let's see: soren (the dane of which i spoke in my last post) is gone; his girlfriend found him at school on monday and they kissed and made up, and i guess they're going back to denmark together. so much for that. dima i think will be leaving the hospital soon, and we still have the kitty with us. her new favorite thing to do is swat at the birds when they fly around the kitchen, and i am so incredibly tempted to put her within paw's reach of them, but... no. i want a place to live for the next five months.

teaching on tuesday was long - 3 hours without a break - but interesting. the group of five that i had first wasn't bad; they didn't know a whole lot of english but they knew enough that ninety minutes of conversation went by pretty fast. my second ninety minutes was individual tutoring with a girl who knew little beyond 'hello', 'my name is', and numbers one through twenty. i get the feeling the lesson was better practice for my russian as it was for her english, but... oh well. do you know how weird it is to try and explain something about english in another language, especially one which you don't yet freely command?

i've noticed that russians really like to smack their lips - as much as this grates on my nerves, it always makes me smirk because whenever i hear the smacking begin, i think of aunt dot and her chronic lip-smacking in her later years. and of course, when i think of aunt dot i'm always reminded of that night we were taking turns belching at the dinner table, to her stern and utter disapproval. (aunt mary started it, i swear!)

the flying-up-the-nose snowflakes are back... joy and wonder.

'i think of mankind in quotation marks/ever since i took a drink of you' - jeff buckley



posted by kat thompson at 2:18 PM

i usually tend to shy away from commenting on political happenings, but i think that e.j. dionne jr. has once again hit the nail on the head.

anyways, my birthday's in less than five weeks. [grin] get going!:

book: harrison salisbury - the 900 days
book: orlando figes - natasha's dance: a cultural history of russia
book: irvine welsh - porno (it's not about pornography, i promise)
cd: pearl jam - riot act
cd: pearl jam - binaural (dima's stupid tape player ate my copy)
cd: jeff buckley - the grace sessions EPs

well well. interesting, this weekend was.

the fun began at 9 am on friday when the doorbell rang and i heard a strange man's voice - i thought, 'surely it must be too early for the neighbors to be dropping in'. lo, i was right, as this man was no neighbor but a man in his sixties who stayed with tanya last year while he was studying russian at the university. like me, but old and not female, and danish. apparently, he met a russian woman while he was here and they moved back to denmark after he was done studying here, and not too long ago moved back to petersburg, north of the city, where they've been ever since. there was some domestic dispute and he came to tanya basically begging her to let him stay here until thursday- where he's going after that, i don't know. but he told his girlfriend that he was going back to denmark, while he's actually just somewhere else in the city. she hasn't come looking for him yet, but - lord, what a weird situation. the good thing is that since he's staying in the den, anya's now staying with her mom, although the kitten has been left behind. so, happily, i get to watch kitty do even more stupid things like chase her tail. yes, a cat that chases her tail...

speaking of anya, back in the day i said that i really thought that she and dima would get married soon. as it turns out, things probably couldn't be farther from the truth. tanya told me yesterday (i love how talkative this woman gets when she's been drinking) that anya is hopelessly in love with dima, but the feeling is not quite requited - he recently told her something along the lines of 'if i live in this apartment any longer with her i'm going to turn into an idiot'. (tanya, like the good mother she is, replied 'you can come back home if you want, but i will say i told you so' - hee hee!) apparently, the day before tanya's birthday back in november, one of dima's friends got married and he was one of the groomsmen - but anya was only a guest as she didn't really know this friend very well. apparently she blew a minor fuse when he had the nerve to dance with one of the bridesmaids at the celebration, and apparently more often than not she just sits at home and waits for him to walk through the door at the end of a given day - and if he's five minutes late, she immediately suspects that he's out cavorting with another woman. ack! psychosis has followed me across the ocean!

anyways, back to friday. i had the pleasure of getting mindlessly drunk with a bunch of russians at another tram party, but there was something funny in the air at this one - it might have been the slightly warmer-than-usual weather or the many bottles of vodka that were passed around, but it seemed like everyone was making out with someone else. it reminded me of a phrase that bubbles used to describe a punch party he threw several years ago: 'it was great - the pheromones were practically sliding down the walls!' i don't know, making out on a tram seems kinda trashy, but it was rather amusing to observe.

saturday i had dinner at a diviiiiiiine indian restaurant with some classmates. yesterday i slept; i missed the super bowl since it was on at 2 am local time - do you know how weird it is not having seen the super bowl for the first time in a zillion years? ah well - at least now that football is over i can concentrate on the important stuff, like basketball.

i start my new job tomorrow - teaching a group of five high schoolers and individually tutoring a seventh-grader. pray for me. please?
posted by kat thompson at 11:11 AM

mwa ha ha ha... who was it that said revenge is sweeter? (and what is it sweeter than?)

i think i am going to die of a cuteness attack. see, on monday as i was coming home, dima was being taken to the hospital with an apparently really bad sore throat and fever (in russian it's called 'angina', but i don't think it's the same definition as in english). this meant that anya and the kitten moved in with us for the duration of his stay there, which as of today has not ended. anya i could do without, but the kitten - oh my lord. this thing oozes cute from every bit of fur. she loves to sit behind me when i'm eating dinner and on occasion will do something amusing like roll off the divan or try to pounce on my hands (which is interesting when one of them is holding a spoonful of hot soup). she sits outside my door and mewls when i'm home - tanya doesn't allow her in my room, for reasons i don't know, but when i'm home alone i let kitty run around my room freely). she has these huge bright green eyes that somehow seem to get even bigger when she trains them on the birds. now, speaking of revenge, let me tell you how sorely tempted i am to let her at those damned birds - they're not allowed out of their cage while she's staying with us, which for me is nice but must be driving them nuts. i do fear that they might try to peck her eyes out or something if they, i don't know, somehow accidentally got out, but i would bet that kitty would make bird cutlets out of them right quick. she's a sharp one, and i guess it's good that she's on my side. i wonder if i can convince tanya to get a kitten when this one leaves? [evil grin]

i might be gainfully (well, hundred-bucks-a-week-gainfully) employed soon - keep thy fingers crossed!



posted by kat thompson at 1:07 PM

repeat after me: vodka does not cure a 101-degree fever. vodka does not cure a 101-degree fever. does not!

for gini: david hasselhoff in all of his, erm, glory? (click on his name, and make sure that the sound on your computer is turned up)
posted by kat thompson at 5:21 AM

aaaaaugh! i want to tear my eyes out with a spoon! no no no no!

if you're reading this and you're down at uva, please send this... thing some inflammatory email for me. you've got plenty of fodder to work with. for example (and i know this exposes me fully as a hypocrite, but i do not care): "as if making fun of someone is EVER going to help the state of our country".

aaaaaugh!
posted by kat thompson at 10:49 AM

1) my beloved dictionary has finally bitten the dust. it's split right in two, about fifteen pages before the division between russian- english and english-russian. why it couldn't have been good enough to split right at the division is beyond me. [pout]

2) i want to be far, far, far away from this city when the great spring thaw finally happens. we got a tiny taste of it yesterday and suffice to say that if i don't invest in a pair of stilts soon, i'm going to be washed away in the inevitable flood. there's no place for the melting snow and ice to go at all! the ice is about two inches thick, the slush is as high as ankle-deep in places, and walking generally blows goats. you can note the sarcasm in my voice when i say that i cannot wait for the icicles to put in their appearance.

3) new year, new classmates, more job offers: the two korean boys are transferring to a different school, so in their place we get another korean guy, a taiwanese girl, a finnish girl, and next week a japanese girl. i found out today that lorenzo, the italian stallion, is a lawyer. i don't think he's too old for carrie - should i send some pictures home? we had a sub for our awful reading teacher today, and when i told her 'i want to teach english', i'd barely gotten the word 'english' out of my mouth when she said 'wait! i'll give you my phone number, call me and i can give you a bunch of other phone numbers if you're serious' - good lord. have i tapped some unknowingly starving market here?

4) by chance i met this girl karen from new york on the plane back to helsinki who's also studying in st pete for the semester. when she told me her name, i had to try really hard not to say 'oh, really? i had the roommate from hell my second year of college, her name was karen too' - i figured that might put her off. just a tiny bit.

5) things here are sloooowly getting back to normal. i was a tad annoyed to see a table full of zakuski and vodka when i got back on tuesday night - it was 11:30 pm, all i wanted to do was go to bed - but of course, the spirit was more willing than the flesh was weak, and it was another drink-and-talk-till-3-am evening. i didn't feel so bad sleeping until 4 pm on wednesday, but it completely messed up my sleeping schedule. i think once that gets back on track, all will be well, if i can conquer the nighttime fever and the weird dreams i've been having lately (do you really think that i could defeat professor snape from harry potter in a supermarket swordfight by piling sandwiches atop his face? i thought so!).

6) karma has been restored to the nba world - wally's back in action for the timberwolves. whew!

7) david hasselhoff... returning soooon... [evil grin]


posted by kat thompson at 10:31 AM

i'd forgotten that i installed snood on mom's computer this summer before i left for russia. i am brilliant!

charlottesville was entertaining - i got to see just about everyone i wanted to, and i even got to drive a bus again. that was weird, to say the least. i spent the rest of my weekend romping in the snow that d.c. got, watching football, and enjoying a spectacular performance of les mis, but not necessarily in that order.

kim's put up some pretty awesome pics from her visit - click on 'new pics' on the right-hand side of the page, and enjoy.

thanks to melissa and anne for being around.


posted by kat thompson at 1:31 AM

i have arrived stateside. i have been awake for almost forty-eight straight hours. i can't write sentences containing more than fifteen words right now. train was interesting, finnish countryside was lovely, plane was comfortable (turbulence between new york and washington excepted, thank you!), the temperatures are warm warm warm here, and my favorite casserole was ready for me as soon as i walked in the door. oh, and i'm going to see les mis on saturday, because my mom rocks completely.

i can't see straight enough to type anymore, so i'm going to bed before i hit cville tomorrow. happy fucking 2003, kids.
posted by kat thompson at 1:46 AM