Me, Crazy? Never!

So, long time, no post. You can blame the folks who write our schedule for that - there was absolutely no internet time last week (trust me, this is much more tragic than you think). You can also thank them for the fact that I'm writing right now, instead of learning my Russian folk dance. You see, dance club was supposed to start at 4, but the meeting we had with the rector (head of the university - he's the President Lilley of ASU), was also supposed to run until 4.30. Thus, when we arrived at clubs at 4.30, the girls who teach had decided no one was coming and left. I felt terrible, but the lady in charge of stuff like that theoretically explained what happened. Argh!

Russia remains Russia. School is driving me more than a little crazy. The grades on my midterm sheet say I have learned diddly squat thus far, which I have simply decided is more a reflection of the exams than me (otherwise, unbearable depression would probably result). I sincerely miss the concept of the rubric, which might at least give some indication of *why* grades are what they are. This, of course, is too much to ask. I'm also still trying to figure out how, exactly, I have a grade for a reading midterm no one took... Oh, Russia!

In other news, we had an interesting excursion this weekend. We rode 4+ hours each way on a bus in order to see the largest Buddhist temple in Europe, which is somewhat randomly located in the middle of Russia. Kalmykia is Russia's only Buddhist republic, but they seem to be doing pretty well at it. The temple was gigantonormous and Buddha himself was big, too - 2 stories of gold Buddha! He also had a decent-sized army of tiny golden minion-Buddhas. It was interesting to see, but on some level heart breaking - there were all these food offerings left to this huge statue, made by nothing but human hands...

Lecture today (if I haven't mentioned it before, lecture is a special level of hell reserved for us after lunch...) was supposed to be over tolerance. No one, Russian or American, read the article (I read enough to declare it funny and then watched West Wing* instead), and thus it was a lot of "Well, I think..."

This then was directed to immigration. Mind you, we didn't redirect it to immigration - the head teacher rather naively decided that we should talk about it. Things kind of deteriorated from there, since controversial topic (which I really wouldn't want to discuss in a large-group setting in English) + relatively simple language skills = um, yeah. It was interesting, if you wanna call it that.

I was forced to attempt to explain the influence of the job situation in France on racial tensions, and then the professors tried to ask further questions regarding my opinion on some policy of the French government on something (from what I understood, they were having difficulty with the whole concept of open borders for work under the EU - can't really help you there if you don't get it...). I just gave up and said that anything the French government said about jobs was a fairy tale - I'm not terribly well-versed in French policy in English folks! I was just trying to deal with the fact that there was more to the situation than people randomly going crazy and burning cars, which seems to be the Russian take. The joke is that we're going to talk about the war in Iraq next week, so we can just line up on opposite sides of the room and practice shouting insults at each other.

The internet is being problematic at the moment, so that'll have to be all. We're going to see mosques tomorrow, but there should be internet time the day after (emphasis on the *should*) or something like that.

*Oh Mother Dearest! Season 3 of the West Wing would be an awesome Welcome Home present... *looks innocent*