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.