Today we had our first day of real school with real Russians in a real Russian class. It was like the other classes, except we understood a lot less and were terrified of everyone. They had these sort of bench-table combinations that seat 2-3 people, but all four of us Midd kids (required to take a mainstream, that is, a course outside of the international department not designed specifically for foreigners – of course, all our classes are 100 % in Russian, but the difference, I think, is clear) crammed into one at the very back. Periodically, Russians turned around blatently to stare at us. They generally didn’t pay very close attention, writing each other notes or giggling and whispering the whole time. We desperately tried to follow at first, but each of us faded in and out of trying.

For this reason, my notes are hilarious. Sometimes it’s clear that I’ve simply decided to write down exactly what I understand – there are handfuls of half-sentences and individual words or terms scattered around. I wrote князь by itself about six times, except I always spelled it wrong by leaving the soft sign off from the end. There are sentences like «the process was very quick» with no actual description of the process in question. Or I've written «fifteen independent princes ----> fifty» which I take to mean that the process whereby the number of independent князи greatly increased quickly (it's near that part about the process). Also I have «– delicious?» written next to about three things. I even drive jokes into the ground when I'm taking notes!

Then I slip into observations like this «the walls of this room are turquoise» or «i love russian shoes! they're so pointy!». I also, when the teacher started talking about мыт written « мыт – this must be important! she keeps saying it, also funny? many students are laughing. a fat girl near me appears to be having some kind of a break-down». Also I noted how long Natalie simply did sudoku. It was a lot.

The teacher seems nice. They told us we wouldn't understand anything for the first several weeks, but after that it'd quickly get better. Nothing is actually hard, other than being in Russian. Like the seniors told us, Russian public univeristy work is just not as demanding as Midd. Which is not a surprise. And not a criticism. Anyway, I don't care if anyone decides I'm being snotty. Isn't that practically the definition of snotty? No. It isn't, on second though. Not at all.

Leonya was sick today, which basically meant he didn't have to go to work and I got to hang out with him a lot. That's a lot of fun and makes me not really miss home. Except when he and Anya and I look at pictures from last year at Midd for like an hour. But when we're briding cultural gaps by explaining, for example, why the name «Bulgakov» is funny, it's great.

In our video-course, we watched a movie called Бег. It's from the sixties, it's based on a Bulgakov play, it's about the Russian Civil War, and the title means «race». The first hour and a half (it's three hours long) has a cavalry charge literally, and I mean literally, every five minutes. If the camera isn't following the careening chargers, then there is a cavalry charge IN THE BACKGROUND. You ever seen a movie where cavalry charges are the background? Also I'm sure no one has ever seen a movie with this many cavalry charges that was boring. But it was also kind of cool. In a boring way. Like «Lost in Translation». Heh heh. Billy Murray leading a cavalry charge.

That's about all for today. I've abandonded all pretenses now and just get up in the middle of meals to get mugs full or water to drink. If you ask for water one of several things happen, none of which are recieving water: you may recieve water with jam in it; you may recieve hot boiled water (this is literally the cleanest tap water in the entire world but the Russians boil it), tea, or you might just not get water. People drink tea or nothing with meals. Both are inconcievable to me (of course tea is great, but ONLY tea?).