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Russia Breaks My Brain
I don't understand this place, I just live here.
#02: funny who you run into when on boats
Tuesday, September 16, 2003

Hi folks. Time for the latest excitement from the land of sour cream and beer. I trust you all enjoyed the previous chapter, and hope that today's exciting adventures will be a little treat for everyone. Admitedly, some stuff today will only make sense to some of you, and some stuff to other's of you, but you can all deal with that I assume. And for those of you who get none of my references, well....you should really make a point to hang out with me more.

So things have been going pretty well. I now know of a couple of places where I can handle getting food, which is damned exciting. This has been augmented by meals at Kristin's, as well as meal's prepared by my roommate (the guy who never leaves the room and only has 2 shirts, remember him? I'm not sure how to spell his name, so I'll just call him Arandt.) Recently, Arandt finished the first chunk of his translating work, and to celebrate told me "don't eat anything" and then made us dinner of salted fish, instant mashed potatoes and potato chips. Quite tasty. The problem is now figuring out a way to repay him, as he always refuses food I offer him. I may have to kidnap him and drag him to a restaurant or something.

Classes have been progressing as well. I can finally say "I want"which is very exciting. Especially when coupled with "to eat"or "to drink." ("Ya hachu yest"or "Ya hachu peet"for you linguistics nerds.)

Speaking of linguistics nerds, I've met quite a few lately. They seem rather competitive too. The latest batch was a group of 4 Swedes, 1 Norwegian and 1 Russian. These groups often have a little edge of "how well do you speak foreign languages?"which gets a little silly at times. But they're good to listen to, thanks to non-native speakers having much clearer pronunciation of russian than any russian I've encountered. This group also reinforced the stereotype of the swedish chef. Aside from the quasi-mid-western sounding accent, (but without the "dontcha know"), at one point one of the Swedish girls asked the Norwegian guy about some joke where the entire sentence was nothing but vowels. At first the guy insisted that that didn't mean anything, but finally admitted that it was a sentence, thus comfirming that Norwegian sounds very silly. (think Swedish chef, but a little less clean-cut.)

Another interesting get-together took place last night, and will probably only be interesting for Vassar folks. Specifically, I had dinner with Fran again. She's here with some alumni boat-tour of Russia, and Kristin, Kristin's roommate Nicole, 2 vassar kids from the program Nicole works were invited to come meet this folks, basically as their entertainment for the evening (besides the consulate director, who was pretty boring.) So we went out to this boat, and Fran met us there (she's not looking especially well- remember that vacant look in her eyes? It's gotten worse.) After meeting everyone else in the group, she asked what school I went to. I told her I had dinner at her house. She then said I looked familiar. What a smooth-talker, eh?

It got better when we were introduced to the alums (and their business-oriented husbands: geriatric vassar at its best). Fran had credentials for everyone but me (Fulbright scholar, Director at the Bard/Smolney Institute, current students and...me.) So I mentioned the Misc, and that seemed to impress the crowd. It led to a conversation with an Misc-alum, who was actually pretty fun to talk to. Fran stood there for a while making sure nothing embarrassing came up, and mentioned something about how she's glad the Misc no longer prints so many innaccuracies. I really wish I knew what year she was refering to.

So the evening was then schmoozing with alumns, which was sort of entertaining. Mainly because we were so fascinating to them. And all the free booze. That helped.

There was another sort of "why am I encountering this in Russia" moment to last night which is for the Santa Fe folks. There was someone there (last name Davis?) connected to United World College. Remember them? The weirdo field hockey team who had the gorilla-goalie that never played with a helmet? Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to find this person and comment on UWC's sports teams though.

And now for a couple of pieces of trivia encountered here in bizarro-world: While looking for a tailor to fix Kristin's coat, we ended up in a building that looked like it should be a courthouse or something. But inside it was very dark, grimy and generally creepy. Every hall was long and dark and had seemingly unnecessary corners. You felt like you could get lost there and end up in a horror movie. The lighting was all from yellowed-lights above doors to various offices. But by office I mean Cosmetics Office. Or Hair Dressers. Yup, this dark creepy building was some sort of soviet-style centralized beauty palace. Right down to the poorly marked saunas, which led to a very unfortunate moment whereby I had the image of a grotesquely fat naked woman branded on my memory. And we didn't get the coat fixed.

Have I mentioned the cars driving on the sidewalk? They do. I had to jump out of the way the other day. I think roads are considered suggestions here.

That's all I can think of for the moment. Who knows what adventures await me as I leave the internet cafe? Find out next time....or write to me before then.

paka,
Angry Giant