By the way, I think that's the first time I've ever written/said/thought "Midd."
Anyways, I was at Russian table, meeting the new TA and seeing Tatiana for the first time in far too long, and thought I'd make conversation by talking about Eddie and Natalie in Siberia. As I've already figured out far too many times, ridiculing Russians in front of Russians is no good way to make civil, happy conversation. But, again, I found myself ridiculing jam water, because, of course, it's ridiculous.
"What's wrong with jam water?" asks the TA, in English, I swear those were her exact words. I almost died right there.
So I try to move on, and comment on Natalie's host mother saying "Vodka cures anything. The other day, my leg hurt, and I rubbed vodka on it. It no longer hurts."
They all laugh. I think myself redeemed. So I push the envelope, as I am wont to do, never with good outcomes.
"Do they REALLY believe that, though? Do they REALLY think it works."
Everyone turns serious. Immediately.
Tatiana: "It does work."
I stayed quiet for the rest of the day.
--gs
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
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?).
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?).
OOOOOOO My Gahd!
Natalie also has a pretty hilarious blog, as it seams to be the thing when you go abroad to Absurdia.
http://nattikgirl.blogspot.com/
It's funny once you get past all the homoeroticism.
--gs
http://nattikgirl.blogspot.com/
It's funny once you get past all the homoeroticism.
--gs
La aventura de Fraz
I´m just going to start off by saying that Eddy totally wins. Conceding that, here´s my story.
Ok, so, in order for this story to work you have to realize that I´m probabl functionally retarded. Over the summer, I´d exchanged emails with the housing lady for Spain, and I´d kind of been on autopilot, figuring that everything would work out in the end. She said I had a family, and I kind of figured that everything was OK. Thing was, the last email that I got from her was one saying that she´d email me the address and phone number of the family, so I could contact them. So I waited. During my last weekend of summer vacation, I started to get a little worried, so I emailed her asking for the address. Problem: it´s the weekend, and apparently they completely shut down for that. So I get on the plane without knowing what I´m going to do, figuring, worst case, I can check in at the Sede and sort everything out. I also don´t tell my parents this, because I´m too embarrased.
Guess what? The Sede is CLOSED on Sunday! I figured there´d be one person there, but nope, it´s closed. So I ask my Taxi driver to take me somewhere to spend the night, and he drops me off in front of this sketchy hostel, with my three MASSIVE suitcases, and I´m all alone. While I´m walking the twenty feet to the door, this guy starts accosting me. At first I´m like, "bah, homeless man, just ignore him," but then he starts screaming "DUDE, I´M FUCKED UP!! JUST GIVE ME TWO EURO MAN" and FOLLOWING me. I´m freaking out, obviously, but feel ok when I get to the door. The hostel is on the third floor, and this guy follows me up the stairs and grab my arm. Now, keep in mind that I´ve been in Madrid for half an hour, tops, and I´m freaking out already because I have no home, and this is kind of the last straw, so I start screaming at him to leave me alone, swinging around my suitcases with all of my tiny fury, and he runs away. I guess he was just hoping to intimidate me and didn´t have any weapons or anything, and I guess I would have felt cool about this were it not for the fact that I was having a nervous breakdown. Anyways, the hostel is full, so I can´t use it, and I hail a cab. I´m pretty much done with this shit, and decide that I can spend a little extra for piece of mind, and so I get a hotel downtown.
This would be a horrible experience in and of itself, were it not for the added insult that when I went to the Sede the next day, to sort everything out, the housing lady shows me the email where she gave me the address. I thought it was just her signature and had ignored it. I hate myself.
Anyways, happy ending: I finally get to my house, and it´s freaking huge, and right in the middle of Madrid. It´s really old too, so it´s got high ceilings and cool floors and all that. The lady I´m staying with is really nice, and has the most massive crucifix I´ve ever seen in a secular building over her bed. She got minorly awkward when she learned I was a protestant. Her daughter got a little awkward when she learned I was a Texan, but now she loves me because my mom loves Jesus Christ Superstar. I know.
Oh, one more thing: I´m going to die from eating. For lunch yesterday, the first course was this creamy vegetable soup, and I had to finish it before I could eat anything else. She just sat there and looked at me when I put my spoon down. I was seriously afraid I was going to vomit all over her table. I mean, I know my food stories aren´t going to match Eddy´s, because this stuff is pretty normal, but I´m used to little Fraz-sized portions.
Anyways, life is good. I think I´m going to survive.
Ok, so, in order for this story to work you have to realize that I´m probabl functionally retarded. Over the summer, I´d exchanged emails with the housing lady for Spain, and I´d kind of been on autopilot, figuring that everything would work out in the end. She said I had a family, and I kind of figured that everything was OK. Thing was, the last email that I got from her was one saying that she´d email me the address and phone number of the family, so I could contact them. So I waited. During my last weekend of summer vacation, I started to get a little worried, so I emailed her asking for the address. Problem: it´s the weekend, and apparently they completely shut down for that. So I get on the plane without knowing what I´m going to do, figuring, worst case, I can check in at the Sede and sort everything out. I also don´t tell my parents this, because I´m too embarrased.
Guess what? The Sede is CLOSED on Sunday! I figured there´d be one person there, but nope, it´s closed. So I ask my Taxi driver to take me somewhere to spend the night, and he drops me off in front of this sketchy hostel, with my three MASSIVE suitcases, and I´m all alone. While I´m walking the twenty feet to the door, this guy starts accosting me. At first I´m like, "bah, homeless man, just ignore him," but then he starts screaming "DUDE, I´M FUCKED UP!! JUST GIVE ME TWO EURO MAN" and FOLLOWING me. I´m freaking out, obviously, but feel ok when I get to the door. The hostel is on the third floor, and this guy follows me up the stairs and grab my arm. Now, keep in mind that I´ve been in Madrid for half an hour, tops, and I´m freaking out already because I have no home, and this is kind of the last straw, so I start screaming at him to leave me alone, swinging around my suitcases with all of my tiny fury, and he runs away. I guess he was just hoping to intimidate me and didn´t have any weapons or anything, and I guess I would have felt cool about this were it not for the fact that I was having a nervous breakdown. Anyways, the hostel is full, so I can´t use it, and I hail a cab. I´m pretty much done with this shit, and decide that I can spend a little extra for piece of mind, and so I get a hotel downtown.
This would be a horrible experience in and of itself, were it not for the added insult that when I went to the Sede the next day, to sort everything out, the housing lady shows me the email where she gave me the address. I thought it was just her signature and had ignored it. I hate myself.
Anyways, happy ending: I finally get to my house, and it´s freaking huge, and right in the middle of Madrid. It´s really old too, so it´s got high ceilings and cool floors and all that. The lady I´m staying with is really nice, and has the most massive crucifix I´ve ever seen in a secular building over her bed. She got minorly awkward when she learned I was a protestant. Her daughter got a little awkward when she learned I was a Texan, but now she loves me because my mom loves Jesus Christ Superstar. I know.
Oh, one more thing: I´m going to die from eating. For lunch yesterday, the first course was this creamy vegetable soup, and I had to finish it before I could eat anything else. She just sat there and looked at me when I put my spoon down. I was seriously afraid I was going to vomit all over her table. I mean, I know my food stories aren´t going to match Eddy´s, because this stuff is pretty normal, but I´m used to little Fraz-sized portions.
Anyways, life is good. I think I´m going to survive.
hola amigos
hey whats up dudes. so we finally started orientation (no school yet which is fine with me). i have my own apparment which is pretty damn sweet except for the fact that i live with a 28 year old german who sounds a bit like the governator arnold schwartzeneger. he tries to speak english with me but i can´t stop laughing at him so i asked him to speak spanish for "immersion purposes".
so far we (fraz, lizzes, miranda and such) are all at a school now called sede prim. its located in an area that is known for two things: gays and blind people. (i have yet to see a gay blind person, though upon meditating on this fact i come to realize that it would be impossible for me to recognize one being that blind people can´t dress flamboyently. i saw one "trendy" as they are known here, with a purse dog, something i am used to becasue of hollywood´s obsession with that, but it is strange out of context and with a dude instead of a bleach blond babe.
on a completely opposite note, spanish girls are probably the hottest ever which makes me very happy, and that´s all i have to say about that.
what else, well, my eating schedule has been completely screwed up because spaniards insist on eating at the "civilized" hour of 1030 at night. due to jet lag and such i don´t think i´ve stayed awake that late yet, but i always manage to wake up in my appartement at around midnight to aromas of amazingness that seem to permeate my soul and haunt my dreams making my lack of food ever less bearable. speaking of spanish food, i haven´t quite acquired the taste for gallons of wine, whole pigs worth of sasuage, and a salad with no lettuce, but i´m hoping it will come in time.
so far we (fraz, lizzes, miranda and such) are all at a school now called sede prim. its located in an area that is known for two things: gays and blind people. (i have yet to see a gay blind person, though upon meditating on this fact i come to realize that it would be impossible for me to recognize one being that blind people can´t dress flamboyently. i saw one "trendy" as they are known here, with a purse dog, something i am used to becasue of hollywood´s obsession with that, but it is strange out of context and with a dude instead of a bleach blond babe.
on a completely opposite note, spanish girls are probably the hottest ever which makes me very happy, and that´s all i have to say about that.
what else, well, my eating schedule has been completely screwed up because spaniards insist on eating at the "civilized" hour of 1030 at night. due to jet lag and such i don´t think i´ve stayed awake that late yet, but i always manage to wake up in my appartement at around midnight to aromas of amazingness that seem to permeate my soul and haunt my dreams making my lack of food ever less bearable. speaking of spanish food, i haven´t quite acquired the taste for gallons of wine, whole pigs worth of sasuage, and a salad with no lettuce, but i´m hoping it will come in time.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Over at Middlebury.
So as I hear that everyone's having a great time, drinking jam water and living in lordly flats in central Madrid, probably overlooking the Palacio Real, and eating puppies, I thought I'd quickly let everyone know how Middlebury's doing.
Trays are gone. The dining halls have gotten rid of trays, because the eco-fascist Sunday Night Group decided it wasted too much water. At the SGA, we're now trying to see if they can at least give the trays out for tray sledding. It's a long shot, since someone apparently almost got killed last semester becasue they were "being reckless" and "crashed into a tree." Some are also floating ideas of making energy inefficient light bulbs illegal at Middlebury, similar to Christmas lights ("safety hazard.") Their reason? Carbon hazard.
Also, salt and pepper are gone. I'm not sure on whom to righteously blame this item, but, only because it fits me best, it'll also be the work of the hippies. I went into town, bought my own salt, and carry it with me to dinner. It's a ridiculous sight. And a minor work. Hepburn 5 is fun; I've found out that Dave Hu is afraid of ghosts, and so is Sid, although he manages to convince himself that they don't exist. I pulled my first all nighter this Sunday, and slept for 3 hours last night, because I'm taking 5 classes.
And the rest is the same, so, at least as of right now, you'll all come back to somewhere familiar, minus trays, salt and carbon. Except for Fraz, because it is bound to change more by next year.
--gs
Trays are gone. The dining halls have gotten rid of trays, because the eco-fascist Sunday Night Group decided it wasted too much water. At the SGA, we're now trying to see if they can at least give the trays out for tray sledding. It's a long shot, since someone apparently almost got killed last semester becasue they were "being reckless" and "crashed into a tree." Some are also floating ideas of making energy inefficient light bulbs illegal at Middlebury, similar to Christmas lights ("safety hazard.") Their reason? Carbon hazard.
Also, salt and pepper are gone. I'm not sure on whom to righteously blame this item, but, only because it fits me best, it'll also be the work of the hippies. I went into town, bought my own salt, and carry it with me to dinner. It's a ridiculous sight. And a minor work. Hepburn 5 is fun; I've found out that Dave Hu is afraid of ghosts, and so is Sid, although he manages to convince himself that they don't exist. I pulled my first all nighter this Sunday, and slept for 3 hours last night, because I'm taking 5 classes.
And the rest is the same, so, at least as of right now, you'll all come back to somewhere familiar, minus trays, salt and carbon. Except for Fraz, because it is bound to change more by next year.
--gs
Great! So this post is being written from my house in Russia because I found out we have dial-up and you can buy these little cards with roubles on them and pin codes and stuff to log-on. This is also how cell-phones and some house-phones work; they don't have much in the way of actual "plans". I kinda like it better? I dunno, I've never paid for an internet or cell-phone plan before so I don't have much of a standard for comparison.
Homestay: I have a host mom, a host dad, a host younger sister, and a host older sister. They are like 18 and 25, roughly? Mostly it's exactly like they told us it would be. They try to feed you ALL THE TIME, and most of the food is okay to good. You drink an amount of tea that makes any tea-drinking habits in the States you've ever encountered just seem sad. Every meal. Every single meal. Also between meals. And at things like, say, "events". They don't drink water. I was desperate for water and filling an empty pepsi bottle with water from the kitchen sink one night when my host father appeared and said to me "WHAT?! WHY ARE YOU JUST DRINKING WATER! HOLD STILL AND I'LL PUT SOME JAM IN THERE, MY BOY!" Then he did. As I stood there, he ladled a quantity of jam roughly equal in volume to Fraz into my bottle from a huge pot on the stove (I didn't think you cooked jam . . . ) Then we spent like ten minutes finding things to put water in so we could add jam. It was fun in a Twilight Zone kind of a way but I still have two liters of jam water under in a bottle under my desk.
We have a huge, huge, huge solid metal door. It has a big four-bar dead-bolt and a latch on it. Then we have another door with two deadbolts and a slightly smaller (only the width of my thumb) bolt. Then we have our last door. As far as I know, we never use the locks on that one.
I have my own room, which is nice. I spend most of my time in there reading books, because the lecture about strange ways to die (falling into open manhole covers, getting hit by ice, stepping on used heroin needles because I live in a bad heroin neighborhood, getting hit by ambulances which have been known to accelerate after pedestrians) included asking the police for help. Also it's not really safe to be out at night? Or drunk near people? This discourages me from living as though I were older than the age of 12. Home before dark. Read books. Do homework. Drink jam water with Dad while he explains his job where he makes tourist/sports centers? He talks ALOT about ski-lift design and business economics as specifically deal with ski-lifts.
At school they speak Russian all the time. It's not hard at all except for that. Even that's only hard in Siberian History (we can have like 20 pages of reading in these 7th grade history textbooks. even if my Russian was good, I still think I'd have to look up words like "cattle-herding" - though the word for "wooly rhinocerous" I was able to decode from context clues). Worst of all is the class about Baikal. This guy is not holding anything back and no one understands much of anything. We take the most hilarious notes that mostly consist of dates or numbers next to question marks (what happened then? is this how many tons of golomyanka nerpa eat every year?). Golomyanka are fish that nerpa, the earless seals endemic to Baikal, eat. Nerpa are one of the two really famous animals unique to Baikal. The other is a big tasty fish called omul. One day we learned a term than was defined as "a safe place for nerpa". Another day, trying to take notes based on the notes of the kid next to me, I looked over to see him studiously write "omul - delicious". He wasn't even smiling. I almost cracked up right in the middle of class.
We went to Baikal and saw nerpa in a way-too-small aquarium. Some of us ate omul. We went banya-ing. If you don't know what that is, it's where you sit in a little room and pour water on real hot rocks so that the room fills with steam. I actually thought I would die. Then you run into the lake. When we did this a week ago, the lake was 55 degrees. But it'll get colder. That part's fun. Also you drink tea (since this is an event) and take turns wacking each other with birch branches. Our RC told us you're really supposed to do it naked and rub honey on each other. Someone needs to alert the Frisbee Team to this; I think they'd like it. We also went to this town called Arshan were we drank vodka with these random boryati men who invited us to their table in this cafe-diner thing. We also went swimming in hot springs (Natalie complained that some guy kept watching us. apparently it was, like, awkward or something. we did manage to talk about it.) also we sauna-ed, which is the same except without steam and we jumped into a much warmer little indoor pool and this time we brought vodka. We had brought 3 bottles for two days for six people, so I figure that's decent enough.
That's probably enough for the straight event/situation-vomit. I miss Midd alot and all my friends. After the departure of the seniors at the end of last year and having to leave all the cool friends I made at Summer School, I'm actually considering making a drawn map of my friends. So I can remember them, and possibly begin a concentrated and life-long letter-writing campaign. You know those people who just have volumes of their personal correspondences complied and published and sold and quote after they die, just cause they're that cool? I could stand being one of those. I'm a little bummed because I don't actually know what to DO here. At college I was finally happy to admit that I didn't actually like extra-cirricular activities of any kind. I liked screwing around with my friends, being on the internet, going to parties (by which I mean our little dorm-room parties - those are the pinnacle of fun to me and I am only vaguley aware of what other people may regard as "actual" parties), and sometimes reading books. I liked doing history homework. That was what I liked. But here we have school, and we having being at home with your extremely-involved host-family, and we have transiting between the two while trying to remember to watch out for so many hazards they've warned us about that you start to think you're playing Frogger.
I think the trick is to actually just not be afraid. They pumped us full of all these reasons not to go out at night or do anything fun that is entailed by being a college student, or any young person, at home or abroad. So I just need to take some risks. Of course I won't. It's not like I'm dying to go clubbing or whatever, and I can't think of a lot else would require not being afraid to go out late at night or travel a little drunk to do.
Anyway, I hope you're all having a good time and you all better post or we're not friends anymore.
Homestay: I have a host mom, a host dad, a host younger sister, and a host older sister. They are like 18 and 25, roughly? Mostly it's exactly like they told us it would be. They try to feed you ALL THE TIME, and most of the food is okay to good. You drink an amount of tea that makes any tea-drinking habits in the States you've ever encountered just seem sad. Every meal. Every single meal. Also between meals. And at things like, say, "events". They don't drink water. I was desperate for water and filling an empty pepsi bottle with water from the kitchen sink one night when my host father appeared and said to me "WHAT?! WHY ARE YOU JUST DRINKING WATER! HOLD STILL AND I'LL PUT SOME JAM IN THERE, MY BOY!" Then he did. As I stood there, he ladled a quantity of jam roughly equal in volume to Fraz into my bottle from a huge pot on the stove (I didn't think you cooked jam . . . ) Then we spent like ten minutes finding things to put water in so we could add jam. It was fun in a Twilight Zone kind of a way but I still have two liters of jam water under in a bottle under my desk.
We have a huge, huge, huge solid metal door. It has a big four-bar dead-bolt and a latch on it. Then we have another door with two deadbolts and a slightly smaller (only the width of my thumb) bolt. Then we have our last door. As far as I know, we never use the locks on that one.
I have my own room, which is nice. I spend most of my time in there reading books, because the lecture about strange ways to die (falling into open manhole covers, getting hit by ice, stepping on used heroin needles because I live in a bad heroin neighborhood, getting hit by ambulances which have been known to accelerate after pedestrians) included asking the police for help. Also it's not really safe to be out at night? Or drunk near people? This discourages me from living as though I were older than the age of 12. Home before dark. Read books. Do homework. Drink jam water with Dad while he explains his job where he makes tourist/sports centers? He talks ALOT about ski-lift design and business economics as specifically deal with ski-lifts.
At school they speak Russian all the time. It's not hard at all except for that. Even that's only hard in Siberian History (we can have like 20 pages of reading in these 7th grade history textbooks. even if my Russian was good, I still think I'd have to look up words like "cattle-herding" - though the word for "wooly rhinocerous" I was able to decode from context clues). Worst of all is the class about Baikal. This guy is not holding anything back and no one understands much of anything. We take the most hilarious notes that mostly consist of dates or numbers next to question marks (what happened then? is this how many tons of golomyanka nerpa eat every year?). Golomyanka are fish that nerpa, the earless seals endemic to Baikal, eat. Nerpa are one of the two really famous animals unique to Baikal. The other is a big tasty fish called omul. One day we learned a term than was defined as "a safe place for nerpa". Another day, trying to take notes based on the notes of the kid next to me, I looked over to see him studiously write "omul - delicious". He wasn't even smiling. I almost cracked up right in the middle of class.
We went to Baikal and saw nerpa in a way-too-small aquarium. Some of us ate omul. We went banya-ing. If you don't know what that is, it's where you sit in a little room and pour water on real hot rocks so that the room fills with steam. I actually thought I would die. Then you run into the lake. When we did this a week ago, the lake was 55 degrees. But it'll get colder. That part's fun. Also you drink tea (since this is an event) and take turns wacking each other with birch branches. Our RC told us you're really supposed to do it naked and rub honey on each other. Someone needs to alert the Frisbee Team to this; I think they'd like it. We also went to this town called Arshan were we drank vodka with these random boryati men who invited us to their table in this cafe-diner thing. We also went swimming in hot springs (Natalie complained that some guy kept watching us. apparently it was, like, awkward or something. we did manage to talk about it.) also we sauna-ed, which is the same except without steam and we jumped into a much warmer little indoor pool and this time we brought vodka. We had brought 3 bottles for two days for six people, so I figure that's decent enough.
That's probably enough for the straight event/situation-vomit. I miss Midd alot and all my friends. After the departure of the seniors at the end of last year and having to leave all the cool friends I made at Summer School, I'm actually considering making a drawn map of my friends. So I can remember them, and possibly begin a concentrated and life-long letter-writing campaign. You know those people who just have volumes of their personal correspondences complied and published and sold and quote after they die, just cause they're that cool? I could stand being one of those. I'm a little bummed because I don't actually know what to DO here. At college I was finally happy to admit that I didn't actually like extra-cirricular activities of any kind. I liked screwing around with my friends, being on the internet, going to parties (by which I mean our little dorm-room parties - those are the pinnacle of fun to me and I am only vaguley aware of what other people may regard as "actual" parties), and sometimes reading books. I liked doing history homework. That was what I liked. But here we have school, and we having being at home with your extremely-involved host-family, and we have transiting between the two while trying to remember to watch out for so many hazards they've warned us about that you start to think you're playing Frogger.
I think the trick is to actually just not be afraid. They pumped us full of all these reasons not to go out at night or do anything fun that is entailed by being a college student, or any young person, at home or abroad. So I just need to take some risks. Of course I won't. It's not like I'm dying to go clubbing or whatever, and I can't think of a lot else would require not being afraid to go out late at night or travel a little drunk to do.
Anyway, I hope you're all having a good time and you all better post or we're not friends anymore.
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