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.