first of all: it's about effing time!

second of all: i could do without elton brown's profound commentary, but this makes me happy nonetheless...

so... my week with kim is [sniff] officially over. i'm pretty darn exhausted, if not only because i haven't done that much walking in a week since i first got here. whew, we saw so much! a brief rundown of highlights and minor disasters:

-first minor disaster: monday night after getting back from picking kim up, going out to dinner, and getting her settled at the hostel, i got home around 11:30 pm with the intent of making myself a cup of tea, taking a nice hot shower and going to bed (seeing as i'd gotten very little sleep on sunday night and had to meet kim downtown at 9 to get her from the hostel to my apartment). that dream was smashed to tiny tiny bits as soon as i walked in the door and saw a table topped with food and vodka. tanya says 'tomorrow's your holiday, let's drink!' [this is what i get for telling her that christmas eve is somewhat of an extension of the christmas holiday itself; apparently she took this to mean 'it's a holiday, so we drink'. agh!] refusal was simply out of the question, so we were up until almost 3 am polishing off said vodka. to say that i was thrilled to be alive at 8 am tuesday would be something akin to a lie.

-second minor disaster: christmas day itself. now, well beforehand tanya and i had agreed that drinking was to be done on christmas, between dinnertime and the time kim and i were supposed to leave to do some disco dancing all night. that was all well and good, until we got home around seven and saw the vodka glasses lined up with everything else on the table (which was very nicely decorated, by the way). i probably don't need to tell you what ensued afterwards, as the three of us plowed through almost a full liter of the stuff. somewhere around nine it became apparent that kim and i were not going to make it much farther than the front door in any pursuit of going out, so we drank more. needless to say, we slept late on thursday.

-first highlight: when kim arrived on monday night, it snowed. and snowed and snowed and snowed. tuesday, it did more of the same. we got a break on wednesday, but i finally got my white christmas nonetheless - hooray! thursday: even more snow. today: you guessed it, yet more snow! total about five inches, i would guess. but i love the snowflakes here - even the tiny ones you can see every little crystallized detail. i want to take them home and keep them, but they keep melting as soon as i get inside [gee, go figure].

-second highlight: last night we went to a concert of operettas sung by up-and-coming opera students from the mariinsky, which was jaw-droppingly good. but i couldn't stop snickering, because the women sitting next to me kept snickering like misbehaving schoolkids, because of the guy sitting in front of them. to start with, he was wearing these glasses with rose-colored frames that were half the size of his face, like i once wore when i was eight or nine. he kept taking them off and wiping his face and eyes, and after almost every performance, he would sit up as tall as possible, clap his hands above his head [note: this is not really acceptable in russian theater-going etiquette], and shriek 'bravo! bravo!' at the top of his lungs [note: this is actually acceptable in russian theater-going etiquette, but not to the extent this guy was doing so]. after a few rounds of this, his wife tried to still him by simply holding up one finger in the air next to his left eye. this actually worked, and he'd settle back into his chair, only to return to his at-attention stance moments later. well, the women next to me started guffawing the first time the finger came out, and it was all downhill every time thereafter. when i heard them laughing and realized just why they were laughing, i started snickering too, and this set them off even more, which set me off even more - it was like being in church with my sisters when we've had a bit too much coffee. good lord.

-third highlight: watching the peacock clock in the hermitage go off at five wednesday afternoon. every wednesday at five, some old guy with the coolest job in the world steps into the glass case the clock stands in, winds it up, and runs the heck away before the fun begins. the owl in the cage in the forefront starts spinning around, the toadstool (the little round thing to the bottom right of the owl) opens up to show the clock's gears and second hand, the rooster (the smaller of the two birds) starts crowing the hours, and the peacock turns itself around and, well, moons the crowd. this mooning elicited a chorus of oohs and aahs from the crowd, especially the horde of japanese tourists behind us. quite amusing, indeed.

-fourth highlight: opening my stocking to discover that it was made almost entirely of candy. i now have enough sugar to keep me awake until my train to finland leaves on wednesday morning. hot dog!

anyways, i had a blast playing tour guide and romping through the snow and minus-20-fahrenheit wind chills, but i think i'm ready for at least twelve hours in bed before i start packing for home. hee hee!

this will probably be my last entry before i arrive stateside, so i want to wish everyone a happy and safe new year now. i'd do some big reflecting-on-the-year-that-has-passed entry, but i think i can sum up 2002 in two words: big changes. some good, some bad, but suffice to say that i'm pretty glad to put this year on the shelf. may 2003 be happy, healthy, and useful for you, and may your hangover be nonexistent.

cheers!
posted by kat thompson at 10:16 AM

opinions please: i'm thinking hard about switching my blog over to livejournal. what do you guys think?

the past week has been a whole lotta nothing for me. i did so much laundry on friday and saturday that i was up to my ears in, well, pretty much everything. i had my last day of class today, and kim arrives later this afternoon, and she'll be staying with me after tonight thanks to tanya's last-minute offer of something amounting to a weeklong slumber party in my room.

thursday was an unexpectedly amusing day, however, as a new classmate arrived - i guess no one told him that holiday break was coming up soon. i can't help nicknaming him the italian stallion, even though only half of that epithet is true (if i tell you he's balding faster than rick and probably approaching thirty-five, will you be able to guess which half?). his name is lorenzo, and his accent is strooooong - although listening to him speak is kind of cool since he has a very lyrical way of accenting his words. plus, he's got his own apartment and has offered to make the entire class spaghetti sometime, so maybe the fact that he's so old isn't but so bad.

speaking of old: i feel very old. emily and grover are engaged. who let them do that? [grin]

speaking of engaged: i really think it's gonna happen to dima and anya soon. tanya had another tanya over on saturday night - this one lives on the 20th floor and her son is igor, who's married to lyuda, who is megan's hostess - confused yet? - and all (my) tanya talked about was how stupid anya is because she doesn't want to go to school and only wants to get married and become a stay-at-home mom. while i find this sort of amusing because it's true (and because it's funny to hear tanya lecture someone other than me on the ways of the world for a change, even though i usually ignore her [mom, are you surprised?]), it's a bit frightening to see this happen all over the country - the latest trend is for girls to get married right out of high school, if not earlier, and become housewives. my only question is, what happens after the inevitable divorce?

eh, enough quasi-sociology for today. onward!
posted by kat thompson at 6:27 AM

if you're a harry potter fan, then you must read this. don't have food or drink in hand!

so... let's see. thursday was russia's constitution day, and unbeknownst to me this holiday involves quite a bit of drinking. i was slightly horrified when tanya called me for dinner - i was in the middle of some homework - and when i entered the kitchen, i saw a table full of zakuski, which can be anything from pickles to meats to breads, usually eaten before dinner as appetizers or while drinking - and two shotglasses and a bottle of vodka. clearly not thinking, i blurted out 'who's coming over?' tanya smiled and said 'no one - we're drinking for the holiday'.
.
two hours and a half a liter of vodka later...

that debacle aside, yesterday was a lot less drunk and a bit more entertaining. i don't know how she manages to find these people, but my former conversation teacher got together a group of american and austrian students to speak to some schoolchildren at a school out in oranienbaum, a suburb about 25 miles west of st. petersburg. i was told we'd be speaking english to them to help them practice, with a bit of russian thrown in for our benefit, so you can imagine my surprise when not once but twice we filed into classrooms and had to stand before these kids (the first group were ten- and eleven-year-olds, i think, while the second group was a huge conglomerate of thirteen- to sixteen-year-olds) and tell them, in russian, all about life in america and where we lived and what we studied and what we did in our free time. note well that i hadn't gotten enough sleep on friday night due to the heinous amount of drinking my classmates and i indulged in that night, and you can imagine my mental state. i did what any sensible, slightly crowd-shy, more than slightly hungover person would do: i forgot almost everything i knew about the russian language. now, when i'm drunk the words flow freely, since the 'think about what grammatical mistakes you might be making' part of my brain gets shut off, but alas, that doesn't carry over to when i'm sober and/or recovering. things improved a bit when we broke off into small groups to talk to the schoolchildren individually, but then, a group of sixteen-year-old girls who want to talk about shopping and britney spears don't present much of a grammatical problem. they must have thought me terribly boring, although when i told them where i was going after the school visit, my popularity shot through the roof. [i went to see a rather popular russian dance/pop group in concert, and i think the average age of the audience was fifteen] all things considered, the outing went pretty well, and the headmistress of the school seemed really interested in giving me a job there teaching english - she practically leapt out of her seat and said 'we've got openings!' when i told the first class that i wanted to teach english to russians. so, maybe there's something in the works there, maybe not; we'll see.

and life rolls on...


posted by kat thompson at 9:59 AM

if anyone can find a copy of this movie with english subtitles, see it now, see it yesterday, have a bunch of friends over and don't touch food or drink throughout. brilliant!

'home, where my thought's escapin'/home, where my music's playin'/home, where my love lies waiting silently for me' - simon & garfunkel

[sigh] home... home. home means apple-cider-scented candles, furniture adorned with cat hair, the red felt bows that mom puts on the lampshades every christmas (presumably so that they, too, can become adorned with cat hair, when katrina rubs up against them [yes, i have a weird cat - she rather enjoys rubbing her chin against any sharp object, although in fourteen years she still hasn't figured out that lampshades are round and not square. can you imagine that? square lampshades? feh!]), flannel sheets, star trek ornaments that say 'merry christmas. live long and prosper', hot chocolate on christmas eve after we've come back from midnight mass and still have to wrap a whole bunch of presents, elmo & patsy's 'grandma got run over by a reindeer', the chipmunks' christmas album, and the unfortunate jingle cats album playing on endless loop while we decorate the tree, mom's virgin egg nog, eating dairy queen even though it's twenty degrees outside, basketball all over the tv, bowl games, consistently hot water, my own car, and as many peas as i want. and the ability to belch in the kitchen without reproach.

why do i wax nostalgic, you ask? well, it is two weeks before christmas and it's with some sadness that i realize i won't be around for any of the above. however, at the same time, to quell any and all rumours about my aforeposted big news - i am not engaged, i am most definitely not pregnant, i have not been arrested (although i did come close), i am not about to be extradited, i am not picking up and moving to russia (at least not yet [wink]) - especially not to marry some russian man - and i have not recently joined the russian mafia. sorry to disappoint some of you, but my big news is that i'm coming home from jan 1 to jan 13. it's not a whole lot of time, but it's enough for me. aside from going to nation on the 9th, my only other concrete plan is to visit charlottesville at some point. oh, and to eat lots of tuna casserole. with peas. lots and lots of peas.

getting all that arranged has taken up the better part of the past four days. it's snowed a bit more, the wind has picked up a bit, the new year's decorations are up in full swing, and i've got five days of class left before break starts. not a whole lot going on otherwise, although i am rather happy to report that thanks to my mom i now have my own mini christmas tree, complete with mini ornaments and a string of stars. and an angel. have i said before that my mom rocks?

i think the funniest thing from making all these travel arrangements was when i was on the phone with joanne, one of american airlines' 'international experts', and she asked me where i was coming from. i told her st. petersburg, and that i only knew of an american airlines office in moscow, and she laughed and said 'yeah, that's about it, we don't fly to the ukraine!' have the maps of russia and the cis changed since i left home in august...?

oh well. point of the story is, i'm coming home! [wide grin]


posted by kat thompson at 9:05 AM

i can't not post the following, because it's too amusing. chris, my apologies, and if you want me to remove this, then let me know and i'll oblige. maybe. [grin]

a bit of background first: on the last day of fall semester, the pep band gets together and watches 'the grinch who stole christmas' at a band house, but we make it interesting - we make it into a drinking game. every time the word 'hoo' is heard in the movie [in case you haven't seen it in a while, that's a whole lotta times], a drink must be taken. and during cindy-lou-hoo-who-was-no-more-than-two's speech, some form of chugging must be done. [at least that's what i remember from hazy years past, although it generally just disintegrates into general drinking as you please] once the first viewing is complete, drinks are refilled and the movie is viewed again. and then, we all go out caroling around grounds, usually to the ire of anyone and everyone within earshot [hey, we're a band, not a choir!]. collectively, this evening of merriment is called 'grinching'.

anyways, last year i had the foresight to make a wicked batch of cider for grinching, which involved a couple of gallons of apple cider mixed fifty-fifty with a rather toxic mixture of captain morgan's spiced rum and goldschlager, and some cinnamon thrown in for taste. the problem with the first batch was that i mixed it so well that even that much alcohol couldn't be tasted, and by the time the first viewing was through, the eight or nine of us who'd taken drinks from that batch were stumbling around like idiots. i myself was barely cogent enough to make it to the bathroom. basically, the recipe was a success. so when chris emailed me a couple of days ago to ask me for this recipe, i gladly obliged. here's what came out of that:

"KAt!!! I'm writing tyou from Cocke hall, and le6 me tell tou , your cider recipe ois fabulous! At first, Alex put in tpp mych Goldschlager, (qow! I can spell Goldschlager, but not too!) and it was nasty-ish, so we "boroewd" some fo Em Reuschenburg's un-tainte cider ad mixed it uin with the nasty Goldschlager-osh stuff. And you can now see the resuylt :-) Layra is laughing at me, so I think I should get some water maybe and og to bed 'cause that sounds fgood abouyt noew :-) :-)} Yeagh. Hope Russia isn't too cold for you, I'll write a sober email once I relize I sent this one [smiley face]"

heh heh heh. i think the last sentence is my favorite. all in all, it's good to see that the drunken semester-ending traditions in charlottesville are carrying on in my absence.

potentially big news coming up... but i'm not going to say anything about it until i'm absolutely sure it's going to happen. so wait! [grin]



posted by kat thompson at 7:10 AM

i cut my hair on saturday. i intended to only snip off an inch or so, but about three inches and two hours later... the consequences aren't as dire as they sound, nor is the job that bad. i kind of actually like the length right now. and my split ends are gone, which is a nice thing.

memory can play some weird tricks on you. today i saw 'red dragon', dubbed into russian of course, which means it was necessary for me to concentrate more than usual on what was being said, as i can't read lips well enough to decipher any english. so, at the beginning of the film, i'm getting into it when a latecoming girl swishes past me, passing behind me to her seat, and in her wake is left the faint scent of whatever vanilla perfume she was wearing. almost instantly, i'm distracted from the film and i realize how chilly it is in the theater. for some reason, the combination of cold and vanilla conjures up the time my high school buddy theresa and i went up to ellicott city (a small suburb of baltimore) for christmas shopping one day after school. it was cold, she had the windows down and the heat turned up, and the stereo blasting per usual. she always had one of those tree-shaped air fresheners in her car, and more likely than not it smelled of vanilla. anyways, we drove around downtown for a while, parked, and got huge cups of coffee and scones at a little cafe somewhere on main street. i remember buying hordes of scented candles for my friends, and poking around the craft shops to see if i could find anything for mom or the sisters. towards the end of the trip she pulled me into a palm-reader's parlor, telling me that her christmas present to me was a free palm reading. i'd never done anything like that in my life, so i shrugged and obliged. all i remember from that visit is that i was told i'd be traveling near water soon [i was due to go to italy four months from that time] and that things would soon get interesting with whomever i was romantically interested at the time [which they did, and almost immediately thereafter got super-hyper-weird. long story {grin}]. happy, i got back in the car with theresa, we drove around for a while, and then went home. but my mind didn't stop there - it went straight on to the stone temple pilots concert i went to with theresa and suzan and catherine, where i did donuts with her mom's station wagon around the parking lot of the patriot center while suzan was hanging off the front [not exactly bright, i know]. i had been rather sick that day, because it was the day after thanksgiving and i ate way too much the day before and threw it all back up at three am the day of the concert. i insisted to mom that i'd be ok, and proceeded to consume nothing but bread and ginger ale for the next thirty-six hours. it didn't matter, though, since we got spots right in front of the stage, and the bass player [on whom i had an enormous crush at the time] threw me his towel, and although some other girl caught part of it and tried to fight me for it, we agreed that it would be ok to just rip it in half and call it even. and after the show we went to a mcdonald's drive-through, the wrong way - which brought me to the time theresa and i ran to seven-eleven after school one day and she was circling around the tiny parking lot the wrong way, and ended up hitting some guy head-on; it was at ten miles an hour, and was so ridiculous that we just laughed it off - and then we went back to catherine's dad's house to spend the night. and it was cold in the basement, so very cold. and from here my brain went on to the post-winter ball sleepover that theresa had at her house, when none of us could sleep so at six am we went for a walk in the woods near her house. there was this river that was completely frozen over, and the sun rising over it was beautiful. out in the middle of the river was a giant rock, and i have this picture of my date, jerry, sitting on that rock, draped in this stupid green cape that he wore everywhere - all you can see in the picture is this cape billowing over the rock, and his nose sticking out over the water. that stupid big nose of his, that always somehow got in the way.

it was at that point that i was jolted back into the movie by some loud music and a knife through edward norton's abdomen, and i told my brain, 'no more, we've got a movie to watch'. that seemed to do the trick, and while i know i missed some dialogue, the action of the film was such that knowing what was going on wasn't completely necessary. that, and i remembered very well what i'd read of the book about six years ago - and then i remembered who was the only person i ever lent that book to, and the precise reason for my doing so, and how i had to sneak over to his house on a warm spring afternoon to get it back. and then, finally, i told my brain enough, for the last time.

but good lord. all that from a whiff of vanilla.
posted by kat thompson at 12:18 PM