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.