update in madrid

let me just preface this with the fact that no entry will ever match the excitement or terror of eddie´s russian chain saw massacre tale. that being said there have been some interesting things happening here.

like today, right now. i went in for work to my internship and low and behold there was no one there. i waited the appropriate 30 minutes and left. however, i saw one of my bosses walking to the office (on my way away from it) and what ensued was a sluethful mission impossible game of cat and mouse where i had to avoid being seen at all costs. there was a significant amount of ducking behind people and at one point i actually hid in the bushes, however all of my charades paid off and i am now sitting at midd school with nothing but free time. on monday, when i have to go back to work, i will simply say that i was waiting for half and hour and left. my phone is conveniently out of batteries at the moment so there is no question of them calling me in. also they go easy on me: 1 because i am not paid 2 i do not speak fluent spanish and 3 i have repeatedly failed at the simplest tasks due to my cultural, linguistic, and overall ineptitude.

so holloween is approaching soon and guess who´s coming to stay with me for several days?.....................................go ahead, guess...........................................................that´s right, aki ito. apparently next thursday all of europe has off and she´s coming down to party. this has cut into my travel plans, but no matter, i would rather see good friends then try to make new ones in a strange city. i have decided to be a madrileño for holloween, that is, someone from madrid. they are exceptional people here, that is to say exceptionally strange and unfriendly. my costume will consist of capri jeans, a very tight shirt and incredibly jelled hair--and the ironic thing is that when i go out, no one will know i´m in costume becasue i´ll look like everyone else normally does.

also, i received a rather distressing text message from mother the other day. it read something like this:

PLEASE CALL, WE´RE BEING EVACUATED

i called and guess what, san diego is burning. there is not just one fire there are about 5 different fires going on all around san diego area. my house and my aunt´s house were in incredible danger but as of now i believe, are safe. however, i have talked to some friends in SD and they say that upwards of 500 homes are gone and several thousand acres of land. right now the national guard is stationed all around because of the possiblity for looting. anyway back to my mom.

so i called her and she answered the phone and said in a somewhat frantic voice (trying to be funny) guess where i am, i´m at your father´s. you have to appreciate the irony here, being that my parent´s were divorced more than 10 years ago and have not lived together since. and not only was my mom there, but her two sisters, their husbands, and all of the dogs, cats, and children. all in all my dad´s house turned into a compound with 10 cars, 14 people and 6 dogs. after 2 days there, the fire has receded slightly but the air quality is still atrocious so everyone went to disneyland to distract themselves and to breathe the nice clean air of los angeles (i jest LA has the worst air in the US). however, it appears that the fires are under control now and my parents have returned to their respective homes. also as a side note, my dad just got a new car and i really wish i was there to drive it. he won´t tell me what it is though which means its sickkkkkkk.

so we´re heading over to casa de iris tonight which is a friend of ours where her two italian roommates cook amazingness for us and we pay them next to nothing for it. i can´t wait. also, on i have just found out that every monday night james bond is on in español. i watched "una mirada de mater" (a view to a kill) the other day with shapiro. i can´t understand how the bond films made it out of the 80s, they were so bad. also, may day (the large black lady) scares the shit out of me perhaps more than even xenya from goldeneye. because at least if xenya kills you you´re most likely having sex and to die at that moment isn´t so bad, but may day just snaps you like a twig. that was also the night that i had my first true middlebury dinner (proportions wise). lizz and i made spaghetti and salad but there was a mountainous amount--like at least 2 or 3 pounds worth of food. after dinner liz changed into pants she could fit in and i unbuckled my belt. i don´t know if i´ve ever actually had to do that before, but it was both an amazing, exhilarating, and disgusting experience. i felt like that guy from "7" the gluttony guy who is forced to eat to death. luckily, i survived.

in terms of classes, all three are going well. my econ class is difficult but the teacher likes chinloy and i because we actually know econ as opposed to the rest of the class who is just interested in socialist politics and inequality of gdp per capita and such. i have decided to write my 8 page paper in my international organizations class this weekend, the purpose of this is so that i will never have to worry about that class again. it is stupid, pointless, and a waste of time, so i am not going to go to it. there are 4 people in my linguistics class at the middlebury school here being that everyone else has opted to take something else somewhere else. i don´t see a lot of some people (which does not bother me in the least). however, i do see a lot of chinly, which is not surprising or uncomfortable being that we no longer have to have conversations but can rather communicate telepathically.

oh yeah, so yesterday i was riding the metro back from school with the lizzes and a random guy came up to us and said "be careful, there are gypsies on the metro who are going to rop you." i thought gabe was just being racist before, but apparently they exist and do steal things from you. the gypsies were these 3 women who acted very shifty which means that there was probably a plant somewhere else on the metro who was actually doing the stealing. anyway, we were careful and there were no thrown babies involved. however on a similar topic, fraz chinloy and i were walking and were accosted by 2 old ladies who thrust flowers in our hands and then asked us to pay one cent for them. i thought that was a good deal, but then the 2 ladies got weird, we pretended like we didn´t understand, and walked away with the flowers. apparently what they do is when you go for your wallet to get out the one penny, they simply take your whole wallet and leave. that´s it. aaahhh. que susto los gitanos.

that´s about it, i´ve wasted enough time writing and avoiding work (not that i regret it), so i will sign off. later gaters,

miles

What to say today . . .

I’ve been to the local tex-mex resturaunt twice in the last . . . two days. Both times I have attempted to eat two chimmichangas. Both times I have failed. Both times Vanya and Natalie have finished the last of my second would-be victim. This is part of my “be willing to spend way too much money” initiative, which is involved in the general “don’t ever be bored again” offensive. I mean, just reasons to be wandering around with other students and getting into situations where I have to speak Russian are good, and I guess the best way to learn.

A much bigger deal than the good tex-mex (which is a big deal!) is the cool concert I went to last night. Originally I wasn’t gonna go, because I was too lazy (people having been planning this for like two weeks or something), but because of the new offensive (which I declared after “publishing” my last note/entry), I spent yesterday buying last minute tickets for Joseph and I (I was just getting his ticket, he paid me back of course) to the “Zemfira” concert (can you believe there are no soft signs in that?! I can’t. I don’t base my expectation of soft signs on anything legitimate, just how weird a word is). I didn’t expect to like it (I don’t know why, she’s a girl or something). But I really did. It wasn’t Helsinki 1972, but it was interesting and I thought the band had some nice not-totally stale licks. And they keyboard player got a lot of play, and there was a guy on trumpet – pluses for me. There was good energy. I drank beer in a bar/club setting. It was great.

Today I bought the album this tour was in support of, and am so far enjoying it. Though not as much as the actual concert, of course. I don’t really get people who don’t like live music, or people who don’t like concert discs.

My classes are not very good. I don’t like them. Little is expected, so that’s what I do. I suppose you can make an argument for self-motivation, except what are you PAYING a college for? If you had the self-motivation, you could probably learn most of this stuff yourself. What’s lacking in people is usually not mental ability, but discipline. So you pay someone to make you care about learning well and in a timely fashion. According to this philosophy, I am not getting Mom and Dad’s money out of the classes here. Though of course there are lots of other perks about being in Russia of course, especially as relate to learning Russian. I have a very hard time in class making myself pay enough attention, so I’m understanding, probably, significantly less than I hypothetically could. Which is not to say nothing. And that’s enough Nietzschean conscience-gnawing.

I finished “The Red and the Black” a coupla days ago, finally. It is interesting for being a book that is fascinating but, for me, was a huge pain in the ass to read because all the characters are so obnoxious. It’s like a parody of love, with all these characters raving about being in love, and then falling out of it in like two days, and then loving someone else hysterically, and then going back to the other person. Ugh. But I certainly get why Nietzsche liked Stendhal so much, and why he’s highly regarded. His depiction of the more detestable/commonplace elements of the human psyche is erudite, to say the least. And it has that sort of narrator-as-a-character voice that is neat when Stendhal does it and bad when Stephen King does it. And Stendhal was probably a Napoleon-worshipper, as is Julien Sorel, as am I. Man, Napoleon was just awesome. This Felix Markham biography is just great. I even mostly agree with it for once.

St. Petersburg is coming up in like three days. Wow am I ever excited. Sara says the hotel she found for me has free internet.

I mean I can’t wait to see the city!

Concerning the Recent Unpleasantness

The most exciting thing that has ever happened to me happened this weekend. It was also the most terrifying.

PROLOGUE

Some of us had been planning to go to the island (or near-island) of Alhon for most of last week. These little excursions to various touristy villages scattered around Baikal are easy and ubiquitous. You buy a ticket for a bus or a microbus (8-12 dollars one-way), ride 4-6 hours, rent a little room or a couple of rooms at some local inn-thing, and then wander around in nature and go to banyas. Also you drink there because Middlebury has stupid obnoxious rules about not drinking when we’re on a Middlebury-led trip and trying to get home drunk in the city is scary, with all the stuff they’ve warned us about (the police, etc.).

I wasn’t gonna go, simply because I didn’t feel like it. But then I wondered what I would do in town, and people going seemed to want me to come along, so I changed my mind at like the last possible minute and went.

I am VERY glad I did. I would not have wanted to miss the trip this turned out to be.

PART 1: Arrival

We rode our little microbus to the village we were staying in on Alhon (I don’t know/remember the name). This was Saturday afternoon, and I had spent all that time on the little bus reading or listening to music (though my batteries died fairly soon – I have quite a collection of dead batteries in my backpack). When we got there we found a little inn to stay in, and set up there. Then we wandered over to this big rock sticking out of the lake and scampered around amicably thereon. It was one of the five poles of shamanism, apparently, and when I asked with incredulity about five poles, Vanya suggested, drily, that the others must be near by, since the particular shamanism of the Buryati probably did not get exported all that far.

We had a dinner of pelmeini, which I ate and sort of helped clean up from but did not help in preparing, because I am lazy and despicable. Then we settled down to drink some vodka we had brought with the Russians staying also in this tiny hotel. There were three Russians and one Buryati man. The woman who ran the hotel said they were cheerful and fun and worked as electricians on the island. They certainly were not boring, and at first things proceeded normally (jovial Russians make girls in our group uncomfortable while we sort of simultaneously have a good time, though I am on edge because I cannot think of a way to be of assistance to said girls).

INTERLUDE: Our Setting

A brief description of our accomadations will be important very soon.

The hotel consisted of a hallway which ended at the door to the building on one end and a sort of sitting room (where we drank and carried on) at the other. There were rooms on each side of the hall, six total, the first two near the door being the kitchen and a small store, then four rooms (two a side), then the sitting room, then two more bedrooms branching off from it. We occupied the two rooms before the sitting room, three boys in one and three girls in the other. The other guys there occupied the rooms attached to the sitting room. The bathroom was, as is custom, outside.

PART II: In which the action of the story is framed by two bathroom trips

We had, after a short time, begun the process of extricating ourselves from our friendly comrades. Leaving a group of Russian men with whom you have been drinking is invariably a long process, exponentially increased by the number of girls in your party. I went outside to the bathroom, figuring the others could uneasily mumble “No, we really have to go to bed now, we’re nothing without a good twelve hours of sleep.” over and over just as well without my help for a little while.

When I returned, progress appeared to have been made. Vanya and Joseph were in our room, and the girls were in theirs with the door shut. One Russian guy was watching TV. The others were no where to be seen, but I could hear some of them in one of their rooms.

Vanya quickly told me, looking a little confused, that Boris Andreivich was beating the shit out of the Buryati man. I, too, began to look confused. Joseph, clearly already on the adrenaline high we would all be joining him in soon, narrated in our language of broken Russian and charades that the Buryati guy had been talking about drinking more with them (Vanya and Joseph), when, for no apparent reason, Boris (about three hundred pounds and probably the friendliest-seeming, up till now) had arrived and driven him into the room the two of them shared with enormous punches to the face.

We moved into the sitting room in an attempt to sureptiously watch. The Russian there watching TV, one of two brothers so far not involved, was blase. I could see this Buryati guy, himself LARGE, richoceting off his bed and wall as Boris laid into him. Joseph reported that his jaw was sheeted in blood. We soon returned to our room, and things quieted down.

At this point, we heard a low growling noise, loud but distant. It sounded like it was in the yard or next door somewhere. It went on for a little while without us really acknowledging it (I thought to myself “haha, now there’s a chainsaw noise somewhere. what a creepy coincidence”). Then the noise cut out. For about two minutes.

When it came on again, it was clear that this chainsaw was not running in the yard or next door. It was in the next room and moving through the building in our direction. Our door, perhaps a third of the way open, displayed a very surreal picture. Boris backed past it, hands out in front of him, in kind of a fighting crouch. Probably ten inches from his amble belly followed a running chainsaw, and following that came the shirtless, blood-covered Buryati manning the chainsaw. We watched, open-mouthed, in extremely honest shock.

Then they went down the hallway, towards the door to the outside. Joseph and Vanya and I all looked at each other. Joseph said something like “Hey did you guys just see that guy with a fucking chainsaw?!” I put both hands on my head in a hilarious half-mock display of comic panic and said, hoping for a laugh, “I don’t have this merit badge!”. Vanya remained calmly sitting on his bed, regarding us. Somehow, without seeming to discuss it, we decided to join the girls in their room (the door was still closed), there to barricade ourselves and perhaps make a plan.

My first thought was “passportwallet”, and my second, as I stuffed the first into one pocket was “where are those damn batteries I just bought?”. So I took my backpack too, with my CDs and player and new batteries. The three of us hustled down the hall – I don’t even remember if the Russians were still inside or not – and got the girls to let us in. We locked the door and began to speak English.

We debated how easy it would be to kick out the window, how to break the headpieces into our beds into weapons, whether or not the drunk chainsaw-weilding Russians would recognize our neutrality, where to go if we did successfully flee, and so on. All the while shouts and chainsaw roars continued outside (they were definately in the street in front of the house by this time). I reflected that it was nice to be breaking the Language Pledge for an actual emergency, and babbled on about organizing ourselves into the proper formation to bash attacking drunk chainsaw-murderers in the head with panks of wood.

After probably ten minutes, the sounds of fighitng stopped. I don’t remember the specifc order of events, but one of the two brothers came and talked to us, telling us things were alright. We got the impression that he and his brother had been trying to break up the fight. Periodically, shouts and sounds of a scuffle would resume, and then subside. Eventually the Russian guy left and Joseph went out to use the bathroom. Upon his return, he informed us that the end of the hallway by the door was covered in blood and Boris was cleaning up with a mop. The Russians claimed the Buryati guy had been subdued and was now in his room, unconscious or passed out.

I went to the bathroom this time, seeing only an ominously bare hallway slick with mopwater. Opening the door, I almost had a heart attack because Boris was there, smoking a cigarette and looking into the dark street. Also because the front stoop looked like the deck of an industrial fishing boat after a big haul – that’s the only analogy I have been able to supply myself for the amount of blood.

I went to the bathroom. When I returned, Sonya fairly forced me to drink some water. I had felt okay when I left the room (indeed I would characterize my feelings as excitement punctuated by little spikes of real terror throughout the experience), but I was pretty freaked out after that porch, and apparently looked it. I had also heard moans and yells coming from the dark in the street.

PART III: Aftermath

After this, the two Russian brothers, their hands and pant legs splattered with still more blood, periodically visited us. It was clear that they were still thinking primarily about getting a little, which is insane, but we stonewalled them (this is something that you pick up pretty quickly in Russia). All that means is that everyone keeps talking while you wait for them to get it through their heads that no one here wants to sleep with them. Then they cynically leave. This is what happened. It was about two in the morning at this point (I think this all started around ten or ten-thirty?) and we all agreed that things had been quiet for long enough that everyone felt good going back to their rooms.

Vanya and Joseph and I talked awhile, pretty predicatable unwinding stuff. Joseph and I eventually elected to go investigate the street (I had heard those moans and Joseph had actually talked to someone, but it had been too dark and the other guy too drunk for Joseph to understand him). We wandered around at the edge of where the light from the porch gave out for a little while, calling out, before our nerve deserted us and we fairly scampered back in side.

Then we went to bed.

Other stuff happened, but nothing that really rates, considering. The next morning we went on a little microbus trip around the island, looked at scenery, and talked to this Australian/British couple there with us. Sunday we came back. The end.

P.S. The next night the three Russians told us that the Buryati guy was okay, and had left. Who knows if that’s true? They were pretty subdued but we avoided the hell out of them anyway.

Fraz Needs a Hug

Ok, I’m prefacing this by saying that, on the whole, I love it here, and I do not regret coming. That being said, this is not Disney World, and my stay has been less than perfect. This post will be dedicated, then, to everything bad that has happened to me thusfar.
Now, thanks to Miles, you all know about Saturday. and I’m more or less OK with it. I was so completely blackout that it’s difficult to feel that embarrassed, since I have absolutely no recollection of doing anything, and, let’s be honest, I’ve drunkenly hit on girls a lot uglier than Miles.
What I did not like about Saturday was the monster hangover I had on Sunday. Actually, no, I take that back, the hangover wasn’t even that bad. It’s only distinguishing feature was that it strangely continued into Monday. I had to get up early on Monday to talk with Teruca (our coordinator) and attributed it to this. Still, it was a strangely persistent hangover, and I was getting these weird pangs in my stomach.
Come noon, I was still feeling kinda blugh, so I decided to go for a run, since normally a little bit of exercise does a lot to cure a hangover. The run was impossible, I felt terrible through the whole thing, even afterwards, when you usually get that satisfied feeling, I just felt gross. I also cramped up all over my body, like, every muscle that I have wanted to be stretched. I attributed this to the cold, and after I took a shower, I seemed OK.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, except for the fact that I kept getting these stomach pains, and they kept getting more intense. They weren’t unbearable, though, and I had an interview for an internship at five, so I sucked it up and went. The interview went pretty well, except for the last five minutes when I started swooning, and when the guy asked if I was OK, I couldn’t say anything except “No, not at all…” He basically had to push me to the nurse’s office (this is at a high school) because I can’t see anything and I’m dizzy, so I lay down there for a bit, we joke about how this is only supposed to happen in movies, and I walk home.
Home isn’t that far away, like ten minutes, but like twice on the way home I have to actually stop and sit down because when the stomach pains come, I can’t do anything but wait them out. I finally make it home, explain to the two ladies I live with that I’m actually sick, and ask if they have any pepto bismol. Now, I would expect Pepto Bismol to be a pretty much universal thing, but they just stare at me blankly, so I try and describe it, and they both start nodding and go “Ooh, manzanilla!” Ok, I think. Manzanilla = Pepto Bismol. Not so. Manzanilla is tea. Fucking tea. What the hell? I’m in a major city, not Siberia, I will have none of your folk cures!
I try again, trying to cognate my way through it. “Antacida?” I meekly try. Blank stares. They thankfully decide to take me to a pharmacist, and I try and describe what I want, and the pharmacist goes “Oh, antacido,” and I’m like “yes!” and the women are both like “Oooh, antacido.” Really? Is gender that important to you? You couldn’t bridge the gap there? Well, if nothing else, a good grammar lesson. I get some pepcid, and while the next two days are still pretty unbearable, I’m at least not in unbearable pain, and my ladies totally made up for their earlier ignorance of Pepto Bismol by pampering me very nicely during my convalescence.

But that’s not all! Last night, I was out with Miles and Jer and the Lizzes, and we had a good time, didn’t even get that drunk, but when I’m walking home (ironically because I didn’t wanna pay the eight euro cover charge to get into some salsa club) some “drunk guy” bumps into me for two seconds, and afterwards I have no cell phone. What the fuck? What really pisses me off about the whole situation is that it’s not like I’m some ignorant country bumpkin who got taken advantage of, I’m super paranoid about pickpockets, and I’m almost always on guard. I even saw this guy and braced myself, but his fake drunk fall concealed what was a pretty aggressive move on his part; he basically grabbed me and shoved his hand into my pocket. He left my keys, though, so I appreciate that courtesy.
This little incident let me finally understand white flight. Before last night, the city was all sunshine and butterflies and I was like “who wouldn’t wanna live downtown, where you’re close to the Opera and the nightlife and everything is beautiful,” but now my Texanness has kicked in, and I actually caught myself this morning thinking “Dallas really is the perfect plan for a city, because you can live far away from all the fucking thieving gypsies, and just drive in whenever you wanna go somewhere.” I’m kind of ashamed but not really. I know I’m really lucky since this is such a minor incidence, but it just kind of makes you bitter about humanity in general.
What really pisses me off is that he stole a shitty prepaid cell phone with no minutes left on it, so he basically inconvenienced me without really gaining anything for himself. It’s like a net loss for the world. It only costs like thirty euro to get a new one, but I’ll have to put my numbers back in, tell everyone my new number, etc.
Which allows me to segue pretty smoothly to my last point: yeah, it’s thirty euro, but that’s actually a ton to me right now. I know everyone makes fun of me for bitching about how “poor” I am, but I really do have almost no disposable income, which is hardly a big deal at Middlebury, but here you can’t do anything without spending some kind of money, and it’s really killing me, no matter how stingy I’m trying to be. This cell phone? That’s almost like, two weeks worth of spending, and I honestly need every penny I have. Part of me almost hopes that second semester I don’t make any friends, because I probably won’t be able to go out at all anyways.
Bleh.

And again, to clarify, this is just kind of all my concentrated Madrid beef. I’m really not this pissed off, but I needed to vent, and it came out in kind of this distilled bitterness.

I need sleep.

The Battle of Lechfield lasted me all night, and much of the morning. I had two other mid-terms, and I just finished class now. It's 4:15pm. I'm not going to bed until 6:00pm, because I don't want to wake up at 4am and be completely rested.

And, as miserable as it feels, there's something to be said for not having slept for a whole day and a half. You feel pleasantly buzzed, but without saying stupid shit. I was just in Russian, and I'm pretty sure that Sergei thought I was drunk in class.

I also just sent out the emails accepting and rejecting people. As much as I disliked some of the applicants, I still feel bad rejecting them, you know? They may be crying now, and I'm not okay with that. I'm glad to hear that you want to join, Eddie. And the paper was for "Making of Europe." Also, glad to know you'll be back in the spring.

Miles, how do you like the internship?

Fraz, where are you?

I need to stay up for another hour and a half. But then, I'm gone.

--gs

oh man

so i was reading gabe´s newest blog, procrastinating from my own assignment which is due in less than two hours and thought, hey why not waste more time telling people about it. its for an econ class on latin american development. i was simply going to go to the middlebury school, print out the paper and go to my spanish school all with plenty of time to spare. but after reading my paper, i realized not only was it shit, it was also flat wrong. so in the last hour i have typed like a madman (getting some weird looks from people in the computer lab) and rewritten my 3 page essay. i thought that was damn impressive--though ten pages in one night is better, i concede.

anyway, i haven´t seen fraz since we went to see "funeral de muerte" literally translated as "funeral of death" which i thought was funny. its supposed to be that english comedy "death at a funeral" but apparently something was lost in translation.

hah, gabe, you and your silly major changes. twenty bucks says you change it again to psychology or international studies cuz that´s the only department where your riffraff of classes will all fit. also, i´ll bet you made one of those life schedules yet again planning out every detail until you graduate. ok, they were impressive freshman year, but now that´s just 3 semesters more--shit isn´t that scary? ok gotta go.

miles

The Battle of Lechfeld and Contemporary Historiography.

Thus is titled my paper for tomorrow. It's 10-pages long. Have I begun it? No. It's 1:35am and I'm going to be up all night. Yet I write on this blog.

Did I tell any of you? I switch my majors, again, 'cause that's how I roll. Double: PSci/History. So here I go again.

Anyways, I started up this Committee for Balanced Debate, through the SGA. I (and others,) felt that there was insufficient coverage of ides on campus: there'd be one speaker giving one viewpoint, but we'd never hear the other. Like last year, when we invited Chris Murray (author of "The Bellcurve,") and had him tell us why having given minorities more opportunity to go to college was a bad idea, but didn't have an opposing viewpoint. One could easily say "well, the opposing view is clear enough," but it really isn't, not after you heard what he had to say.

So our (at this point, my,) ideas are these:
1. Get one huge DEBATE, with outside speakers, once a semester. Focus on a single issue. Have students moderate it, introduce questions.

2. Get two faculty debates a semester (not panel discussions.) An idea I heard today: have someone from the Psychology department debate someone from the WAGS department on whether gender is biological or social. Kind of eh, but an interesting starting point.

3. Student open forums, focused on an issue. Hopefully it'll get really intense and people will start throwing chairs at each other because someone mentioned "the Islams."

4. Balancing lectures with opposing lectures, like, the week after. Like the Chris Murray example.

So I interviewed like 30 people today. I though I was going to die. Especially the ones who were there for no reason other than to waste my time.

I also had a Debatable Editor's meeting tonight, which I'm part of this year. I'm the "Political Editor," which I think is awesome.

And I was just at the Grille, and was talking to Dave and Sid and Rohan, and thought about Eddie's eternalest of questions: would you give up your sex drive if it meant you never had to sleep again? I mean we really THOUGHT about it. And the answer is "Oh my God, of course, in a heartbeat, rightnowwhere'stheoperationtableomygodplease.

I really have to work now.

--gs

(I'm so caffeinated.)

despite what you may think, Gabe, i do enjoy reading your blog becasue at times i get homesick and i can live viscerally through you--also you are a much better writer than me. however, i agree that more posts are necessary thus here.

today was hell. i have never spent more time on public transportation. it was ridiculous. my internship started today, and they had me go all over the city interviewing people to create a guide book or something. oh yeah, i´m doing an internship, its with a non profit organization that helps immigrants start small businesses. i figuered i should protect my sould before i go into the banking world and forever damn myself until i turn philanthropist.

not much to report about in terms of class. oh yeah. so Liz chinloy and i saw a doctorate thesis presentation at my college. it was a failure and i do not believe the poor guy got to change his title to dr._______. oh well, just 3 years or so down the drain, no big deal right. wrong the guy was like 60 so i felt even worse.

i´m also taking this class called international organizations. i bought the textbook, so i probably wont end up going to that class.
also, mi clase de...yeah that´s spanish sorry, my linguistics class is 4 people, me the lizzes and leah skahen. oh well, at least i´ll learn a lot.

fraz and i are very close to the point of having you, gabe, break into that family´s house and retrieve west wings being that we miss america and are further missing out on the presidential race which i´m sure is fascinating. although i do not support hillary, i recognize her majesty.

that´s about it. eddie i´m really glad you will be back in midd for spring, you made my day. however, maybe you should take some normal classes, cuz who´re you going to party with if you´re the only one awake? see ya soon guys--no actually not that soon but later than soon so see you later--dudes.

So today I got my changing-how-long-I’m-gonna-stay form from Elisabeth, our RC. I decided a little while ago to come back for second semester, but was planning to keep it a secret from all my friends at Midd – indeed I’d already revealed this plan to Miss Jones and Mr. Bestor, soliciting their discretion. The point of this plan was to make everyone happier to see me by surprising them, to REALLY surprise them, and to generally pull off a stunt.

I’ve chosen not to do this cause it’s too hard. I’m not sure why but, the idea of telling all my friends at Midd I’m not coming back for sure, and making them sad, is too difficult, and I don’t think I’ll be able to keep that secret anyway – I’m too excited!

I’m really looking forward to next semester. Mainly because the last semester at Midd was so great once the Arockening got going, and I am making it my declared intention to make (or to continue) the Arockening every day operating prodecure. This will be enhanced by the fact that, for my first time ever at Midd, I will NOT be taking a class that meets every weekday morning. I will be taking as many history seminars as possible, and the results of this will be numerous and universally positive.

1-It will be so much fun. Nothing is more fun than history seminars. It will be exactly what I want to do.
2-I will be learning exactly the kinds of things I want to be learning.
3-It will be what I should be doing, academically.
4-It will easy.
5-It will provide a ridiculously flexible schedule. This will facilitate lots of rocking out, Arrested Development marathons, Dota marathons, spontaneous trips to the Burlington Denny’s, crazy parties, and so on. The overall, and most-anticipated, aspect of this, however, will be that I can completely re-arrange my sleeping schedule, and make an utter mockery of the hours normal people keep. Not only will I stay up all night QUITE OFTEN, and then make up for it in numerous moderate-length day-naps, I will strive to keep no order of any kind. I will sleep when I am tired, and only then. I will pull sufficient feats of staying-up in order to keep this as uneven as possible. Also, I will be able to work at 3 am a lot, which, despite my own incredulity, is my most productive time of “day”. Last semester, which included perhaps two weeks’ worth of all-nighters, was my best semester by a comfortable margine.

ANYWAY, what about Russia?! Today I went to class and ate pozi, which are the national buryatski dish. I’ve had them a few times before. They’re meat-balls wrapped loosely in dough and boiled. You get this, like, dough-bag with meat in it. You’re supposed to bit a hole in it and suck the hot meat-water out, which I am less a fan of. But I like eating them a lot.

I think we’re going to some island on Baikal this weekend? There we will probably drink vodka while banya-ing. A sauna but with steam and you hit each other with tree-branches/bundles of some certain kind of leaf. Quiet, mellow Vanya is quite the dominatrix, I can assure you. Also you usually jump in Baikal after this. Baikal’s going to be pretty damn cold by next weekend, but it was pretty damn cold all those other times we jumped in it after sitting in hot little banya rooms/hot springs, etc.

The weekend after that, we have another break – the whole week of October 29th to November 2nd, plus the weekends around it and that last Monday (cause we never have class on Mondays). I’ll be spending it in Petersburg, which I’m turrible excited about.

I bougth toothpaste today! Hoo-ray! Given the responses to my toenail-details (heh!) I won’t explain just how rarely I engage in dental hygeine. Hint: rarely!

Did I tell everyone I fought a volume of Nietzsche in Russian? I bought it but have yet to make an attempt to read any of it. The best part though is that I found it in a train station bookstore. No Stephen King or Michael Crichton for the Russians, видно.

I am really, really starved for history. None all summer (usually I pick at a book or two), and none this semester. I only have one short little Napoleon biography with me (though it IS a good one), and I've already read almost all of it by nipping around here and there for so long.

Still at Middlebury.

My posts can never be as... what's the word?... good, as yours. I'm not in Madrid. I'm not in Siberia. I'm not in China getting censored and not being able to post, I'm in the Land of the Bread Loaf. Which is quite a ridiculous name, now that I think about it. Any word, if you think about it will begin to sound ridiculous, but place names especially.

Anyhow,

WHEREAS I now have an iPhone and it's possibly the most amazing thing ever ever, and
WHEREAS I have joined, like, sixty things now that yous guys aren't around to pass afternoons, and
WHEREAS I live my abroad time viscerally thru all a' y'all,

LET IT BE RESOLVED that you must all post more frequently. Eddie has done a goode job with this.

LET IT FURTHER BE RESOLVED that you should all remain intact while abroad, so that we can come back and watch three more seasons of the West Wing, which I've watched and none of you have and that should be fixed because while Season 5 is middling at best the last two are returned their former glories. Eddie, again is exempt, since he doesn't love America. obviously.

Furthermore, Hepburn 5 is fun. We each have our little (actually mid-sized,) cellars and interact with one another often. The salt shall be missed, but we'll manage. ditto for trays. Juice at dinner has been eliminated as well, and there are bills in the SGA Senate that would demand more and better washers and dryers, as well as free washing (but more expensive drying.)

One thing I do not regret about staying is my ability to follow the 2008 horserace oh-so-closely. Is Fraz in the missing of that? It's getting exciting, simply because everyone is floundering (this time, it's for real, say the scientists,) except Her Majesty, as I'm sure she poisoned everyone else's entire staffs, and she now leads in Iowa, NH, and SC and nationally by about 30 pts., she's broken the 50% barrier in most polls.)

Anyways, I'm also glad you guys are abroad b.c. this semester I can't "work secretly" as I've always done. I really do need to work a lot, so there would be little opportunity for me to say "you'll go to bed 5 minutes later."

So on that note, I'm going to watch an Arrested Development. ciao.

But seriously, I hope you guys are loving it.

college hilarity

although we have been going out regularly here in lovely madrid, it has been a while since we really went out college style. that is to say, when one enters the night of madrid one usually goes to a tapas bar orders a copa of wine or beer and proceed to bar hop until 4 in the morning where traditionally we have ended up at the chocolateria which is a place open incredibly late (or early who knows) where they serve melted chocolate and churros. anyway, i, tired of such nonsense, decided to host a true college party at my apartment. luckily, my two flatmates were out of town being that one is a douchekill creepy guy while the other is way to good looking and suave to be allowed around drunk friends. exorbitous (is that a word i don´t know)amounts of alcohol were bought and lizz shapiro bar tended. long story short everyone got hammered in a period of less than two hours.

we then proceeded to go out. i feel it is my duty to tell of the further tales of the evening being that i am one of the only ones who did not completely black out. one such story is as follows. some of us really had to pee, like badly, like public urination badly, and we did. we stumbled into some dark back alley and did the business. (im not sure who all is reading this so i will spare the details, suffice to say that we almost got killed by a homeless guy or something/someone who yelled at us and chased us away. what else. oh, so fraz was the drunkest i´ve ever seen him, and the funny part was that he walked home alone through madrid traffic and everything without making a complete idiot of himself--shocking right. actually i take that back, fraz did something very funny, he hit on me. being that i am a nice person i did not lead him on falsely, just ditched him to go pee.

there is much more to that night which i´m sure will come back to me however, there are many people who´s honor i do not wish to violate, only my own and fraz´s, so i will leave you all here with a final note. COOOOLLLLEEEEGGGGEEE.

Today was a nice day in Russia! I got up at two in the afternoon (barring a few earlier trips to the bathroom!) because I had had a Legitimate College Experience the night before, of the type I powerful miss. I stayed up until five in the morning on the internet, talking to people about games and science fiction and who was and wasn’t a dick. The cherry on top was foraging for junk food at four am (COLLEGE!) and finding some! Also, it had a nice “you’re in RUSSIA” twist to it, since the junk food were these little fried dough cake things that I slathered in honey. And now there is honey on my pants, since I willingly wiped it there. Less cool is the fact that my Russian host-sister remarked to me skeptically, and jokingly that I had been wearing these pants for a while. Russians wear clothes more times between washings than Americans, in general. But I have broken even them! Victory! My pants actively smell. We are reaching “I stink too much by my own standards so we have to change soon” – but that just means all is as it should be.

Anyway I got up and ate something and went to see Leonya. I hung with him a bit, we listened to music (a group he has recently discovered called “The Horse Cock Kids” – and the songs are even better than the name! and Tom Waits, one of his favs), and then we went to visit his aunt, who is Natasha’s host mom. That was the first time I had visited a kid here on our program in their host-house (except Lucy, of course, who lives with Leonya). Sonya’s family is never home (except when they stop by to ask her incredulously why she isn’t in a night club), Joseph has just an old babushka who weighs him every week and gives him самагон (moonshine) and drinks with him.

Anya arrived hot on our heels, and we sat around being hilarious and gross in Russian for like four hours while we trank like six gallons of tea each. Then there were lots of jokes about being full of tea which wanted to be freed and having to pee very often. I sort of brought down the house by grossing everyone out with the story about how I like chewing on toe and fingernails so much I salivate at strangers who have longs, and how I spent like a week working on my big toenail, which Dr. Daniels gave to me after he pulled it outta my foot. That coversation went something like this:

DR. DANIELS: (enters) All right, everything's good. Here's the nail – some people are biters! (he winks – he is a jovial, friendly man)

EDDIE MCCAFFRAY: (sitting on examination table – he is unsure if DOCTOR DANIELS is joking or not) Heh heh . . . thanks. (he decides that, regardless, he will begin to consume said toenail in the car on the way home, while listening to FRANK ZAPPA'S song «FLORENTINE POGEN» which includes a delicious driving RYTHYM GUITAR, and some COOL SOLOING – and also NAPOLEON MURPHY BROCK provides and ENJOYABLE VOCAL PREFORMANCE)

EDDIE MCCAFFRAY: (in MOTHER'S tope-colored mini-van, hurridly crams TOENAIL into MOUTH, drooling like PAVLOV'S DOGS and singing along badly with FRANK and NAPOLEON) SHE WAS THE DAUGHTER OF A WEALTHY FLORENTINE POGEN – DA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NAAAA!

CAR SPEAKERS exeunt

Then we wandered around downtown for like twenty minutes. There were fireworks and also some music, since today was the 70th anniversary of the Irkutsk Oblast (or something like that). Then Anya and Leonya and I returned домой.

Now I am listening to Dispatch's live album «Gut the Van» - it's really great (not that this is news to me). Some people may not like the overly-slick «college» lyrics (and they have occasionally grated on me), but mostly they're average, with a few moments of what is probably genius or something close to it. I am sorry they do not present the lyrical mastery present in such recently-popular works as «Candy Shop» (I am all too afraid that Fifty Cent really would allow me to «lick the lolly pop»). As for their groovable, meolodic, and emotional playing . . . I don't get who doesn't like that. It's not the most complex thing out there, that's for sure, but it's put together so dammed well. There are a lot of moments on both discs that really floor me.

I thought about a lot of mildly-funny ways to coyly warn people about this entry. But instead I opt for bluntness. Mild-mannered bluntness is also a common form of humor, after all.

So, friends and relatives, if you don’t want to read about hemorrhoid-related experiences, don’t read this.

Hi how are you?

Anyway, so digestion has not really been going that well over-all here in Russia. Usually it hasn’t really been bad enough (I thought) to use the pills I brought with me, and like a lot of minor medical inconveniences I’ve experiences, I just elected to wait it out. A good other example of this, for anyone interested, is of course my recent in-grown toenail experience.

And then we had our trip. There were really no good places to go to the bathroom in the way that relates to this story (of course I could find places to pee – and puke while trying to get a fishbone out of my throat one evening) so I did what I spent all of public school doing. I just held it until I got home. Except this time it was like four days. Anyway I didn’t really feel bad. But when I got back and relieved myself, I was saddled with the above-mentioned affliction. Which is terribly difficult to spell.

So I started doing what Dr. Daniels told me to do the other time I had one. Lots of short, warm sitz baths, sitting on hard stuff, and trying not to eat anything particularly troublesome. I did not want to tell my host family about my troubles, both because I don’t like announcing the presence of hemorrhoids (other than writing about them in blogs I make everyone read – errrr) but even more importantly because the oddness and moderately uncomfortable nature of my previous run-in with Russian folk-medicines. I did not want a lot more jam-tea, or to become better aquainted with the heat-lamp. Little did I know I would instead become better aquainted with various Russian medical personnel all too soon.

So I did these things, and stuff seemed to be about even. Occasionally I thought I might be improving, other times I thought the opposite. There was no large change until Saturday when I started bleeding. That was a change! I was displeased.

On a related note, I had had a great victory with Joseph the night before when we actually managed to find, and drink in, a bar. It was a nice bar we found despite the fact that I had forgotten the directions Leonya had given me (he reccomended it). They have horse-sausage there, at least it was on the menu, but the waitress said then they didn’t have any. And in any case Joseph had eaten dinner already and didn’t feel up to it – and it was listed as four people. So we drank beer and vodka and ate those little salty beer-snack things that make you want more beer and I ate some tasty ribs and french fries and possible something else? No I don’t think so.

But then the next day I was bleeding in my boxers, so that took some of the wind out of my sails. The next day, when I woke up I felt very sick to my stomach and couldn’t keep anything I ate in me. Also no great improvements had come in the night, so that afternoon I confessed to my host sister. Keep in mind that some description was required, despite the fact that I had looked up “hemorrhoid” in Katzner’s – she didn’t know exactly what they were, in the same blissful innocence I remember. Also keep in mind that the only word for “butt” in Russian that I know (or knew at the time) is жопа, which is a swear-word. So my sister enjoyed that.

Then a doctor came to examine me, and we become very close friends. I was at least reassured that this doctor's examination was both probitive and hands-on. Also by the fact that this doctor was a woman of approximately eighty years. But she wasn't sure – not being a «specialist» - so we went to the hospital. It seemed to me she already had a pretty good grip of the situation, but what do I know? I rode in an ambulance, feeling moderately silly (I was just sitting on a chair inside), though the ambulance-driver getting fed up with traffic and using his siren not-very-successfully to make better time was enjoyable.

Then a fairly joial middle-aged male doctor got into the whole affair. He told me what I had been doing was exactly wrong, so I have spent the last two days lying in bed. Which is not that bad. Also I recieved a cream. Things already seem to be improving. No one should worry. Mom.

I'm hungry!

Today was another day in Russia, but one of my most enjoyable “normal” days. In general, like you may have picked up, I’ve been bored and mopey for my home friends and family and general set-up. Our trip was a terrible amount of fun, weird both because things in Russia have been kind of slow, and also because it involved so much out-doorsy physical activity.

But today was just nice. Only have one class today, about Baikal. I paid slightly more attention than usual, cause it seemed like I was understanding a little more. I don’t like to think about that – I’ll just over-analyze what I get and don’t get, and trying to chart your progress or lack thereof is a good way to ramp up the emotional rollercoaster, already on overdrive from culture shock (which I also don’t like to think about for fear of over-analyzing).

So class. Then to Cafe Fiesta, where they have fruit juice, pretty darn good pizza (I like the one with tomatoes on it), and free wireless internet. Our home internet is not working now, so I was went with Lucy and Natalie and Sonya met us later. However, after about ten minutes of internet, it cut out (it’s kind of spotty), so I left just as Natalie and Sonya arrived.

“We” have “made” a Russian friend. There are so many quotes there because I am too cool to actively make friends (I passively make them –that’s not actually quite as conceited as it sounds, since what really happens is that I have a system that makes friends quite well without appearing to be trying, which is the secret of the whole thing. this mostly consists of ignoring people. scoff if you like. the bald truth is I have a ton of friends and made a lot of them this way). Also she approached us very enthusiastically, and Natalie and Sonya responded. So she walked around for a minute with us yesterday and today set up a hanging out thing for this afternoon. But then it got moved forward, adn I didn’t feel like going. So I went home, knowing that if Natalie and Sonya made friends with this girl, it wouldn’t be very hard for me to insert myself in this emerging circle later to a satisfactory degree.

At home I considered my trend of doing a ton of dorky Spacebattles things, made more dorky by the fact that I don’t have internet access. These things are about the most fascinating ones to me in the world, but I am equally sure you’d all be bored to tears with discussions about how to build which space battleships in what amount of time, desiging them optimally, figuring out supply issues, for God’s sake, and so on. Also I read more of The Stand – a delight, as always. It’s a mysterious, powerful book. And this is my holding myself back from turning this entry into one about The Stand.

Also finally moved the Boss from my external to my laptop, so I could listen to him. Been wanting to do so for several days now, but since I have to actually doing all this transferring my spontaneous phase-changes are a lot more clunky than they are with an iPod. Oh how I’m pining for my iPod. I mean friends?

Then I went to hang out with Leonya. We talked about my trip and then a little about music. Turns out he likes Primus, which is a band I’ve meant to inspect for a little while now, and finally got to on our trip when a kid let me use his iPod. They’re perhaps best described as “funk-metal” – extremely quirky, and their real claim to fame being their frontman, the virtuoso bassist Les Claypool.

This is not much about Russia. Anyway, Leonya’s Russian and we spoke Russian. I talked some to his mother, learned how to call Leonya a smart alec in Russian, he called me an asshole (swearing in from of his mother is our joke, since she always melodramatically scolds him and I go, whistfully, «мой сын» like she did once). Later we muttered «сука» and «сволыч» under our breaths at one another. Those mean «bitch» and «bastard», respectively. He's just a ton of fun, and I count him as one of my best friends. Anything I say about being bored or melancholy in Russia (which already seems of the past) doesn't apply to time spent with Leonya!

Also last night I talked to my family a fair amount. It was Mom's birthday, so I finally got to get a little drunk and have vodka! An hour or so of conversation with my host sister sobered me up – being in Russian.

It's hard to evaluate my language ability. I can spend several hours talking freely with Leonya and Anya and his mother, or about as much time with my family, or with the other American students here, or, apprently, with two Russian men who shared Natalie and Sonya's compartment on the train back from Ulan-Ude. Class is very hard though – Baikal and our mainstream history of course being hardest. Grammar and Conversation Practice are pretty easy, I guess. There are confounding variables of course – Leonya knows a lot of English, so I can always ask him how to say something, or he can tell me when a cognate I'm reaching for doesn't exist instead of just being confused. We American students have a sort of heavily-accented, translated-from-English, occasionally case-less or poorly-conjugated pig-latin secret language, and on the train Sonya usually answered the man's questions first. I could tell what he had asked only by compiling what I'd understood of the question with her answer.

But then again, Leonya is not constantly helping me along, and I understood some of what that guys said, and he understood almost all of what he said. It's hard to tell what part of my difficulty in class comes from language problems and what part comes from not paying attention (my favorite topics for thought when I'm not paying attention are, to be blunt: sex, killing muggers with broken bottles and bricks, Lords of Ether, whether or not I can understand the Russian I am currently not listening to, and what I'm gonna write about in my blog – please don't sign me up for counseling).

So it's hard to tell. Like I said above – I'm not trying to map and numerically-evaluate my preformance all the time. I'd just go crazier (sex bricks ether Russian blog)!

I feel like I didn't talk that much about Russia specifically in this entry. But hopefully my образ жизни is interesting enough. Anyway, you can read about Russia itself all over the place. Or ask Mom. Or be Mom, I guess. At least some of you reading can. I'm pretty sure I misspelled the word for «bastard» up there. That's not too important – I can say it REAL good. I really like riding around town in the little bus-taxi things, or the normal buses.

Oh, I remember! Tomorrow Joseph and I are gonna try to find a bar to drink beer in. We decided that we simply cannot be scared and sober all semester (alliteration!). Home by seven every night will, frankly, not learn me much Russian. Leonya suggested a couple, and I've seen a few others that looked interesting. He says most bars with live music usally have live music that isn't that good, and I'll I'm very choosy about what I buy and listen to, I've seen so little live music in my life that I find myself captivated almost every time I see living people on a stage making noises with actual instruments.

Don't worry, relatives who are reading this. I have rehearsed mugger-killing so many times in my head while staring placidly out bus windows at pleasant city scenery that I'm confident I could manage it even if I were moderately inebriated!*

Incidentally, I don't think I've mentioned sex or murder, even in such passive contexts, to very many of the relatives and family friends reading this before. Merry Christmas!

*The English subjunctive mood was here included exclusively for Gabe, who I miss trurrible fierce! No one else is allowed to draw pleasure from it.

Gotta write this fast, since I want to remember and relate as much as possible. Though I’d rather be reading The Stand – I’ve got it on my computer here and I’ve started my sixth reading! Muah.

So I haven’t updated in almost a week – gasp! This is because we had our big group trip, starting last Thursday night and ending early this morning (Wednesday). Everyone in the Middlebury program in Irkutsk went, so four Midd kids, five kids from other schools on our program, and our RC Elisabeth. It was up there with the Leonya visits in terms of amount of fun had so far in Russia.

We left at around nine Thursday night on a train for Ulan-Udey, a town whose size I am unaware of on the other side of Baikal from Irkutsk. It is a big part of the Autonomous Buryatski Republic there located. Russia has lots of different smaller units instead of our ubiquitous states – they have stuff like oblasts (fairly regular) which are divided into okrugs (if I’m getting this right). Also there are autonomous okrugs (very small) and autonomous republics (usually representing some nationality inside Russia). I may have gotten okrugs and oblasts backwards. Anyway it’s not that important to this story!

We spent all night on the train, which was fun except for I lost my quilt and was freezing once I finally tried to sleep which was late in the night, of course, so I was very tired the next day. We rolled into Ulan-Udey at like eight-thirty, met our guides (who were very funny, terribly athletic, and creepily lecherous by American standards – in other words, Russian), and then had two free hours which I used to sleep. Then we started our wandering around which began with seeing a big Lenin monument which consists of a replica of his head about the size of a small cottage on a pig pedastal. Though I am not a communist any more, I still have a soft spot in my heart for Lenin and like him, and if you think he was a monster than, as Garrison Keillor says “Hell to you and take an enema!”

After that we drove around (I liked that and listen to music) and say various religious sites of interest, like Buddhist temples and an Old Believer village/church. We also visited some cottage where like twelve old women lived with a young boy and girl. Here we listend to, frankly, an uninteresting lecture on traditional Russian peasant life, and ate. Eating is the first of our recurring themes on this trip. The second was shortly thereafter established, wherein Russians offer us any alcohol ranging from rum to vodka to moonshine vodka and Elisabeth, bless her soul, has to patiently explain that our new glorious program rule forbids us from drinking when the RC (her) is together with us (the students). What’s this supposed to accomplish, Midd? Tell me. Midd doesn’t even try to forbid us from drinking when we’re NOT with Elisabeth, which would of course be ridiculous. It really seems to me they’re forbidding the safest situation for us to drink in – which is also legal! Anyway. The third recurring theme was the creepy lechery, and it was represented in this situation when the babyshkas staged a mock marriage between Susanna and one of our guides. Let’s just say Russian standards for gender inter-relations are different, and feminism does not exist. I’m not going to rip on them for that – this is of course ridiculous. Behavior is taught. “Good” behavior is behaving the way you were taught to, which is what these Russians are doing. I will not back down an inch on this, despite the fact that I consider myself a feminist (and a staunch one). The point is that when American and Russian ideas about behavior in this sphere encounter one another, the result is often uncofortable (and admittedly, little more). Much the same with the word “nigger”, though I’ll talk about that later.

So other highlights included the all-day drive over terribly rough roads to the mounrtain we hiked up and swimming in Baikal (it was probably five or ten degrees colder than the coldest water I’ve ever been in before, making it high thirties).

The hike was really amazing. It ranks up there with working on that gravity drain in Guatemala as some of the hardest work I’ve ever done. It was about three or four hours up, often on rocky slops of forty to sixy degrees. I was coated in sweat when we reached the top, sore as hell (I still am!), and really enjoying myself. Listen carefully, children.

Then we ran back down it.

One guide hung back some with other people. The other one started literally running down those forty-to-sixty-rock-encrusted slopes, telling us to cut and leap as though we were skiing. He says to Natalie and I (after we’ve left the others behind) «полетели» - here meaning, «let's fly». That's exactly what we did. We fucking ran down that mountain in maybe an hour. I hit several trees. Natalie and the guide totally wiped out. The guide's wipe out came after we were most of the way down. Natalie and I are panting and going «Oh God» alternately in Russian and English, and he goes (quoting something? Possibly Брат Два) «Are you crazy? No, we're Russians.» And then he sprints off and leaps off this giant rock and crashes into the ground and shreds his pants.

The point is this trip almost killed me and was a crazy amount of fun. Also niether of our guides were sweating or breathing hard at any point on this trip, and they were both carrying heavy packs (I was carrying a light one, just my backpack). It was the most impressive display of physical endurance I have personally witnessed, and I know some serious athletes at Midd and knew some in the Boy Scouts.

Anyway that trip was a whole lot of fun.

In which Fraz learns the subtleties of Mediterranean culture

My prepaid cell phone sent seventy-five blank text messages to Miles this morning, and I’m not happy about that. Seventeen cents a text—I don’t even take the metro unless I absolutely have to. That’s not really an experience particular to Spain, but it’s on my mind anyways.

Here’s something particular to Spain: old ladies who love the monarchy. I was reading El Mundo, which is a more conservative paper, in the living room the other day, and the big, above the fold article is about these protestors who, during the King’s visit to Catalunya, burned his picture. Now, this was an event, and all the other newspapers covered it, but what was funny was that this paper gave it the most prominent section of the paper, and was absolutely livid that this could happen.

Now, I’m an American, as you may know, and the only monarchs I am at all familiar with are the British ones, who seem to be made fun of constantly, so I find this indignation on the part of El Mundo kinda funny. I turn to the old lady with whom I’m living (who I’m calling Rosa from now on, because any nominative phrase that refers to her is always far too long) and say something to the effect of “It’s so interesting to me that something involving the monarchy could spur a legitimate political debate.” Thank God I was that vague, because she shoots forward in her chair, her eyes burning with passion and her index finger gesticulating towards heaven, and starts going “Oh I know! You see, up in Catalunya, they’re all Republicans---but not like you’re Republicans that you have, they hate the monarchy! They say that Spain is a Republic, and that the king shouldn’t have political power, and that’s why they don’t want him to be the leader of the army any more.”

At this point, it’s important to know that, usually when I’m being spoken to, I continuously nod and stuff to show that I’m understanding. Nodding was the incorrect thing to do here.

“But no!” she says, responding to a particularly poorly timed nod. “The King is very important! He’s a national leader, he’s a symbol of unity!” and she keeps going on in that vein, while I’m all the while falling over myself, trying to correct my mistake, which I can’t do because I’m speaking Spanish and I don’t have that level of subtlety yet. But hey, I got no problem with the King. I’m an American, I love kings. Spain can totally have a king; the Republican flag is ugly anyways. I eventually get this point across (leaving out the fact that the main reason I think the King should stay is because I think it’s adorable) and she calms down, satisfied that I am adequately monarchist. This entire episode caught me off guard, though, since she’s really pretty progressive in all of her other politics, so her devotion to the King totally caught me off guard.


I don’t know why I was that surprised, though, since everything else about my experience in this house makes me feel like I’m living on the set of some movie. The apartment is one of those “Welcome to Europe,” belle époque buildings, with little balconies on the windows that look out at the (butter yellow) cathedral, and the interior windows are centered around a little courtyard, in which Rosa hangs the laundry out to dry. As she does so, she can talk to her sister, who lives on the floor above and actually does that thing where she throws the shutters open and says hello to you in the morning.

Lunch is an equally theatrical affair, since there is always at least one family guest, and oftentimes many more. The other day, we were eating with one of the daughters (like early forties) and a granddaughter (sixteen), and, since I had been to the bullfights the day before, the conversation turned to bullfighting. The daughter asked me what I thought of them, and I said something about how interesting it was so see a ceremony that had been around for centuries. This was apparently the right answer, since this woman was all about the bullfights, and she starts rhapsodizing. She is soon interrupted, however, by the granddaughter, who says that she can’t believe that they still have bullfights, and how fundamentally cruel they are. This, of course, sets off the daughter, who launches into an obviously oft-delivered rant, going on about how bullfight bulls live longer, more pampered lives than regular bulls, and how you can only be a hypocrite if you’re against the fights but eat meat, since on the whole the bull’s life is so much better. The granddaughter, in response, goes “Yes, but then it dies to the sound of…” and then she actually does the dramatic slow clap from gladiator.

I love them all.


Also, I feel the need to tag on here that we went to the opera last night, and because we’re under 27 and bought are tickets at the last minute, we got to sit in the center of the second row for 14 Euro a pop. Life is good.