More worthless thoughts.

When I’m feeling as if I’m especially sick of Russia (which is often these days), I buy pirated DVDs. This happens rarely, actually; I’ve only done it a couple times. But still. You can get them for less than it costs to rent one at Blockbuster (which is fairly expensive, now that I think about it). But anyway it’s really wonderful and they’re very cheap and I can watch them as often as possible. I’m watching Little Miss Sunshine right now. I also got Traffic to watch at a later date, although I’m not entirely sure that will work wonders for my mood.

Today I ate an apple with peanut butter. Then I just ate peanut butter. The lack of non-stale bread in this house is a bit unfortunate. Now that I have peanut butter I’ve been substituting peanut butter and jelly mini sandwiches for my breakfast. Mmm. Yes.

Tried to organize a lunch to talk about going to the children’s home. Sonya was the only one who showed up. I didn’t think Ivan would come (nor should he) since it was his dad’s last day in Irkutsk…but I dunno about the others. Joseph was probably still at the dacha. Who knows. I was sort of irritated…but I’m often irritated, so whatever.

Also Karrina is definitely in heat, but it doesn’t matter, she still loves me a lot. I’m sure we’ll continue to be BFFs once this passes.

I really don’t want to do my homework. And I need to so I can start writing this 10 page papers. Aghhhhhrrrrrrrgggggg.

I’m gonna go belly buzz Karrina now.

I am like totally worthless. I need to start planning activities in the evenings, so I can still enjoy time alone at home, but do something somewhat productive. I just sit here and play games. Ugh.

Maybe if I had told the FBI about my recently acquired Sudoku and FreeCell skills they’d have wanted me.

Next day (November 13th)
Today is Sarah’s birthday! I would love to call her but don’t have her home number…I’ll get it soon.

Update: Mama Olya called Sarah to wish her a happy birthday, but I didn’t get to talk to her L. Sarah….I’ll call sooooon…Also I think we woke her up.

Today on the marshrutka this woman didn’t shut the door all the way, and when the van started moving again it flew open…everyone just sort of sat around looking at it (I don’t really understand why the woman next to the door didn’t do anything…or the woman who didn’t shut the door correctly…) but anyway, the driver just looked at it and hit the brakes just enough for the door to shut (but not enough for all of us to fly forward, thank God). It was awesome. I was beyond amused. He was also nice just in general, dropping people where they wanted along the route instead of just at the stops. And he didn’t even yell at this girl who had a 500 ruble bill (a sin on the marshrutka, since each ride is only 10 rubles). He just said he couldn’t change it and let her go.

Yesterday and today have sort of been, like, “one of those days”…except there were two. All of these things alone are no big deal, but when you put them together, and add the fact that these days I’m generally just in a bad mood and sick of Russia, it’s basically like the end of the world. First of all, Sonya was the only one who showed up to our meeting yesterday. Not really a big deal. THEN they didn’t have blini bananovii rai (banana paradise) at Domino’s. Then later today, I was just in general irritated in class, and find out that I guess there’s already a children’s home that people are going to? Why did I not know about this? (At the same time I realize I was supposed to be doing more about this, but still, the slowness of the process wasn’t exactly all my fault). Later I went to Café Koks to use their free wifi and for some reason the door was locked. And I couldn’t get inside. Then the cursor on my computer was like not at ALL working, and so at last I figured I would just sit down and watch a movie.

And then I realized I bought “Traffic” in Russian. In ONLY Russian. Although the disc SAYS it’s in English OR Russian with English OR Russian subtitles, it doesn’t. It has Russian dubbing…or very quiet English and THEN Russian dubbing. This is ridiculous.

So I watched Little Miss Sunshine. Again.

Every time I open my computer I think I have something worthwhile to write, and then I see my “blog entry” document and realize that I actually have nothing to say.

But since I haven’t really been sleeping much, I’ve decided that it’s ridiculous to just lie there and sleep and not do anything. So I’m going to be really productive tonight. I’m reading right now, but I’m also going to fold and put away my clothes and clear off a place on my desk to work (I think this is a better choice than having it be my toiletries table).

Karrina is just sort of rolling back and forth on the floor and it’s really funny looking. Also my cursor is spontaneously flying all over the screen.

So, it’s finally gotten cold here, but it’s not THAT cold. I mean, I guess it’s cold compared to what I’m used to in November, but it’s definitely not too cold. At night/in the morning it’s like -15 C (5 F) and during the day it’s like -5 or -10 (14-23). Granted, it’s cold, but it is NOT dublyonka weather. My host mother insisted that I wear my dublyonka and my fur boots. But my regular boots and black pea coat are quite warm. Also, they keep saying that everyone’s dressing for winter, but I have not seen ONE dublyonka. I’ve seen some fur coats, but I think that’s like a middle level in between the regular coat and the dublyonka (and a completely unnecessary middle step, as far as I’m concerned). Also I asked my Speech Practice teacher and SHE said that although technically the weather is cold enough to wear a dublyonka, none of the younger people do it because it’s too early. Have to wait. She also says it’s no big deal just to layer and wait a couple weeks until everyone else starts wearing their dublyonkas. It’s maybe cold enough to switch my regular hat for my zhivotniya (again, this means animal in Russian, but the meaning is entirely lost in the translation. Also we (mainly Sonya and I, or maybe just me) refer to our hats not as hats, but as zhivotnie. As in, we’re wearing our zhivotnie today, not our hats. This is important because my hat has so much fur it actually might be a full zhivotniya. Hard to tell). Anyway there is no real reason for this rant, the point is that I’m standing firm and wearing my “fall” clothes but NOT freezing and I will not back down. She keeps saying she doesn’t care what I wear but she won’t drop it so it’s clearly some sort of big issue.

It’s so not that cold. And Karrina so loves me right now.

November 14th
I GOT MY PACKAGE TODAY!!!! It had quite a journey. From Cleveland it went to England, and then to Moscow, then Novosibirsk, then back to Moscow, and then to Irkutsk. Good thing there wasn’t anything breakable in there, because I don’t know WHAT they did to the box, but my little peanut butter tubs were somehow torn out of their packages and one of my jelly belly boxes got stabbed open and there were jellybeans everywhere. But it’s okay, because everything was there, and YAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I now have lots of peanut butter, marshmallows, and jellybeans. Karrina and Chucha were very curious as to what this mysterious package was. I’ve folded all my clothes and now I’m reorganizing my room. Since I actually have more than a half hour of reading to do, I probably will want to use my desk. But now I’m writing and playing freecell because I folded clothes for like ten minutes. Time for a break.

My host mother came home early. That is sad because I was so looking forward to being in the apartment alone. Also I just noticed that Karrina is like, really, REALLY soft. She probably would make a good hat. That’s the most awful thing I’ve ever said.

One of my marshmallow packages says it’s “award-winning”. Who gives awards for marshmallows? I mean, I like them, and I like making smores, but this is certainly not a food worthy of an award.

I cleaned off my desk and it’s actually quite nice. I was a little skeptical, because I don’t like working somewhere where the table/desk is too low. In fact, I prefer it to be higher than normal. The desk:chair height ratio of this unit is superb.

Thursday, November 15th:
Today I wanted to do all KINDS of things on the internet. So I’m sitting right now in Café KoKs (this very upscale New York-ish place with free wi-fi) and I ordered myself a nice little lunch and a glass of wine. And internet. Except the internet isn’t working, and now I’m sad, because I look pretty weird having lunch alone. I should have better thought this out.
The other people here include:
Some guy and girl that look like they’re on a date.
Two girls.
This old looking Buryat guy and this young looking not-Buryat guy.
Four men, 2 older, 2 younger, that are probably part of the Russian mob.
Oh, then me. All by myself.
I’ve decided I’m going to watch Traffic in Russian. At the very least it’ll be good for my language development, and I have seen it once so I sort of remember the storyline.