I received an email a few days ago which detailed friends behaving badly. It was not a particularly pleasant email, but I had a lot to do, and I tried not to think about it too much, even as I could hear their voices saying ugly things to one another. It was upsetting, mostly because now that I've had time to process everything, these actions make evident that things that I had thought were resolved and done with are very much not so. And discussions and actions did not happen honestly, as I thought had been the case. And this makes me so ashamed, not only for myself, but also for the other party involved.

It's better that I'm so far away. It hurts just a little bit less.

School was dumb and lame. Internet was also dumb and lame. I went to dinner with Meg, Gretchen, and Tevon, so I waited at the café and did mad homework until time to walk to the restaurant. It was really cold. My nose really is not a fan. I should ask if the same expression that they use for a pipe springing a leak can be applied to a really runny nose. Moving away from my perpetual catalogue of bodily functions...

Meg and Gretchen were running a little late, so I waited in the foyer of the restaurant. The waiters were not very friendly. The one that asked if I wanted to sit down gave me a really blank stare when I said that I was going to wait for my friends first. I know that I have an accent, but that's a really simple sentence and my accent's not that bad. Seriously. Then another waiter came out and said that unless our group had made reservations there was no way that we were going to be eating there that night. Man, fuck if I know if Meg made reservations or not. There's no need to be nasty about it, either. When Meg came and asked how long the wait would be, the waiter was nasty to her too, so I didn't feel quite as bad. Douchebags.

So we decided that Plan B would be Chinese on the island, and met Tevon at the metro. Tevon's a really huge black dude who dresses in black all the time. He's finishing up his Fullbright on conceptions of Russian masculinity and male gender roles, and he works with orphans. He also like to hoard small bills. In fact, Tevon may have actually single-handedly caused the shortage of small bills in Petersburg. He is also allergic to pork and really hates mosquitos. We had excellent Chinese food, and I had a good time talking with Gretchen.

In the words of Ivan, "End TRANCEmission!"

I'm going to skip over school because we never do anything interesting. Then I went to the internet café to do research and work and wait until I could go to Meg's birthday party because it was her birthday today. Yay for Meg being old! (Just kidding...) Meg's mom came yesterday, and it was good to see her again. She also brought me Carmax so that when I get a cold and the skin under my nose splits, it won't look like I have leprosy for quite as long.

I bought some beer at the produkti across the street from Meg's. All the coolers that keep tasty drinks cold have some kind of electric locks on them, and you have to ask the lady behind the counter to unlock them for you. Anyway, I bought five or six bottles of beer and was putting them in my bag when I was approached by a bum, who held out a handful of kopeki and said (in Russian): "You're such a nice, smart, pretty girl. Please give me a beer." To which I said, "Uh, no." "But you're so nice and pretty!" "Uh, still no." And I walked away as fast as I could. I'm not about sharing my beer with the bomzhi.

The party was pretty fun—AuTumn was minus the annoying ex-pat from last time (although she in and of herself is occasionally pretty annoying...) so that was good. I also noticed that Jen is a super obnoxious drunk, and she's a real lightweight for her size and the frequency with which she drinks. I'm such a snob. I talked to James a lot, which was fun. There may be a translation dictionary in the works for the long months of dark, bored-ness and depression ahead. I also talked to Neil for a while, and I really liked him. I'm glad that I got a chance to do some character evaluation, but it also made his actions maybe even more incomprehensible. Whatever. I'll continue to be cryptic in the vague interests of protecting Meg's privacy. (There is no word for privacy in Russian. Nor is there a word for fun. Yay!)

James got really pissy with me after I started talking to Neil. I dunno whether it was because I didn't save his chair or because I didn't give him the right question to his question about Alana. Which is stupid, because as far as I know, James really likes Alana and doesn't particularly like me. Which is how I like it. I do not (uh, DO NOT), under any circumstances, want to get reinvolved with him. That's just all kinds of trouble that I don't want any part of. He asked if I wanted to get an apartment with him. And maybe it was because I was already two beers in, but I didn't even feel bad about saying no. Right now I'm all about getting me through this year, and James can fend for himself. He's doped up on all kinds of meds, so he's already got that going for him. I refused. I'm doing it hardcore, which means that I need his crazy even less. Living with him would just be like adding whack sauce to the crazy fries.

Reading back over the last paragraph, it reads almost like a justification for my actions. And I guess in a way it is. I'm not going to lie: it's pretty lonely here, and it would be easy. Then I remind myself that we're both fucking crazy, and he's probably still a really bad kisser. And who wants to deal with that? Let alone the lack of attraction unless I'm drunk... Why am I still writing? Enough. Hvatit.

Today's excursion was to the Museum of Political History. It was fucking rad, and I couldn't believe I forgot my camera. They had really excellent Soviet propaganda. It's a really huge museum, and we only ran through the Soviet period. Student admission was something ridiculous like 15 rubles (about 60 cents), so I'm definitely going back. Maybe I'll talk more about it when I have cool things to show.

After the museum, we sprinted to the American Consulate to hear some of the fabulous folks who work there talk about how great working for the Feds is. For awhile, it didn't sound that bad until I remembered that I'd have to be Miss America all the time. I guess that line of work's out. They probably drug test too. Oh well. Who wants to move around every two years?

I finished Gravity's Rainbow. I totally earned my rocket tattoo.

I actually contemplated calling in sick today because I was so tired and I didn't want to get up. I'm tired, hungry, cold, and stressed pretty much all the time unless I'm hot. Then I'm tired, hungry, stressed, and hot. I hate life pretty much all the time. I still have a cold.

I made a big dent in my to do list. By which I mean that I sent emails to profs at the final list of schools and updated my recommenders on where I'm actually applying. I feel like a spaz. All the time.

I also got emails from people saying "Are you dead? You haven't been updating your blog..." I hate the blog. I hate the blog a lot. Fuck you all and your expectations. I know I'm behind, but it's hard to write when there's so much other stuff that I should be doing all the time. And it's hard to make my not-very-interesting life in Russia sound fun and exciting or interesting, or maybe not even that. I've also been informed that the quality is slipping since I don't make fun of people as much anymore. Fuck you all. I don't make fun of people anymore because it's too much energy and effort to get worked up about stupid shit and stupid people. I've moved into the phase of, "Oh, [insert shitty situation here] sucks a lot. That's just how it is here. Okay, moving along to the next shitty situation..."

I know that's lame and boring to read about, but I'm sure that the grand Eastern European Adventure will bring more tales of stupid people. And remember kids, there's a new bunch of kids coming at the end of January for me to hate on. And I'll have a project like thesis, so I'll be extra cranky all the time. Yay!

Morning is very very early. I am very very tired. All the time. I don't understand what it is. I've been here a couple months now and I shouldn't still be this tired and maladjusted all the time. What is going on?

School was painful, and so was researching grad schools. Although I talked with Reid for a while about the boring grad school stuff and personal statements and we made to-do lists. This makes me feel better. Mostly because Reid has done way less work researching than I have, and he doesn't even have a good or appropriate writing sample to send to any of the programs he wants to apply to. Although he does have all of his recs lined up, and I still need to find a third. I keep waiting until I have a final list of schools, although things are starting to come together.

Got home really late (8:30), had some dinner, and tried to do homework. This was pretty much a failure because I was so tired and then Mom called. I hadn't talked to her since she dropped me off at the airport, and it was actually pretty okay. Apparently she and Dad are totally thrilled that I want to go to grad school and will help me as much as I want getting my stuff together and mailing it. I have no idea whether or not they'll give me any money, but hopefully I can get enough funding that they won't have to feel bad telling me to take out loans. Anyway, the fact that they'll help takes a huge load off and makes me feel way better about everything. Yay!

It was Lydia Borisovna's birthday today. Ksusha and her parents came over. Anton and his parents did not put in an appearance. There's some kind of whack family politics here that I'm not a party to. But that's okay. I'm not sure that I really am up for family drama in any other family than mine. Russian gives me a headache. Mostly because it's hard for me to follow fast excited Russian conversation about how to remodel apartments. That's just so many words that I don't know.

We had a pretty good tort, though. It was meringue with whipped cream and prunes. I feel like I'm 80, but prunes are kinda tasty, as long as I just keep telling myself that it's only a plum. It's like a plum-raisin. Yummy.

I rocked the GRE. Not like rocked it really awesome, but rocked it well enough that I don't feel like a fool applying to the Ivy's. Yay!

So I went to the internet café to brag, then home to read Thomas Pynchon. Because I'm just that cool. And I deserved a day off. At the internet café, I ran into Larissa, who updated me on all the party shenanigans that I managed to miss out on. The kids managed to buy and drink all of a ginormous three liter bottle of vodka, plus whatever else that people brought. Several people got really really sick and barfed all over. Kristin insisted on being the hero of the evening and kicked Phoebe out of her own bathroom. Margaret was called, and several kids went to EuroMed at their own request.

So I talked to Meg after I got home, and she was pissed about the whole thing. Mostly because nobody actually needed to go to EuroMed and she had to take a taxi across town at 2am to deal with squabbling kids. Apparently Kristin had put one of the barfing dudes in the bathtub in order to cool him off. Which makes sense, until you realized that when you're drunk, your body can't regulate it's temperature that well, so once you get all the heat out, you get really fucking cold really fast, and Kristen, who works in a hospital and knows everything about anything medical, almost gave this dude hypothermia. Good job!

During the course of the conversation, Meg and I also expressed our surprise at the number of times people have had so much to drink that they've been sick (or gotten themselves into bad situations...). I sort of understand... I've been sick from drinking, but only twice. The first time was totally deserved: I drank a 40 of PBR, and then a 40 and a half of OldE in an hour and a half. The second time I don't feel was quite so deserved, but whatever. Anyway... I understand that shit happens, but I feel like the amount of shit that happens with this group is way more than it should. It's like people don't know how to drink. And the other thing that pisses me off is that these kids don't really know how to care for drunk people. Rub their shoulders? Put them in a bath tub? What?! Drape them over the toilet and then give them water when they stop barfing. Leave them alone. Nobody wants an audience when they're puking their guts out. Jesus. The only time you need to worry is if they're passed out before they've barfed. Why are people so stupid? It makes me angry.

The GRE is tomorrow. So instead of going right home and studying (because I figure I've probably done about as much as I can do), I went to EuroMed to give more blood to convince the Russian Feds that I haven't managed to pick up the HIV in the last two months. I ran into Ivan on Nevsky. He wanted to hang out, and I wanted to hang out too, but I had to go get my arm poked. It made me sad.

The EuroMed waiting room is pretty nice. They have comfy chairs, filtered water, a fish tank, and free internet. Top of the line luxury. Anyway. I got my arm poked by a super efficient nurse. Usually when I get blood drawn, it's sort of an ordeal. My veins aren't all that big or close to the skin or whatever makes them more poke-able, so usually I have to have all kinds of tourniquets and alcohol rubs and special squeeze balls. But this lady just gave me the rubber band around the arm, a wipe and then a jab. No poking around inside my arm for the vein. No needle falling out of the vein midway through. I'm all about the Russian blood-drawing efficiency.

Then to Chinese food with James, Meg, Neil, Evgenii Yurivich, and the Flagship girls. I don't want to give away Meg's love life for her (because I'm not that much of an asshole) but I think she was happy that she had a posse to counter Neil's Flagship posse. The Flagship girls seemed nice, although both spoke really really insanely good Russian and made me feel pretty much like an idiot. Whatever. It was good Chinese food. And McDonalds for ice cream because no meal is complete without ice cream, according to Evgenii Yurivich.

Then it was suddenly 11, and it was late. And I had to get up very early to take the GRE in not very many hours. So I didn't make it to the last Club Phoebe. Beer makes me sleep well.

So because I'd been thinking about poetry last night, I started trying to think about what kind of poetry I like, because I do like some of it. The product of all this thought culminated in the following:

There once was a whack bitch named Kristen
Who would tell anyone who would listen:
"I will work," —with a sigh,
"For the FBI,
"But only in trafficking women!"

It's actually preventing women trafficking, but she's a whack bitch, and even Pushkin took poetic liberties. Besides, it's more funny this way.

And none of you wrote any parables of the whack bitch of Whackistan. This makes me sad because I'm sure that many of you have encountered many whack bitches that you could write me entertaining stories about. But looking back, I didn't really make a clear distinction between the whack bitches and the crazy bitches. So. For the record. A crazy bitch is crazy all the time and that's all there is to it. Sometimes she's maybe less crazy than others, but she's always crazy. A whack bitch is a little different. A whack bitch seems really normal until she just goes and does something totally whack, like hits you upside the head and then steals your wallet or something.

Entertain me. It's cold and dark over here.

I still have a cold, but it's not as bad today. Yay only blowing one gallon of snot today instead of five! I talked to Rob this morning. Yay for a sweet election! Jenna sent me a text message saying "The Dems win! We can go home!" Yup, pretty much.

Today is also excursion day to the Dostoevsky museum. It was really excellent, except that there was a film crew making a documentary about why foreigners (non-Russians) like Dostoevsky so much. Although the more that I think about it, the apartment "museums" (which are more like shrines that make money) are a really weird institution. I was going to say that we don't do that as much in America, but I guess we do. I've been to Mark Twain's house, Louisa May Alcott's house, and the house of seven gables even though I've never had the misfortune to read that particular Hawthorne tale. I guess maybe it's just that our literary tradition is less revered. I didn't give the blog address to any of my high school english teachers, so yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say that our American literary tradition is less rich. Yeah, Art, that's right. Less rich. American literature mostly sucks. Regardless, I still think that these apartment museums are slightly strange. I mean, it's really cool to see this stuff that these famous people owned, and the the rooms that they lived in pretty much the way they left them (or as near as the restorators can figure out), but there's something about it that also really creeps me out.

But I've been distracted from the museum. It was really pretty cool. They'd done a really good job with all the restoration and stuff. In favor of authenticity, they'd even papered it in the same really ugly brown wall paper that was there when Dostoevsky lived there (they knew it was the right one because people put sheets of newspaper underneath new wall paper, so they were able to date it from the newspapers). They had his top hat under a glass dome, and even a cup of tea on his desk. The tv camera was really obnoxious, and most of the kids (except for Claire) weren't so hot on being video taped for tv. They interviewed Margaret for their show. It was excellent. Then Claire volunteered to be interviewed as well, and said nothing, much less articulately than Meg. Is anyone surprised? I mean, really.

After the museum, I hit up the internet café, mostly for grad school applications and other useless stuff like that. Today brought home to me the absolute impossibility of applying for grad school from here unless I have a lot of help from state-side. I'm going to have to ask for help from Mom and Dad. Fuck me. Fuck me a lot. Really hard. Yes, Zhenya, I could take another year off to figure out what I really want to do with myself, but if I took another year off, I'd also have to work 70+ hour weeks again, and I'd be so tired all the time just trying to live, I'd never be able to do anything and I'd end up like Rob, having the best of intentions to go back to school, but never doing anything about it. At this point, I feel like staying in school is the only way that I'm going to get to where ever it is that I want to be.

The second part of our "Dostoevsky-day" excursion was to see the play, "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man." It was ridiculously awesome. It's a pretty typical Dostoevsky "love will save the world" parable, but the play was so cool. It was in a room like Raskolnikov's: a little attic room with period furniture and lit by candles. We sat in chairs around the perimeter of the room, and the actor appeared out of a huge trunk in the middle of the room and delivered the monologue in period costume, etc. He got right up in our faces and climbed and stomped around. It was way cool. I want some glow in the dark prayer beads.

So Dostoevsky is all about love, which started me thinking about how we express love. I won't expound at length because it's boring, but I started thinking about the difference between expressing love in prose versus in verse. Mostly because I also had the misfortune of reading some incredibly bad love poetry recently. Why is it that so much poetry sucks so much? I'm not really a fan of poetry, and I never really have been. Maybe I'm just uncultured, but I don't get it. I'm not a poet and I don't have any pretensions to being a great writer either, but I feel like you can do so much more with prose while avoiding more clichés. Whatever. Love is dumb.

I still have a cold. My head feels like my brain has been embalmed with cotton balls. My ears won't pop when I ride the metro, so my head feels extra funny. This is probably the worst cold that I've had since the one I had about this time last year when I chugged decongestant out of the bottle and had coughing fits that made me have to sit down and rest. The one where I thought I had TB? Alex remembers, if only because I hacked all over him every other night...

Lots of people were missing at school today. This was a big mystery until Meg explains that this is because four of them were attacked by some drunk dude at a bar and then saw the drunk dude shoot the bartender in the chest. Good times. Dude hit the girls, and punched Clark in the face and broke his nose. And all this time I had been feeling bad for being lame and never going out to bars! Now it turns out that rather than being lame, it was a survival mechanism! I win!

James had very much wanted to meet Ivan, so I set up a meet and greet. It went well, and they got along better and had more to say to eachother than I have to say to Ivan, so that was cool. Mostly also because I wanted to think a little bit more about this people getting beat up thing and wasn't really in the mood to do a whole lot of small talk. There was also an exchange of sorts. I'm vaguely disturbed that I now apparently exude enough sketch that I can go halfway around the world and meet people who like the same kinds of things I do. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing...

Home for homework and study. James put his hand on my knee as we were riding down the escalator. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Mostly not so much. Ew.

Today was a day off for the state holiday. Which was good, because I still have a cold. This blows. I woke up and took more decongestants three times last night. That's so not okay. I hate not being able to breathe. Lydia Borisovna made us vareniki (jam in a sweet pasta shell) for breakfast. They were pretty tasty. I walked Laura back to the metro station so that she wouldn't get lost and then went to the grocery store for lunch stuff and more kleenex.

I read more of the Rainbow until I felt too guilty about not studying for the GRE. After all, I only have to take the damn thing in five days. I did that until I couldn't stand it anymore and then did homework and went to bed. It was a very chill day off in between emptying the entire contents of my sinuses every two minutes.

I woke up with a really bad cold. Not just the congested, stuffed head feeling, but the sore throat and the so much snot it should be illegal cold. I was alone again this morning so I went back to bed and slept most of the day. When I wasn't sleeping, I was re-inspired to read Gravity's Rainbow. I am now past halfway, which means that I will most absolutely finish. Or something. It's only taken me five months to get this far...

Unfortunately, I had to get up at some point because Laura was supposed to be coming over to spend the night. And here's why, because this is pretty excellent. She wasn't just spending the night because we were planning on going out and getting really drunk. It's because her hozyaika was planning on having her lover over and wanted Laura to leave. Just for the night, though. So in the interest of keeping everybody happy, Laura came over here. My hozyaika's reaction was actually pretty cool. She said, "Rita's not married? She has a lover over? Good for her!" I'm glad that I'm with such a liberal family.

Anyway, I went out for drinks with Laura and James. We stayed on Vaska (the island) and went to the same bistro that Meg and I went to before. They have very cheap beer, which makes me happy. At some point James said that I was a hard drinker, and I got a little offended. Maybe because Kris also said that I was a drinker. But that's okay. I'd rather be a drunk than a 32 year-old pot-head living with Mom. I made James explain, and his rationale was that it was a compliment: that he's seen me drink quite a lot, but he's never seen me be stupid drunk or totally out of control. And that may be true. I've been stupid drunk plenty of times, but usually only in very controlled situations (after lessons learned the hard way). Mostly, I don't feel like I'm actually that much of a drinker mostly because most of my friends drink just as much if not more than I do, and also because I drink way less here than I do at home. It's also a little touchy because Grandpa's a hard-core boozer. I love my tolerance, but I don't love those genes.

Enough meditations on the black state of my soul. We eventually packed it up because the metro was going to close and as much fun as the drunk walk home was with Meg, I wasn't quite up for it with Laura. I wanted some more decongestants like whoa and then to pass the fuck out. Which was pretty much what I did. And it was excellent.

Today is a national holiday, so there is a fascist march down Nevsky. My plan is to stay home and not go out as much as possible. There's always more violence around the national holidays. And also probably because the fascists have a permit to march and the antifascists aren't so much fans of the fascists and will probably start some big rumpus. I was hoping for a huge cool-looking bruise on my ass from my aborted love affair with the escalator, but no such luck.

I talked to Alex this morning about grad school and personal statements and all that kind of good stuff. This was actually the first time I'd talked to him since before I left and it was pretty good. I forgot how much I like to talk to him, and the amazing capacity that we both have to talk about nothing for so long. Anyway, it was really nice to talk to him and he had some good advice for me and helped me pin down what I'm going to write about a little better.

I still don't have any cell phone service. Surprise surprise.

Then Meg called and invited me to come over for dinner. Yay dinner. Nobody is home and I like some company sometimes. I headed out for Meg's a little bit early so that I could swing by the Megaphone store and attempt to figure out why my phone doesn't work. I was all ready to use the phrase "This isn't service, this is shit" if they tried to tell me that they didn't know what the deal was. Unfortunately, they did know exactly what the problem was: I still owed them money. I think that that's a big pile of shit because they keep a running balance as you use your minutes and it's pretty hard to go way over because they just turn off your phone. But rather than listen to more incomprehensible explanations, I decided to fork over the cash and get the hell out of there. And then they turned my phone on a half hour later!

This was good because I got hopelessly confused trying to find Meg's house. But all was well and we hung out a little bit before everyone else started arriving. Tevon took over the role of doorman, which was excellent when James (!) arrived and Tevon wouldn't let him up. It was really excellent to see James. I hadn't quite realized how much I missed people from home and how excited I was that somebody else who understands me and the proper way to roll was here with me. This is also mostly because the other kids in my group are a bunch of fucking squares. I don't think of myself as particularly "extracurricularly experienced," but these kids make me look like a fucking expert and it makes me really sad. AuTumn brought this super annoying ex-pat named Michael that she'd met at a bar somewhere. James and I started the skype-age as soon as we heard that he was an English major from Princeton with a shelved (unfinished and unpublished) novel about South America (written while he was living there, of course) and currently working on a collection of short stories, fictional of course, set in Russia. Anyway, I had a great time being an asshole to this poor man who absolutely deserved it for being such an perfect example of why everyone around the world thinks that Americans are know-it-all jerks. Jen and AuTumn had the misfortune of misinterpreting James' question: "Have you ever played Mortal Kombat?" as a pickup line, and then Meg felt compelled to elucidate the nature of past relations. Boo.

But it was a pretty excellent night, including a mad dash through the snow to catch the very last metro home.

Lydia Borisovna was gone when I got up this morning, but she left me kasha on the stove. It was actually really nice to have the morning to myself and ease into the day a little bit. They're actually really nice about the fact that I don't really like to talk in the morning, but I always feel a little bad about it. My brain is just not up to the gymnastics of managing all that much more than good morning, please, and thank you.

So probably because I was having so much fun all by myself, I left the house a little bit late this morning. So I got to the metro late. And rather than waiting in line and trying to elbow my way over to the standing side, I decided that I'd just go ahead and thump down the running side. Except that I forgot that the escalator was wet from all the melting snow from people's boots, and I slipped and fell on my ass. And not just fell, but fell and slid down several stairs (on my ass) into the man in front of me. And people laughed at me. So I picked myself up and continued to run down the stairs away from the people who had seen me fall. Those were some of the hardest stairs I've ever fallen on and my ass hurt a lot. It still hurt when I got to school and it was lame that I had to sit on it all day. It still hurts now, actually.

After school, I had to go to the knitting store with Jonathan. Sometime a long time ago I said that I'd fix the hole that he made in Jessica's mitten, and that he's go to the yarn store and buy the yarn to fix it. So I had to go today. I was cranky and did not want to go at all. Mostly because I don't really know anything about how to fix holes in mittens, other than it involves some yarn and a needle. And not that I knew the words for either one of those. Whatever. So we went to the knitting store, and I walked up to the counter, showed the lady the mitten, and said, "There's a hole and I have to fix it. What do I need?" She looked at the hole and then said that I could either cut the top of the mitten off and reknit it, or I could pull all the stitches together with some black thread for 13 rubles. I liked the easier 13 ruble option.

Then I went to the internet café to do "grad school research" which mostly consists of halfhearted looks at Slavic Languages & Literatures programs and reading livejournal. But I got an email from Claire in Paris, who apparently hates France about as much as I hate Russia, and we all know that misery loves company. It made me really happy to know that all the people who come back with glowing opinions of study abroad are really full of shit.

So more about the cell phone. I'd been trying not to get too mad that I still didn't have any service 23 hours after I paid for more minutes, but it hasn't been working too well. I saved my receipt just in case something like this happened, so I went back to the Ultrastar with the receipt and said, "I paid for minutes yesterday, and I still don't have any service. What happened?" To which they said that everything was fine on their end and that I'd have to take it up with my service provider. Blow me.

At this point I was too tired and fried to even contemplate going back out and dealing with the phone company, so I went home and watched tv with Lydia Borisovna and had dinner. Then I fixed Jessica's mitten. Lydia Borisovna was very curious about why I was fixing the mitten. She said, "Why didn't these kids just ask their hozyaika's (host moms) to do it?" To which I said, "I don't know. Maybe their host moms didn't know how." "Psssh. What kind of hozyaika doesn't know how to fix a mitten?"

Then I studied for the GRE and went to bed. More good times on Friday night.

Morning comes so early. So so early. And with a big fat hangover. Go figure. Jenna works close to where I live, so we piled into the marshrutka and headed to the island. It was the first time I'd been in a marshrutka this trip. I'm always vaguely afraid that they won't let me out, but I was reassured that this will not happen. The driver didn't hear the girl sitting in the back say that she wanted to get out and all the other passengers yelled at him when he started to go by her stop. The driver was nice to us and let me out close to the metro so that I could run home and grab my books and stuff. It was a pretty awful morning and I wasn't sure I was going to make it. I went to text Meg to tell her that I might be late, and then remembered that I didn't have any minutes on my cell phone. Right. So lame.

School was so painful. I'm not sure whether it was because of the hangover or because I'm just getting restless or whatever, but every single class was the longest class of my life EVER. Even longer than the Russian Formalism class, and that was particularly awful specimen. Politilogia was the worst. Not that that's unusual or something, but today was especially bad for some reason. Maybe because the teacher kept pushing for a discussion and nobody was in the mood.

I hit the cash machine and then the internet café to ascertain that in fact, nobody loves me. Then I went to the cell phone store and bought more minutes, and went home to do homework. I am checking my cell phone (turning it on and off) every hour and waiting for service to magically reappear.

Wednesday is excursion day, and yet again, I have no pictures for you. But I have a good reason this time, not some bogus excuse like "they wouldn't let me take pictures of the beer factory because of terrorists!", but we went to Kresti Prison today, and nobody gets to take pictures of the prison. Today was a nice reminder of why I don't want to ever get caught doing anything illegal here.

So anyway. Because it's Wednesday, you also get a little history lesson. Because I should at least try to be informative if I can't be entertaining. So Kresti was built way back when and opened in 1892. It's cool because it's super old and it's also built in the shape of a cross. It also has an old church that's undergoing restoration smack in the middle of one of the crosses. The prison is actually a huge compound (as they tend to be) and it's very centrally located in downtown Petersburg. It's maximum security, and Kresti is only where they keep you before your trial. I can only imagine that where they take you after that is about a billion times worse. Anyway, the cells are really small and supposedly only have six people in them (according to the guide), but my good friend Lonely Planet says that they actually have more like ten to fifteen, sleeping in shifts. The doors were about as thick as my hand and totally soundproof. We found this out when the guide shut some of the group in one of the rooms and we couldn't hear them scream. Ha ha.

The doors also have a small window in the middle of them, probably about the size of two of my hands put together wide, and a hand and a half tall. Or about the size of my Katzner dictionary. Anyway, these windows are pretty small. However, I did see one of the prisoners on the upper level had managed to stick his entire head out of the window and was talking to the guard. I'm not sure how he did it, because the windows are too small. Amazing. It was really creepy to walk down the hall and have people come to the window of the door (if they had one) and watch you. It made me feel like I was the one in the zoo, rather than the other way around.

The prison is actually a really beautiful old, red brick building that's slowly deteriorating. The day was grey, drippy, and cold, and as strange as it is to say, made the prison prettier. Maybe just because it fit the mood or something. The prison museum was cool. They had all kinds of artifacts that prisoners had managed to smuggle in (like knives, files, guns, and bombs), tattoo guns with ball point pens, and things that the prisoners had made out of bread. Don't ask how this works because I don't really know. Actually, I do, because I watched that Sorokin movie. Alex, you know what I'm talking about. They chew the bread up until it forms a paste that they can mold. When the paste dries out, it becomes really hard like clay. It's really gross. But kinda cool. (In the same way that I'm fascinated by the color of my stomach acid...)

After the prison, we all needed some cheering up, and so I went to the sit-down Teremok with some of the other kids. And what better thing than blini and bad company? Actually, the company wasn't that bad. It's not like I really have problems with any of them. Some of them are just annoying. Which doesn't make them bad people. Actually, whatever. It totally does make them bad people. If I can't stand to be around you, you're probably either a bad person, or too good of a person. I'm such a snob. Anyway.

I headed home for a little while before heading out to Novus to hear Jen and Lafleur DJ. I was pleasantly surprised by the company. I ended up meeting Jen's soon-to-be ex-partner Mischa, a Russian who speaks flawless English and translates for a living. He's really cool and I ended up getting rather sloshed and heading out with Jenna, fully intending to catch the metro and go home. But then Jenna said that we should go get shwarma and stay at her apartment. And being drunk, greasy shwarma sounded like the best thing ever. Also because it smells so good, but everyone always tells you not to eat it.

Why should you not eat shwarma in Petersburg? Ask any Russian, and they will tell you that it's made out of dog. This may or not be true, but it's pretty tasty. Regardless, there are better and worse places to get shwarma. Meg says that the shwarma by her house is bad, but the one where Jenna and I went is better. I've decided that the difference in quality must be due to the age of the dogs they're using. The shwarma cart at Senia Ploshad must employ faster, younger men who can go out and catch the younger and tastier dogs. It's a funny thing—you never see any puppies in Petersburg...

So we had drunk shwarma standing outside in the cold, and it was quite possibly the best thing I've had here. I know I say that about everything, but this might actually be true, drunk or not. Then we wanted water, so we headed to the grocery store where there was also the drunk purchase of a hat, some diet coke, water, and hair die. Then we walked to Jenna's house and decided to play drunk beauty parlor at 2am. My hair came out pretty well. I was going to take a poll (from the three of you who actually respond...) as to what color I should do my hair (I'd been debating about going either a bright out-of-the-bottle dark red, brown, or blond) but then I just decided that I'm going to be blond again for a while. It looks pretty okay. Deciphering the directions was a bit of a mess and I'm glad that I'd done it all before. Otherwise my hair (and Jenna's, who did dye hers red) would be a disaster. We finally got to sleep around four, still drunk.