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Hey. It’s Thursday night and I’ve been home sick for most of the day. I’ve been feeling kind of sick for the last few days but it wasn’t bad enough to miss school until today. Well, I didn’t miss a whole day of school. I had a big grammar test in my first class that I couldn’t really miss, so I went to school for that and then went home before my second class. I spent the rest of the day listening to music and watching movies from my Gaidai DVD. I’m going to try and make it to school tomorrow though, because if I stay home my host-mom pretty much won’t let me leave the house for anything and I already have plans to meet with Emily in the afternoon and I’d like to do something tomorrow night too. But anyway, things have been pretty cool otherwise. On Tuesday after school I used the internet (oh yeah, I seem to have lost my thumb-drive, with which I am able to post pictures and blog entries at school. I think I left it in the computer lab, but the guy who works there says he didn’t see it. I’m sure it’s long gone by now. I may have to look into buying another one) and then tagged along with Matt and Bryce who were going to KFC. I hung out with them there for a while and then Matt and I caught a bus home. A lot of people were planning on going to the Red Lion that night (you know, Tuesday being champagne night and everything), and I was kind of on the fence as to whether or not I was going to go. I was already starting to feel a little sick at that point, so I thought maybe I shouldn’t go. At any rate, I went home first and did some homework, ate dinner, and relaxed a little bit. At one point I decided that I was definitely not going to go, and had resigned myself to staying in for the night. After messing around on my computer for a little bit, though, I suddenly had a second-wind of sorts, and decided that I would head out to the Red Lion after all. I rode a bus down and trudged through the slushy park and got to the bar around 9:00. I couldn’t find everybody at first, but finally found them in the back room where the dancing goes on later. EVERYBODY was there. I mean, must of the people from my program (most of the ones I usually hang out with, anyways), plus the British girls, plus Stacey’s friend Megan from the day before with some of the people from the group she was traveling with, although they had to leave about a half hour later to catch their train to Moscow. I received a very warm welcome when I arrived because most of the people had already been there for an hour or two and had all thought I probably wasn’t going to come at that point. So, that was really nice. I started immediately chatting with everybody and dancing in groups to the cover band (not Soulgarden this time) and having a really good time. I met a lot of new people and got to talk to a lot of my friends too. Some of the British girls were participating in this “G8 Youth Summit” thing this week and so we hadn’t seen them in school. Alice was there and had to write a speech that night to give the next day about Foreign Security in the EU or something like that. A lot of us started taking turns writing in her notebook and coming up with speeches for her. Tom wrote some big thing about the US and the EU being terrorist organizations or something, just being weird. I have to say, I think the speech I wrote for her was really funny. I tried to write it as if it were being written by a really dumb sixth grader or something who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Let’s see if I can try and recreate it:

Europe. Union. Foreign. Security. These are words that go together like “words,” “that,” “go,” and “together.” The European Union is a union in Europe made up of many European countries, but not all of them. It is important that the EU be secure for foreigners because if it weren’t then it would be really, really, really bad. We need to make sure it is safe and secure so that nobody dies. This can be achieved in many ways. Thank you, and good night.

I kept telling Alice that, “I took care of the speech for you, just read it. You don’t need to worry about it.” I probably thought it was a lot more funny than anybody else (except Tom maybe), but who cares? Peter David and I got in a text-message battle arguing about Bob Seger. I told Stacey that she was the most unpretentious person I have ever met (which I absolutely meant) and it seemed to make her really happy to hear. “More than I could possibly understand,” in fact, so that made me feel good to know I had given her a compliment that she really appreciated. So, everybody was having a great time and everything, but that there was an incident that kind of put a damper on the evening for everyone. And you know who was at the root of this incident? Yes, you guessed it, the Russian militsia. Let me explain. So, Matt had been drinking and every thing like all of us, and some times when people drink it makes them have to throw up, right? So, Matt feels like he has to throw up, so he heads for the bathroom, but since the place was crowded and the bathrooms are pretty far from where we were sitting, he wasn’t able to make it and ended up throwing up on the floor. I might have mentioned before that there are militsia guys who hang around in the front of the Red Lion all the time. Well, once they found out what had happened, apparently, they were all over Matt and asked to see his documents. He gave them his student ID and his Spravka because his passport is being re-registered right now. I wasn’t around when all this happened, but when Abby came back to the table and told me that the militsia was trying to kick Matt out, I ran to the scene. I didn’t understand what had happened at first. Matt was by the bar and Bryce and a few others were around him consoling him because he was really upset. Nobody was telling me what happened exactly. Ruth told me that the militsia had Matt’s documents and wasn’t giving them back and that I should try and talk to them and get and see what the problem was. I said to one of them, “excuse me, is there some sort of problem?” and he said, “Of course!” I asked him, “please, then, tell me,” and he took me around the corner and showed my Allisonn on the floor cleaning something up. I thought maybe at first it was just a beer that got knocked over, but then once Ruth explained some more she told me that Matt had thrown up and now the militsia was hold Matt’s documents ransom. She said I should stand with Matt and Bryce and look menacing, and while I was standing on of the militsia guys came up to us and said that it was going to cost a thousand rubles to get the documents back. That’s completely ridiculous, of course. We decided we should get Tsveti to come talk to them because she speaks Russian way better than the rest of us. We figured she could find out why they were charging us and maybe get the amount reduced. She talked to them and they told her that the fee was to compensate the bar for the money that was lost as a result of Matt throwing up, which makes no since. Allisonn cleaned it all up by herself, and nobody left the bar because of it either, as they claimed. Plus it’s so obvious that none of the money they were asking for was going to go back to the bar, and that the whole thing was just a lame excuse for a bribe. We stood around for a long time trying to think of a way to get it lowered or other ways to get the documents back or something. I wish I could have just told them, “You know, a few of your pals in the militsia happened to take 1000 rubles from me just the other day. Why don’t you go ask them for that money and then we’ll all be even?” After a while I think Bryce just got fed up with the whole thing and paid the guys their 1000 rubles just to be done with the whole thing, and Matt got his documents back. Most of were pretty pissed off at the militsia and at the whole situation, so most of us were ready to leave after that. By this time it was about 12:30, so everybody would have to take a chasnik. There were quite a few of us who needed to go back to the island, and I thought it would be taking one with Vickie, Nick, and Allisonn, but then Nick and Vickie really wanted to go to McDonalds, so we decided to walk to the one at Vasileostrovskaya which isn’t nearly as far as it might seem to most people. We had a nice walk over and I got to talk to Allisonn for a while, which was really good because I felt like we were on bad terms for a while, but I guess we never really were and at least now everything is cool. We got to McDonalds and most of us ordered a little food. We stood around eating it and were just about to hail a chasnik when this group of guys came up and started talking to us. I guess it was my doing partially. There was one guy who was looking at us and kind of chuckling to himself, and I looked at him and asked him, “what?” And so from there it was basically an open invitation for them to start talking to us. This was all really good though, and these guys weren’t nearly as drunk and sketchy as the guys I had met on Sunday night (which happened just a few feet away. I don’t know what it is about that area, but I have met all kinds of weird and crazy people right around that McDonalds). There were four guys and I think they were all about our age. One was pretty drunk and hyper and kept giving us swigs of his bottle of champagne. After talking to them for a little bit, of course, they asked us to come drink with them. Most of us were down with the idea for the most part, and those who weren’t were pretty much forced to tag along. We walked with them just down the walk-way a little bit and stood next to the fountain near Kofe Khaus. One of them bought us all some beers and we stood around talking for quite a while. One guy spoke English pretty well, and the others would try to interject some when they knew it, but for the most part we all spoke Russian. One guy (Ilya) was originally from the city Naryan-Mar, which is way up in the north near the Arctic Ocean. One of them was studying physics at the university (His name was Yevgeny, which the English equivalent of is Eugene, and I when he introduced himself as “Eugene” I told him that was the name of the town I was from and he got excited). They were all really cool and we talked about Russian movies, literature, music, and all kinds of stuff. I sang a few lines of the Antoshka song with one of the guys named Dmitri, and Yevgeny told me the name of some contemporary Russian author that he really wanted me to read (unfortunately, I have forgotten the name. I think it was two or three syllables long and started with an “s,” though). I also asked him about a lot of different Russian bands that I have gotten into / want to get into. He recommended a band called Mumiy Troll that I had heard about but have not yet heard. Apparently they are really good live. He didn’t really seem to think too highly of any other Russian bands, though. The fourth guy, Tomor (I think that was his name) but us all a second beer after a while. Some creepy woman with a broken noise came up and asked for a cigarette, but the guys shooed her away. Ilya took some pictures of all of us with his fancy camera phone. Everybody exchanged numbers except me, because I was talking to Evgeny while they were doing that and when I asked for his number he said that he had lost his phone. After 2:00 most of us were getting anxious to get home. Basically Nick, Vickie and I were ready to go, but Allisonn wanted to stay longer. She had, lets say, kind of gotten “involved” with the Dmitri kid, and they were kind of off on their own little thing. We started telling the guys that we really needed to go and they kept insisting that we go walking along the river with them, and Dmitri, in an embrace with Allisonn at this point, kept walking with her further and further down the street. Evgeny actually picked Vickie up at one point and I had to hold him back to keep them from walking to the river. It was really difficult to get everyone together, what with them working against us and Allisonn readily going along with them. But, after a bit of a struggle, we finally pulled her away from Dmitri’s arms andgot our entire group together and headed back to the main street to get a chasnik. We said by to the guys and told them thayt we would call them to hang out soon. After a while they started following us to our chasnik, and we had to put up another small little fight to all make it into the car. It was fun h anging out with them, but it definitely got kind of weird at the end. So, the chasnik took us home and everybody got home safe. Pretty wild and crazy for a Tuesday night, huh? Wednesday was much less crazy, though I did do some interesting things. There was a free lunch for all the CIEE students that had something to do with the delegation of US professors that was here to evaluate the program. I’m not really sure why, but I didn’t question the free food. I talked to one of the professors who teaches at Lewis and Clark in Portland. She said it was 17 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland right now (or, then I guess). Was that true? I didn’t really believe her. I stuck around for a little while and then headed home for a bit. Remember, I had been feeling a little bit sick this whole time. I got home and did some homework for a while and almost fell asleep at one point, but couldn’t really take a nap because I had to go teach English to my new class at 6:00. I didn’t really feel like going at that point, but I couldn’t just skip it. So, I rode a marshrutka over to the university and waited around for a while until I could find out where to go or what to do. The secretary finally found me and told me which room to go to. This class is made up of college professors who want to learn English for whatever reason. I think for most of them it is a real asset to their careers. Oh yeah, and of course I teach this class all by myself (they have a real teacher, but when I’m there it’s just me and them). There were five students in the class, all of them middle-aged women (except one, who was probably in her late 20’s). I asked them what their fields were, and they all were involved in completely different subjects. One was a radio-physicist. One was a biologist specializing in genetics. One was a sociologist. One was a German language specialist. The last was an economist. It was so weird to have this room full of incredible smart people, but to be teaching them something that to me is so simple and basic. I mean, it seems so weird to hear a radio-physicist (I don’t even know what that is!) to be stumbling over words and grammar constructions from a textbook. You know what I mean? And, you would think that having a room full of adults would be a lot less awkward than a room full of teenagers, but you’d be wrong. I think most of the people in this class were much more shy about speaking up than the students in my teenage class. It also felt strange teaching teachers, to be exerting the same authority over them as they usually do over students like me. It just seemed like such a huge role reversal. They were just finishing up a chapter on “attraction,” that talked about dating and stuff like that in British society. The book was published in England, so the cultural aspects integrated into the book (there is a lot of that) is very British-centric. For example, an exercise we did involved looking at the lyrics from a song by the group All Saints. Never heard of them? Most Americans probably haven’t, or at least don’t remember them anymore. Fortunately for the class, I did remember them, and remembered the actual song that was included in the book. They were a British girl group that had a minor hit in the US back around ’97 called “Never Ever,” which I remember was pretty catchy. They must be somewhat popular in England still, at least enough to be included in this book. There were also a lot of British spellings that I felt obligated to point out every time and give the American variation (for example: “realise,” and “programme”). We finished up that chapter and began the next one on the topic of “genius.” They read a short article about the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain, and about Frida Kahlo. There were some exercises dealing with art and how to talk about it, and we talked for a while about the artists that they liked. The economics professor seemed to really like art, and went on about Matisse for a while. When there was a subject she liked to talk about she could go on and on in near fluency, it seemed to me, but when it came to answering questions in the exercises she was very reluctant to answer. We also talked about famous buildings and monuments in Russia and the US. The radio-physicist talked about seeing the famous statue of the Motherland in Volgograd. They asked me if I had ever seen the Statue of Liberty, and I told them about the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and about Mount Rushmore. All in all, I think the class went pretty well, despite some moments of awkward silence. I think the students respect me well enough and I enjoyed teaching them. Sometimes it can be a little hard when they don’t know a word and I don’t know the Russian equivalent, or when they have questions about the terms of certain grammatical structures in English and I have no idea what they are called. I mean, of course, I know how to use all the grammatical structures correctly just from experience and having spoken it my whole life, but I’ve never actually studied English grammar and don’t know how to actually explain it. You know what I mean? But, everything works itself out and I think the students understand everything in the end. After the class was over (it’s three hours long, by the way) I waited for the bus stop outside, and one of my students was waiting too. It was the young one, who is also the one who studies sociology. She may not be an actual professor, I think she said something about being an assistant of some kind, but does actually teach herself as well. I believe her name is Marina (or perhaps just Maria). We talked for a bit while we waited for the bus. She told me that she was from Buryatia, which is a republic within the Russian Federation way out in Siberia next to Lake Baikal. She is from the capital, Ulan Ude. The Buryats are ethnically Asian, and so Marina doesn’t look Russian at all but completely Asian. She was very nice and was interested in hearing about the US and Oregon and all that. She has been living in St. Petersburg for six years. It turns out she works somewhere in the same building where I go to school (it’s a big building, though) and lives somewhere close to me because she rides my same bus, Bus 147 came and of course we both got on. Nobody really likes to talk on the bus, so our conversation kind of ended once we got on, but when she did speak to me a tiny bit she did it in Russian, because I think she didn’t want the people around her to hear her speaking English. I got off before her and said “see you next Wednesday.” She seemed really cool and I look forward to talking to her more in the future. At home I had to study for my big grammar test today, and by the end I was feeling totally exhausted and pretty sick. I got to bed around midnight, which is earlier than normal these days. This morning it was really rough getting up. I was having a dream that I was in Russia just like I am and in the same program and everything, but that I had signed up beforehand for a second program of some kind for some reason that started about halfway through the other one, so I had to leave my program in the middle of classes and everything and go join this other program with a bunch of new students who were just arriving. I was at their orientation and all that and I was just thinking, “why am I here? Why did I sign up for this new program? I already went through all this stuff, I belong back in the other group.” It was very strange. SO I roused myself out of bed and made it to school just to take that stupid grammar test. I think I did alright on the whole. There was one part that I didn’t understand very well and took a long time to complete. I probably got it all wrong too. But the rest of it I feel pretty confident about. I hung around in the hall with everyone after classes for a while but then slipped out before the second class and caught the bus straight home. I’ve just been taking it easy all day. Like I said, I’m going to try to make it to class tomorrow. I think I’ll be fine. I’m supposed to meet Emily at Soiree tomorrow, so at least I’ll be able to post this entry without my thumb drive for now, but it might get harder to manage later on. We’ll see how it goes. I might be going to Moscow next Friday to go to a Motorhead concert. I’ll keep you posted. Later.