PS

In sorta-answer to this blog's question, the lady next to me in the Internet salon definitely has the piccolo part from "Stars and Stripes Forever" as her ringtone. So, yes, Russians do play Sousa - on their cell phones, at least.

How Time Does Fly...

Start music: Fleetwood Mac's The Chain (seems kind of fitting for the girl who's too lazy to update all that often...)

So October's almost over, and we passed our halfway point sometime earlier this week. It's weird - it seems like time has sped by being here, and yet it seems like there's so much time left to go. It doesn't help that a very vocal part of my brain is convinced that cold weather = Christmas and that it is, therefore, almost Christmas.

I'm all registered for classes today - thanks to Baylor weirdness, I have all 15 academic hours on MWF, running from 8 AM to 3.30, maybe? And since harp tends to fall on Mondays, I'll probably just be working on Tuesday/Thursday - crazy, isn't it? My schedule came out with: Principles of Microeconomics (04), Intermediate German (01), Fundamentals of International Politics (02), Russian Reading Development, Introduction to Slavic/Eastern European Studies, and Harp. Anyone have class with me?

Things I've done today: gone to the gym, gathered up my clothes for the wash, had a discussion with my hozhaika about the wash (which I think has probably resulted in everything - pinks, darks, whites, getting washed together...), had a discussion with my hozhaika about rent payment (she's decided she wants USD this month since she "already has Russian money". Because it's so easy to find USD in provincial Russia...), bought lunch at a kiosk (I miss Dr Pepper, and I'm going to miss 25 ruble pitas), and now I'm on the Internet (in case you can't tell).

Things I'm excited about: the cookie thing in my purse, going to the grocery to buy water*, the bookstore that sells both English novels and Star Wars books in Russian, the ballet in a few weeks (I'm going twice in the same week), the upcoming trip to the Caucasuses, the fact that I got my box from my parents yesterday (!) (Erica - your birthday book made it all the way to Russia - the 'rents mailed it to me, and it made me glad), the fact that I've actually cast on and started knitting a sweater (it's about two inches long at the moment...), and who knows what else.

My brain's kind of scattered at the moment, so apologies for the correspondingly scattered blog post. Tell me about what's going on with all of y'all at home - I miss you! Have a Happy Halloween!

*The grocery store is an actual Western-style supermarket. I can't recall if I've blogged about it before, but trust me, it makes my heart glad to go and wander up and down the marked aisles, where you can pick up things and examine them for yourself and look in the freezer cases and all that. It's funny the things that end up being comforting...

Baby, It's Cold Outside (aka I May Never Understand the Russian Mind)

So Monday was cold - collar up, find the gloves, consider pulling out the winter coat cold (they have fall coats and winter coats here - it was winter coat weather). Now, the past two days have been absolutely lovely - I took off my fleece and rolled my sleeves up on the way home from the gym because it was such nice weather. The majority of the Russians I pass on the street, however, are living in some alternate universe in which the next Ice Age is beginning. We're talking ankle-length wool or down coat, serious winter weather hattage (they like hats), the whole nine yards. They have to be sweating under all that, and yet they soldier on, all geared up for the unexpected blizzard that's bound to befall us in the next week or so.

Within these masses of extra bundled up people, there are subsets. Babyshkas (grandmas) get a free pass - most babyshki are prepared for a snowstorm in the middle of August, so there's really no passing of the seasons for them. Babies can't dress themselves, so they're spared the blame, but one has to wonder - the babies and small children have been dressed for subzero temperatures since we got here. I'm wondering what's going to happen when it actually gets cold - I fully expect to see a baby wearing the snowsuit it's been wearing since September, wrapped in a layer of fleece and stuffed into another snowsuit, with the entire ensemble topped off with a jaunty hat... It's a wonder the children don't keel over from the heat.

I think this entry was meant to contain more of the usual ranting and raving about classes and the Russian language (verbs of motion are evil, I tell you), but blogging about people in heavy coats has lightened my mood. Yay! I miss you all, be good!

I'm still here...

Sorry for my long absence - I know y'all have just been dying to hear the latest from the Eastern Front, right? Actually, I spent last week on semi-vacation sightseeing in St Petersburg (Leningrad, if you're a Russian of a certain age...) Thanks to the loan of an adapter from Lindsey, I'm able to use my laptop for non-internet stuff, so I'm currently composing an epic entry on St Pete's, so for now it's just back to our regularly scheduled complaining...

School was a pain today. First Anatoli decides to give us a pop test. I asked if it was for a grade, and he muttered something about Americans and always wanting to know if things were for a grade. I'm sorry, but in America, we have these things called GPAs, and we tend to care about them. It was just a progress test, but I was annoyed anyways - who the heck gives a test without warning?

We also did a reading comprehension passage that I think must've come from the Russian equivalent of the National Enquirer - it was about some lady who passed out in school and when she came to, she could speak 120 languages. Her theory is that the languages came from 120 previous lives, and she talks about bits of past lives she can remember - see what I mean about the National Enquirer? :-)

Homework is from the Verbs of Motion book. I HATE verbs of motion in Russian - either you go, or you don't. All this complication is really unnecessary, if you ask me. AND my Verbs of Motion text (publication 1975) is missing the key in the back. It's supposed to have one, but the last 30+ pages of my text is missing. Argh.

On a positive note, I stopped at the rinok to buy yummy cheap bread and some cashews for lunch. I think I'm really going to miss the rinok and the people there - the bread lady always makes sure to pick out a piece that's good and warm, even though it's only 10 rubles (about 40 cents). The lady I buy cashews and pecans from remembered me - the last time Lindsey and I were there, she got all excited because we were conversing with each other in English. Voronezh doesn't see a terrible lot of foreigners, so they really do excited to meet innostrantsi. Anyway, she remembered that I was an American (actually, her first guess was Mexican, but I think that's because I always say I'm from Texas), and she wanted to know where I was studying and what. It was nice. Also, the heat in the city is on, so the radiator in my room is making an effort - it's a good place to put clothing to warm it up.

For a funny, I got mistaken for the mother of a 6-year-old at the gym yesterday. There were only three of us in the locker room - me, the little girl (complete with blonde pigtails) and her mother. The lady who does the children's classes came in and did the whole hands-on-the-knees, talk to the kid thing. She then looks at me and asks "Mama, da?" at which point I paniced and started pointing towards the mother's locker on the other side of the bank of lockers, saying "Nyet, nyet, ana tam" (no, no, she's over there). Fortunately, the mom decided to appear before they gave me the girl...

That's all for now, kids. Be good.

Of Gyms and Drugstores

So I went to the gym today. As I do many days. Because there's really not that much to do here, and since chocolate is one of the other major things to do here, I have to make things balance out. I'm going to pay for it tomorrow, I think, especially since today was weight-increase day for me, so I upped the amount I was lifting on most things. Maybe if I just keep telling myself I was a good girl for going, it'll be okay. At least the showers were fixed today - I went yesterday, only to be met with broken showers. I then had to run home post-workout and take a cold shower (hot water is hard to get during the day) so I wouldn't smell funny for church.

Church was fun - yesterday was a "club" for older kids in the local orphanage and for kids who've aged out of the orphanage. I still didn't understand most of what was going on, but the people are nice and the fellowship is good. Zhenya, who's about 13, I think, seems to have decided that I'm at least mildly entertaining in my attempts to follow what's going on, was kind enough to make sure I understood what I was supposed to be doing in the games and such. He's the self-declared paparazzi, so he's got a lovely shot of me sticking my tongue out. I shudder to think what's going to happen to that when he's done with the Photoshop.

Post-gym, I had to walk all the way to Frederich Engels* to buy a banana, so I stopped at the drugstore to buy some shampoo and conditioner. You know how you can stand on the hair products aisle for about an hour, considering all the various options, weighing the promises and the murky distinctions between brands and subtypes? (Ok, at least I can do that for a long time.) Now imagine trying to do that with an aisle full of products labelled in a language you have to concentrate to read. Fun times. What's up with the not actually labelling the contents of the bottle? It's great that's a new scent or for color treated hair, but what is it? Who at the advertising agency decided that the consumer didn't need to know if it was shampoo, conditioner, or some random concoction (and Russians love those) in that colorful plastic bottle? Seriously. On a random note, Palmolive (whom I mostly associate with dishwashing liquid) is a big name in beauty brands here, it seems. Then again, the company that makes my hairspray (or hair lacquer, as the can translates to) - Wella - also has a storefront on our street that sells paint products. Weird.

All of my pictures from the Volgagrad weekend are now up. Captions and translations to come. They're publicly viewable via Facebook at http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2131471&l=0482c&id=9214311 and http://baylor.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2132166&l=ccb6a&id=9214311 I'm planning to blog about the weekend, too, but that's going to have to wait until I have a lot of time and concentration, as I want to do all the war memorials justice.

Have a wonderful rest of the week!

*Yes, we have a Frederich Engels street - it's one of the main streets in the area. We also have a "Revolution", "9th January", "Karl Marx", and who knows what else. Oh yeah, and a huge statue of Stalin...