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
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
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!
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!
Monday, October 22, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, October 19, 2007
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
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
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
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
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
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.)
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.)
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