More thoughts. Also not interesting.

Ice cream stands are everywhere in Russia. I don’t know if I’ve talked about this already. I’ve clearly thought about it often, as you can usually find one every hundred yards or so. There are also large numbers of shoe repair shops/kiosks. I would say that those two kinds of kiosks are most prevalent here in Irkutsk. In fact, there is a dual ice cream/shoe repair kiosk right across from the university. People often have to ask whether we’re in line for ice cream or shoes.

Sonya told me that the moose were not actually used for military purposes. Stalin had wanted to use them to have people travel on mooseback into the United States through Canada. I have no idea whether or not this is true as it is completely ridiculous. At any rate, the entire conversation, and Russia as a whole, is fairly ridiculous, therefore I’m not going to try to come to any conclusions about it.

So my host mother has been buying things that I like to eat, like these little cream bars and candies and hot chocolate. Which is very nice of her. I know that Middlebury pays them for food and housing, and assured us that they were being given more than enough money, but I can’t help but feel as if maybe I am this huge expense. This isn’t really making sense. But I fear that the foods I like are also the most expensive. I don’t think this is true, given the fact that these are things they already had in the house and that I eat pretty much anything they give me. But anyway, I went to the сентральный рынок (central market, I guess you could call it) and was very relieved to find that packets of hot chocolate are only 5 rubles each (about 20 cents). I decided that I wanted to replenish the stash. I was originally going to buy 10, but figured that would be too obvious, so I only bought four and placed them with the other hot chocolate packets. I feel a little less guilty now. I wonder how long it will be before they realize something’s up (as in, we’re all drinking hot chocolate but the number of packets never really seem to decrease). I suppose I’ll keep the replenishing under control. Food here is a major source of stress, I don’t know if I’ve conveyed that already or not. Sarcasm online is really difficult.

I also really like walking around the сентральный рынок. They have pretty much everything there, and you can just walk around and look and be anonymous. Of course, it’s more like a lot of kiosks (because naturally, you have to ASK for everything in Russia. You can’t just go and pick up some things like at a grocery store). I’m serious. Literally everything you would ever want is behind a glass case.

I’d quite like a cup of hot chocolate right now, but I also want to add a little bit of milk. I know that I’m allowed to open the unopened packet of milk, and it’s okay (especially considering that I don’t really drink any here, so I very rarely consume any of their milk), but I’m hesitant for some reason (see above paragraph about food guilt). Oh, did I mention the kind of milk they have here? Normally at home I would say I’m a skim milk person. Sometimes 1% or 2%. Here they have like, 4% and 6%. It’s like half and half. I can’t even drink whole milk at home because it’s too much for me.

I have located the sports channel (7) which is now my favorite channel to watch. It requires minimal language proficiency and sports happen to be one of my favorite things in general. I am, however, confused as to how the channel 7 in the kitchen is not the same as the channel 7 in the living room. They are both supposed to be the Russian sports channel, but this morning, channel 7 sports in the kitchen was showing a field hockey game, while channel 7 sports in the living room was showing a soccer game.

Alex Gym is undergoing even more renovations. There is no longer a women’s changing room (have I talked about this?), and numerous walls have been torn down. I’m not entirely sure what it is they’re doing, but whatever. All of this construction started literally 2 days after we bought our passes (well, there was construction and painting upstairs, but there’s nothing up there-I just figured that was some other store or space or something). While Alex Gym itself is improving, I am still a pathetic mess in all aspects of athletics and weight training.

In other news, our grammar teacher was able to sell us tickets to a sold out show at some theatre. We’re going with a bunch of German international students. Yay! I’m really quite excited. It’d be nice to have friends outside of our little American group. I think I might be taking two mainstream classes too, so I guess that doubles my chance of making Russian friends (now we’re at like, .04% as opposed to .02%). AND today for the first time on the marshrutka I called out “next, please” (you have to say either “next, please”, “at the stop, please” or the name of the next stop, etc, if you want to get out). Well, I’ve done this before but only when I’m sitting like right next to/behind the driver, or when there’s no one else in the marshrutka (well, maybe 1 or 2). But today, I was all the way in the back, and there were a bunch of people, and I said it anyway. And no one stared at me, which was fabulous.

I am trying to download the entire Middlebury course catalog onto my computer so I can figure out classes and credits and whatnot for next semester. A) October is a bit early to be doing this b) as if I need more ways to procrastinate. I don’t consider watching TV procrastinating though, because as Elisabeth said “it’s like learning!” and it takes a genuine amount of effort to actually follow anything.

There are a large amount of men in uniforms here. I’ve figured out which ones are the police, but the other, like, 5 are still a mystery to me. They have badges or seals or something on the sides of their arms, but don’t say anything. Are they training to be policemen? Are they like park rangers (unlikely, because there are no parks here or endangered animals, unless the rabid cats count)? Should I avoid them like I avoid the police? Right now I just see them as a sign of Russian bureaucracy, which is always to be avoided. I will update more as the mystery unfolds.