap it is they play on NRK these days. There was a little screaming and jumping around, but nowhere near as much as I expected.

Today, we were supposed to go see a play together and we were going to meet at the metro station at 6:30. But, one of the other of us was not in the right place (probably me), so at 6:50, I decided to try to find this place by myself. But I went the wrong way and got lost and then it started to rain. Not just a little rain (which would have been unpleasant since I forgot that before snow, you get RAIN and didn't bring a raincoat), but a lot of rain, and really fucking hard. And because I'd been in a hurry to get out the door, I'd forgotten my zontik. This is one of my favorite Russian words because it sounds funny. Also galstook (neck tie) and skripka (violin). I'm pretty much opposed to zontiki to begin with, being from Oregon--c'mon, a little rain's not going to kill you!-- but I was fucking soaked by the time that I realized that I'd gone the wrong direction entirely, and that by the time I got to the theater, I'd be 45 minutes late if I could find it at all, and being cold and wet, I decided to go home.

It was not a good adventure.

But it does make a good story, and I even knew all the words so that I could tell my host mom what happened without any help. That may not sound like much, and I feel like I'm back in kindergarten, but it's a pretty major accomplishment for me to be able to tell a story. Of course, my speaking ability depends a lot on how much I've thought about what I'm going to say and how tired or hungry or distracted I am, but it's getting better. And despite still being maladjusted and most of the time not being able to understand what people are saying to me, it makes me feel a little better about my decision to come. Especially since given the right circumstances (that thankfully never arose...) I would have stayed in a heartbeat... But I'm moving on with my life, I think at this point I've more or less successfully picked up all the broken pieces of my heart and glued most of it back together. I'm happy that I feel like I'm going somewhere with my life, that I'm coming closer to doing what I want to do, that I'm not stuck in Portland still working 70+ hours weeks at two or three crappy jobs just to make rent and have enough money to drink myself stupid every night so that I don't have to think about how miserable I am... I'm out of all that. I know I left a bit of a mess behind, but I'm out, and I'll be gone long enough that it should take care of itself before I come back. And if not.... I'll cross that bridge when I get there. Nine months is a really long time.

Subjects for another time:
1. The wild dogs in the vacant lot on the way to the metro.
2. Mineral water.
3. Again, people that walk slow. Or, the St. Petersburg shuffle.
4. Our excursion to the medical clinic in which they tried their best to convince us that they were legit and offered the best of western medicine.
5. My tutor, Lena.
6. Zontics.
7. Davai na clube. And Ella Bandita. Who is pretty awesome.
8. Why razgovornia practica may be my least favorite class. Mostly because I don't think the professor likes me.
9. Why do people think I'm Russian? I don't look Russian at all.
10. Surprise! The food here is really fucking good.

So yeah. Today was a hard day. I woke up to go to the bathroom around 2:30 and never really went back to sleep. Then it was the first real day of school. Classes were pretty much The Suck. I'm definitely in the dumb kid group, but that's cool. I guess I'd rather be at the top of the dumb kid class than the bottom of the smart kid one. I hate being the only one to not understand things. And actually, my first two classes went pretty well. I felt like I understood 90-95% of what the professors said, and I knew what was going on. I misspoke plenty, but that's cool. I could follow along, at least.

The last class was a bitch and a half. I signed up for this linguistic-culture class, which sounds super cool. We look at fairy tales, poetry, music, tv programs, etc. and look at the way that culture influences language and vice versa. Unfortunately, Claire (remember the obnoxious chick?) is also taking the class. And not only was the class fucking hard, she had to comment on every single fucking thing and know exactly what was going on. I'm not sure what made me more mad: not being able to understand what was going on, or the fact that she did and I didn't. So. After sitting through one class, I decided that there's just no fucking way I'm going to be able to make it through the semester without shooting her or myself. Or maybe both.
I talked to Meg after class and explained the situation, and it seems like it should be cool if I switch to another class. Which isn't ideal because I really want to take the class I'm signed up for, but if I have to sit there with Claire, even if it's only for three hours a week, I'll kill her. What made everything even worse was that she kept looking at me like she wanted to be friends. Which just made me want to scoot my chair away in the other direction.
Why is it so hard to be nice to other people? Or rather, why have I not yet adopted the Russian mentality of being outright mean to people I don't like?

I hung out with Meg during her "office hours" and then she took me to the supermarket so that I could buy things like a trash can and lunch stuff. Eating at restaurants every day gets expensive really fast. And is also a good way to get food poisoning. Yay Russia! Meg also introduced me to her friend Jenna, who is still living in Petersburg after finishing her Fullbright. I liked her a lot--she's nerdy and dorky in the same way that most Reedies are and is totally into doing her own thing. She seems like a good contact to have, and I need to meet some people outside this group.

I was going to write more about today and all the stuff that I hate about Russia so far (culture shock, anyone?), like mineral water and people that walk slow, but I'll save my tirades for a day when I have more energy.

Today, I finally worked up the courage to plug my laptop into the wall. I was afraid that the guy at the Apple store had lied to me and that my laptop would explode. And going a year in Russia without any of my music or any of my other "important documents" would have sucked a lot. But anyway, it didn't explode, and it seems to be charging.

There seems to be a pressing need to do some catching up. But there's so much for me to talk about, I don't even know where to start. Maybe with the group and orientation? Sounds good. Scroll down if this is boring, but I can't promise that it'll get any better.

So, da. Orientatsia. Washington D.C. Walked by the White House. Killed some time in the Smithsonian. Like every other educated tourist, I pondered the incredibly amusing fact that most of our nations greatest monuments are phallic symbols. Nothing very exciting. I (re-)pierced my nose at some sketchy little hole in the wall place I picked out of the phone book because it was in walking distance of the hotel. This actually made me really angry. I paid $40 for the piercing (Black Hole does it for $20), and it was in some dirty little back room. The dude didn't sterilize the inside of my nose, even after I asked him about it, and then jammed the needle in. Then, without taking the needle out, he put the jewelry back in. "Wow. You're sure bleeding a lot." Yes, thanks, dickwad. Maybe you should take the needle out of my nose before it pokes my eye out. And they didn't give me anything for aftercare. So, yeah. If you're ever in D.C., don't get pierced or tattooed at Fatty's. And despite being dipped in disease-ridden St. Petersburg water, it seems to be healing okay.

The group of kids I'm with seems to be mainly from the mid-west. Which amuses me, but I'm not quite sure why. There's nothing particularly funny about mid-western people, other than the fact that I date them. Well, okay. There you go. Anyway, most of them are either from the mid-west or go to school there, which amounts to the same thing. They seem mostly okay except the girl from Grinell. I saw some weird people with some fucked up or nonexistent social skills at Reed, but this chick is right up there. Oh man. There's no way that I can do her justice. Everything about her irritates me, and I've known her less than a week. I try to to think about nasty ways of killing her. Maybe pushing her out in front of a marshutka. Or the trolley. Maybe we'll have a group excursion on the metro. Anyway, this chick. On the first day of orientation, remember, we haven't even left the states yet, she insists on introducing herself by her "russian name." This is the name that she picked because she doesn't like the way "Claire" sounds in Russian. Not only this, but she refuses to speak in English, only in Russian. This wouldn't be so bad if she was comprehensible. But she's not. And it's not because she speaks badly, but because her intonation is so weird that you can't follow what she's saying because you keep looking around for the cat being tortured in the next room. Shall I continue? (I know that this is quickly descending into bitching, but I'll think up a clever punchline at the end to reward you.) Everything this chick says is affected. Not pretentious, affected. Like, "I would be in ecstasy if I got an internship at the Hermitage." Translated from Russian, of course. The is complete with fanning hand motions around her chin and cheeks. Dude. IN ECSTASY. Stick in knife in me, mommy! Maybe the most bizarre example (this one's for you, Katie) is as follows. A group of us are in one of the hotel rooms after a misunderstanding about vacating some of the rooms (more about that later) and we're shooting the shit, talking about what our host families are supposed to be like, where we had lunch, food, whatever. One of the girls in the room has some weird stomach condition, so she needs to eat a lot of small meals. Then Claire chimes in (in barely comprehensible moo-speak) that the doctor says that it's better for you to eat small meals anyway, and she knows this because she's anorexic. The room goes silent as every one does the mental "Uh... wait. What the fuck?" After about ten seconds of silence, the general consensus was to change conversation topics. Thanking God for small favors, everyone else hates her too. Heh. I typed "tool" first. I realize that there's absolutely no way that I can even begin to represent the full extent of her obnoxity, but this girl is driving me up the fucking wall.

Anyway, there seem to be a few others that I'll want to kill next week emerging from the woodwork. By which I mean most of the rest of the group. Yeah. Today was a little trying and I doubt tomorrow is going to be much better. But onward and upward!

There was lots of talking at orientatsia and most of it was boring. Surprise! Although I did find out from Margaret that not only do I have a good chance of catching herpesyphilaids from even touching a Russian man, I can also contract some sort of mollusk disease that humans don't get anywhere else in the the world. And probably aren't supposed to get, but hey! It's fucking Russia! We'll get bored and drunk and fuck whatever! Hey! Good times! (Meanwhile, Margaret regales me with tales of exploits.) Whatever. This is my journal. I can be as snarky as I want.

Meg seems to be doing more or less okay. She's not pining for her russkii soldat, so that's good. And contrary to all bets, he actually looks pretty cute. At least from the photo I saw. However, as we all know, good looking men can look like orcs in photos, so I'm sure orcs can do the same. At least her track record's getting better. Although after Aaron R., I'm not sure there was anywhere to go but up.

Anyway...

I'm probably just jealous that she hasn't asked me to hang out with her in Russia yet. Whatever. I'll make my own friends. Although if group members see this, it certainly won't be with any of them.

The flight over was pretty okay. There were only a couple of screaming children and the guy next to me didn't really want to talk, so that was pretty cool. Seeing as we're only going to be going to school with each other for the next year. But that's okay. There's plenty of time. Although I did realize on the way over that I need to get my head straight. Or quit hanging out with easy dudes. One of the two. Granted I was really tired, but I had to keep reminding myself that the dude sitting next to me probably really didn't want my head on his shoulder. Yeah, really probably not so much. So I restrained myself. But it was fucking hard and I felt like I at least deserved something nice to make up for it, but all I got instead was motion sickness and then some kind of weird stomach bug that made me explosively barf up shit-tons of stomach acid. Which was kinda cool, but only because stomach acid is bright green and I'm always amazed that my body can make something that color.

After arriving in Petersburg, we went to the school's hotel which turned out to be some kind of bizarre cross between dorms and a hotel. We got money, and food, and internet on the first night, and I'll tell you that I'm really fucking glad that they took us somewhere with an English menu on the wall because after that flight I could barely remember that I was actually in Russia, let alone read Cyrillic and figure out what foods were. And I rediscovered that pancakes and meat are really gross. But the money changing place is super excellent. The one that we went to is close to the school/hotel/whatever, but it's across from one of the chocolate museums. And, this, being Russia, the land of the politically correct, has a black dude in a period costume standing outside to entice people into the museum. Seriously. How many other countries would this fly in? Although, I have to say that I've seen more black people since I've been here (all of what, three days?) than I did in the two weeks I was in Russia before. However, with one exception, they've all been doing door-man jobs. At the chocolate factory. Or dressed up in the giant asian person costume outside the sushi bar. Yay for whack shit.
We had Peterburgskaia orientatsia on Saturday. This consisted of getting the low-down on our host families (or nothing that we couldn't have gotten from reading their letters to us), and having a "tour" of the city. This really meant that Meg walked us up and down Nevsky prospeckt and pointed out restaurants, internet cafés, and then showed us how to use the metro, because we're obviously too retarded to figure it out. Granted the signs are in another language, but seriously. How hard is it to look at the map, find your stop, and then match the name of your stop to the sign that has the name of your stop on it and then follow the fucking arrows? Christ. Then we had free time, so I played on the internet for half an hour, had dinner, and went to bed.

Sunday was eventful for many reasons, not the least of which being that we got to meet our host families. However, we were supposed to have free time until three o'clock. So, being jet-lagged and having been awake from 4 to about 7:30, I decided that since I was getting sleepy, I'd actually try to sleep in. However, at exactly noon, we (being my "suite" mates and I) were rousted by the peculiarly Russian stomp and official knock. The woman on the other side of the door demanded that we be out of our rooms immediately. Uh... And where are we to go? A shrug, and a thoughtful comment that perhaps we could leave our baggage in the lobby. Super. After calling Margaret, it turns out that it was only our set of rooms and one other that were needed and there had been some arrangement made way before time that nobody bothered to let Margaret (or us) know about. But life is full of such trials and tribulations, as Mary reminds us daily... We packed up and schlepped our crap all the way around the hotel to another room where Claire made her astonishing revelation and revealed herself as the true idiot she is in all her glory... I'm so cranky. But then, why should I bother to be pleasant here? I have to be nice everywhere else.

I met my host family. They actually seem pretty cool. Lydia Borisovna reminds me a lot of my gramma. She's a good cook, and likes to sit around and talk about the past a lot. Which is cool and super interesting, but my brain gets tired of focusing on difficult vocab after an hour. Her husband, Boris Vasiliych, reminds me of my dad. He's a professor of physics at the university, so he doesn't seem to be around much. When he is, he definitely seems like he wants to be nice and make conversation, but doesn't quite know how. Which is unfortunate that my vocab and speaking ability is so limited, because he knows a lot of cool shit. Otherwise, he works in his room or putters awkwardly. Aw... just like dad! This is my room:



I had expected things to be really super awkward and horrible and that I'd just want to kill myself and get it over with. But it was actually fine. They were super nice, and they've had a bunch of other homestay kids, so they kinda know the drill. They know that we're going to totally retarded and not very interesting for the first couple months. Hopefully, since I'm staying all year, I'll be able to be more interesting for longer. But I've never been very good at tricking people, particularly into thinking that I'm cooler than I am, so I'm probably shit outta luck.

Today, we had testirovanii v shkole. That's tests at skool to the rest of you. It was pretty much the suck. I took some adderall to rock the written part, not realizing that there might also be some speaking involved in this testing. And I also hadn't realized that taking adderall totally fucks up my ability to speak. This is quite the revelation, and I'm not quite sure what to do. Because it's going to be real fucking hard to get anything done if I'm not doped up, but on the other hand, I'm pretty much a gibbering idiot. Not that I'm not usually, but the meds seem to make it worse. Go figure. And being drunk doesn't seem to be an option either. Although they do sell cans of gin and tonic here. I have yet to try this concoction in a can, although I'm very tempted. I've been on the straight and narrow since leaving Portland. And surprisingly enough, it hasn't been that hard. And considering the amount of drinking and smoking I was doing before I left, I was expecting a real uphill battle. Well, the first couple days without a beer were pretty awful, but after that, it's been okay. I'm hoping that I can kick the smoking for good this time. This probably means another week or two of staying out of the bars. Which means that Dennis won't get his T-shirt for a very long while.

I walked home by myself today. (This after being escorted to school by Russian mom. It was like kindergarten. I'm not kidding. All the way to the lobby.) And it was a long walk. A couple miles along the river and through the island (did I mention that I live on an island? And the bridges go up at night? And if you're not on the island when the bridges go up, then you're fucked until about 5am?) with maniac drivers and angry looking babushkas and Russian dudes exuding varying degrees of creepiness. I made it all the way home, and then couldn't get the door open. But I'm going to blame that one on the keys. I have some seriously medieval looking keys.

But yeah. Every time I stop and think about it, I still can't believe I'm actually here. I had wanted to come to Russia SO BAD and then it didn't work out, but I wasn't all that upset about it. And then it was thesis, and I had to figure out something for this year. So I applied and I got that grant, and now I'm here. It's so unreal to me. I know I'm here, and I'm speaking a lot of Russian, but oh my god, I'm actually doing this. The other part that amazes me is that I can actually do this. I can't carry on a great conversation, but I can ask questions and get people to talk about a variety of interesting topics and I get about 60–75+% of what they way, depending on what they're talking about and how fast they're going. Which gives me a little bit of confidence that I can do this after all.

Which will all be smashed once we start classes tomorrow.