Последний день фебраля

Hi, it’s me again. Things have been kind of slow lately, so hopefully this post will be somewhat shorter than usual. I think I mentioned last time that I was feeling pretty sick on Thursday night. Well, I did end up staying home on Friday, which was nice and relaxing but also extremely boring because there really isn’t much to do here in the apartment, I messed around on the computer a lot, listening to music, watching Pete and Pete and the handful of episodes of Family Guy that I have on my computer. I really wish that I had brought more DVDs with me. I could have just put some in a little CD wallet and I would have had a lot more to occupy myself with in times like that where I have nothing to do but hang around my room. The only DVDs I brought were my Pete and Pete bootlegs. I have bought a few DVDs here, and I watched some old soviet cartoons for a while too, so that was fun. My host mom basically told me that I couldn’t go out on Friday night even though I kind of wanted to, but I probably would have felt pretty terrible if I had gone out so it was probably for the best. I got bummed out later hearing about the crazy nights other people had on Friday, staying up until all hours of the morning hanging out in bars and what not. I guess there’s always next weekend. So, Friday was spent pretty much entirely hanging out alone in my room, and most of Saturday was the same. I decided that no matter what I wanted to go out on Saturday night and do anything at all really. I was just dying of boredom in the apartment. I made a few phone calls and arranged to meet with Peter David and Matt over at Koffe Khaus. Both Kenny and Stacey showed up separately after a while, and we had a nice relaxing time just sitting with some beers and talking. I was just glad to be out of the house. We also had my favorite waitress, so that was good too. At around 11:30 we left so people could catch the metro, but first of course we had to stop at McDonalds for our late-night snack that’s kind of become the tradition for when we go out around Vasileostrovskaya. Everybody got their food in time to catch the metro and Peter David (We’ve been calling him P Diddy lately, so I think I might just start referring to him as that), Matt and Stacey headed home. Kenny wanted to stay out a little longer so I decided to hang with him. Also, seemingly out of nowhere, Brandon and Tom (not TOM Tom, of tominrussia.blogspot.com fame, but the Tom from the returning students who I don’t ever really hang out with) show up while we are at McDonalds, and so the four of us headed over to Choomadon for a while. We had some more beer as well as some grenki (the garlic-bread snack like I had had at Tsynik before). These guys are really more “guys’ guys” than the people I usually hang out with, which was kind of weird but also a nice change of pace. It was Brandon’s birthday the other night and apparently these guys and a few other guys went to a strip club, so they were talking about that a lot, and there was a lot of that general type of conversation, you know? At a table next to us there was a group of Russians – three guys and two girls – and one of the girls kept staring at Brandon the whole time and whispering and laughing to her friend and being really obvious and annoying about it. One of the guys she was with seemed like he was getting pretty mad about it, and kept raising his voice and grabbing her away. They even went outside to talk about it for a while, but she kept ogling him. At one point she held out her cell phone to him so he could just put in his number. She hadn’t even talked to him at all? Brandon (and all of us, really) was kind of freaked out by the whole thing, so we paid up and got out of there. Brandon decided to head home and I was feeling like calling it a night too. Kenny and Old Tom decided to stay out some more, but there is really nothing else open around there at that time of night, so I wasn’t really down for wandering around with them. I was going to have to take a Chasnik, and I decided that I could probably catch one for cheaper if I walked a couple blocks down to Bolshoi Prospekt instead of hoping into one of the cars that is always waiting outside of Vasileostrovskaya on Sredniy Prospekt. I got to Bolshoi and there weren’t really a lot of cars out, so I figured I’d walk down a block and then check to see if some more cars were coming and if I could flag one down. There were big piles of snow along the sidewalks that kind of blocked me from getting to the street mid-way through a block, so I woud have to wait for the intersections to try and flag a car down. I would get to one intersection and look down the street and not really see any cars coming, so I’d walk another block and try again and so on and so forth. After a while I had gone for enough blocks that it just made more sense to walk all the way home and save some money on chasnik fair. Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to do while still being a little bit sick, but I was feeling up for it and I’ve been meaning to take a walk down Bolshoi for a while. There are no less than two statues of Lenin on that street, and another really cool statue of firefighters in front of the fire station that I had always been curious about while riding by on the bus but had never gotten up close to it. I didn’t have my camera with me but I wish I had, because there were quite a lot of cool things to see. I walked by this creepy Children’s Hospital that was set back behind some trees and looked totally abandoned and haunted. Just imagine the ghosts of thousands of dead children haunting this old brick building, and imagine walking by it alone in the middle of the night and thinking about such crazy notions! It was kind of a creepy walk in general, but nowhere near as creepy as it is walking down Sredniy Prospekt where the road gets blocked off and all the Nazi graffiti starts to appear. I did see a pack of stray dogs and I was worried that they were going to attack, but luckily they left me alone. At the end of my street there is this really awesome-looking old building with weird domes on it (but not like domes on an orthodox church, it’s hard to explain) and behind it a ways are these huge red and white smokestacks that are always belching out pollution. All this is behind a brick wall, and the old building with the smokestacks together was such a cool shot against the night sky. I really need to go back with my camera sometime, considering that it’s about three blocks away. By the time I got back it was about 3:00 I think. So I just went to bed. On Saturday I was feeling pretty eager to get on the internet, so I called around to find somebody to go with me to Soiree. P Diddy was down, so we made plans to meet there at 2:00. I got there a little late because of the long bus ride, but I got there alright and P Diddy had already snagged us a table. It was in the back and I couldn’t get a wireless signal at all, so after a while we decided to move up to the main room where, after a while, I was finally able to do some surfing. There were quite a few people there, many of them with laptops, and that really slows down the router. I was surprised by how many people there were for a Sunday afternoon. I had a couple beers and some Geogrian fried cheese. My favorite waitress there was also working that day, so I’ve been on a roll as far as waitresses go. P Diddy loaded some of his pictures from his camera onto my computer to be added to his Facebook account later. He had some pretty good ones of me. He left after a while and I hung back just for a bit before I got tired of the slow connection and decided to get home. I bought a new international calling card and then hopped on a number 7 bus. I got a good seat and thought that on a Sunday afternoon the buses wouldn’t get too crowded, but boy was I wrong. It got just as jam-packed as it does any week-day, but at least I had a seat. I felt like maybe I should offer my seat to some babushkas, but then I figured that it made more sense for me to sit in the seat when it gets this crowded, because, being a big guy, I would just take up a lot more room if I were standing, making the situation in the aisles all the more crowded, where as if I am seated I am taking up considerably less room, or at least just as much room as anybody else would use where they seated. So, I figured let the babushkas stand and create a little more room for everyone. Hell, they’ve been communists most of their lives, they should understand the concept of sacrificing some of their personal rights for the good of everyone. At home I just took it easy, did some homework, and in the evening called home and even called my friends back at the Diamond, which I hadn’t done yet. I was using up my last minutes on my phone card, so I could only talk for about 14 minutes but it was still nice. Today it was back to school after what was essentially a 4-day weekend. We had a test in grammar class that I had felt like I prepared well enough for, but it seemed considerably harder once I took it. I think I did alright, though. I had to play catch up a little bit in Phonetics because I missed it in Friday, but that wasn’t too hard. Kara returned my Thumb-drive and my Kino CD and because she felt bad for having borrowed them for a long time she also brought me a bar of chocolate! How sweet of her. I did some interneting after classes and found myself with nothing to do afterwards, so I ambled my way over to the Chernyshevskaya area just for the heck of it. I decided to go looking for the American Consulate because I knew it was right around there. I figured it would at least be a good idea to know where it is, plus my old Russian teacher Josh used to work there and I thought it would be cool to see because of that. I found it and it wasn’t all that excited to see, so I headed back towards the metro. Oh yeah, on my way to the Consulate I was walking between some parked cars and my bag scrapped against this car’s hood ornament and knocked it out of place. Unfortunately for me, there was a guy sitting inside the car, and when he looked up and saw what I had done he stepped out of the car and yelled at me. I said I was sorry and tried putting it back into place, but he shooed me away and took care of it himself. I felt bad, but it was kind of funny nonetheless. I also tried to find the store that apparently sells the really cool tetradi (little notebooks that all the students use in Russia) that Sasha and John have. I found a bookstore that I thought might be the place, but I couldn’t find them inside. I wanted to get some for my sister because I know she would really like them. I guess I’ll have to keep looking. After a bit I decided to get on the metro and head over to Nevskiy for a while to kill sometime before I had to go teach English at the University. I got to Vostannia and decided to hit up CafeMax for an hour to use the internet some more and look up stuff for spring break. I’m getting really frustrated about that because it’s just over a week away and I still don’t know exactly where I’m going. Like usual, I’m trying to get in as much as I can, but I think I’m going to have to skip out on a few places I might want to go just for the sake of practicality, and it kills me that I have to do so. I want to see everything! I don’t want to talk about spring break here until I have a set plan, so look for that sometime soon. I did the internet thing for an hour and then caught a bus over to the university. I got there a little early so I looked at my Russian Road Atlas and thought more about spring break. English class was great again. I really enjoying teaching (or helping to teach, anyway) in that class, because I feel like the kids are really interested in what I have to say and all I really have to so speak with them and answer there questions. I do give them new words sometimes, and the teacher has me explain different topics about life and culture in America. Today, for example, she wanted me to explain the school system in America, so I broke it all down for them on the dry-erase board and gave them some good vocab words like “freshman,“ “sophomore,” “junior,” “senior,” “bachelor’s degree,” etc. The one girl who’s really into hip-hop had written down the lyrics to some song she liked and wanted me to explain the slang in it. It was some terrible rap song and must of the slang involved putting an “-a” at the end of words instead of an “-er” and things like that. It had some swear words in it too of course, which they all already know. The teacher always thanks me a lot at the end of class and I always leave feeling really good about it. I’m already looking forward to next week. A quick bus ride and I was back at home, and now here I am. I need to write emails to a few people and I feel like maybe I should do that now, but I’m getting really tired, so I might just have to wait until tomorrow. Oh yeah, I was invited back to Nick’s apartment by his host mom for blini tomorrow. I guess I made a good impression on her the last time I was there, because apparently she keeps asking about me all the time. The big week-long end-of-winter / beginning-of-summer holiday called maclenitsa starts this week, and basically all people do is eat blini all week long. The blini apparently represents the sun and the coming thereof. The name it self, “maclenitsa,” comes from the word for butter (“maclo”) which is a main ingredient in blini. I’m excited for it. I’ll let you all know how it goes. Over and out.