Still putting off my homework. I miss being up really late on school nights here (usually I go to bed early because there’s not that much to DO, whoever’s fault that is). This is actually kind of a strange thing to say, since last weekend (we have three weekend nights because we don’t have class on Monday) I didn’t go to bed before four a single night, and that’s not really unusual. But I guess that’s why I said “school nights”. I very sincerely miss actual schoolwork. I really like writing papers and reading for interesting classes like history and philosophy and that Palestinian Lit course (even though I think most langauges have a more ornate poetic tradition than English, since all the foreign poetry I read I think is too syrupy-thick – or it’s just really impossible to translate poetry very well). I especially like writing papers real late at night. I miss my really hardcore productive all-nights from last year. God willing, I will soon repeat them.

But I sat down to write this ‘cause I just talked to my host father some. Mom was encouraging me to talk more to my host family, so I’ve been asking them who they like for the upcoming elections. This, combined with some other stuff I’ll talk about, makes me think my family is a little unusual. Keep in mind my group for comparison is very small – I’m just going based on what other people have said about their host families and stuff our teachers have said.

So my mom, who I asked first, said she wasn’t sure yet. She was gonna think more, but probably Putin, who she generally likes. My older sister said she wasn’t sure either, and then sort of seemed to take it as a matter of course that she’d vote for Putin too. This sounds a little different what other people have reported from their host families – the idea that my host mom was gonna think it over more surprised me, since a lot of Americans don’t do that (though Russia has a lot more viable choices – well, probably, I’m still not entirely convinced that Putin will outright tamper with election results, or that he’s in a postion to). Also most other people have seemed to say their families think of it as unimportant: “It doesn’t matter, we don’t really control anything like you do in America” seems like something I’ve heard from several people, like our teachers.

Then my dad said he didn’t think his vote made much difference – hey, buddy, now you’re speaking a language I understand. He told me the most coolestest anecdote ever. It’s a Russian sequel to that one about the fox and the crow with the cheese (“Wow you sing so pretty!” bird sings, drops cheese, i tag dalia). It goes like this:

Crow: crow is in TREE with CHEESE . . . eating CHEESE
Fox: arrives at TREE (insert relevant VERB of MOTION – a pod- GLAGOL, if I am not MISTAKEN, which I probably AM) Hey, didja vote for Yeltsin, or against him?
Crow: filled with PRIDE at PARTICIPATION in Russia’s new POLITICAL PROCESS “Yo! I totally voted for him!” KONYECHNA, CHEESE upals. “Chort!”
Fox: cyels CHEESE and IDYOTs
Crow: THINKING to SELF Well . . . what if I’d said no?

The point obviously being, that it doesn’t matter who you vote for. I guess this is a fairly normalish Russian view (though he didn’t draw an contrast to America). But then he talked a little bit about the Soviet Union. He said things were better now (kind of unusual, at least for what I’ve heard about other kids’ families?), but only a little, economically – we’ve already established he doesn’t think much of electioneering. He says that now, its easier to find things you want to buy: no waiting in huge lines, no going across town to find a store with whatever you want. But that a lot of stuff is so ridiculously expensive now you can’t afford it anyway. His example was also plane tickets. In Soviet times, families could afford to take trips for their kids to go skiing. He said he could go, in those times, on his salary and buy a ticket to anywhere in the USSR, round-trip, and spend a longish time vacationing wherever he was (I think he said a whole month!). Now, though, he definately could not afford that. And the best professional skiiers (maybe they’re not professional) in Irkutsk can’t afford a trip to some big ski conference or competition or something.

Interesting that Russians don’t give a shit about political freedoms. I don’t think they see a big difference between Soviet times (after Stalin anyway) when you could have whatever opinions you want as long as they were indoors and now, when you can have opinions. What’s more important, to them at least, is buying shit you want/need and so on. I dunno how I feel about this. I don’t have very much (any?) belief in my personal political efficacy and not THAT much in the difference between the parties (okay, actually this is less true. it doesn’t affect me directly, but the fact that gay people can’t get married? what the fuck is that? and while I may have some issues with huge amounts of public welfare now, it still makes at least as much sense to me as spending all our money on weapons that we only use to antagonize everyone so that we need to buy more). Ugh, I dunno. If your tradition is that you look out for you and yours by going around the government or through legal gray areas, and if your tradition is living in minor to moderate censorship . . . I can understand this outlook. It’s always obnoxious when some asshole right-winger with a degree in assholery writes a book about how the slav simply can’t understand freedom because he’s always lived in godless, backward totalitarianism not like Classical Athens and Western Europe and America. Who let’s these dickheads out of the Victorian period, anyway? I found a list on Wikipedia once of the ten most influential battles in history from some book. One of them was Valmy, so I was all tickled until I scrolled down and saw the list had Thermopylae because the Spartans saved Ancient Greece, cradle of freedom and truth and democracy and thinking and freedom and Monday Night Football and babies and puppies and baby puppies and blowjobs from the evil Persian Japanazi athiest rock and roll feminists. Then I saw the book was from like 1850 and by an English guy. I think there was even something about some battle from the Thirty Years War saving Western goodness from Papist fanaticism.

That was kind of a long rant. I really like that anecdote though.

Reasons why I am not a lot better at Russian than I was at the end of Language School, here being posted so I don’t have to explain them to everyone when I come back: I surf the internet a lot here (this is also why I have no money), in English. When I’m not doing that, I’m reading or writing in English and often listen to music in English. I think all these things are reccomended against in the Middlebury orientation literature. But I could’ve figured out by myself that these things were bad. I don’t spend much time on our homework (which is not that involving to begin with). Basically I make very little effort to actually learn Russian. Please don’t be surprised when I am not hugely good. But I still speak more Russian than you.

Also, like I’ve been saying: “Thick as a Brick” is NOT THAT GOOD. I love Tull – Bryce helped me get back in a little bit (so did Songs from the Wood on its own, some), and I take back some of the dirty/snotty thoughts I’d been having recently. But “Thick as a Brick” is just about my least favorite Tull album. No, it really might be my least favorite. Though my copy has a cool Ian Anderson/Martine Barre/Jeffery Hammond interview. I love these, there’s one on my Aqualung too. Big long, like, fifteen minute interviews. Though this one mostly seems like it’s about A – how little time Anderson spent actually writing the music and B – how gross the studio and cafe they ate at while recording it were. Perhaps all these detailed descriptions of gross food and dank basements taints my enjoyment of the album . . .

Gross food! Reminds me of how I was gonna write about my food/stomach issues. Even if I wanted to stay here for a whole year, I think I would probably just die from gastro-intestinal problems. I’d just sit down one day and shit out all my organs. Which might actually be a relief. Let me simply say that the initial period of . . . disruption that travelers are warned to expect turned out to, in my case, not be very “initial”. I think I’ve had problems, ranging from simple discomfort to other more discomfortable problems, for at least as much raw time as I’ve not had them. Plenty of the food is decent to good. But I get these terrible soups. I don’t know if this is normal, I don’t eat a lot of soup, but I’m getting a seemingly-random grab-bag (I guess you don’t have to say random if you use the expression “grab-bag”) of stuff: potatoes, noodles, and what seems like more pieces of chicken skin rather than actual chicken in water. Hot. The big problem is the watery-ness. It’s so watery! Agh!

Another problem is richness. Maybe other people usually butter their sausage-and-cheese on bread. I never say someone butter something and then put cheese on it before, though. Sour cream on mayonnaise on eeeeverything (though I shouldn’t complain, I manage to dodge both). My host father tried to get me to butter cookies today at tea. Grease. So much grease. Finish your broth (again maybe that’s usual for other people, but it’s terribly gross for me). And quantity. They force a lot of food on you. A lot. Forcefully. You don’t understand, trust me. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s more. And if you forget to eat bread or something, woa boy. They practically holler, and always very accusitorily, “And why aren’t you eating any bread!?” I just remember Homer telling Bart to butter his bacon and bacon his sausage. It’s like that. Also the most hilarious event is as follows:

Eddie: eats hurridly, like a fugitive, trying to cram everything into his mouth before the Food Gestapo arrive.
Mother: walks by, scoots PLATE of SAUSAGE closer to EDDIE
Sister 1: walks by, scoots PLATE of CHEESE closer to EDDIE
Sister 2: walks by, scoots BOWL of SOUP closer to EDDIE
Sister 1: walks by, scoots PLATE of SAUSAGE closer to EDDIE
Mother: walks by, scoots PLATE of COOKIES closer to EDDIE
Mother: walks by, again, scoots BOWL of SOUP closer to EDDIE
Sister 2: walks by, scoots PLATE of SALAD* closer to EDDIE
Father: walks by, exclaims “AND WHY AREN’T YOU EATING ANY BREAD, MY BOY?! HERE, PUT SOME BUTTER IN THAT TEA!” initiates CONVERSATION about SKI LIFTS with EDDIE
Mother: “And now the CAT isn’t eating enough! The CAT! Why aren’t you eating?! I gave you two pieces of meat!” notices EDDIE, scoots PLATE of SOUP closer to him “Would you like some (more) sour cream with your soup?” EDDIE has laid down his BREAD to eat some SOUP “And why aren’t you eating any bread?!”
Eddie: dies, exeunt EDDIE
Table: FALLS OVER, as entire entire CONTENTS have been successively shifted to one eigth its total SURFACE ARE
Cat: is in heat

None of this is made up. Mom told me to butter my tea today. She yelled at the cat for not eating enough.

*Russian salad consists of a whoooole lot of mayonnaise.