i forgot one thing: another way that orthodox easter differentiates from catholic easter: so far as i know, catholic priests don't throw eggs at their congregations. ok, so we were watching live footage of the midnight services on saturday, and one of the channels showed the kazan cathedral downtown, where tanya and lyuda (megan's host mom) had gone to services earlier that afternoon. tanya told me that people usually bring some of their dyed eggs to services and give them to the priests so that the priests can hand out eggs to kids in hospitals and orphanages around the city. so i was a bit surprised to see one of the priests carrying a large box as he made his way through the crowd, reaching into it, removing an egg, and throwing it into the surrounding throng. he did this more than a few times, and everyone was scuffling for the eggs as if they were bridal bouquets or garters. i really hope they were hard-boiled, for the sake of anyone nearby an egg that fell to the ground.

i'm trying to picture father macfarlane - the pastor from church at home - throwing eggs into our congregation. i wonder how much wine he'd have to drink to even contemplate that?

posted by kat thompson at 5:58 AM

weekend update...

friday: i got some interesting photos of downtown landmarks at sunset because it had snowed/rained right around dinnertime and the clouds were black in the east while the sun was setting in the west. kind of an odd juxtaposition, but par for the course around here. megan and christina and i went to bar-o-meter and plowed through more long island iced teas than should probably be healthy on a friday night, but they were much needed and we were later joined by christina's rather amusing friend knute, who is from germany and dresses the part. some guys at the bar kept buying us champagne 'for easter', so they said, not that we were really complaining, but i don't think it mixed with the long islands and the subsequent shaverma very well. had a bit of an 'urf' upon waking up saturday morning.

saturday: i woke up well before noon (!), showered, and sat down to breakfast to see the oddest thing sitting before me: made out of bread, burned at the top by accident, it looked just like a mushroom cloud. it was the traditional easter bread with small grapes in it, and it was accompanied with bliny, which i haven't had in for-ev-er. megan and i then spent all afternoon seeing museums; first we went to the political history museum, which i regret not taking kim to while she was here. it was awesome! it had different sections tracing the history of political parties in russia and how the revolution changed politics, as well as rooms full of the most kitschy soviet propaganda i've ever seen. plates, cups, stained glass windows, posters holding stalin up as god, you name it. i think my favorite tidbit was a 1994 photograph of alexander solzhenitsyn speaking in the state duma with his beard in full, wild growth and his arms extended into the air at his sides - there's a duma deputy sitting right behind him with a classic look of 'do you believe this guy?!' on his face. and in case you were wondering, lenin doesn't look at all himself from the pictures taken near the time of his death. after that, we went to see peter's domik, which is the tiny wood cabin facing the river neva that peter the great built and lived in to oversee the building of the city before the winter palace was finished. it's the smallest house in the city; it's only got three rooms, and the entire house is actually enclosed in another house built to protect it from bad weather sometime in the nineteenth century. and then, after that, we went to see the cruiser aurora, which is the ship that fired the blank shot signaling the storming of the winter palace in the 1917 revolution. i have doubts as to whether or not it's the actual ship that's moored there, but in any case it's pretty cool. then, after going home for a brief nap, i helped tanya make the easter salads, including my favorite potato salad - i must make some of this stuff when i get home - and then waited for a while before we went to church.

orthodox easter is quite unlike anything i've ever experienced. i guess the obvious contrast would be with easter mass in rome with the pope on st. peter's square: easter services here start at midnight and go on until at least sunrise. we left around 11:15 and made our way across the dark, creepy cemetery (thankfully patrolled by police) (you know, that's the first time i've ever been thankful to see the police anywhere) to the church, where there were already tons of people standing outside and waiting. we went in to try and get a glimpse of whatever was going on at the time - i heard a lot of chanting and could smell the incense, but there were so many people crowded in there that seeing anything was impossible. so we bought candles and shoved our way back outside, by which time even more people had gathered. right before midnight the bells started tolling, and the priests and their entourage came out with the easter candle and banners and incense, and led everyone in a procession around the church three times (i can't remember exactly why it is that they walk around three times - it's either to symbolize the trinity or to fortify the church, kind of the reverse of the wall of jerusalem). after the procession the priests got back up on the stairs leading into the church and said a whole slew of unintelligible things - church slavonic is a bit harder to understand than russian since it's only used in the church - and then began the frenzied exchanges of 'khristos voskres' - 'voistine voskres!' among people. ('christ is risen' - 'verily he is risen!') at this point tanya decided that we should go home and start eating, so we did. alas, everyone else had fallen asleep so it was me, her, and megan munching away on salads and buterbrod, but only making it about halfway through the bottle of vodka before us girls called it quits and went to our respective beds to pass out.

sunday: the party continued, but without me, since i woke up superbly late, ate yet more salad for breakfast, and proceeded to really do nothing all day besides some homework. tanya came home really drunk sometime after midnight and there was some business with the removal of an armchair from the den, but i wasn't really paying much attention.

dima and anya have officially broken up, and he's now seeing someone else. i'm kind of curious as to who this girl is, but i suspect i'll find out with time one way or another.

friends from moscow are coming to visit on thursday for the long weekend. good times, good times. that's all i got for now.

current mood: sleepy
current music: my life with the thrill kill kult/"ride the mindway"
posted by kat thompson at 7:53 AM

by the way: i was wrong about the snow. as i was walking to the metro about an hour and a half ago, a storm of flakes came out of nowhere.

yeah, so it was funny to watch people scramble to pull on their hoods and don their hats, but come on. maybe it's a sign of the apocalypse...?
posted by kat thompson at 8:35 AM

good lord, people, i leave charlottesville for a year and you let this and this happen?

i don't really know what to say, other than i'm not entirely surprised and rather disappointed. and, in a way, glad i got my kicks in before things really went the way of the dodo. but sheesh. this isn't cool.

current mood: chagrined
current music: cool for august/"on and on"
posted by kat thompson at 5:39 AM

this is a big thank-you to the internet for peeing all over me today. no, really, i didn't want to get anything necessary done today. i'd pee on you in retaliation, but i'm afraid of electrocuting myself, not to mention tarnishing my image in this place.

it's been a somewhat frustrating week: i've managed to ruin two of my favorite shirts with oil stains - i wish there was some way to tell tanya to cut back on the oil she uses when she cooks, but that would just as likely get me run out of the house - and i'm keeping my fingers crossed that multiple washings will get rid of some of the marks, but i'm not counting on it. i got a new bed yesterday, but all that means is that the futon-like thing on which i was previously sleeping was replaced by the huge pull-out couch from the den. it only pulls out one section at a time - kim slept on one of the sections while she was here, so she at least knows what i mean - and even if two sections are pulled out next to each other, there's still an inordinate number of gaps for a body to fall into during the course of the night. my back was screamingly sore when i woke up for the sixth time at sunrise, so this is going to take some getting used to. but argh. and, it hit me today that i still have seven weeks of school left, although if you subtract days for holidays and testing, it's more like six - but i'm too used to finishing at the end of april to believe that i still have to go to class for that much longer. i know, woe is me, but it's weird.

but enough of my complaining. i know no one comes here to listen to me moan and whine - and isn't that all i ever do anyways? - so i'll move on to the fun stuff.

tuesday: i finally got myself down to the dostoevsky museum. i can't quite express how cool it was, since he's probably my favorite writer and a fairly decent influence on my thinking and writing. the museum is hosted in the apartment he and his family moved to right before he died in 1881, and while it's obviously been cleaned up and repaired since then, it's neat to see the rooms he wrote, slept, ate, and entertained guests in. also scattered around were several personal effects, such as bunches of his books on philosophy, his wife's financial ledger, his kids' toys and notes they used to pass him under the door when he was writing, and the clock that was stopped at 8:38 am when he died (in accordance with russian tradition). there was also an exhibition hall containing manuscripts of his works and some dioramas of scenes from said works. i was in heaven! i couldn't help buying a reproduction of a map of petersburg as it looked in his time, and i've got no idea how this thing is going to get home since it doesn't fit in the tube my diploma was mailed here in, but i'll find a way. i hope.

tomorrow: tanya and i are coloring easter eggs. i suspect she might be going to services on saturday night or sunday, and if i'm not too drunk (not that that's stopped me before from going to church [whistles innocently]) i'll probably tag along just to see what the fuss is all about.

saturday: i'm predicting that it's going to snow. just because it can.

urf.

current mood: annoyed
current music: mazzy star/"fade into you"
posted by kat thompson at 11:32 AM

not-so-superfast post, while i'm procrastinating: although i really should go back outside and get my butt home, since it's so damned nice out. in fact, it's the first day in many months where i've left the house minus hat, scarf, and gloves. now if only the trees would bloom already - then it might be spring.

so, tomorrow's catholic easter, and i made the mistake last night of telling tanya that i know how to make ukrainian easter eggs. she now wants me to teach her how to do this - i think it would be really cool to sit down and kill an afternoon doing this, but i simply don't know where to even begin looking for a good deal of the supplies one needs. namely, the special dye and the kistka. tanya does have some easter egg dye at home, but it's not the kind you can use to make these eggs. hmmm. we'll see. in any event, we've got eggs, vinegar, and dye, so at least that's a start.

i haven't done a whole lot this week; justin cooked me a wonderful vegetarian dinner on wednesday and i was so pleased when he unveiled dessert: fruit drenched in yogurt. perhaps i'm just too easily pleased, but fresh fruit was soooo good for a change. speaking of fruit and yogurt, i had some apple cinnamon yogurt this week, and it was surprisingly good. an odd flavor, but tasty nonetheless. last night i went to an evening of one-act ballets at the mariinsky with megan and her mom; the last ballet was a premiere and it was fan-tas-tic. i wonder, though, if the male dancers wear jockstraps. i think - and i hope - that they do, since (yeah, so what if i was looking? but, you know, when they're wearing tights that tight, how can you not?) i didn't notice any unusual bouncing. i dunno.

oh, so i guess my big news (although at this point it's more of a headache than anything else): i'm coming home for longer than expected when i do get back in july. as in, up to a year longer than expected. suffice to say that staying on for school in moscow isn't panning out right now for a variety of reasons; if you really want to know, pop me an email and i'll explain at more length. right now i'm trying to stay sane in figuring out how i'm going to get all my stuff home and in finding a job. welcome to my life for the next two months. urf.

current mood: bleargh
current music: fatboy slim/"ya mama"
posted by kat thompson at 9:24 AM

oh, superfast post before i run out of here....

1) i can't get into my email right now. if brian's parents are reading this, i got your box yesterday and i was pleasantly surprised by its contents. perfect! i love what you sent. thank you many many times. :-)

2) to the three people i ever used instant messenger to communicate with: the computer center here has a firewall up against many things AOL right now, so you're probably going to have to wait until, um, july when i get back home to chat with me. sorry.

more sort of big news coming up, when i feel like reporting it... :-)

current mood: craving chocolate
current music: chaikovsky/"swan lake" (pick a movement)
posted by kat thompson at 12:09 PM

the drought has been broken: i had steak for the first time in almost eight months this weekend! done to medium rare perfection, marinated in red wine, accompanied by some crispy fried vegetables and a glass of cabernet sauvignon... oh, heaven. had the portion not been so small for its high price, i might be eating at the restaurant that offered it every day. oh, yum.

by the way: when a restaurant calls itself 'fusion', it's just a fancy way of saying that the chef picks the ingredients of a given dish out of a hat before he makes it. the food was good, but the atmosphere was a bit too yuppie for me - lingerie show aside. see, here it's common for restaurants to have themed dinner shows along with their food, which in some places can mean folk dances, or singers, or strippers, or whatever - and on friday night, this certain restaurant was having a lingerie show from the spring and summer collections of local designers. it can be a bit hard to eat when you've got butt floss prowling around your table, but it certainly was interesting.

saturday i was a) hungover b) exhausted and c) without keys, so i stayed in and watched movies and read most of the night. a) and b) came from the ridiculous amount of drinking and then clubbing that justin and his friends and i did after dinner, and c) came from the fact that justin left with my keys around 4 am, leaving me to crash at his friend's apartment, which i would rather have not done for a myriad of reasons. but oh well. i got my keys back last night, though, so all is well.

yesterday i had an odd experience: i got to see a one-man show of dostoevsky's short story 'the dream of a ridiculous man'. it's a good thing i read the story before seeing the performance, otherwise i might have been lost. but imagine this: i was in a group of twenty people, and our 'theater' was a cramped room in an apartment, in which all the action took place. it was just this one guy playing the role of the ridiculous man, but he was really, really good - damned if i can remember his name, but i was told he won an academy award for his portrayal of lenin some years back. it was pretty interesting to see how uncomfortable some people were when he had to do things like find props that were under their chairs or look them in the eye as he was delivering a key part of monologue. ah, wacky theater. i can't argue with the quality, though.

plans for this week are slim: i'm hoping to catch a film tonight, have dinner with justin at some point, and see some ballet at the mariinsky with megan and her visiting mother on friday. oh, and definitely stay as far away as i can from this stuff as i can. [twitch]

current mood: a bit overwhelmed
current music: cornershop/"brimful of asha"
posted by kat thompson at 6:48 AM

hah! i win without having lifted barely a finger.

today was day one of my battle with the passport and visa registration office (PVS), as alluded to at the end of yesterday's post. see, my friend stephanie in moscow was planning on doing a tour of the baltic states by train at the end of this month, and late last week it occurred to me that if i'm to join her, i need to get myself an exit-reentry visa so as to be legally allowed out of and back into the country. it also occurred to me that i'd need to get one of those shiny little migration cards in order to be let out without deportation. [in brief, the migration card system is a new headache implemented back in february; all foreigners entering the country after february 14 are required to obtain one of these cards upon entering and present it upon leaving. every time someone leaves and returns, they have to get a new card. this does not even begin to explain the stupidity of all these proceedings, trust me] so, i decided to venture down to the not-exactly-centrally-located migration services office, and see what i could do about getting myself said card.

let me first point out that it was looking a lot like we'd have a score of PVS one, me zero, as when i arrived at the address (#14) i was confronted with four buildings, all claiming to be #14. this is actually fairly common in russia; some buildings can have up to eight entrances, all under the same house number. i had to circumvent all four before arriving at the correct door. upon reading every sign posted in the stairway directing me to the correct floor, i took a deep breath, climbed the stairs, and said a short prayer for patience as i opened the door to the department.

not thirty seconds later i was quite literally chased out by an old man flailing his arms at me screaming 'come back tomorrow! the person in charge of that isn't here today!'
ok.... so. PVS one, me - a resounding zero. after glaring cursorily and swearing under my breath at the old man, i shuffled back to the metro and went to class, where i spent ninety minutes being distracted by my teacher's eyebrows. she shapes them so that they look like upside-down V's, and in the process she looks pretty evil. she's actually not all that evil, but i found myself wondering this morning how long she spends every day forcing her eyebrows into that shape and exactly why she does so.

but anyways. after class i ran into a friend of mine who recently switched to another group, to whom i don't often talk, so i took the chance to stop and chat. i mentioned my episode with flailing-arm-old-man above, and he looked at me curiously. 'were you at the office here, or at the filfak?' [the filfak is the nickname of the philological faculty, which is what us foreigners all belong to] i told him where i went, and he helpfully pointed out that there was an office of 'international matters' at the filfak, hiding in a deep dark corner, that could get me my migration card to the tune of about two dollars. [i hate to admit this, but i've completely fallen under the spell of the idea of 'why do something myself when i can get someone else to do it for me?'] heartened, i dashed over there, only to find that they were closed for lunch.

but no matter. after lunch i marched in and told them what i needed, and they gave me all the necessary stuff to fill out. however, as i was filling all this stuff out, another guy who'd also been studying here since september came in and asked for the same card. i overheard their conversation, and not two minutes later the secretary was on the phone with the main PVS office in town, asking them if we actually needed to get these cards right now since neither one of us was leaving until june. [i found out earlier today that the planned trip to the baltics has been turned into an excursion for the moscow kids to come here. woohoo!] they most emphatically said no, so i was told to stop filling out my forms and come back in june when i'm leaving, so that i can get my exit visa and migration card all at the same time.

therefore, i present to you today's final score: PVS one, me two. one because i don't need to ever come back to your stupid office and deal with flailing-arms man, and one because i've beaten your system. ...for now.

the postal system has set a new record for sloth. mom mailed me a st. patrick's day card that was postmarked on march 1. it arrived here april 5. i wish i was kidding.

current mood: foolishly optimistic
current music: diskoteka avaria/"disco superstar"
posted by kat thompson at 10:36 AM

you know... i really didn't want to believe it was true. but when i saw it on the news here i knew it had to be: i am appalled to report (probably belatedly) that our defense secretary has been moonlighting as an awful poet. i think my favorite one has to be the first one, 'the unknown'. i'd swear if i didn't know better that he'd been taking cues from russian short stories on that one. but... gads. it makes the mind twitch.

i lied about spring, once again. they say the wind chill is only 19F, but i don't think they've been out near the water. i almost got knocked over waiting for the light to change so i could cross the street earlier. i take that as my hint to make a beeline for home, fix myself some hot chocolate, and curse the fact that tanya and i completely jumped the gun on taking down my cold-weather-proofing from my balcony. argh!

more news of the ridiculous, in case you think that the american government is the only one losing its mind right now.

this week's battle: kitty versus the passport and visa registration office! (i've decided to crack and go see what i can do about getting one of those migration-card things... long, long story) film at 11.

current mood: musing
current music: prodigy/"mindfields"
posted by kat thompson at 7:31 AM

sorry it's been so long, but the pinko lesbian (thanks, gini :-) ) is finally re-reporting for duty. i've been in bed sick since tuesday morning and only today felt up to venturing out of the apartment. let me tell you: russian daytime television is pure and utter crap. my brain is probably half mush by now. i've been reading to try and combat this phenomenon, but i don't know how much good it's been doing. i'm sitting here looking at the screen and getting all sleepy-eyed - and i've only been out of bed for 3 hours.the upshot about this cold i caught from marieke is that it's been giving me some really interesting dreams. monday i dreamt that a bunch of banders and i were taken as POWs in baghdad and that we were expressly forbidden to wash our pants - the rule of the camp was that you lived in whatever dirt you created. i spilled ketchup on my pants, and ran off to a secret hose (don't ask) to go wash them off, when this woman came bellowing around the corner: 'why didn't you give back that bible i lent you when you got here?' 'um... i forgot?' 'oh...ok. well, get it back to me as soon as you remember!' um. ok. last night's dream was similarly whacked out, but i don't remember it anymore, which is probably just as well.

kim linked to this on her page, but i'm going to do the same here since it's too amusing to not repeat: a warmonger explains war to a peacenik.

so... let's see. brian arrived early last thursday; i was running late, per usual, and he had to wait for me about a half hour or so. thursday night was a minor disaster - tanya invited us back to the apartment for dinner, by which i mean the three of us downing a liter of good vodka and snacking intermittently. i hadn't eaten that day since breakfast at 10 am, and he was loopy from the plane rides, so by the time we got into it around 8 pm, well... drunkenness was soon achieved. this would've been ok if tanya hadn't seized both the moment and the remote control and turned our attention to the war. now, tanya is a wonderful person and all that, but when you get her going on the war, it can turn into a two- to three-hour treatise, wherein she repeats herself at least four times and doesn't let you get a word in edgewise. brian made the mistake of saying something like 'yes, i'm interested in politics', and she took that as her cue to run with the war rant. for an interminably long time. now, understand that i agree with most of what she says, but on thursday i was in no mood to hear it - at that point i'd already heard it at least three times, and i was drunk and absolutely did not want to talk about war and politics. a brief light would shine at the end of the tunnel when she'd say 'ok, enough about this' and turn her attention elsewhere, but five minutes later she was back at it. i can't say it was really a bad evening, since it was entertaining, but i wish she hadn't harped on the war like she did. brian did get treated to five of her 'gospodi!' exclamations, however.

on friday we got bliny from my favorite bliny stand and spent most of the day at the hermitage, amidst the hordes of children who i'd forgotten were on spring break last week. we did my birthday route of macaroni/mollie's for dinner and drinks, but after one beer at mollie's i felt kind of queasy, so we went home. on saturday we went to pushkin, the suburb where i teach, and squished through the mud around the parks and the catherine palace. i still didn't find 'girl with a water pitcher', though. grrr! we had every intent of going out dancing that night, but by the time we got through with dinner and made our way back to the hotel to change, i was so full that i fell asleep. free advice: eating mexican food after 9 pm might be detrimental to your desire to dance. sunday was the last day of good weather that we had - by 'good' i mean sunny and hovering in the low to mid 40s - and we did quite a bit of walking after a visit to the boys here at the computer center. we closed out the summer garden and had a thoroughly yummy cheese fondue dinner at one of my favorite restaurants. the best part of that was the kids sitting at the table next to us who had little else to do but stare at our fondue and make really stupid comments in english (they heard us speaking it and i guess they thought they were cool or something) while their parents got drunk. this time we were firm in our plans to go out, but by the time we got to the club i'd wanted to go to (sometime around 1 am), they were doing some weird sort of face control, and they wouldn't let us in without talking to 'the administrator' first. i quickly realized that my russian wasn't quite good enough to be able to deal with this administrator person, so we left in search of another club. but when we got there, it was a ghost town - no one was around, and nothing could be heard other than a few people playing pool. which i found odd, since a dj had been advertised as playing there that night. figuring that it was too late (by this time it was close to 2) to go anywhere, we trudged home. monday we woke up to snow and a nasty wind - because of the weather we didn't do a whole lot of walking. we had dinner at my favorite georgian cafe and called it an early night, since his plane left at 6:55 tuesday morning. more free advice: if you don't want to tempt fate, leave earlier than 5:50 for a 6:55 flight. i assume that brian made his scheduled flight since there was no one around and i didn't get a phone call saying otherwise, but i was a little worried when we pulled into the airport at 6:15 knowing that check-in was supposed to close at 6:10. note to self: don't ignore the alarm at 5, or 5:15.

all in all, it was a good visit, although it continues to amaze me how five days can fly by so fast. it's not fair, i say. ;-) and as i indicated before, i've spent almost all of the time between the time i got home tuesday morning and now in bed, reading and watching tellyvision. today is megan's birthday and we're supposed to go out, but i think it's gonna have to wait until the weekend, since i can barely hold myself up before a computer screen. not much is new apartment-wise, except that there's new wallpaper in the foyer and new plants out on the balcony by the kitchen.

if you've mailed me anything in the past, oh, month, and haven't heard anything from me about its reception, chances are very good that it still hasn't arrived. mail has been slow as fuck ever since i got back in january; i don't know why - but please be patient. i'm as annoyed by this as you are, but all one can do is wait.

neither maryland nor duke are in the final four... this pleases me.

oh, and in case you were wondering: it snowed yet again last night. if the stuff sticks around until tomorrow, that'll be six months of snow. i love it...?

current mood: slightly loopy
current music: pearl jam/"thumbing my way"
posted by kat thompson at 8:49 AM