first: i'd like to wish a very happy 22nd to my dear friend melissa. mwah!

second: this is so very, very true (it was borrowed from this blog): "no amount of waxing poetic about the poetry and beauty of baseball is going to make her give a shit whether the cubs win today." there you have it. the rest of sour bob's blog is pretty amusing and thought-provoking [of course it is, or else i wouldn't have linked to it!], so have a look around.

so... major gossip for you fans of the dimitry saga! i found out from dave on saturday night [he apparently knows more about my host family than i do, since our host moms talk to one another] that dimitry is *moving out* of the apartment - and moving into another apartment with anya, his girlfriend, who is sixteen, not seventeen. apparently the place they're moving into used to belong to her parents, and if i understood tatiana correctly (i broke down and asked her yesterday), it doesn't have hot water, or heat, or windows that work too well in blocking cold air. i'm not entirely sure where this place is - it's either around the corner near the dorms, or about a thirty-minute bus ride across to the neighboring island. in any case, what i do know for sure is that dimitry's taking the television that's currently in my room with him - which makes perfect sense, because the room i'm in used to be his own bedroom. it's probably for the better that the tv is going with him, but i'm going to miss my daily news dose. if all else fails, i guess i'll study more {gasp!]. sigh.

i didn't realize until yesterday how thin the walls in the apartment building are - i was able to hear the guy who lives *three doors down* drilling a hole into something (i don't know exactly what was going on, only that the drill he was using sounded like a person with explosive diarrhea - who knows, maybe he drank the tap water?), and as i was doing homework i was serenaded by the sounds of the kid downstairs playing the supremes' "my world is empty without you" on the piano for the better part of two hours. just the chorus, over and over - seems he got the piano for his birthday, and he's just now starting to play it. he's not bad, but a little variety might be nice...?

oh, yeah: so dave's also got this russian girlfriend, whom he met through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend. she works at a casino and knows no english, which is amusing because dave happens to know very little russian. it's kind of cute, since they're not technically dating yet according to him, but what irks me is that he refers to her as his "proto-girlfriend". what is she, a robot? "pseudo-" i can see, but "proto-"? that sounds fishy to me, but then, what do i know?

today's craving: green onions. sooo tasty!


posted by kat thompson at 5:35 AM

first of all: you guys know i can't do math, so i hope you'll forgive me when i report that i just realized that seventy rubles is more like two dollars and change. still, heck of a deal!

today's brief anecdote: i've finally been hit on by the token sketchy drunken russian guy! megan and i went to a 'small party' in the student dorms last night - justin, who was throwing it (ie bought all the beer and most of the food) estimated that about twenty people would show up, so i'm sure he was surprised when over twice that number came. whoops. anyways, this guy andreii who introduced himself to me by spilling his beer onto my pants leg then thought it a good idea to go through about a third of a bottle of vodka and try to carry on a conversation with me. that didn't get too far, though, since he was so creepy that i thought it better to move away. far away, to the other side of the room, where i met this indonesian kid named enrique [yes, he knows it's a spanish name, and he admits that his parents are weird], and we talked about america and globalization for a long time. definitely an odd evening, but i won't be opposed to attending another such gathering.

for the curious, i've finally washed my jeans so they wouldn't get up and run away. you know, washing jeans by hand isn't so bad - they're actually almost dry, about twenty-four hours after the fact. i think i could definitely get used to this!

that's all i've got for today - on the off chance that danny isaacs is reading this, happy birthday, old man! [wink]
posted by kat thompson at 9:03 AM

well. today's source of amusement, from yesterday's edition of the st petersburg times, can be found here. this guy is a genius! do a google search for chris floyd, and sit back and watch the trainwreck. also amusing was the story of miss universe's recent sacking - not only for the fact that the author used the word "sacking" [where are we again, a monty python film?!], but also for the fact that this girl is on this month's cover of "cosmopolitan st. petersburg". it's like the sports illustrated curse!

anyways - so tonight i went to the st.petersburg philharmonic to see a concert celebrating shostakovich, conducted by his son dimitry. it was amazing, in a word - the acoustics in the bolshoy zal (where the philharmonic plays) were outstanding. just - everything was great! we had seats in the seventeenth row, at the great price of seventy rubles, or about a dollar and ten cents. unbelievable! granted, i was a little taken aback at the clueless american woman behind us who not only asked her poor companion who was playing tonight, but then proceeded to tell him that she had been looking so long for (in the words of dave barry, i swear i am not making this up) "a good philharmonica". i think her search might go on a bit longer than she hopes.... oy.

oh yeah: i got good news about my potential niece or nephew today, in that the situation appears to be turning out for the better. keep thy fingers crossed!

today's random tidbit: did you know that when new cars are made in russia, orthodox priests bless the cars before they roll off the assembly line? i love this country! [grin]


posted by kat thompson at 2:36 PM

oooooooook.

first things first: no matter how good of an idea it may seem to be, don't use your teaspoon to stir up your cherry yogurt and then put the spoon back in the tea. the resulting flavor will be closer to liquid menthol than actual tea, and you just might spit it across the table, as i nearly did the other day. whoops. also, if there's a photo album lying out in plain sight and you can see that the first picture contains an unknown girl, do not, i repeat, do not pick it up to peruse said album to try and find out who she might be. otherwise, you'll find out that she's one of dimitry's ex-girlfriends and that he's taken the liberty of photographing her, and other females, in very skimpy underwear. this is what i get for being curious, apparently.

so, the weekend: i saw the botanical gardens on the petrograd side and went back to the peter and paul fortress with megan and dave, all on saturday. at the fortress there was an exhibit of post-sept. 11 photos from new york by this guy whose last name escapes me at the moment - it's a traveling exhibit and at some point it's going back to the u.s. pretty neat stuff. the gardens were nice - the air was fresh, and what was still in bloom was pretty. better to go back in the late spring, though.the entire petrograd side that we saw was pretty nice - quiet, less congested, not a bad place to live, methinks.

jesse's misadventures have been continuing in class - thankfully, there's another american who just came into our class who offsets him nicely. his name's justin, he's from nashville, and he's going for a phd in economics and he's over here just to learn the language, i guess. he's the perfect southern gentleman - opens doors, says 'ma'am' and such, and has that inimitable way of speaking that renders his russian almost unlistenable. right now it's funny more than anything else, and i know i'm not one to talk since my pronunciation will always be far from perfect, but still...

speaking of class: i feel like i'm eleven and have just been told that we're moving across town for some arbitrary reason - my class was plucked from the nice, warm haven of our previous building (where all my friends have class! and there's a nice cheap cafe on my floor!) and plopped into a not-so-warm, prison-like building where the philological faculty is located. it's about a twenty-minute walk further from the metro, and class starts at 9:00 sharp, not 9:30, which means i have to wake up earlier, yadda yadda... argh! today wasn't bad, but my normal conversation teacher has been sick for the past week and today we had the pronunciation nazi (tm) who, when correcting our speech, drew out her vowels in such dramatic fashion that i started to think i was being taught by an owl. for example: the word "nastayashi" (which means 'real') became "nastayaaaaaaaaaaaashi", so that the actual utterance of the word went from taking two seconds to about eight or nine. after a while, this became more amusing than annoying, but i couldn't help thinking she was going to swoop and pounce at any second.

one note about pronunciation: i really feel for the asian kids who are here studying russian. i hope i don't sound callous or prejudiced, but i've noticed that they have a really hard time with the sounds 'tee', 'dee', 'vee', 'ts', 'ch', 'shch', and 'r'. when some of the kids in my class try to talk at a normal rate, their words come out sort of jumbled and i can't really understand them. i guess a native russian speaker would be able to discern what they're getting at, but it really must be hard for them to work on pronouncing those sounds. again, my pronunciation is far from perfect, and sometimes i find it hard, so i can't even imagine what it's like for them. oy.

this week's idiosyncrasy of the apartment: the front door. when i came home on saturday and pieces of the door were lying in the foyer, i figured that maybe tatiana had finally fixed it (from my room i later heard much sawing, drilling, and cursing). now that i've gotten the 'how to work the door in cold weather' tutorial, things are ok, but i can't exactly say that the door has been fixed. the thing hates me, i'm convinced; it's as if it knows i don't quite belong!

oh yeah: the heat in our building was finally turned on last night! hooray and rejoicing! granted, i couldn't really tell last night apart from putting my hand on the pipe to ensure that it was, in fact, warm, but the point is that the cold spell (hopefully) is over.

final tidbit: i'm not sure why, but this amuses me. how much you want to bet it was an inside job?
posted by kat thompson at 5:30 AM

erm... well, this is comforting...

so... yeah. there's a bit of a complication with gini's pregnancy, about which i won't know more until after the weekend. i hope and pray that things will turn out for the best, and i wish i could be there to offer some comfort in person. really, i'm speechless beyond that. dang.

what's new: i bought laundry detergent and softener, so hopefully my underwear won't be so stiff the next time i do laundry. it rained all day wednesday and thursday, which prompted me to go straight home after class and curl up under the blankets with my homework and, yes, i admit, with my russian "cosmopolitan". i can't understand much of it, but from what i do, i gather that it's about as profound and thought-provoking as the english edition (ie, not at all). perfect! the clouds broke up on thursday evening and today it was fairly nice, although when i woke up this morning it was 0.8 degrees outside. that's roughly 34 degrees by fahrenheit standards. that's fine with me, even if they haven't turned the heat on in our building and probably won't for a while - as long as there's hot water, it can be 30 below for all i care. let's see... i met another american who lives across the street from my apartment; his name is dave and he's from the san francisco/bay area, although he grew up in the lovely suburb of oxon hills, maryland. but hey - he knows where 270 is! he's a computer programmer, and you can kind of tell because he has this sort of desperate, needy, not-so-good-with-socializing edge to him, although he is really nice. not sure how old he is, but he can't be older than 30. if nothing else, he's someone with which to converse in english, when our russian fails us.

speaking of failing russian: so there's this kid in my class named jesse; he's 21, from ohio, and of the staunch republican "our country is the best" mindset. [note: i have no problems with republicans, when they have the good sense to keep their darn mouths shut [wink!]] he's also rather full of himself, which is surprising coming from someone who went to the army before college. anyways, he used to be in dave's class [dave is in the beginning level] but decided that it was moving too slow for him, so he moved into my class. upon hearing this last week, i thought, "great, he's gonna upstage the rest of us and make us look like bumbling fools", but that was not the case, as he soon settled into the same mistake-making pattern as the rest of us. i thought, ok, fine, he's right where he belongs. well, today we finished the book we'd been working on, and, logically enough, we're moving on to the next book on monday. today jesse decided, in front of everyone else in my class, that we as a group weren't ready to move on because we hadn't yet mastered the grammar in the current book. [this being based on the fact that we had some problems with a particular grammatical point yesterday, and class went kinda slow today] he then proceeded to point out that both myself and the koreans in the group were all making mistakes, and while he did at least admit that he, too, was making mistakes, he decided that this was basis enough for a) us not to move on yet so we could review more, and b) him to pull one of the koreans aside and tell him how badly he spoke. my poor teacher, bless her heart - she is so nice and so patient with us, even when we do dumb stuff, and she was defending us and saying that we'll be ok to work with the next book, and that if jesse wanted more practice, he should study more at home, and that we would probably get bored with repeating more of the grammar that we'd just finished reviewing - all of which i agree with, but couldn't quite express, as i just wanted to get out of that room before i smacked the kid upside the head. i felt like telling him that if he wanted to re-review the grammar, he should go back to his original group. i could see his point, i guess, but i see no reason to hold back and then berate the entire group just for one person! the nerve of some people... really. sometimes you need a bit of a push to improve your language skills, and if this kid doesn't see it that way, then he should find somewhere else to learn, in my opinion. ugh. sorry for the rant there.

i caved in and ate lunch at a pizza hut today - mind you, the russian food i'm eating is excellent, but i just had this awful craving, and they had hawaiian pizza. unreal!

i found some great kitschy old soviet postcards in the university bookstore, so those should be hitting the mailboxes stateside at some point. keep thine eyes peeled.

for those in charlottesville: happy homecoming! enjoy the toga party...




posted by kat thompson at 10:51 AM

today's quick post: it's raining buckets outside and it's cold, so as soon as i send this i'm going home to have some tea and do my homework. and snuggle under the covers... perhaps with the october issue of 'cosmo' in russian. hee!

so, the ballet last night was fantastic! i couldn't believe how good it was. we got great seats for only $6, so i think it goes without saying that i'll be seeing a lot more stuff there in the future.

that's all for today, i guess. did you know that in japan, if a woman gives a man a necktie as a gift, it means she's agreed to marry him? i didn't know that either. interesting.

do svidanya...

posted by kat thompson at 6:14 AM

first of all, i hope this isn't the first time anyone in my family's hearing this: my sister gini is pregnant!! words cannot express how excited and happy i am...!! hoooray! we'll find out on thursday how far along she is. this is too cool! congrats!!

anyways - so there was a rather funny article in the monthly magazine published here called "pulse" about the four types of russian men that can be found in petersburg. i wish it was online, so i could link to it, but it's not - in any case, it was so hilariously true, and seeing dimitry tonight reminded me of that article and i almost choked on my cabbage soup. [yes mom, you read that right: i'm eating cabbage soup and liking it!] he's the quintessential quasi-euro-trash-discotheque-going young russian man of today:
he owns almost exclusively black clothing, most of it a size too small, yet he insists on wearing snow-white sneakers and a white jacket every time he goes out. it's all good, until he puts the shoes on. i fail to understand this in any way. he's been talking to me more, but i suspect that a barrier was broken between us last thursday when i did laundry and hung my bras in the bathroom to dry - i know he saw them at some point, since they took a couple of days to dry and i would hope he went into the bathroom to wash his hands at least once over those 48 hours. and before anyone asks, i would have hung the bras in my little sunroom, but all of my underwear was already out there. i don't want to go imposing my panties on these people - not yet, at least.

laundry, speaking of, was this weekend's great adventure. i've figured out that in addition to the powder detergent, it is necessary to also add a sort of "clothes-conditioner" to the wash basin so that one does not have the cardboard underwear i ended up with on saturday. i wash all my unmentionables by hand, and tatiana washes my shirts and pants in the washing machine. everything dries by hand, but that which is machine washed tends to be a little more soft than that which is hand washed. it's an interesting system, but at least it works, for now. it's all part of the big adjustment...

so back to dimitry: the girl who's over all the time is, in fact, his girlfriend, although according to tatiana this definition seems to change on a daily basis. her name is anya, she's seventeen [what a cradle-robber he is!], i don't know if she goes to school, and she's one of those slightly hysterical girls who wears too much silver eyeshadow, even in the middle of the day. granted, that's not abnormal here, since it seems that most women have to put on four pounds of makeup before they run to the corner market to pick up some toothpaste. mind you, i'm not complaining; i'm just relating how it is. perhaps the eyeshadow is preventing her from thinking clearly, because i can hear her sobbing hysterically and throwing things (!) one minute and then laughing - shrieking is probably a better term for the sound that emanates from her mouth - the next. i'm completely clueless.

so, the weekend: didn't amount to much. thursday was spent at the zoological museum, which was huge, full of every stuffed animal you can imagine and more, and more than a bit creepy. but hey, it was free! on friday night megan and i went out drinking, which simply involoved some beer and some vodka, both of which were very cheap, very good, and did the trick nicely. on saturday i got a whirlwind tour of the peter and paul fortress and cathedral, and st. isaac's cathedral, both of which merit repeat visits. in one museum of the peter and paul fortress there's an exhibit of photos from a new york photographer from sept. 11 that i want to see, as well as the space and rocket museum and more of the cathedral. st. isaac's is crazy inside - the word 'opulent' doesn't begin to describe it. and, the view from the top looking out over the city is incredible - on a clear day, it seems you can see forever. bla bla bla. on sunday i meant to get up and go see a show jumping competition on a nearby island, but i overslept and missed it. whoops. i went to the alexander nevsky monastery today and saw the graves of many famous people- tchaikovksy, dostoevsky, and the like. pretty neat.
and tomorrow, i'm going to see the ballet 'swan lake' at the rimsky-korsakov conservatory. whew!

anyways... it's odd, but the two things i miss most right now are goth clubbing and driving my car. not that i went clubbing all that often at home, but i've yet to find a place here that plays that sort of music - the techno here barely passes for listenable as is. and while i wouldn't say i miss traffic at all, i do miss the physical act of driving stella, although there's no way you'd get me to turn her loose on these streets. also, i don't know why i didn't bring my portable cd player with me - i have my cd's, but nothing to listen to them with [the cd player, along with the playstation, grrr!, is in the den where the family sleeps]. not even headphones. it's odd - there's plenty of american music to be heard if you know where to go, but i kinda miss my cd's keeping me company. i mean... i can only hear eminem's 'without me' so many times in a week...

that's it for now - more at the end of the week! p.s. hi gordon, and everyone at the asylum - i miss you guys!


posted by kat thompson at 3:17 PM

ok, so my football withdrawal is apparently so bad that a couple of nights ago i dreamed that i was on uva's football team. granted, so was everyone i used to live with at the asylum, and we were the most ragtag bunch of misfits one's ever seen at doak campbell stadium (of course we were playing fsu!), but it was still a bit disconcerting.

let's see... i went to the hermitage on tuesday. suffice to say, i'll need to return about four hundred times to soak in everything that's there. i only saw one floor, and it was mostly italian, spanish, flemish, and dutch paintings, with a few state rooms thrown in for good, opulent measure. absolutely amazing. it was sort of convenient when i went back there yesterday with a tour group from the program i'm here with - too bad that we were supposed to do a city tour and they changed the itinerary at the last minute, so we're doing the city tour on saturday and we did the hermitage yesterday. only two of us got this memo, so it was a small tour. but, it was still rather informative, and it was nice to be with someone who knew where she was going.

yesterday there was a memorial service at the kazan cathedral. the usual orthodox incense, and chanting, and singing - kind of haunting, but i like listening to it - by the time megan and i got there after class, it was mostly over, but we lit candles after it was over. and cried. i thought i'd be ok, but i was wrong. it wasn't made into a huge deal or anything in the city, but that didn't surprise me too much. before we went in, however, a cameraman with the 'rossiya' channel accosted us and interviewed poor megan, who did exactly what i would have done: panicked and forgot almost everything useful to say. thankfully, they didn't want to talk to me, but still... you know?

the weather's gotten nice and chilly - from 22 degrees to 12 in one day! that's equivalent to going from the 70s to the 50s overnight. good thing i've got all these coats to wear.

emily has graciously volunteered to put up a web page of my photos from russia when i get them sent home - i'll let everyone know when that happens. could be awhile, since i have yet to finish the first roll. or buy more film. hmmm....

well, i'm off to write some more email and then check out the zoological museum. an entire floor of insects! here i come! =)
posted by kat thompson at 6:06 AM

so.... the liver has exacted its revenge. it must have read my post about me not liking it, and it showed up again in last night's dinner. and made me sick for most of last night - not throwing-up sick, but stomach-cramps-that-keep-you-up-all-night sick. needless to say, i wasn't entirely thrilled when the alarm went off at 7:30 (for those of you back home, that's 11:30 pm - when most of you are either starting your homework or thinking about going to sleep).

speaking of food again - let me go off on a slight illustratory tangent. anyone who watches 'malcolm in the middle' - do you remember the episode where dewey was terrorized by the evil elf lawn ornament; everywhere he turned, there it was staring at him? well, i'm experiencing the same thing with these damned pots and jars of pickles and gherkins around the kitchen. i open the fridge - there they are, leering at me. i go to open the door to the sunroom - there they are again, looking up at me from a pot on the windowsill. i'm very much afraid of what they intend to do, such as show up on my dinner plate one night. most things i can suck up and eat for the sake of politeness, but pickles absolutely are not one of them.

anyways. so this past weekend i went to peterhof, which is peter the first's palace and surrounding park that he built about 30 miles west of petersburg, on the coast of the gulf of finland. absolutely beautiful out there - the fountains were all amazing! the rooms in the great palace were breathtaking - it must have been nice to have that kind of money. i think next is a trip to pushkin, to see more of the same. that was saturday; sunday i did a whole lotta nothing. you know, it's rather difficult to not have football to watch on sundays anymore - i read two entire books yesterday, and only went out in the evening, to buy a card for the metro and find the beach at the end of my street. by beach i mean small deposit of sand that has been taken over by some trash, people having bonfires, and a couple of beer stands - but the sunset view over the gulf is pretty nice.

hey, speaking of water: i've had some interesting shower experiences of late. i learned the hard way on friday morning that if tatiana ever asks me if i want hot water on a thursday night, my answer is to be 'yes', because on the first friday of every month, they turn off the hot water in our building, for reasons completely unknown to me. this past thursday our conversation went something along the lines of 'do you want hot water?' 'no, thanks' *shrug* 'ok, have it your way'.... fast forward to friday morning and me doing my best not to scream as the frigid water is running down my back... mmm, yeah. not doing that again. kinda makes me wary of showering on any friday at all. and today, the light in the bathroom was broken, so i had to shower in the dark. i'm blind as a bat as is, so this didn't help my situation of not being able to see. i got it right, mostly, but it was an odd experience.

today i went to the russian museum after class, which was interesting. i think i liked the icons and the wooden toys the best, although karl brulliov's "last day of pompeii" was pretty impressive. it definitely warrants another visit when i have more time. i got in for free, which helps. tomorrow, i plan on starting my conquest of the hermitage, into which i also gain free admittance. this makes me very happy.

oh, by the way: dimitry has his own tapochki, so i must be wearing an old pair of his. ...or of his deadbeat dad's. that's a creepy thought, no?

this weekend's moment of zen: "american pie" dubbed into russian. almost as good as "police academy 4"... almost.

dinnertime!
posted by kat thompson at 9:44 AM

if you've emailed me in the past day or two, hang on a bit for a response - for some reason i'm having trouble accessing my email right now. sorry guys.

mmm.... so i woke up today to the pervasive stench of smoke, and wondered what exactly was for breakfast. as i found out by looking out the window, one had nothing to do with the other, since the air was thick with smoke from forest fires from nearby towns - it just happens to be blowing this way. it's kinda cool because you can't see a damn thing (ie from the university, you certainly can't see st. isaac's or the hermitage), but at the same time, it's making breathing a little hard. although, it hasn't deterred anyone from being outside, really, oddly enough.

today i finally got my student id card - i'm official! yay! this means i can now get into museums for uber-cheap - for example, today's venture into the kunstkammer (peter the great's ethnological and anthropological museum) cost a mere 20 rubles, or about 75 cents, as opposed to close to 200 rubles (about $6) for foreigners. i love it! the museum itself was wacky- there are rooms full of neat stuff on indigenous peoples of asia, africa, indonesia, and native america, which are really cool, but everyone goes to see the freaks and derelicts, most of which are lovingly preserved in jars of formaldehyde. truly astounding.

so, some more about tatiana and dimitry, for the curious ones of you: i think that dimitry resents me because a) i think i'm sleeping in his room, which i think has been occupied by a foreign student for the better part of the last ten years [i think this is the major supplement to his income, which supports the family, because as far as i can tell. tatiana doesn't work during the day]; b) i'm also fairly sure that i'm using his tapochki, or slippers that one puts on when one enters a russian home so as not to track dirt in the house - the ones i'm using are far too large for me, but tatiana has told me that she's going to teach me how to sew my own - !; and c) whenever i'm around he sort of disappears, and vice versa. he's always got some girl over who laughs a lot - i assume she's his girlfriend, but who knows? interesting. tatiana smokes, which doesn't much bother me since it's only her that does it, but she's got this godawful ashtray that she uses - it's a dog's head, and to open it to get to the ashtray part you have to unhinge the dog's head at the jaw, thus splitting its face clean in half. i don't know why this bothers me, but it does. also, we've got this sort of ritual now - there's a really bad talk show called "okna" [windows] [think jerry springer, in russian, and with a little more audience interaction] that we usually watch together while i eat dinner. kinda funny.

the birds are still one of my favorite things about the apartment - they remind me of aj, that stupid parakeet that dad used to have. i remember he would always fly around and land on your head, and usually dig his claws into your skull while cawing victoriously. he met his fate by divebombing into an open crockpot - while it was cooking something, mind you - and even though i know these two birds are smarter than that, i still wait for it to happen. oh, i was wrong about the names - one is masha, but the other one is kyesha, not kisha. in any case, it's odd to have bird feathers swirling around rather than cat hairs, but i kind of enjoy their squawking and such.

well, dinner calls. more after the weekend, probably...


posted by kat thompson at 10:58 AM

well.... today finds me dirty and tired, but that's only because i've been walking around all day. i found alexander park and, inadvertently, cafe salkhino, which i'll have to check out soon per dr. herman's recommendation.

a few observations:

-everyone here uses cell phones, much more so prevalently than in the united states. yet for some reason it's not such a bother here, at least to me - maybe it's because i can't understand sorority-speak in russian, if there is such a thing. let me tell you, btw, it's sooo nice to not have a greek system of any sort here - it remains a totally foreign concept. thank god.

-all the guide books i read noted that the roads and sidewalks here aren't in the best shape. that's simply because the drivers here bloody kamikazes - yet they're all good enough drivers that they never ever hit each other. a car's more likely to break down and then get fixed by its driver than get hit. and sidewalks are merely suggestions for where the road ends and the pedestrian area begins - crossing streets here is not for the faint-hearted. neither is the metro, whose escalators are steeper than the one at rosslyn. speaking of the metro - what a grand clusterfuck. if i ever need reminding that there are over 5 million people living in this city, i only need to take the metro.

-outdoor weekday weddings apparently are rather popular. or at least by the bronze horseman and the nose of the strelka (which is the tip of the island on which i live, near the university - i spent a good amount of time there today in a lovely little enclave called birzheny sad [garden]). the bronze horseman i can understand, since it's supposedly good luck for newlyweds to kiss under the statue - or something, i'm ashamed to admit i've forgotten the custom - but at the tip of the island? well, it is lovely, but still... in any event, the sheer amount of broken glass lying around both sites is amusing [at russian weddings it's customary for the bride and groom to each throw a glass behind them after all is said and done. so if someone invites you to a russian wedding, i guess, don't stand right behind the wedding party]

-rammstein is *hugely* popular here. please, don't ask me to explain this. i had to do a double take this morning when i passed a man driving what looked like a motorized horse-and-carriage type thing, except there was no horse in front of it and in the back, where presumably one would sit, there was a blow-up doll wearing full winter gear - anyways, out of this man's car was blaring some rammstein song, whose name i don't know - but he did, as he was enthusiastically bobbing his head along.

-i've grown accustomed to eating meat at least twice a day - you can imagine the damage that's doing to my digestive system. at least the pipes are being kept clean...

-speaking of pipes, i darn near broke the toilet at home the other day when i pulled the knob to flush it and the knob popped off - the lever was still up and the water just kept coming and coming and... ack! i finally gathered my wits and got the wherewithal to push the lever down, and thankfully it wasn't too late, but it was a bit disconcerting. other things i've done wrong include not knowing what the word for 'liver' was and indicating at the supermarket that yes, i did indeed like "pechen", only to find out the next night at dinner that no, i don't much like liver, not at all, in fact. the smell reminded me of the incense they use at church back home. so, that was an interesting meal.

-speaking of meals again, it's kind of odd - i don't really miss american food, although i wouldn't mind getting a shipment of tuna casserole in the mail. [wink] i'm getting used to having tea twice a day, and this morning i had it with jam [no, i'm not in england, not yet at least!]. i'm also starting to have to like cucumbers and tomatoes, since they appear in almost every meal. see mom, i'm eating my vegetables!

-i've seen the evil twins of so, so many people since i got here. to name a few: jrc, gorski, christine owen (sorry guys, only kim gets those), huey lewis, aunt dot [one of tatiana's friends looks exactly like her - i almost fell over when i realized who she looked like!]... i'm sure there are bunches more, but i forget them almost as soon as i see them. considering how many people i see in a given day, that shouldn't be too surprising.

that's it for now, i suppose...
posted by kat thompson at 11:02 AM

title: 'from russia with love'. clever, no?

anyways, i'm here and i have a thousand gazillion things to write about, but not right this minute - perhaps tomorrow. i will note, however, that my eyes have been witness to no less than three weddings today, a man leading a bear cub around on a leash, some of the most insane traffic i've ever thought possible, and a lot of interesting people, so few of which speak english that it makes my heart soar. really.

until later...
posted by kat thompson at 9:01 AM