Not What I'm Supposed to Be Doing...

So, I'm supposed to be listening to either a) my phonetics disc or b) tomorrow's lecture (I'm not sure what's going on there...). Instead, I'm reading blogs and posting, so I can go home early instead of waiting for normal internet time. This isn't even what's on the schedule for this block, but they like to rearrange things for fun...

Quite a bit has happened since my last post: flood, theft, chastening, a trip, illness, and traffic violations (plural). And thus, Davai!

Flood: The flood waters arrived Thursday afternoon as we were riding home from an excursion to the book making factory/printing press (absolutely fascinating. Terribly inefficient, but absolutely fascinating.) Initially, pretty much everyone was glad to see the rain, because it would bring the temperature down. Problems started arising when it started raining hard and didn't stop. All the good Texans in the group figured that it'd pour for a bit and then stop, so we attempted to wait it out by sitting in the foreign exchange office and drinking tea. No such luck - we waited a good bit, and then realized that the rain definitely wasn't letting up. Thus, we went ahead and went to the stop to wait on marshytkas. I caught one pretty quickly, and proceeded to ride in a tiny van with 20 other people while our driver drove part of the way on the sidewalk in order, to a) avoid the flood waters and b) move around the mounds of non-moving traffic. I thought the woman sitting across from me was going to have either a heart attack or salvation experience every time we tilted dangerously while lurching on and off of curbs... My normal commute tripled in length (it took about an hour and a half), but I'm just grateful that our marshytka never joined the legions of stalled vehicles with flooded engines that were all over the roadways. Water was knee-deep in several places - a few students in our program were in cars that lost complete contact with the ground and floated for a while. Fun times.

Theft: Not me, but poor Ross had his wallet stolen from our super-full marshytka on stipend day, no less. Boo Russian thieves.

Chastening: While we were being scolded for our decidedly lacidasical attitude towards the Russian-only pledge, I brilliantly piped up with the comment that it's hard to get others to do it, as no one wants to be the "Russian Police". Apparently, we are supposed to be the Russian Police (rysskie militsia) in the name of "community policing". I'm trying harder, but I'm pretty sure community policing requires some level of commitment from the whole community. *le sigh*

Trip: Volgograd/Stalingrad again - my favorite (honestly. Hard as it is to believe, I do occaisionally ditch the sarcasm). I had a bigger memory card in my camera and I bought a picture pass in the museum, so lots of pictures to come. We had a lecture over the Great Patriotic War (essentially, the war of Russia against Germany - occured simultaneously with WWII, but is generally regarded as a semi-separate entity. I think.) prior to the trip and I took two pages of notes in Russian - this is apparently impressive. Train was normal and all that jazz.

Illness: The only downside of the Volgograd trip - the restaurant that we've now eaten at three times apparently didn't do so well Saturday night, and early Sunday morning found me befriending the trash can at the end of the train car. (TMI, I know, but if you've ever been sick by yourself in a foreign country, you know it stinks...)

Traffic Violations: In the last week, my marshytka has been pulled over by the militsia (police) twice. This morning, it was my fault. I was riding standing, which may or may not be technically illegal - it's certainly common practice, but who knows? Anyway, I was standing when we got pulled over. I thought it was a stop, so I was looking for who was getting off (generally, the standers have to pile out so that people can exit), when everyone started telling me to get to the back of the marshytka. I complied and squatted with the other guy who'd been standing. What I didn't understand was that I was supposed to be *hiding* from the militsia - I thought everything'd be okay as long as I was sitting-level. So of course the militsioner saw me and detained our driver for almost an hour, while I sat on the bus and everyone glared at me. When everything got sorted out, the driver was clearly pretty ticked, so I got off a few stops early, rather than risk being alone with him. I felt/still feel absolutely terrible - I'm sure he had to pay a fine, and he lost work while we were waiting, but I almost always ride part way standing up - half the time, it's the only way to get a marshytka in the morning from my stop. I'd figured it was okay, since two people got off at my stop (hence, two places in theory), and there was already another guy squatting in the floor. I'm kind of scared to ride the marshytka again (not like I have a choice), and I'm going to try and avoid that particular one for a while, but I don't know... At least half my class rode standing today, the three of us who rode back from the theater all stood partway... I hate subjective laws!

I think that's all of our excitement. Well, at least, it's excitement for me - it might be really boring to read. So if you don't get throught it all, don't worry - I still love you!