General Update

I tried to go to the post office today; I successfully found one, and waited in a very long line, and wondered at the very wide variety of things being done in the post office- seemingly every official document in Russia must be dealt with in the post office. Finally I got to the front of the line, presented the letters I wanted to send, was asked if I wanted to send them “normally” or “some word I didn’t understand.” I figured “normally” meant ground and the other word airmail, so I said “not normally.” And then I was told to go to some other building, with an accompanying vague hand gesture. I gave up and left- I’ll try again tomorrow, which means today in terms of when this will be posted.

My host family is back from Italy, with lots of new refrigerator magnets and mugs. Their return made me realize how much I had come to think of the apartment of my own- I was sort of indignant, this morning, when they had eaten all the food the night before and there was no bread for breakfast (there was muesli, I didn’t starve), and especially this evening when I got home and the kitchen hadn’t been cleaned up from whatever the last meal that was eaten in it was. I am also apparently fairly stingy, when left to my own devices.

I went to a meeting of the hiking club again today. I very rarely have any idea what’s going on there. We spent a long time today making various knots with rope, or at least all of us but the three boys who were going through all the Russian music on my computer fixing all the mistakes I had made when I typed in the titles of songs made various knots with rope. The three boys just got yelled at periodically by the leader guy. There was also an interesting part of the meeting, after many people had left, where people had newspapers thrust at them and were commanded to read them. One time the leader guy just put a chair facing the wall and told me to go sit in it and read the articles posted there. There’s always a lot of tea drinking, but by some strict schedule that is completely unpredictable to me - at certain points people rush about setting out and clearing away mugs. Today, actually, we drank not tea but the most awful instant coffee in the world, called “MacCoffee” or something, with American flags and eagle on the packaging and “Real American Taste.” It was made in Singapore. Oh, and at some point in the meeting Harry and the Potters were planning from my computer – it was a very strange experience, hearing Save Ginny Weasly in the midst of the crazy Russians tying rope and wondering why I didn’t own any American music they’d ever heard of.

On the bus on the way to the hiking club meeting, I made interesting attempts to explain A) Nick Jansen 2) gangs 3) Emo and 4) why Americans generally refrain from covering national parks in graffiti. I think 0 of the explanations were understood. The boys I was with told me how many guns they owned and pointed out all the amusing mistakes I had made in the text messages I sent them.

Today in grammar class we learned that it is evident that Eddie doesn’t ever comb his hair, an interesting continuation of the theme of our failures of personal grooming – last week my failure to wear make-up was commented on, and Ivan’s lack of hair combing. In speech practice class we learned that we didn’t see anything we were supposed to in Arshan, and we should have gone with someone who knew what he was doing. In Baikal Studies class yesterday we learned about Stalin’s plans to invade North America on mooseback.

I ran yesterday morning, in a tiny semi-enclosed neighborhood I found one time when I was looking for the university. One circle of it is 5 minutes, but it has the great advantage of not being full of marshrutkas and buses trying to run over pedestrians. It was very, very wonderful to run. I suspect I will be tired of that circle very soon though. I’m keeping my eye out for other eligible running locations.

I feel that I must comment on the importance of the plastic bag in Russian culture. The plastic bag: it’s very important. That’s my basic comment. It can be used as a purse or briefcase, with the more sturdy and cool-looking bags from clothing stores preferred but grocery bags also acceptable for menial tasks. There’s this one store, Two Thousand, that sells clothing in red bags that seem to be highly prized. They are red with white writing and an of a perfect size for the transport of notebook-sized objects and have handles that are separate pieces of plastic rather than just holes in the bag. I really want to go to Two Thousand and buy something, just to get one of the bags. Bags, particularly grocery bags, are also important as trashcans, which do not seem to exist, indoors, in other manifestations. It’s always sort of sad when the trash must be brought out, as it means that another bag (packyet, as we say in the rooski) must be sacrificed to the trash-bearing cause. And they don’t just give out bags at the supermarket- you have to pay for them- which means you can’t just carelessly use your packyets every which way. It also means that people try really hard not to need bags in the grocery store, and walk out the door with groceries falling out of their arms. Actually this is mainly just me - other people also avoid buying bags, but they seem to manage it more gracefully. At first I thought this grocery-store practice was good for the environment, but then I realized that it just meant that people don’t have enough garbage bags and just throw their trash on the street. In a final note: one of the possible occupations for penniless street vender women is the sale of random collected plastic bags, on major shopping streets. Were I not embarrassed by the fact that these women are selling plastic bags for a living, I would go inquire about the prices of the bags – I’m interested to see which types are the most expensive.

Oh man, this is sort of ominous- I’m listening to iTunes on Shuffle (my many hours of discussing/listening to Russian music today removing my guilt for listening to English music), and every time a song comes up, the genre label switches from English to Russian – from ‘country’ to ‘кантри', for instance. It's moving slowly down the list, converting my life, even down to the Kinky Freidman and Alison Krauss songs, to Russian.

Also, as I write this, it is my father’s birthday. Happy birthday.

Over and out.