Another post compiled by having a word document open in my room for a long time

More Stuff

A song came up on my i-pod the other day, by the Red Clay Ramblers: “Fifty Miles of Elbow Room.” It was one of those yearning-prediction-of-the-joys-of-heaven type songs. It occurred to me that the song would make very little sense in very few countries but America. It’s really a very strange thing upon which to base a construction of a paradise; I wonder how strange I would have though it was 4 months ago.

There’s a series of knock-off Harry Potter books here called “Tanya Trotter.” The covers are in the same colorful style, with the same lightning font for the title.

They like seaweed salads here, imported from China or Korea. We ate them a lot on our group trip. And we had it for dinner here on University Street tonight, and I was told once again how good for the health are all sea products. No seaweed consumption, though, can beat the first time any of us ate it here, when Joseph’s babushka gave him a can of it to bring on our trip to Arshan. It was set out with the rest of the food for several meals, and we all just looked at it distrustfully; eventually, when we were sitting around in the cement ice-rink, boredom defeated caution, and Joseph smashed the can open with a stone. Not a lot of it was ever eaten, I don’t think.

I went back to Fiesta today, because I couldn’t begin my boycott without first using up some unused minutes on a couple receipts. And, by stealthy avoidance of the waitress who told me I had to spend 100 ruples, I got another receipt-thing. It only had 10 minutes on it though. Curses upon you, stingy internet providers.

I asked Valentina Petrovna (host mother) today whether she thought things were better now or before, back in the USSR. She thought for a minute and then said that she used to be able to fly to Moscow for much cheaper, which is a shame because she likes Moscow, and likes looking around there and talking to people. I wonder if it was frustrating for those underground book publishers and other various dissidents that most of the country didn’t seem to think there was anything worth protesting against. Valentina Petrovna did admit that it is now much easier to buy sausage, and that it’s nice to be able to leave the country.

I am pretty much writing this only to avoid doing my homework. Well I don’t really have any homework. I did my only written homework, which was to list problems of modern Russia. My list: alcoholism, demographic crisis, small pensions, political apathy of the population, too few fruits and vegetables in the diet, price of food in relation to salary, not enough living space, AIDs. But, anyway, to avoid studying. Somehow this apartment sucks out any responsible study habits I might ever have possessed. I need togo back to the mysterious reading room I found that one time. But right now I’m going back to searching Katya’s cd collection for interesting songs.

I don’t know why I like Russian rock so much. Maybe I should try, when I get home, to like American rock. Maybe it’s just that the words are cooler why I have to try harder to figure out what they mean, or that I think words are automatically cool when they are in Russian? But I think I really do like the music. Do we still have rock music in America, come to think of it? I don’t know that I’ve ever heard someone answer the question “what kind of music do you like” with “rock.” People listen to “alternative” or “indie” or “punk” or... well, I’m not really sure, because the answers don’t usually mean much to me. Anyway, I increasingly like, in case you are interested, the groups ДД“, Агата  ристи, Чиж, and Чайф. Another question: how did a genre of music get named 'heavy metal'? Is it in contrast to 'aluminum' music? Wait, isn't some row of the periodic table the heavy metals? I was sort of sad when I discovered that there is no cyrillic periodic table.

Wait, I remebered I have more homework, for grammer class: I have to write a paragraph about what a person in love should not do. There's some important grammatical concept involved, but unfortunately I don't really know what it is. Hmm. Why do we always get such odd assignments, anyway? How am I supposed to know what a person in love should not do, even if I knew how to say it grammatically? Probably the person who knew could make a lot of money, if they marketed this remarkable knowledge correctly.

I should try expressing myself in Russian only in rock lyrics. I would be much more grammatical. Unfortunately the range of subjects of my conversation would be sort of limited to tortured love, early death, and teenage rebellion. And Uma Thurman, I could talk about her rather a lot, she has an entire band named for her.

next day:
I wonder what would happen to a Russian who didn't eat bread at a meal. It's very funny- sometimes we have a very good meal, and people are fairly full, and then you see them look around uneasily for bread, because we haven't had any yet; this morning this happened after the macaroni-milk-porridge disk we had. It was followed by the every-present bread-cheese-sausage course. Actually I guess Svetlana, our summer school teacher, often didn't eat bread at meals, when she had her interesting 100% watermelon lunches.

I am currently in a very bad mood because I just bought a train ticket to Mongolia and it cost a lot more than I thought it would. And this is not only annoying in itself but reminds me of how much money I spend in general here, and how I don't make any, and then how in my non-Russian life I pretty much just spend my life wracking up debt to my parents and the federal government, and I don't really know what to do about it. This is hardly a new train of thought, I am just newly depressed about it by this stupid train ticket. Argggggg. I should have just gone to Frederick Community College and studied some lucrative subject like landscape design and become financially independent. Or been one of those child-entreprenuers who makes her first million by age 15. As it is, I am just going to have to never spend any money again. I already walked a long way home because I am too cheap to spend money on more than one marshrutka for one trip, and it was sort of cold because I am too cheap to buy a hat to replace the one I lost. And you are not reading this right now because I am too cheap to go to an internet cafe. I predict this budget to continue for approximately a week.

Actually I did try to go to the goth computer game internet cafe, but there were no free computers. I'm just too cheap to go downtown and use an internet cafe. Aiko, if you read this, I am currently wishing that I could call you and wish you a happy birthday. But I don't have your cellphone number, or your room number, and I can't get on the internet to find them. And I just tried to call Abby to ask her, but I am only told by a static-y British voice that the subscriber is not available right now. She is probably in class. All I can do is give you a late shout-out on my non-posted blog. When this gets posted, and if you are a person who has not yet congratulated Aiko Weverka on the completion of her 20th year of life, you should do so.

Katya told me tonight that she had a test for History of Culturology or some other horrid-sounding subject today, and I was referenced in one of her answers- it was some question about international cultural post-soviet relations or something? and she said that she had an American girl staying with her now, that many foreign students come to Irkutsk, and that Russia is a very welcoming country. I think she has a poor understanding of culturology, whatever that is. Russia has many positive qualities, but being especially welcoming of foreigners is not one.

This was just posted in the punk-video-game cafe by a very complex file transfer from the attendent's computer to this one.

Snow here today. Valentina Petrovna told me I'm not allowed to consider it winter yet though.