california, here i...am

incoherent rant to follow

2007-10-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

Man, I thought Peter Bjorn and John's reign of terror had ceased sometime around early July when ahead-of-the-curve radio stations like 103.1 and clubs like the Echo finally recognized that "Young Folks" had run its course. I was so wrong. Now that mainstream radio is playing it and every TV show that wants to be hip is licensing it and James Frickin' Blunt is covering it, I expect it'll be months before I get that goddamn whistling out of my head.

"Young Folks" offends me on two levels: first, I can't whistle, so it's like the refrain is taunting me. Second, I just found out that the group Peter Bjorn and John isn't made up of two guys (one named Peter Bjorn and the other simply John), but is actually three guys, none of whom ever learned how to use a comma. That sort of thing bugs the shit out of me. Like when Fergie sings "I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket." God help me, I actually sat through that entire song twice because I thought I might have misheard it the first time. But no. Whose blanket, Fergie? Whose fucking blanket?

A new year, a new start?

2007-09-13T20:31:00.000-07:00

I'm a bad Jew, I guess, for going to work today, but seeing as this is my first full week at NWE I hope I'm excused.
Anyway, for the first time in sixteen-odd years it's September and I'm not starting school. I don't think I've processed this yet, maybe because the transition to full-time coincided so neatly with the start of the new Pomona semester. And while my summer was far from a vacation, it nonetheless effectively ended the way all my summer vacations have ended for the past five years--with a plane ride from Massachusetts to Southern California.
But--and this is a scary realization--from pretty much this exact point onward, life won't have those neat little pre-cut sections anymore. Up until now, every single memory I've retained has been branded with what grade I was in at the time. Furthermore, every school year and every summer has been a unique, almost self-contained experience--the third grade spent in California, the summer in Scotland, the sophomore year in which I learned to like college, the sixth grade where I suddenly became unpopular and yearned for the fresh start middle school would bring.
So now that I don't have that, will my years start running into each other until it's all just a meaningless blur? With apologies to "Rent", how will I measure, measure a year?
In birthdays, in jobs, in apartments, in boyfriends? In oil changes, in haircuts, in contact lenses? In gym memberships, in gallons of milk, in loads of laundry? In seasons of "24"?
How about love?
(Actually, that part of the song never made sense to me. Isn't love, like, intangible? That would seem to interfere with its effectiveness as a measuring unit.)
Happy Rosh Hashanah.

Requiem for a thing.

2007-08-07T20:28:00.000-07:00

My iPod died on Saturday. By means of a carefully delivered whack on the table, I was able to resurrect it just long enough to back up all my songs. But then it went and died again, this time taking its music along with it. After about fifteen system restores, it's now in some kind of vegetative state wherein it acts normal when it isn't plugged in, but freezes up whenever I try to put my music back on it.
This is a problem. I hadn't realized how dependent I'd become on my three-inch-long friend. This morning, for example, a bit of construction on the 134 meant five-odd minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. Had my iPod been working, I could have scrolled through thousands of songs and come up with the perfect musical selection--something chill, but still upbeat enough that I wouldn't drift off and hit the car in front of me. Without an iPod, and with a broken car antenna that only lets in Jack FM, my options were thus:

1. Silence
2. "Feel Like Making Love" by Bad Company

Guess what I've had stuck in my head ALL FREAKING DAY?

So now I have to get a new iPod. I feel like I shouldn't, to protest Apple's nasty penchant for designing products that expire right after their warranties do, but, well...when I live without my iPod, I live without love. And that's just not acceptable.

So I guess I should update.

2007-07-22T17:25:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm working three jobs, time to myself has become a major commodity. Today was my first day off following a 60-hour work week, and I took the opportunity to sleep in, eat an enormous breakfast, do some laundry and devour my roommate's copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (pretty good despite the lame-ass epilogue, a lot of unanswered questions and some blatant borrowing from Lord of the Rings.)
My third job is at a micro-winery run by a friend of a friend, and it's been fun so far. Business is slow most days, but we do get the occasional customer. I have to say, it's pretty funny watching people taste wine, especially the ones who take it really seriously. The best are the men who bring their wives/dates in for a tasting and attempt to show off their vast wine expertise by questioning us, the staff, about mouth feel and varietals and tannins and such, at which point I just want to say "It's $16 a bottle! Get a grip!" but usually don't.
My own knowledge of wine has increased dramatically over the past two weeks, but that's not saying much--before I took this job, the only "varietals" I knew about were "comes in a box", "two-buck Chuck" and "ooh, let's get that, it has a cute animal on the label."
Oh, and I'm 22 now, and have been feeling simultaneously older than I've ever felt and younger than I've ever felt. It's odd.

Recent good things:

2007-07-03T20:23:00.000-07:00

I hosted my friend Susi, who had a four-day stopover in LA on her way from New York to her home country, Germany. Good times and quality beer.

I got to pull Russian music for a project that shall go unnamed (confidentiality agreement and all). but that involves Steve Carrell standing in Red Square. Finally, a use for my major!

In honor of the Simpsons movie, eleven 7-11s have been transformed into Kwik-E-Marts. One of them is down the street from my office. Score one for working in Burbank, the epicenter of the entertainment industry. I didn't take the photo, but trust me, it's all this and more:

In which I meet Adolph Hipster.

2007-06-18T22:45:00.000-07:00

The Echo's had some good shows recently. Two Fridays ago it was the Raveonettes--yet another boy-girl indie rock duo, but at least they're not married. Saturday was SoCalled, a Canadian group going for that ever-broadening indie/hip-hop/klezmer demographic. The following Tuesday, the Cold War Kids played a benefit show that had the hipsters lining up around the block. The show was awesome--if I hadn't been able to see it for free I would've lined up and paid the $20 in a heartbeat, I swear. And then last Thursday there were a bunch of bands who all went to the same high school as one of my NWE coworkers. Sadly, the streak ended Saturday thanks to several ironic-techno-spinning DJs. What sticks with me most about that night was a certain patron whose facial hair was so controversial, I couldn't help asking about it.

RACHEL (while wristbanding): Dude, um, what's with the mustache?
GUY WITH HITLER MUSTACHE: What do you mean?
RACHEL: Just...careful how many Jews you offend with that thing, you know?
GIRL CLUTCHING ARM OF GUY WITH HITLER MUSTACHE: (giggles) Oh, it's OK, I'm Jewish!

Now, that mustache would've looked disgusting even if it didn't immediately recall the most reviled dictator/mass murderer of this past century. There are certain guys who intentionally try to camouflage their good looks as much as possible--even if they don't have any to begin with--and this guy (who was also wearing a neon vest and proto-mullet) was definitely one of them. I honestly don't think he was thinking about you-know-who when he inflicted that hideous patch on his upper lip. But it seems to me that even the most ironically repulsive hipster wouldn't have been able to sport the 'stache for more than a few hours before a glance in the mirror--or maybe a Jewish girlfriend--made him come to his senses and break out the Schick Quattro.
So either this guy and his girlfriend are into some seriously kinky role-playing, or they are the two most oblivious people ever to walk this earth. Either way, I'd like to categorically state that Hitler mustaches are just plain Not Okay. Unless you're a cat. But even then it's creepy.

Facing my phobia the hard way...

2007-06-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

OK, so anyone who knows me knows that bees freak me out. Well, guess what happens to be located somewhere in the ceiling of my new apartment? That's right. A whole freakin' nest of them. At first I thought the mysterious buzzing sound I heard whenever I went to the bathroom was an electrical problem. No such luck. Yesterday was the first day I was home in the morning; once I noticed the steady stream of bees flying in and out of a spot somewhere above my window, I called the manager, who as it turned out had already hired an exterminator. The exterminator came today, but I'm thinking he did so when the bees were out gathering pollen or whatever it is they do, because now they're all back and they're all pissed. Wouldn't you be if you came home from a normal day at work to find your house destroyed and your children poisoned to death?
What's worse than a bee's nest somewhere in your ceiling? Uh, I don't know, how about a SWARM of FUCKING DISGRUNTLED BEES throwing themselves at your window? Maybe they'll give up and find another place to nest, but I'm guessing they'll bond in the face of today's tragic events, embark on a journey of healing and rebirth, and declare a War on Humans, starting with me. My window really isn't all that thick.

Talk about your occupational hazards.

2007-05-24T14:30:00.000-07:00

So far I've enjoyed my new job at the Echo. All the other people who work there are fun, and free shows are always sweet. Last night it was the Monolators, a husband-and-wife duo (he's on guitar, she drums) who don't really sound like the White Stripes. It seems that in the age of 15-minute celebrity marriages and a 50%-plus divorce rate, indie husband-and-wife duos have become all the rage--a week ago we had the Submarines, who are really a threesome once you count the laptop.
The Monolators' set had ended and 8-Bit was about to go on when the manager took me off wristbanding duty and told me to go guard the stage entrance at Dub Club, which was happening in the club room downstairs.
I'd been at the Echo last Wednesday when Dub Club was going on, but hadn't spent too much time there. As its name suggests, it's a reggae dance party that attracts mostly guys in dreadlocks and, this being LA, your standard complement of scantily clad girls who wear too much lip liner. I don't really get reggae, or at least the kind they play at Dub Club: it's too repetitive, the melodies don't go anywhere and the unnecessarily loud bass verges on brown note territory. As I sat there turning away the occasional non-VIP, I wondered who in their right mind would actually pay to subject themselves to this; then, as I breathed in the thick air, I was reminded that most of these people weren't in their right minds. Someone singing onstage referred to marijuana, ganja and sensemilla in the same verse. An ancient Bob Marley lookalike stood at a corner table selling red, yellow and green smoking paraphernalia. And I had, I realized, been uncommonly focused on the same light fixture for a good ten minutes now.
Oh, fuck.
I'd last been familiar with the particular state of mind in question some three years ago; now, not surprisingly, I was woefully unprepared to deal with it. I made my way over to the nearest security guard to tell him I was leaving my post, but forgot what I was trying to say mid-sentence. Mortified, I ran up the stairs to the outside. The Southern California air had never seemed so crystal clear.
After standing there for a while and downing a bottle of water, I sobered up enough to tell the manager what had happened. He looked amused, then told me he wouldn't station me down there again. Thank god--or Jah, if you're into that kind of thing. I've got enough to worry about in LA without the threat of becoming an accidental pothead.
Next week, though, I head for the relative calm of Pasadena. Wish me luck.

Where to start?

2007-05-18T13:25:00.000-07:00

You know, when they show college graduation in movies or on TV, they always show everyone throwing their big square hats up in the air, but they never show what happens after the hats come down. I'm hoping the bruise on my arm goes away sometime soon.
I'm writing this from a public library about a block away from my temporary apartment in Koreatown. I am feeling very white. Tomorrow I'm going to check out an apartment in Pasadena, and if that works out I'll be moving sometime next week. I think Pasadena's a better fit for me than smack dab in the center of LA--it's smaller and more manageable, but it has a pretty happening downtown and it's still within a short drive of all the resources the city has to offer. It's also expensive as all hell, but hopefully I'll be able to swing it.
I bought a car, a 1994 Camry that has seen better days but runs great and has AC that could give a witch's teat some serious competition. Within 24 hours of buying my first car in LA, I got my first parking ticket. I'm contesting it.
I got a part-time job taking tickets at The Echo, a nightclub in Echo Park that showcases indie bands. I emailed the guys at NWE about it, and Omar told me I'd be receiving my first hipster merit badge in the mail shortly. I'm hoping the free shows will be worth the not-so-great pay and the ridiculous hours.
So overall, I'm adapting. I'm still not thrilled about living in Southern California, but I'm finding myself more and more excited about exploring the area from the inside. The beach, the mountains and the desert are all relatively close by, and I have easy access to basically every kind of cuisine imaginable, assuming I'm able to afford it. I have friends in Pasadena and Claremont and Orange County and Encino, and hopefully they will want to hang out with me. And (as I keep reminding myself) I don't have to stay here forever.
For now, though, there's internet at the library and Wilshire Boulevard to walk around and the Section Quartet playing at the Echo tonight. LA, let's do this.

The end of the end? Or the beginning of the beginning?

2007-05-13T02:16:00.000-07:00

I graduate college tomorrow, and despite everything I've been saying and thinking for the past year and a half or so, I don't know if I'm ready.
I don't know if I'm ready to live outside the safety net of home or college. I don't know if I'm ready to deal with rent, student loans, car insurance, gas and groceries every single month from now until who knows when. I don't know if I'm ready to give up free food or free music studio use or free gym access. I don't know if I'm ready to stop getting student discounts on things (although my Pomona ID doesn't have an expiration date on it, so I'm probably good for at least another year.)
Yes, I've wanted to leave this place for ages. Now that I've actually gotten my wish, though, I can't stop thinking about all the things and people I'll miss. Maybe if I had any time between finishing my thesis and going to San Diego for Senior Week, or any time between San Diego and graduation, I'd have had time to come to my senses.
Or maybe if I'd allowed myself just a wee bit more time between graduating from college and moving to LA, so that I wouldn't have to make the transition from "ridiculously coddled liberal arts student" to "twentysomething trying to make it on my own in a city that doesn't give a damn about me" in a matter of hours. Yeah. That might've been smart of me.
I don't have time to write anything else tonight, but consider this a "to be continued"...

Life is the longest death in California...

2007-04-29T02:08:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's fitting that I'm going to work for an entertainment company--my life has the tendency to resemble a bad sitcom. To wit:

SCENE: Junior year, second semester. RACHEL is talking to a friend in the dining hall.
RACHEL: I'll say this much: there is absolutely, positively, one hundred percent NO WAY I'm going to live in LA.
HARD CUT to RACHEL, a year older and a year wiser, surrounded by stacks of boxes in front of a couple of palm trees and the Hollywood sign. Music sting.
RACHEL: I can't believe I'm going to live in LA.
Canned laughter.

Seriously, folks. If there's one thing I learned in college, it's that Southern California is not the place for me. I like the weather, the music scene and the Mexican food, but all the sun and indie bands and tacos in the world can't make up for the traffic, the urban sprawl and the fake boobs. Mostly, I can't stand the thought of buying a car--one of my friends got into a pretty serious car accident the other day, so now in addition to worrying about high gas/insurance costs, endless traffic jams and the toll on the environment, I've been worrying about getting killed.
So why am I doing this? I'm doing it so I can learn as much as I can about music supervision and film scoring, gain that valuable industry experience, maybe even contribute to American pop culture in some positive way. I already know I like working at NWE, and I imagine being able to commute by car instead of dealing with unreliable public transit will only make things more enjoyable.
But will it last? Can I make it in the entertainment industry before the city beats me into submission? Or will I go broke and turn into one of those homeless crazy people who walk around Skid Row mumbling to themselves?

I can't believe I'm going to live in LA.

Dateline: Sunday, April 22.

2007-04-22T12:18:00.000-07:00

One week from today, my thesis will be done and turned in. I'll have presented my thesis to my department, and I'll hopefully not have screwed it up. I'll have performed in what might be my last choir concert ever. My internship with NWE will be over, and I'll know whether I get to stay in LA and work an awesome entertainment industry job and keep my boyfriend or whether I'll have to start fresh, move back home, find a job in a city I actually like. And all that will stand between me and graduation will be a week in San Diego, a couple jazz gigs and a bitch of a Debussy prelude that I really should've started orchestrating a week ago but will only get around to this coming weekend.
Three weeks from today, I'll be a college graduate. Well, no, I'll probably be in the middle of sitting though an endless barrage of speeches about how far we've all come and and how I am responsible for using my just-acquired liberal arts education to benefit the greater community (Right. Maybe I'll go teach Russian Formalist theory to inner-city schoolchildren.) But several long hours after that, I'll be a college graduate.
Four weeks from today...well, who knows?
You'd think I'd be feeling something--anything--but mostly I'm just tired. Maybe I'll get all nostalgic after the fact, but for now I want to get everything over with as soon as humanly possible. Three weeks is not short enough.

Ah, stress...

2007-04-11T22:14:00.000-07:00

Like any feeling worth having, it takes different forms in different people. For me it's an imaginary claw digging into the exact center of my upper back and an an uncontrollable urge to check Facebook every five minutes. It also results in such I-am-so-going-to-hell thoughts as when I was working at the Motley a little while ago and they started showing a film about African kids with AIDS and all I could think was All right! I get it! You have AIDS! Now could you possibly not talk so much?
To be fair, the film was by a Fulbright grant winner with an obviously inflated sense of self-importance trying to not so much tug on as yank out the audience's heartstrings (sample question: "What is your biggest wish?" not to mention that the film's last sentence was "Most of these children will die needlessly.") And then there was the music: sort of acoustic and emo, but with vaguely African-sounding percussion (Death Cab for Djibouti?)
Incoherent blog rants. That'd be another symptom of stress.
At any rate, my to-do list isn't getting much shorter, but at least it isn't getting any longer. I found an outside thesis reader and ordered the jazz band shirts, and the Russian Special Dinner problem got worked out. The problem is that the twin spectres of Thesis and Will I Get Hired are constantly hanging over my head, and while I can do something about that first one, I have no control over the second.
Once I do find out about it, though, that claw in my back is going to either politely remove itself or tighten up to the point that the Vulcan Death Grip will seem like a soothing massage by comparison...so stay tuned, folks.

Various "happy places" to which I have gone in the past week or so:

2007-04-07T01:44:00.000-07:00

The Getty Center:Yes, there are some things LA does right. It's all high art and gardens and panoramic views (LA doesn't look so bad from high up in the hills) and pretty much my favorite architecture ever. If it wasn't so far away from everything, and if it weren't for all that pesky security, I would live there.

The Meadows, in Edinburgh, right around sunset:
(I couldn't find a picture of it at sunset, or during the festival, but you get the idea.)
The Meadows is an enormous quad-type-thing located between the city center and my former flat. I had to walk across it just about every day, and it always made me happy. You could see Arthur's Seat and Edinburgh University, and if it was a nice day there would be lots of people lounging about. During the festival around sunset there would be fire jugglers, not to mention the huge complex with the Ladyboys tent, the Moscow State Circus tent and a fun fair that played cheesy '80s music all the time.

Nevsky Prospect, in St. Petersburg, at night:
Nevsky Prospekt dominates St. Petersburg. At night--or when it gets dark, rather--the buildings, cathedrals and monuments lining the street light up and the city's strange blend of Russian onion domes, Western European grandeur, Soviet bombast and crass American capitalism suddenly somehow makes sense.

A small apartment somewhere just on the outskirts of central Pest:
This should be self explanatory. Hard to believe I took that picture three weeks ago--it feels like something that happened in another lifetime.

Just a few of the places I visit during moments like these, when I'm stressing out about getting my thesis draft done in the next week, finding a reader for the thesis outside the department, finishing the music part of my thesis, which may instead turn out to be the final project for my film music class, passing my orchestration class, convincing the Oldenborg staff to let us do the Russian Special Dinner skit in English instead of Russian (it's a bigger deal than it sounds, trust me), actually working on and performing in the Russian Special Dinner, dealing with that dinner, three jazz gigs and two choir concerts all in the space of about a week, designing and ordering the T-shirts for jazz band, figuring out what the hell I'm going to do if it turns out my internship place doesn't hire me (my boss said "probably," but the final decision has to wait until some guy who's on vacation comes back from vacation), figuring out what the hell I'm going to do if my internship place does hire me (I'll need to find an apartment, a car and another job...since if I get hired it'll probably only be for three days a week or so), and wondering when the loud party two floors above me will stop so I can get some sleep so I can spend all day tomorrow on my thesis.

Oh yes. Thank god for happy places.

Time flies...

2007-04-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

I saw my former advisor with her kid on my way back from work today. It struck me that, during my four years at Pomona, Gabe--that's his name--went from complete and utter nonexistence to a living, breathing human being who can think, walk, and talk (albeit with a limited vocabulary.)
As for me, I started out my freshman year here as a small, cynical, slightly awkward musician type with a long-distance quasi-boyfriend and no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And now, four years and thousands of tuition dollars later, I'm...a small, cynical, slightly awkward musician type with a long-distance quasi-boyfriend and no idea what I want to do with my life.
Right.

I feel dirty.

2007-03-26T21:56:00.000-07:00

I wish America had more bath houses.Um, no, not that kind of bath house, this kind of bath house...
...where, for relatively little money, you get to hang out in a palace filled with pools, hot tubs, saunas, steam rooms and Hungarian masseuses with dubious credentials. The baths in Budapest weren't as intimate/intense/culturally fortifying as the banyas in Russia, but they were still pretty therapeutic and a lot of fun.
Americans don't bathe; we shower. The rich among us pay exorbitant prices to go to spas, where they get wrapped in seaweed so they can look thinner or have smaller pores or something. And I'm guessing that even the fine gentlemen at the top of this entry don't go to bath houses to take baths. (By the way, what an amazing picture. Google Image Search rocks.)
I realize I'm being a bit unfair--baths are more of an Eastern European thing, not an everywhere-but-America thing--but, well, this country just has a tendency to piss me off. Like today, when I was riding on the Metrolink and the conductor woman told me my 10-trip pass wasn't valid for travel past Union Station (I hadn't known that) and wrote me a citation. That action in and of itself was fine--it's her job and all that. However, as she was writing me up, a group of LA County sheriffs seated next to and across from me (one of whom looked disturbingly like this guy) started laughing and saying things like "I knew she was trouble right when I saw her!" and "Want us to get her fingerprints for your records?"
And then the conductor started laughing right along with them.
First off: damn do I need a car.
Second: Yes, I could see that same situation happening in, say, France, but in that case the bystanders' remarks would've been a lot more witty and the laughter closer to malevolent snickering than big-throated guffawing. I wouldn't have minded that so much.

Well, back to work...

2007-03-21T16:20:00.000-07:00

I wish spring break had been just a little less awesome. That way I'd be feeling at least a little more motivated to re-start work on my thesis. I was at my most productive in the weeks leading up to the trip; now that I know I won't be going anywhere exciting until Senior Week, I just can't get back into the swing of things.
I was getting a bit frustrated with the damn thing even before break. When I started a couple months ago it felt like I was embarking on a meaningful intellectual journey, at the end of which I would discover the meaning of Art and Life and such. These days it just feels like I'm stuck in an academic version of Space Invaders. Try as I might, I will never be able to shoot all those little fuckers down before they land on my head and I die.
(Large mass of enemy ships=my thesis. Tiny green ship trying to destroy all the enemy ships in time to prevent their ever-quickening inevitable descent=me.)

The Hungary post.

2007-03-19T21:55:00.000-07:00

Maybe I over-romanticize Europe, and maybe that's harmful--I mean, it has its share of problems, just like the US--but can I help it if every time I've gone there I've had the time of my young life?
My spring break in Budapest last week was my first trip to Europe in a strictly tourist capacity, and while I didn't have time or local connections enough to bond with the city in the same way I did with St. Petersburg and Edinburgh, I was still damn impressed. It's definitely my kind of city: small enough to be easily navigable, large enough to be vibrant and full of things to do. Public transport is easy to use, inexpensive and efficient, and there are tons of chill coffee shops and bars to hang out in. Not to mention that it's gorgeous, especially when it's warm and sunny (which it was for almost the entire duration of my trip--I only saw clouds right when I got there and right before I left.)
And of course there was the boy--Austen--my ersatz tour guide and provider of shelter, among other things. We covered all the sightseeing bases, had some really nice dinners, went to the opera, took an afternoon trip to a nearby village...all the usual touristy stuff. We also got to check out some speeches and demonstrations on March 15th, the anniversary of Hungary's 1848 revolution. At the time neither of us were particularly sure what was going on--damn Hungarian--but apparently a lot of it had to do with Hungary's right-wing party calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister. Thankfully we missed this riot, which happened a couple streets over from Austen's apartment. We did get to see a crowd of protesters throw water balloons and eggs at...um, some government person...but he was protected by a couple of Secret Service types wielding black umbrellas.
I'm so incredibly happy to have gone, but now I'm a bit depressed. I mean, I finally got to be with the guy I adore in the continent I adore, only to have to return to writing my thesis, contemplating my future and dealing with LA public transport after just one all-too-brief week. And I had literally no time to decompress--I got into LA Sunday night, only to have to go to my internship yesterday and classes today. I'd think the whole trip was some impossibly euphoric fever dream if I didn't have photographic proof.
I'm not saying LA doesn't have any pretty sights, but honestly, when it comes to sheer eye-melting gorgeousness per square foot, you can't beat a European capital. Going from that to Burbank's Media District kind of makes me want to swear off America for a good long while.

But then again...

2007-02-26T23:18:00.000-08:00

This evening, I was on the Metrolink from LA back to Claremont. It was the end of a long day; I had even darker circles under my eyes than usual and my makeup was doing nothing to cover up my most recent breakout. As the train neared the Claremont stop and I made my way to the doors, I passed by an elderly gentleman who smiled at me and said, in a pleasant Southern drawl, "I sure do like the beauty in your face, lady."
He said it in such a sincere, non-creepy way that I couldn't help but have a huge grin on my (ostensibly beautiful) face for the entire walk back to my dorm room. It kind of made my night.
So yeah, score one for public transport, and one for humanity while we're at it.
I should add, though, that this doesn't give all old guys a free pass to hit on me. This was a special circumstance, and every other time I've been propositioned by the elderly it's seriously creeped me out. Yes, I mean you, Mr. Scottish Golfer from the Bank Hotel bar. And you, Mr. Sweaty European Man who tried to dance with me at a ceilidh and thought "My shirt's all wet, it's like I just washed it!" was a valid pick-up line. And you, Mr. Anonymous Russian Guy who came at me out of nowhere, patted my chest through about five layers of clothing, then ran away. And...well, you get the idea.

A Metrolink moment.

2007-02-19T23:21:00.000-08:00

Generally I see taking public transportation as a life-affirming experience: I mean, here are all these people with all these different backgrounds and heritages, thrown together on a train going to the big city. The 50-minute Metrolink commute into LA is long enough that you can, if so motivated, get to know the person across from you pretty well by the end of the ride. And hey-everyone's saving the environment! Yay for humanity!
The other day, though, I had to sit next to what could euphemistically be called a racially charged dispute between a Latino graphic designer and a black guy with half of Fort Knox in his mouth, spurred by the former accidentally putting his bag down on the latter's foot. I had to drown out the onslaught of epithets with my iPod so that my PC reflex, so carefully calibrated in Amherst and Claremont, wouldn't compel me to gasp out loud or start lecturing.
Moments after the affair had been settled, we were joined by a pair of cherubic-looking 8-year-old schoolkids, one of which piped up, "My dad has a gun but the police said that if they find it one more time he'll go to jail so he's hiding it in my closet."
Oh dear God. Humanity has a ways to go yet.

Jack Bauer or Jon Stewart?

2007-02-15T20:43:00.000-08:00

For various reasons I've been feeling like absolute crap for most of today. The nail in my depression coffin, though, was this, an interview with Joel Surnow in the New Yorker. Joel Surnow is the man behind 24, the show that makes my Mondays surviveable. He is also, as is revealed in the article, a huge fucking conservative asshole.
To make matters worse, his new show, meant as a Daily Show alternative for the oh-so-oppressed conservative faction, is so unfunny it's...well, not funny.

I'm not saying liberals are immune to satire, or that Obama fever isn't just a little bit ridiculous (although I do like the guy.) But dear God, the worst torture method Jack Bauer could possibly imagine isn't as painful as that show. "BO Magazine"? "An all-time low of 99.9 percent"? They'd do a better job if they plagiarized from their enemies at The Daily Show:

So in conclusion, while I don't want to make assholes like Surnow any richer, I can't give up my Monday night endorphin rush. So I've decided that maybe I'll just illegally download new episodes off the network from now on. As a liberal, it's my moral obligation.

Stupid Rachel, stupid.

2007-02-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

I'm at the Motley working on my thesis, and less than 15 minutes ago freaking John Cameron Mitchell, director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch (one of my favorite movies ever), was sitting at the table next to mine. He's here for a screening of Shortbus (his infamous non-pornographic movie in which all the actors and actresses nonetheless have actual sex on camera), and he was talking to a couple of students from the organization sponsoring the screening...not that I was trying to listen in or anything.
So anyway, I introduced myself during a gap in the conversation, and while this encounter managed to go a little better than my last encounter with a famous gay guy, I still managed to come off sounding like a tongue-tied, starstruck idiot. I guess for all my cynicism, I get just as caught up in the whole celebrities-as-demigods mythos as everyone else. Or maybe I was just so afraid of saying something stupid in front of the artistic genius that I couldn't say anything substantial at all. Argh.

California, California...

2007-02-07T23:01:00.000-08:00

I have no car.
Today, however, I had an internship interview in Burbank at 3.
To get there, I had to catch the 11:30 Metrolink out of Claremont, hang around Union Station for about 40 minutes, catch the 1:10 Metrolink to Burbank, wander around looking for a bus station for some time, wait at the bus station (conveniently located just downwind of a couple of guys painting a streetlight...mmm, fumes) for about 20 minutes, take the bus to a stop located a couple of blocks away from the internship place, then walk those couple of blocks.
This would have been trying even at the best of times. Today, I was PMSing. By the time I reached my destination, I was ready to go all Carrie on the ass of the next person who crossed my path. But then, noticing that I still had 20 minutes left before my interview, I decided to get some tacos from the stand across the street.
This was actually the best decision I could have made at the time. Not only did the act of eating calm me down, they were the kind of tacos that make Tuesday "Burrito" nights at Frary seem like an exercise in futility. The kind of tacos that make you realize Amherst's vaunted Bueno y Sano is nothing but an impostor. I hadn't had Mexican food that good since...well, Mexico.
After that, everything went wonderfully. I got the internship--that was pretty much a given before the interview--and it's just what I'd hoped it would be. I'm going to be working for the music division of New Wave Entertainment, a smallish production company. The division's called Zoo Street Music, and they deal with music supervision, licensing and composition. Currently they're trying to expand their enterprise, but they only have about five people on their staff...which means that a) I'll get to do actual work as an intern, rather than just filing or whatever, and b) I stand a chance of getting hired once the internship is over.
As if responding to the karmic inertia built up by lunch and the interview, public transportation worked the second time around--it only took about an hour and a half to get back to Claremont, about the same as by car.
So anyway, here are the three simple thoughts I took away from today's adventure:
Tacos are good.
Internships are good.
But would the job of my dreams really be worth living in the city of my nightmares?

On the bright side...

2007-01-28T11:55:00.000-08:00

One of the weirder things that happened to me last semester: During dinner, I got a call from a guy who graduated last year and who happened to be back in town for a little while. Now, I kinda knew this guy--he was friends with my freshman year sponsor--but the two of us had never had an actual conversation. So when he asked me if I wanted to accompany him to a Joanna Newsom concert in LA that same night, I was understandably a little taken aback. (My first response: "How did you get my number?" His reply: "Uh, Facebook." Bad sign.)
I turned him down as respectfully as I could ("I've got this huge essay due tomorrow...") but now that I've listened to Ys I sort of wish I'd gone. I fully expected to hate Joanna Newsom---I mean, she's a "psych-folk" harpist who sings about magic animals, for God's sake--but her music is evocative and gorgeously orchestrated and totally unlike anything else out there.

Other sources of excitement in my life: the thing with cheaptickets.com got straightened out, and now I'm going to Hungary--yes, Hungary--over spring break. Am hoping to God I'll have enough of my thesis finished by then that I won't have to pass up sightseeing/the opera/etc. in favor of staying in and writing.

Speaking of which, my thesis might be kicking my ass/destroying my social life, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Yes, it's a little ridiculous that Little Miss I Hate Academia is throwing herself into a project involving avant-garde Soviet cinema from the 1920s, but I figure it's got to give me at least a little hipster cred. Did I mention the guy I'm researching has 200-odd MySpace friends?

I also got started on the film scoring process for the creative component of the thesis. No composition quite yet, just blocking out cues and hit points on Digital Performer, but it's going to rock. I hadn't been in the music studio in about seven months, so I'd almost forgotten that Zen feeling I get when I'm figuring out the shortcuts and idiosyncrasies of music technology, that state where even the most bewildering of technical difficulties is somehow manageable. I think this theory explains it best.

Now if I could only get into that same state while writing my thesis abstract, I wouldn't feel the need to distract myself with things like this blog.

Stuff that has happened in the past few days:

2007-01-22T19:36:00.000-08:00

--I decide it would be nice to go visit the boy in Europe over spring break. After carefully comparing prices on dozens of sites, I settle for an American Airlines flight offered on cheaptickets.com. The booking goes well until I hit "Purchase" and get a message saying the transaction didn't go through, try again. I try again, same message. The third time, it works. About an hour later, I get an e-mail telling me my flight is canceled. My card will not be charged, they say. Hmm, I think. I check my bank account online, and not only did they charge my debit card, they charged it--you guessed it--three fucking times. Their customer service people reassure me things will be straightened out by Wednesday, but until then I don't have enough money in my bank account to buy a ticket from another, more legitimate source.

--I meet with my advisor. She informs me, once again, that she thinks I should go to grad school. In fact, I'm the first person in ten years whom she has actively encouraged to study Russian in grad school. No pressure or anything.

--I go to get a key to the music building from the department secretary (I've got an opening shift this semester). A professor enters as I am leaving. I am barely a few steps out the door when he starts talking smack about me. I overhear a few snarky comments to the effect that the last semester I had an opening shift, I was late to work a couple of times. Which is true, but...fucker couldn't even wait till I was out of earshot?

So aside from finding out I'm the bane of the music department, having the ante upped on the whole future thing to an unwelcome degree, and possibly being scammed out of most of my savings, life's just wonderful, thank you.

Ain't no other man...

2007-01-15T22:55:00.000-08:00

I'm back at school, and although the boy next door is next door no more, there is still a man in my life. For the last five years, I've counted on him to cheer me up when I've been feeling down. I cherish every precious hour we spend together (four so far, and the semester hasn't even started yet). He's strong, honest, talented and reliable--well, except for those times when the bastards at Fox replace him with an extended episode of American Idol.

Jack Bauer, you complete me.

My stepmother has some interesting friends.

2007-01-13T19:36:00.000-08:00

So now that a 106-year-old Comanche medicine chief called Spirit Eagle has waved a plateful of burning sage around me, I think I'm about ready to start this next and final semester of college off right.
You know, a while ago I would've been a lot more jaded about that experience, but I just haven't been feeling the cynicism these days. Maybe it's because of all the traveling; maybe it's because I've met a few people who genuinely believe it's possible to change the world (or at least believe that believing you can change the world is a necessary thing). Whatever it is, I think I've become a lot more open-minded and a lot less prone to ironic detachment. And that's good. Probably.
Also, before I learned how old he really was I'd have guessed Spirit Eagle was around 80, tops, so he's got to be doing something right.

(skip if you're easily bored)

2007-01-11T16:32:00.000-08:00

Now that I don't have...stuff...to distract me, I've (finally) started in on some hardcore thesis reading, and so far I have to admit I'm stymied. Basically, I'm combining everything I've ever been interested in thus far in college to explore the relationship of music to film in Dziga Vertov's 1929 art film/manifesto "Man with a Movie Camera." The only existing information about the music that was originally supposed to accompany the film is a set of notes written by the director and a set of cue sheets written up by a trio of music supervisors meant to translate Vertov's notes into pieces that could be played by in-theater pianists (the film itself is silent.)
Problem is, Vertov, although very interested in music and sound, wrote this whole manifesto about how true cinema shouldn't be contaminated by music (his words.) "Man with a Movie Camera" is supposed to be a "city-symphony"; entire chapters of books are devoted to how the film is edited according to tempi and visual "intervals". By all right Vertov should've insisted that a score for "Man with a Movie Camera" was unnecessary and/or redundant. Or at least he should have protested when the music editors included pieces by bourgeois composers like Tchaikovsky and Massenet in their cue sheets where Vertov wanted something like calm, cheerful music dissolving into chaos. I mean, when Vertov did finally direct a sound film, the "score" was made up of the sounds of machinery--not a note of Tchaikovsky to be found. Why has nobody picked up on this? Or am I the only person who thinks it's remotely interesting?
Ah, the curse of the liberal-arts humanities major.
So my thesis is supposed to be about solving that little conundrum as well as scoring at least one reel of the film (conveniently available for download at archive.org, although I'm sure the fact that they only have it at a projection speed of 25 frames per second as opposed to the original 24 is going to come back and bite me in the ass sometime around March.) So far my head is full of all kinds of information about the meanings of specific images in the film and the historical context in which it was made, but nothing music-related. I never thought I'd say this, but I can't wait to have a nice, long talk with my (disturbingly grad-school-oriented) advisor once I'm back at school.
A less academia-oriented post to come soon, hopefully...

So this is the new year...

2007-01-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

...and I don't feel any different.
(Gosh, however did people express their innermost emotions before the advent of Death Cab for Cutie? It boggles the mind.)
The arrival of 2007 was marked by drinks and general revelry in Northampton on New Year's Eve, followed by the now-traditional veritable orgy of Japanese food on New Year's Day masterminded by my stepmom. The spread made Sushi Cruise's all-you-can-eat special seem positively stingy by comparison. I prepared most of the maki rolls and availed myself of both the finished products and the "reject" roll ends such that by the end of the night, I never wanted to see another grain of sushi rice in my life. (Of course, I had leftovers for lunch today. Mmm.)
My resolutions for this year: write my thesis, graduate, find suitable job in suitable city. It strikes me that these are somewhat more daunting than my resolutions from previous years, which all seem to have involved going to the gym more. On the other hand, I can't remember the last time one of those resolutions actually resulted in my going to the gym more, so maybe it's good to have a change of pace.
It also strikes me that I have no freaking idea where I will be next New Year's. Although I'm kinda hoping it's Russia.

A little free advertising.

2006-12-30T14:14:00.000-08:00

I can't stand those "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" ads. For one, John Hodgman is on the Daily Show, whereas the Mac guy starred in one crappy movie and, apparently, played Britney Spears' boyfriend. (What did people do before IMDb?) Also, they've got that same irritating, faux-hipsterish vibe that turned me off Little Miss Sunshine. (I thought the latter wasn't bad, but...you get the feeling that mainstream types go for it because it makes them feel all "indie," and "indie" types like it because they're afraid that if they don't, they'll be deemed uncool by the universe. That kind of movie.) Watching those ads makes me want to buy a hundred PCs just to wipe that look of smug superiority off of Justin Long's face.
Incidentally, I'm writing this on my new Macbook Pro, and it's pretty much the best thing ever. It's all sleek and shiny looking, and it's so easy to use, and you can make movies and music with it. If you're thinking of getting a new computer anytime soon, definitely get a Mac.
Oh yeah, and I realize it's late in the season for this, and everyone's probably seen it already, but...

Incompetent organists and other things that make me happy.

2006-12-16T20:30:00.000-08:00

I'm back on the East Coast, but I've been too sick to do much besides catch up on trashy novels. So far I've made it through Echo Park by Michael Connelly and One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson, the latter of which managed to incorporate both the Edinburgh Festival and St. Petersburg (I do so enjoy reading books set in places I've been. It helps the book come alive, but mostly I think it's the smug sense of superiority I get from recognizing things other people wouldn't. I mean, maybe I'm being presumptuous, but I'm guessing the Venn Diagram sliver of people who know their way around both the Royal Mile and Nevsky Prospekt is pretty thin.)
Burning through fun-to-read books in a matter of hours, by the way, is the penance us speed-readers must pay in turn for getting wordy textbook assignments over with sooner than everyone else. It's a gift and a curse.
Something else with which I've been amusing my invalid self: just before I left Pomona a friend told me to find a sound clip called "Messiah on Crack." I finally got around to it today, and it had me in fucking stitches. If you like Handel and schadenfreude, listen to it posthaste.

...And then there was one.

2006-12-07T13:24:00.000-08:00

Semester, I mean. Although the end of the first half of senior year seems a long way off (two finals and a paper to go) I'll be back in the 413 this time next week, like it or not.
So...do I like it or not? Time was when I couldn't wait to be seven-eigths done with college. And the thought of getting out of Claremont and possibly the US still makes me happier than all the goods at Death By Chocolate put together (it was yesterday, and while I did partake, the spectacle of someone throwing up from gorging on paid-for-with-thousands-of-dollars-of-our-tuition-money chocolates made me want to race to Ontario Airport and hop on the next plane to anywhere but America.)
It's just scary how little time is left before I have to make that whole set of life-changing decisions. I have literally no idea where I'll be living or what I'll be doing this time next year, other than not going to grad school (at least not just yet), and while I'm hoping to schedule some interviews and apply for some jobs over winter break, I feel like I should know about these things by now. I'm starting to see why grad school is such a popular option.
It's also strange that this break will ostensibly be the last time in my life that I'll live at "home"--or should I say, with my parents--for more than a week or two. And of course, it's quite frustrating that I'll never know what might have been with the boy next door. Sigh.
Well, at least I'll be home in time for Hannukah. It's hard to complain when you're stuffing yourself with latkes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-27T18:02:00.000-08:00

This Thanksgiving I went to my stepmom's brother's family's house in a suburban area just north of San Diego. We had turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, Jell-O salad and cranberry sauce from the can. On Friday we went bowling, ate at one of those theme restaurants at which the waiters wear irreverent shirts and everything on the menu is fried to within an inch of its life, then went home and watched a Harry Potter movie. On Saturday we went shopping at a gargantuan outdoor mall.
As someone who has lived exclusively in ultraliberal college towns and, most recently, European cities, I've had little contact with America. After this past weekend I'm forced to admit it's a great place to visit, but I'm still not sure I'd want to live there.

Why not you tell me this right away?

2006-11-14T14:48:00.000-08:00

I remember this one "Sesame Street" book I used to have (or maybe it was my brother's...well, either way) wherein Elmo or maybe Grover is trying to make soup, and Cookie Monster shows up to help. After adding various bits of kitchen detritus, he ambles over to Elmo or Grover's fridge, takes a look around, and finds something to his liking. He emerges and, filled with a peculiar mixture of triumph and outrage, cries: "ROAST BEEF! WHY NOT YOU TELL ME THIS RIGHT AWAY?!"
Replace "roast beef" with "practically-next-door-neighbor who is decent (at least as far as I know after a week and a half) and adorable in a way that is vaguely Cillian Murphy without the creepy and plays bass" and you've pretty much summed up my feelings of late. I'd say this is karmic payback after a run of unfortunate luck with guys, but he's going away next semester so it's more likely the universe is trying for some some sort of artistic experiment a la Jill Greenberg, the British photographer famous for giving toddlers candy, then taking it away and capturing their misery on film. I read an interview where she said she was making a political statement, but I don't buy it.

Heartbreaking, isn't it?

Some publicity:

2006-11-06T20:48:00.000-08:00

This man is a full-blown artistic genius. He gave a fairly mind-blowing concert at Pomona yesterday, followed by an even more mind-blowing lecture/performance today. Not only is he able to perfectly articulate all the reasons why art is important and relevant, he can play the piano so fast that even my virtuoso friends are convinced he has superpowers. And (as I discovered when he came out for pizza with, like, the entire music department) he has intelligent things to say about Russian literature.
Oh, and he's from Western Massachusetts. I'd like to think that means there's hope for me after all, but part of me is afraid that between him and that guy from Staind my quaint little home region has already exceeded its famous musician production quota for this half-century.

Interesting advice from good authors: part 2.

2006-10-29T14:51:00.000-08:00

So under the influence of possibly way too much coffee, I had a sudden flash of insight and came up with what might be the best thesis idea ever.
Of course, the whole shebang hinges on my finding a certain document that might not even exist, but that's the way these things go.

In other news, I finally met famous author David Sedaris, only to find that he is, if not an asshole, then a strange, strange man. He did a reading at Pomona on Thursday, and afterwards my friends and I waited in the book signing line for two-odd hours. When I finally made it to the front, David Sedaris and I had the following conversation:

ME: (something to the effect of how much I like his work, and how amazing it is that he'd been signing books for two hours straight--I don't remember exactly.)
DAVID SEDARIS: (something to the effect of "Thanks, it's my job"--I don't remember exactly.) So you're in college, right?
ME: Yeah, I'm a senior--
DAVID SEDARIS: Have you ever been pregnant?
ME: Um, no--
DAVID SEDARIS: OK, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go get yourself pregnant. Then I want you to drop out of college.
ME: What?
DAVID SEDARIS: (starts drawing something in my copy of "Me Talk Pretty One Day") No, I'm serious. You don't even have to know the guy. Just fuck somebody, get pregnant, drop out of school. You'll get morning sickness--here, look, this is vomit (indicates picture he has just drawn, which, as has now become apparent, is an unflattering caricature of me vomiting). And you see this? (draws a square with two intersecting lines in it) This is a window. And this is your future going out of the window. (signs book and hands it to me, looking very pleased with himself)
ME: OK...have a good night...

It's three days later and I still haven't decided whether I'm offended (I mean, honestly, where does he get off thinking he can say these things to people he doesn't know just because he's a famous author? And what if I actually had been pregnant?) or elated (I now have an unflattering caricature of myself drawn by one of my favorite living authors! And he had relatively normal conversations with my friends, who were in line ahead of and behind me, so maybe I'm special!)
Either way, I think I preferred my encounter with my other favorite living author over that exchange. It was a little less personal, but much more profitable.

The missing link?

2006-10-23T00:25:00.000-07:00

I've been lucky in that every semester I've studied at this college, I've had a class that really made me think about how the world works, or about what kind of person I am, or some combination of the above. And yeah, I know that's what I'm paying an ungodly sum of money for, but it's still something.
This time, it's my art history seminar on the Russian avant-garde. The class itself is a little dull (not to mention three hours long, and on Friday afternoons--double ouch) but we've been reading all these manifestos and statements and treatises by people who genuinely believed art could change the world. It's hard not to get caught up in that utopian spirit, that dizzying whirlwind of ideas, that feeling of change and reinvention and making up the rules as you go along.
I'm a little sad that the era ended so quickly. Granted, the avant-garde movement happened as a response to an industrial and political perfect storm that couldn't be replicated today. But still: whatever happened to manifestos? You know, those brashly overconfident yet slightly inscrutable proclamations wherein artists categorically state what it is that they're doing and why it's important, then list their demands? Doesn't anyone in this cynical modern world care enough to write one?

Hmm. Maybe there's hope after all...

Haven't my people suffered enough?

2006-10-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

Yet another example (besides this one) of how awkward it can be to look Jewish:

Guy at dining hall in line behind me: Excuse me, miss? May I ask you a personal question?
Me: Uh...what is it?
Guy at dining hall: What's your nationality? I mean, where are you from?
Me: America?
Him: Are you Jewish, by any chance?
Me: Yeah...
Him: Have you ever been there?
Me: Where? (thinks to self: Where's "there"? Jewdonia? Jewland? The Jew-nited Kingdom? Or wait...) Israel? No.
Him: I'm planning on opening a restaurant in Tel Aviv.
Me: Oh, that's cool.
Him: Yeah, people say "Don't go there! It's a war zone!" but I feel like that's the perfect time to get in on things.
Me: I guess so.
Him: Also, I hope to marry a Jewish woman.
Me: (concentrates very hard on contents of tray) Um. That's nice. I'm sure you'll find lots of them there.

Dining hall lines are not short enough.

Sawat di xa!

2006-10-08T16:45:00.000-07:00

I thought I was getting over missing Edinburgh, but I just realized that I don't know what happened to my Sabai bracelet--the cheaply made beaded thing I got for free at my Ladyboys of Bangkok gig--and now I'm feeling quite down. It must've gotten lost somewhere in the indescribably horrible mess that was September 2nd, 2006 (let's just say I made it out of the country, but hardly in one piece.) It's not like I thought about the bracelet at all in the past month, and I still have my Ladyboys poster, my T-shirt and the couple of Thai phrases I picked up, but...you know. Even though I only worked at that box office for a couple of weeks, to me the job represents all the wonderfully bizarre yet rewarding possibilities life has to offer, things you can never imagine yourself doing until you're smack in the middle of them. That poster serves as a physical reminder of one of many crucial lessons I learned this past summer: you're never as far from positive, life-changing experiences as you think you are. You just have to figure out how to track them down.
I've been doing my best to make the most of the situation here. In the past four days I've gone to my friend Emi's show at an LA club, a performance by an improv group, a Tom Stoppard play and an orchestra concert, not to mention played a jazz gig at the campus center. The problem is, such cultural melees are few and far between, what with not having a car and being up to my ears--or, since I'm short, the ears of someone taller than me--in work.
On the bright side, I'm excited about starting a Russian choir. Excited about the music, and excited about taking a real leadership position for the first time in, um, my entire life.
At the risk of sounding needlessly self-deprecating, I wonder how I'll manage to fuck it up?

Revisiting the classics.

2006-10-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

I've recently been studying for the Listening Exam of Doom in my 20th Century Music class. A total of seven hours of music, much of which sounds exactly the same (and not very tonal.) In an effort to get some of it into my head, I watched the "Fantasia 2000" clip for Stravinsky's "Firebird."

My first thought: what'd those bastards do to the music?! I mean, honestly, they cut out the entire first part of the suite just so the clip could begin with the happy fairy sprite and her moose friend (secondary question: what were they smoking?) instead of something more ominous. But then, I'm a geek.
Also, Fantasia was so much better back in the day. I remember watching the original countless times when I was five. Which explains why now, no matter how many times I hear "Rite of Spring," the first thing that comes to my mind is always "dinosaurs."
Hmm, I searched YouTube for the dinosaur clip, but couldn't find it. Disappointing. I did, however, find this, set to Mussorgsky's "A Night on Bald Mountain":

Wait a second...I watched that when I was five?! With the evil god and the undead spirits and the fires of hell and the naked boobies?? Damn, how badly did that mess me up?

Back and more confused than ever.

2006-09-17T13:23:00.000-07:00

So last week in conducting class, the professor told me I wasn't confident enough--that instead of standing up and demanding what I wanted out of the ensemble, I looked like I was apologizing for being there.
It made me think. If the past year has taught me anything, it's that I'm capable of being confident. I can be assertive. I can get what I want. I can go to a city where I know absolutely no one and have an apartment and a job within a week. I can love the way I look. I can ask guys out on dates. I can introduce myself to complete strangers, even ones who don't speak my language. I can be a leader.
I can do all those things and more...everywhere, that is, except for that pesky little strip of land in between Mexico and Canada.
How fucked up is that? I'm only genuinely happy and comfortable with myself when I'm in situations that would scare most others half to death. Meanwhile, in this small liberal arts environment where young people are practically force-fed individual attention and encouragement, I can barely function.
I don't get it. I just don't get it...

The end of a three-week era.

2006-08-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

The Fringe festival ended on Monday, by which time the entire town was starting to feel like a hostess weary of her party guests, ready at last to kick off her shoes, crash on the couch and see what's on the telly. Similarly, my poor, beleaguered immune system sensed that the end was nigh and unceremoniously announced, "Screw it--I'm going on break." Thus did I spend all yesterday--the official first day of Pomona classes, by the way--laid up with a particularly vicious flu. It sucked even more than usual because I had to miss a day of my film scoring class, something I've been enjoying so far. I still don't know if it's something I'm cut out for, but at least now I know a lot more about the business, the process and the theory behind making music for movies. And it's making me want to spend a lot more time in the studio next semester.
But anyway...back to the festival. I realize now that before this past month I never even knew the meaning of the word "festival." From now on it'll be forever associated with three weeks of great shows, on top of work, class, parties, pubs and perhaps even a little romance (well, one date, anyway...but remember, this is me we're talking about, so STOP THE BLOODY PRESSES!) There were too many highlights to list here, but one definitely worth mentioning is the Tattoo, the big military band showcase at the castle that goes on every night for the duration of the festival. My friend Jessica, who works at a hotel, managed to score a few prime seats (it had been sold out since February) and it was just awesome--all bagpipes, brass and bombast, complete with fireworks and images projected onto the castle itself. There was just one wee misstep, which I won't say much about except that while it was going on all I could do was imagine the following conversation taking place:

TATTOO DIRECTOR: Angus? D'ye remember that song from The Lion King? Ye know, the one sung by Elton John?
ANGUS (his trusty arranger/orchestrator): Can You Feel The Love Tonight?
TATTOO DIRECTOR: Aye.
ANGUS: What about it?
TATTOO DIRECTOR: I need you to arrange it for a hundred bagpipes, the combined military bands of Scotland, Chile, Nepal and New Zealand, forty snare drums from Switzerland, and the children's choir of Uganda.
ANGUS: Ye gods, sir! I canna' do it! I don't have the power!
TATTOO DIRECTOR: Don't let me down, man! Just think of what Sean Connery would say.
ANGUS: (resigned sigh) Aye, sir. I'll do it. But it won't be pretty.

And it wasn't. Luckily, though, that debacle was soon overshadowed by a rousing rendition of "Scotland the Brave."

Between that, the creepy yet fascinating Ron Mueck exhibition at the National Gallery, the fascinatingly creepy film "The Page-Turner," the jazz concert in Princes Street Gardens and maybe twenty-odd Fringe shows, I managed to hit five out of the eight festivals that make up the massive conglomeration that is the Edinburgh Festival. (I think it started off with the Tattoo, the International Festival and the Fringe, but then somewhere along the line some smart people decided to take advantage of all the tourism and start up the Film Festival, the Art Festival, the Book Festival, the Politics Festival, and the (shudder) Starbucks Blues and Jazz Festival. The only way anyone could take advantage of it all would be with a time machine and a few hundred cases of Red Bull.) And the amazing thing is, I only saw two shows I really and truly disliked: this one tragically unfunny comedian who literally bullied my friend and myself into seeing his show, and Bat Boy: The Musical, which might have been salvaged had any of the cast members been able to sing.
Not surprisingly, despite getting to see several free shows through various creative means (including working a night as a bouncer), my finances ended up taking quite the hit. So I might end up living like a monk for my next year, or at least my next semester, at Pomona.
But--at least until my Claremont claustrophobia kicks in--I can look back on the past three weeks and say to myself: it was so worth it.

The festival is a drug, and I am hooked.

2006-08-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

It's taken its toll on me, to be sure: I'm on the verge of exhaustion most of the time, my immune system's perilously close to shorting out, my complexion has declared war on the rest of my face, and I'm considering sewing bear-trap-style steel jaws into my wallet to curb my spending.
I should stop. I really should.
But then I think about all the Thai transvestites. The Russian circus clowns. The penis puppeteers. The guy who hammered forks up both his nostrils and read a scene from a cannibal porn novel out loud. The adorable comedienne who handed out zines and homemade buttons and drew cartoons of shrimp. Kevin Smith, in the (quite substantial) flesh, and a bunch of British celebrities I've never heard of. And so on, and so forth.
And then I think about how all the stuff I've seen and done and experienced in the past couple of weeks is just a microscopic fraction of all the stuff I could be seeing and doing and experiencing.
And I just keep on coming back for more...

A double realization.

2006-08-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

The weather rates at about January by Southern California standards, the prices are so high that the stores and pubs might as well just vacuum the money out of my wallet, and I've suffered more romantic humiliation in the past month here than in the past couple of years in the States, but dammit, I love this city.
And if I don't watch it, by this time next year I'll have spent three straight Pomona semesters--collectively, about a year--wishing to God I were somewhere else.
I need to figure out what I'm doing wrong. And fast.
But first...a man in a Speedo juggling knives while riding a unicycle!

Dammit, I love this city.

In brief:

2006-08-10T10:06:00.000-07:00

Ireland was fun. It was cold and rainy the whole time, but it was great to see the family again, eat a big home-cooked breakfast for the first time in, like, forever, and introduce my brother and stepbrothers to the wonders of cider--not Strongbow, unfortunately, but the Irish stuff is still OK, even if it is the colour of Irn-Bru (Irn-Bru being the national drink/hangover cure of Scotland. Gary made me try it once and I was immediately reminded of this sickly sweet bubble gum-flavored toothpaste I had when I was six or so. Think I'll take my chances with hangovers.)
I also really liked the pub music culture I saw there, where the musicians that play in pubs aren't on a stage, but rather are sitting in booths or at tables--like they're just regular pub patrons who decided to bust out a guitar, violin and accordion and start playing. There was one place where one man sitting in the middle of the crowd was singing a folk song a cappella, and everyone else in the room was dead silent, some with tears in their eyes. If anyone tried to do that in an American bar, nobody would be able to hear him over the Li'l Jon (or the Smiths, if we're in a hipper locale.)
So now I'm back in Edinburgh, and the festival's just started up. It really is a great atmosphere. On any average walk down the Royal Mile, you'll encounter a crowd made up of around 50% tourists, 15% locals, 20% performers and 20% flyerers (and yes, I just pulled those statistics out of my ass, thank you.) The line between who's in the festival and who's not becomes totally blurred, so that even the most humble tourist feels like she's part of something big.
Of course, I'm not just any tourist. First off, I was here for a month before the festival started, so I feel like I have every right to complain about the crowds of gawkers shuffling around Princes Street taking pictures and asking stupid questions (for example: "How do I get to Princes Street?" You're on it! Now go back to bloody West Virginia!)
Second off, I'm in the festival. Sort of. I get off work a couple of hours before the Ladyboys actually perform. But I still get free tickets (which I'm using sometime soon, I hope) discount Ladyboy merchandise and free rides at the fun fair next door--closest I'll ever get to being a carny.
The job itself is hectic as all hell, which is a refreshing change of pace from EVOC. The phones ring every five seconds, and confused tourists are perpetually at the box office window. If nothing else, it's given me a chance to practice my faux British accent on people who'll never see my face. Today I got as far as "Hello, Meadows box office!" before slipping back into Americanese, but by the end of this gig, I expect to have the accent fully functional and ready for use whenever I don't want to admit I'm an American. In other words, all the time.

Killing time for the last time.

2006-08-03T05:40:00.000-07:00

There are quite a few things that happened in the last two weeks, and I wrote a whole rant on my laptop about Rossyln Chapel and the Dan Brown-ization of Europe (it's not pretty), but that will all have to wait. Tonight I'm taking off to visit my mom, brother, stepdad and stepbrothers in Ireland (free flight + free place to stay + free food--oh, and seeing my family will be nice as well). Unfortunately that means missing the start of festival season, but by the time I get back here on Sunday night I expect things will have gotten interesting.
The flat will be interesting by then as well. A couple of days ago, a new flatmate moved in, bringing our total to six; I think another few people are due to move in soon. Meanwhile, Gary and Jack are moving out sometime next week, which will be weird since I get along with the two of them better than with the other guys, who tend to talk about sports a lot (and not sports that I know anything about, but things like cricket. I really don't get cricket.) It's been a fun month or so with the five of us, like something out of a sitcom--here's hoping I like the new guys and they stay away from my shower products.
Right now it's the last day of my office job, and in spite of myself I've been thinking that I'm going to miss it here. Which is ridiculous, really, because before I got the other job I was in the process of turning into Milton from Office Space. I'm not kidding--I actually got unreasonably pissed off when I thought someone had taken my stapler. (Turns out it was just buried under a pile of paperwork.) Still, it was nice to have the free weekends and the good pay rate, and at least I've been working for an organisation that does something to help people instead of spending the last month as a corporate pawn.
One thing this job didn't have, though, was transvestites from Thailand. Unlike, say, my new job working at the box office for a festival show called "The Ladyboys of Bangkok." Next week shall be interesting indeed...

London calling...

2006-07-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

...but I was the one who had to accept the charges. And what charges they were: London's the most expensive city I've ever set foot in. The tube alone set me back £5 a day, which annoyed me to no end: not only is the London underground about ten times more expensive than the metros in St. Petersburg and Moscow, it's about ten times less reliable. Say what you will about Russians, but there are some things they just get right.
Then again, London's one of those places where there's almost too much to do at any given moment, so maybe my lack of spending money was good in that it limited my choices. Yeah. I'll go with that.
I managed to cover most of the typical tourist ground--Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, etc. Of course, I didn't actually go into any of the buildings, but...eh. No amount of priceless historical artifacts could possibly be worth £12 a visit.
Almost all the museums in London are free--thank God--so I busied myself with the Tate Modern on Saturday and the British Museum on Sunday. Both were pretty amazing, although the British Museum, like the city it's located in, was a little too overwhelmingly huge for my tastes.
I loved the street markets in London--Edinburgh's lacking in that area. I scored enough free samples at the Broughton market to constitute half a lunch, and had to spend a little too much time at the Spittalfields market convincing myself not to buy a pair of vintage shoes (but they were only £45! Never mind that that's more than I've ever spent on a pair of new shoes...)
On top of the sightseeing, museumgoing and wandering around markets, I managed to go to a BBC Orchestra concert at the Royal Albert Hall Saturday night. The concert was part of the Proms, a summer series that's a lot like Tanglewood except that the cheap, general admission tickets aren't for spots on a lawn about a mile away from the action, but rather smack in front of the orchestra in a space that is for all intents and purposes a mosh pit...although I got the feeling that moshing was highly discouraged. The orchestra itself was great--they played Dvorak, and a Czech guy whose name I forgot, and Mozart (because apparently it's illegal to not play Mozart at concerts this year. Nothing against the guy, but seriously, a whole year? Does this mean that for the entirety of the year 2201, 250 years after Phil Collins was born, no band will be able to play a show without covering "Sssudio"? That's some scary shit.)
After the concert I went out with a couple of Spanish students from my hostel; after the pubs closed at midnight (midnight! What's that about?!) we went in search of a club, only to find that the cheapest ones cost upwards of £10 just to get in. Since I was frugal, and the Spanish guys even more so ("We went inside the Tower of London today," one of them said, "so we didn't have dinner") we contented ourselves with wandering around and people-watching, which turned out to be considerably entertaining.
So that was London. It was enough to make me want to go back with a lot more financial wherewithal and a lot more sleep (frugality be damned; I'm not getting on another overnight bus for as long as I live.) Still, one of the unexpected pleasures of the trip was that it made me realize how much I like Edinburgh. When I got on the coach on Sunday night and heard the driver speak with the kind of harsh Scottish brogue that would've scared me to death a month ago, I forgot how tired I was and how much money I'd spent and, for just a moment, thought simply: I'm going home!

I'm only awake enough to write the following:

2006-07-24T07:26:00.000-07:00

I never thought--not in a million years--that I'd ever find myself longing for the luxurious comfort of the economy class on a Russian overnight train.
That was before spending two out of the last three nights riding economy class on a British overnight bus.
I am now convinced that all of London's famous serial killers--Jack the Ripper and such--were just mild-mannered Scotsmen who decided to take a holiday in England and, over the course of the bus ride there, became completely deprived of their faith in humanity and subsequently went insane. The only thing that kept me from going over the edge was my iPod, which, in a miracle rivalling that of Chanukah, held its charge the entire way to London and back.

I think there was a list of overnight bus rules and regulations that I missed. If I had to guess, I'd say it went something like this...
1. Welcome to Silver Choice Coaches. The use of cellular telephones on this vehicle is permitted. In fact, it's encouraged. You know that friend of yours back in New Zealand? You now have loads of time to talk to him! What are you waiting for?
2. Any and all couples on this coach, married or otherwise, ought to behave as if they were alone on the bus--after all, when you're spending a holiday together, there's so little time for the two of you to make out.
3. At approximately 2 a.m., there will be a short "comfort" stop at a store that only sells crisps. Really crunchy crisps. Please eat these throughout the remainder of the ride. If simply eating the crisps fails to produce an appropriate decibel level, try crinkling the bag.
4. Please be considerate of your fellow passengers when reclining your seat. Unless, of course, the passenger behind you is small and harmless-looking. If that's the case, recline away. There! Don't you feel more comfortable now?
5. As the crew of this coach, it is our duty to make sure your trip goes as smoothly as possible. It is also our duty to make an announcement every time you're just on the verge of falling asleep. So sit back, relax, and you'll be hearing from us soon!

Details from my actual stay in London (which went a whole lot better than the bus rides) to come when I'm feeling more awake and less disgruntled.

At work and bored...

2006-07-21T07:07:00.000-07:00

So I'm taking a spur-of-the-moment trip to London tonight and, for lack of actual work to do at work, have been doing a little browsing to see what's going on in the city. Let's just say I might have picked the wrong weekend.

Apparently, though, they'll be broadcasting that on the BBC. Those crazy Brits.

Here's to masses of incandescent gas...

2006-07-17T02:35:00.000-07:00

The most welcome development over the past few days was the appearance of the sun: FINALLY! This coincided with the equally welcome return of my energy stores (I'm finally eating healthy, and I now know my way around the city--and, more importantly, its bus system), meaning that I could actually spend time doing touristy things instead of stressing out or sitting around unable to move.
I did the hike up Arthur's Seat, a massive outcropping of volcanic rock on the city's eastern border that provides an amazing view of the entire city. Next to that is a smaller hill that is, for some reason, covered with random monuments, ruins and the like. It all made me think that Edinburgh--or at least central Edinburgh--was designed as part of a secret conspiracy by time-travelling manufacturers of either film or digital camera batteries. No matter where you go, you encounter something unbelievably, jaw-droppingly gorgeous. (And yes, I have pictures, which I'll be able to post once my flat's Internet starts working, which should hopefully be soon.)
On Saturday I took a day tour of the Highlands, which included a cruise on Loch Ness. The boat's skipper was a rather intense Scotsman with some sort of advanced degree from MIT. A few of us started talking to him, and it turned out he was convinced of the existence of not just one, but eighteen Loch Ness monsters, actually plesiosaurs left over from the late Jurassic period. He showed us cell phone camera footage of 33-ton sonar blips, of a carcass found at the bottom of the loch, and of something--it was hard to see what--surfacing, producing an enormous wave. The evidence was pretty persuasive, although I wouldn't go so far as to believe the guy's assertions about similar monsters in Lochs--er, Lakes--Tahoe, Champlain, Titicaca and Baikal.
The Highlands were also impressive--mountains, lochs and glens as far as the eye could see, scenery that provided the backdrop for a) movies such as Braveheart, Highlander and Harry Potter, and b) a whole lot of clan warfare, according to our tour guide. Seeing as I knew absolutely nothing about Scottish history prior to coming here, the stories unnerved me. Like, just when you start feeling sorry for the Macdonald clan, who were mercilessly slaughtered by the Campbells, you learn that they turned around and viciously massacred the Macgregors, who went on to murder the house of Maclachlan...or something like that, anyway. It's a wonder there's anyone left in this country. They must be fantastically prolific breeders.
That night I went out with a few other BUNACers; not surprisingly, my plan to wake up early and go to Rosslyn chapel the next morning was derailed in favor of an afternoon trip to the beach. That amazed me, by the way. Not because the beach itself is especially nice--it isn't--but because it's a fifteen-minute bus ride away. My Southern California-trained mind reeled at this--a beach you can get to without traffic? Without driving around in circles searching for a parking space? Impossible!
So yes, Scotland can be quite fantastic--in the sun. Knowing my luck it'll be pouring next weekend, when I...hmm. Haven't decided on that one yet. Stay tuned...

I am most definitely not writing this at work.

2006-07-12T02:21:00.000-07:00

OK, OK, so I'm at work, but everyone in my department is either sick, in a meeting, or on holiday, and I haven't the slightest idea what it is I'm supposed to be doing. I'm also tired from staying up last night; I was supposed to meet my flatmate in the city centre, but by the time I was there he and his friends had already gone into a club which--unbeknownst to him, or so I'd hope--had no cell reception, so I ended up wandering around looking like an idiot until some woman asked me if I was lost and I gave up and went home. Is it just me, or does that sort of thing happen to me a whole lot more frequently than it does to other people? Am I really that forgettable, even in a country where Jews and Americans seem to be in short supply?
I mean, it's probably just as well that I didn't end up drinking. Yes, I had work the next day, but mostly I'm referring to the fact that drinking's expensive in this country. I spent more than I'd like to admit this past weekend, and I'm a lightweight--how do guys with American-football-player builds manage to get drunk here and stay solvent?
So yesterday notwithstanding, the flat's been interesting. A lot of guys, for one thing: three of them are living there long-term, and this one guy's friends, who are all out of uni and temporarily homeless, occasionally sleep in the spare bedrooms. They're all pretty tidy, at least, and there's been a minimum of weirdness (actually, I could stand more weirdness; one of the temporary flatmates has, and I'm not kidding, the hottest English accent I've ever heard. Scottish accents are fun to listen to, but they don't compare with the English in terms of hotness, do they? Like, imagine Spike, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as a Scottish vampire. Doesn't work. I blame Groundskeeper Willie.)

Happy birthday to me...

2006-07-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

Turning 21 was rather anticlimactic, actually. I was having a drink in a bar at 11:59, and I was having a drink in a bar at 12:00. It'll be a bigger deal once I'm back in the US, but even then...there are over 700 pubs in this relatively small city; am I really gonna get excited about finally being able to go to The Press?
The Scots I know have told me that 21 is, historically, the age you get the key to your house. This turned out to be accurate, give or take a couple of days: I moved into my new flat on Monday. Late Tuesday night I met the first of my new flatmates, Jack, who took me out to the nearest pub when I mentioned it was my birthday. He's nice (not to mention an excellent musician from what I can tell--he's playing at T in the Park, the Scottish version of Coachella) but our schedules are, for the most part, diametrically opposite. Sad.
The next day, a couple of the people I work with took me out to lunch, and I got cake and a card signed by everyone in the office--not bad, considering it was only my fourth day there. In the evening I had some of the people I've managed to meet here over for drinks and the World Cup semifinal (disappointing; we were all gunning for Portugal). It ended up being a good-sized group once my new flatmate Gary showed up with a couple of his mates. I had to cut things short--work the next day--but overall, it was a nice birthday, even if I didn't get as debaucherously drunk as is expected of a newly legal American. Planning on making up for that in the near future, though...

Cheers!

2006-06-30T09:16:00.000-07:00

The fact that cars drive on different sides of the street here than they do back in the U.S. hasn't really fazed me. The closest it came was when I saw a car ad on TV where this guy was using a magic door handle to get places. He opened a door at the beach and found himself in the jungle; he opened a door there and was suddenly on top of a snowy mountain; and so on until he used the handle to open the door of the whatever-brand-of-car-was-being-advertised and got in...on the right side. My brain froze for a little while there.
The alternate spellings and strange words have been pretty easy to get used to; so has the famed fries-chips-crisps dilemma. The use of the word "wee" just amuses me; I've gotten used to hearing people say "cheers" instead of "thank you", "you're welcome", "hello", and "goodbye" but am afraid to try it out myself--what if I use it the one time it's totally wrong?
The big news, I guess, is that I finally landed a job--at least for the next month. I'm a general administrative person at an organization called EVOC, and from what I can tell my branch runs workshops in which people are trained to train people to work at charity organizations. Or...let's just say I work at a charity organization. Having watched both the American and British versions of "The Office," I was prepared for the mind-numbing dullness I encountered at my first day of work, during which I labeled envelopes and put sheets of paper in piles for the monthly mailing. The people seem nice, at least. There's no Dwight, but unfortunately neither is there a Jim (or a Tim, I guess, seeing as I'm on the other side of the pond). The one guy remotely my age works at reception, but I don't think I'll see him much.
But I'll have money soon, which is nice, although between rent and groceries and a bus pas and possibly weekend travel, I don't think I'll retain much, if any, of it. Good thing I've been too stressed and busy to go out drinking much. Sigh.

...and I'll suffer excruciating muscle pain before ye...

2006-06-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

When I woke up on Sunday, I was dismayed to find that my legs had almost completely stopped working. Russia had whipped them into more or less reasonable shape, but in the months following my return academia, that enemy of all things muscle, caused them to atrophy from disuse. Now, after three straight days of walking up and down hills, over cobblestone streets and around a large banquet hall with nary a rest, it was if they were saying, "You want me to WHAT?!"
So I wandered aimlessly around the city center for the afternoon, taking lengthy sitting breaks on park benches. I noticed that Edinburgh is currently hosting the Cow Parade--you know, that thing where a major world city has a bunch of customized cows in its center for a while. The whole concept annoys me. It represents just another step in the insidious process of global cultural homogenization, and the cutesy-looking cows take away from the impressiveness and historical significance of all those wonderful places, and--aww, look at that one! It thinks it's Braveheart! "They can take our milk, but they can never take our FREEDOM! MOOOO!"
I'm moving into a room in a flat on Friday, and am currently staying in a spare room in the flat owner's old apartment. The new place isn't the alignment-of-planets-vortex-of-perfection that the first one I visited was, but it's good-sized, cute, and fairly central. I checked the cow that had Edinburgh center painted on it, and my flat's somewhere in the area of the left hind leg. Not ideal, but at least I made it onto the cow. At any rate, I'm not at the hostel anymore, and that's something to celebrate. It was fun meeting people from around the world, but less fun sleeping in the same room with them.
Job-wise, I worked one-off catering gigs on Saturday and Monday, and spent today following up various meetings with various office temp agencies. Turns out I can type almost 60 words per minute--thank you, AIM--and although I didn't get offered anything straight away, I'm going to annoy every agency I've signed with until that happens. That is, when I'm not walking around looking for pubs near my flat that are hiring.

'Cause you had a bad day...

2006-06-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

Cue Daniel Powter-backed montage...on second thought, don't.
The handbook I got from my work visa program said the first week would be the most frustrating, but I had no idea just how frustrating things could get until yesterday. I had an interview with a guy at a music studio on Thursday, but he said the best I could hope for would be a part-time thing, so I spent about six hours straight yesterday going to just about every single temp agency in this city--and believe me, there are a lot of them. I set up a couple of meetings for next week, but for the most part people just took my CV and told me not to expect anything. At the last place I went to--appropriately enough, called The Temp Agency--I was able to land a one-off waitressing job, which I'm going to today. The problem is, in order to work as a waitress, I had to buy a white, long-sleeved shirt, which ended up costing about as much as I'm going to get paid.
By the time I returned to the hostel, I was exhausted, disappointed and desperately in need of good news. Thursday night, I had visited a flat that was perfect beyond my wildest dreams: it was centrally located and gorgeous-looking; it was available for as long or as short as I wanted; the views were amazing; the flatmates were awesome; the price was below what I was willing to pay.
Guess where I'm not living?
It happened that they found someone who could stay for longer, so they took him instead, sending me a consolatory text message. After silently sobbing into my pillow for some time, I reluctantly agreed to come out drinking with my new roommates.
This ended up being fun, or at least it was until we got back to the hostel and one guy, a corpulent Canadian traveling around Europe with his friend as a post-graduation thing, propositioned me in no uncertain terms. In retrospect, I should've seen it coming from the questions he was asking me, like "Do you have a boyfriend?" and "Have you ever hooked up with anyone while traveling?" and "What would you think aboot hooking up with a Canadian in a hostel?" (First off, I wouldn't hook up with anyone in a hostel--I mean, ew, there were four other people in the room--and second, call me shallow, but I tend to stay away from fat guys. It's not so much an aesthetic thing as a self-preservation instinct; I like my lungs un-crushed, thank you. I almost considered responding with "Why? Is your cute friend interested?" but thought better of it.)
So getting to sleep with that guy in the room was a little awkward, made all the worse when I went to put in my earplugs and they fell from the top bunk into the miniscule triangle formed by my bunk, the next bunk over, and the wall. So I had to go climb down into that square foot or so of space, fumble around for the earplugs, then climb back up into bed (Good thing I found them, though, because my would-be hookup snored like a chainsaw.)
All that aside, I'm glad I'm here. I mean, my culture shock's been minimal so far, except for the fact that when you're racing around looking for work and being rejected over and over again, the last thing you want to hear is bloody bagpipes! AAAARGH! Maybe the sound is an acquired taste, like haggis.

Another day, another country.

2006-06-21T08:10:00.000-07:00

So here I am in Edinburgh, thinking myself clever for finding a cafe with free Wi-Fi, forgetting that the tea I'm drinking probably costs more than would a few hours at an Internet cafe. The sun's shining brightly outside, despite the fact that there was rain blowing in my face the entire way here (my umbrella, of course, was promptly forgotten on the bus from Glasgow to here, but it was broken anyway).
It's only my first day here, so I don't have many impressions, other than that the city is one of the most gorgeous places I've ever seen. Everywhere you look there's a monument or a cathedral or, oh yeah, an ENORMOUS FREAKING CASTLE. I haven't done any sightseeing yet--I got in last night and just crashed, and most of this morning and afternoon were taken up by my work visa program orientation (where, by some staggering cosmic coincidence, the only other person present was from Amherst. He's not actually living in Edinburgh, but hopefully we'll meet up occasionally.) I'm planning on starting the heavy-duty job and apartment hunting tomorrow, which is when I'm set to meet with a guy who runs a recording studio/rehearsal space. The sooner I find a job the better, really--I've been keeping my spending to the bare minimum, but I still find myself...dare I say it?...dropping pounds like I'm on Weight Watchers. What?! (Hmm. I'm beginning to understand why there aren't more British rappers.)

Here's some stuff I wrote yesterday morning in Paris...

Jack Bauer ain't got shit on me. I woke up in Amherst at around 8 on Sunday morning, flew out of Boston at 7 that evening, arrived in Shannon at 6 yesterday morning, flew out of Shannon at 11, arrived in Paris at 2, got to my hotel by 5, and did a lot of exploring before crashing at 10 last night. All in all, about 33 straight hours awake. Ugh.
The traveling wasn’t a whole lot of fun, but Paris is tres bien. I wandered around the Notre Dame/Latin Quarter area, as well as the Arc de Triomphe/Champs-Elysees part (I didn’t, however, make it to the Eiffel Tower. But…eh. I’ve seen pictures). I love the architecture, the streets lined with cute cafes, and the understanding that bread, cheese and chocolate are essential to one’s diet. I hope I come back soon, preferably with someone who knows French. Traveling alone was nice in that I could do sightseeing my way (which resembles nothing so much as a rat with ADD running around a maze in which the walls are entirely made of cheese), but it was aggravating not being able to talk to anyone. For example: I was buying a metro ticket at a machine, and a good-looking guy at the machine next to mine said something to me in French. I said one of my stock French phrases--“I don’t understand”--hoping he knew English and would get the hint, but he just repeated whatever he’d said, adding something on the end. I still didn’t understand, of course, and he walked away. So I’ll never know whether he was saying “You’re putting that money in the machine the wrong way” or if it was “You’re gorgeous. Would you like to come to a party on my uncle’s yacht? I promised all of my hot friends that there would be girls, but I've only managed to find a few so far...”
Damn.

Dae ye ken Ken kens Ken?

2006-06-16T21:11:00.000-07:00

I was feeling a little nervous about not being able to understand anyone in Scotland, so, on a random whim, I Googled "scottish accent."
Apparently the complexities of the accent are such that someone felt compelled to write a whole Wikipedia article about it.
That heading, by the way, is how a typical Scot would say "Do you know Ken knows Ken?"
Something tells me I'll be even worse off language-wise there than in Russia.
The Google search also yielded a site selling CDs full of "romantic poetry read in a rich, sexy Scottish accent." I had no idea that was such a commodity.

Dear blog:

2006-06-11T21:41:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in the middle of packing and going home and textbook editing and planning a last-minute trip abroad, I managed to completely miss my two-year blog-o-versary.
I'm sorry, baby. Really I am. But haven't I been good to you these past two years? All right, maybe I've been writing in you a little less frequently of late, but you know how it is. I'd come home from classes or the music studio and just be too gosh-darn tired for even a quickie entry.
And no, I haven't been cheating on you with myspace or livejournal. Facebook? Just a professional relationship, honest. Every half-original semi-coherent kind-of-witty introspective musing I have, I give to you. It's just that I haven't had much to give this past semester.
Remember Russia, though? That wasn't so long ago. Good times. Lots of entries. I even finally introduced you to my parents, just like you wanted. They adore you, by the way. I know how worried you were about what they'd think of you.
I've stood by you through blog hackers, spam robot comments and deleted or repeated entries; the least you can do is let me off the hook for this. And hey, to make up for everything, I'm taking you to England. So pack your bags (or whatever you not-really-existent online entities have) and let's go start year 3 off right.

I'm so bored with the U.S.A...but what can I do?

2006-06-10T16:14:00.000-07:00

I leave the country a week from tomorrow, and dear God am I not ready.
Well, that's not true. I'm ready to get away from Amherst, from life with my parents and from rising gas prices. But I'm not ready to pack, and I'm just a little hesitant to be completely on my own for the first time in my life. I mean, I'm the person who leaves passports in desk drawers, computer chargers in cafes, and long underwear on trains. And here I'm deluding myself into thinking that I can somehow find work and a place to live in London while keeping myself and my finances intact. Right.
The worst that could happen--short of the obvious, which would involve bathtubs and organs and actually having to use that "shipment of remains" insurance--is that I could end up jobless and, instead of earning money, spend all of my savings on living and traveling in the U.K. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that I started this summer with the intent of saving up money for a car. But plans change (this appears to be the theme of my summer). And I have to look at things this way: when else am I going to have the chance to explore another country by myself, without worrying about any commitments to anything or anyone? I'm excited. But still freaked out.
So I've been thinking about other things entirely: for example, after finally listening to Illinois and giving it a fair shot, I came to the conclusion that I like the idea of Sufjan Stevens' music a whole lot more than I like Sufjan Stevens' music. You know what I mean? Like meeting a cute, witty, and musically talented guy but feeling absolutely no chemistry. Sufjan and I have agreed to remain friends, and I might pay him a visit for a "Chicago" booty call every now and again, but that's about it.
Also, after a nearly three-hour drive to New Haven (on my way to visit my friend in New York) during which I left my iPod on "Shuffle" and couldn't skip songs for extreme-weather-related reasons, I realized that I never, ever want to be featured in the Onion AV Club's Random Rules section. All the people on there have such unembarassing random music--their rare guilty pleasures are balanced out by scores of B-sides and obscure indie bands. Knowing my luck, and my iPod's propensity for screwing me over musically, I'd expect a run that included Bon Jovi's "Always" (hey, as the album title says, 100 million Bon Jovi fans can't be wrong), Juvenile's "Slow Motion" (played quite a bit the summer after freshman year, and then never again), Justin Timberlake's "Senorita" (well, at least that has more credibility than anything by *NSync, and it has that catchy call-and-response outchorus), and Color Me Badd's "I Wanna Sex You Up" (no defense for that one, actually, other than that yes, I do want to sex you up).

Maybe I have a problem.

2006-06-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

Man, you know you're anal-retentive when you're editing a medical textbook and you find yourself less repulsed by the detailed descriptions of skin lesions than by the author's repeated misuse of semicolons.
Of course, you know you're not anal-retentive when you open your mailbox and there's an envelope, sent by an unknown Good Samaritan, containing the $125 paycheck that you unknowingly dropped in the middle of the Northampton parking lot last week.
The human brain works in mysterious, and not altogether healthy, ways.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled lack of updates with this breaking news:

2006-05-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

So I guess I've kinda put this thing on hold until my life becomes more interesting, which--if I'm lucky--will be soon, so stay tuned.
Briefly, though: The semester is over. I'm home and trying to figure out my summer. My mom's letting me handle one of her textbook editing jobs, which will hopefully provide me with the financial means to spend a couple months of this summer in the UK doing...well, that will be the interesting part, should it happen.
Highlights of being home, so far: the amazing 24 finale, of course, and a Murder By Death show in Boston. The band was just as kickass live as I'd hoped--they synced their songs up with clips from old B-movies and did their best to recreate their albums' cinematic sound in a smallish club setting. Not to mention that for about half of the opening band's set (check 'em out, they deserve it) I was like two inches away from Murder By Death's lead singer. He was listening to the band and talking to his friends and I didn't want to interrupt, but as he was walking away I managed to get his attention and sqeak, "Ireallylikeyourbandhaveagoodshow!" And he was like, "Thanks!" And then they did have a good show, so maybe I contributed to that in some small way.
I'm such a groupie.
The only drawback, of course, is that now I have these Sharpied X's on my hands that are taking forever to wash off. Thank God this is the last summer I'll have to suffer that particular indignity.

There ain't no cure for the summertime blues.

2006-04-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

Oh yes, I've got those by the barrelful, and summer's still two weeks away. Why the blues? I'm officially spending most of my summer in beautiful, sunny...Amherst, Mass. This is an effort to save money so that I can have a car senior year of college. It is also a last resort. I didn't get any of the internships that I applied for; I didn't even get any rejection e-mails. Apparently I'm not worth notifying.
God knows things could be worse. I'll work a couple of menial jobs (here's hoping I'll be a more attractive candidate than my high-school-aged competition), do some volunteer work and generally attempt to keep as busy as possible until mid-July, when I'll go to Seattle for a film scoring workshop, then fly to Ireland with the family, then come back in August and drive the car-that-I'll-hopefully-have-by-then to school.
Well, it'll be nice to see my high school friends (assuming they still remember me; I've been such a bad keeper-in-toucher), and I'm sure as hell going to try to visit people in Boston, New York and D.C. It's not the high-profile internship that people are supposed to get the summer after junior year; I realize that in abundance. But, as a once-relevant British rock band has been known to opine, "you can't always get what you want."

Leaving me to pose the question: "You can't always get what you want" implies that sometimes you do get what you want, right? So when the hell is that going to happen to me?

What's the biggest room in the world?

2006-04-11T13:19:00.000-07:00

My room draw number--a pathetic 314 out of something like 320--necessitated my standing in line for five hours just so I could point to a square on a chart and sign a piece of paper. And so my fate for next year was sealed: I didn't get the room of my dreams, of course, but it's not too far from most of my friends, and it's a single, which is all that matters.
Especially after the past week, in which I have experienced all the awkwardness that comes with having a roomate with a new boyfriend. This didn't happen at all freshman year (a very good thing; life back then was annoying enough) so I'm kind of at a loss now. It seems that they carry out most of their business in his room, but they take the occasional tandem nap in my room, and dealing with that is awkward. At least if you walk in on your roomate having full-on sex, you know what to do--run away, as fast as possible (or, if you're the blackmailing type, fetch your video camera and return posthaste.) But what do you do if you open the door and the room is dark and they're just sort of lying there wrapped around each other? Should you say anything? What if you need to turn on a light? Is it safe to change clothes? Are they asleep or just waiting for you to go away?
Dammit, I want an etiquette guide for this sort of thing, and I want it fast.
The biggest room in the world would be room for improvement. My life has lots of that at the moment.

And now for something completely...the same...

2006-04-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

Around this time last year I compared my life to a video game. These days, it's feeling more like a Monty Python sketch without the humor: things seem very silly and very pointless, and I find it hard to do anything but wait for a large foot to come crashing down on it all.
Mostly it's the what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-summer thing, combined with the what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life thing, combined with getting the "random" room draw number 314 out of 340 members of the senior class, combined with the usual Claremont-induced frustration.
Oh, and I'm still single. But by this point, that's like saying "Oh, and I'm still breathing air."
I think I liked Russia because when I was there I was forced to live in the moment. I didn't have time or mental space to think about my future career or my summer plans or even my lack of a boyfriend; I was too busy going places and meeting people and finding out what operas were playing that weekend.
Here in Claremont, the present offers no such diversions (although I admit the Russian section retreat a couple days ago was fun) and the future appears to be approaching at an alarming rate. Here's hoping it's not as scary as it seems.

What do you do with a B.A. in Russian?

2006-03-24T00:14:00.000-08:00

...or, more accurately, what do you do when you realize that the life you always sort of thought you might have and the direction in which your life is actually going are like two parallel lines, appearing to meet at some unforeseen point on the horizon, but never, ever to intersect in reality?
Unless you subscribe to non-Euclidean theory, which would mean you'd achieve all your life goals right when the universe ended, or something. Which would still suck.
I wonder what the hell I was thinking when I was applying to colleges three-odd years ago. Did I honestly think a place like Pomona could help me get any closer to figuring things out, or was I fixated on the palm trees, the warmth and what I thought was a close proximity to a major city? (Ha.)
I almost wish we lived in the kind of society where our careers were predetermined at birth. Because seriously? We talk about the importance of giving ourselves time to explore lots of options and choose for ourselves, but the people who get ahead are the people who chose--or were forced to choose-- very early on. Maybe I'd only get assigned to be a sanitation worker, but by now I'd be a damn good sanitation worker. I'd be much better at sanitation than I currently am at Russian translation or music composition or performace or analysis, and who knows? Maybe I'd love every minute of it.

Ironic, isn't it?

2006-03-12T21:58:00.000-08:00

Out of all the people I know, I'm the one who wants to get out of Claremont the most, and where am I over spring break? I'll give you a hint: starts with a C, ends with a get me the fuck out of here!
It's out of necessity, of course: I'm staying so I can work in the studio so I can write and record five musical compositions so I can apply for an internship that I have practically no chance of getting. And yeah, I like that I finally have time to spend on creative endeavors, but the absence of classes and the lack of people remind me anew how much I don't want to be on this campus.
If I could take just one breather, things might be all right. This one summer when I was in high school, my dad took me and my brother on a road trip around the southwest. As with basically everything I did with my family when I was a teenager, I appreciate this much more in retrospect than I did at the time. But even then, I was amazed at how beautiful everything was. I got to see the Grand Canyon, of course, and Mesa Verde and Arches and Zion and probably a lot of other national parks whose names haven't stayed with me. Now I go to school within short-road-trip distance of all of those places, but I haven't been back to any of them.
I think I just need to venture out to the middle of nowhere and stare up at the millions and millions of stars that are visible in a desert sky. I want to wander around and meditate and not eat for a few days and take hallucinogens and write pages and pages of music and maybe get a tan. I feel like after that I could come back here and things would be bearable.
As it is, though, I'm stuck. And it's not the kind of frustration I can channel into music; it's the kind that makes me want to curl into a ball and close my eyes until things get better or until I go insane.

Kill the wabbit? Or kill the dominant paradigm?

2006-02-20T23:16:00.000-08:00

Although this may not be my favorite semester in the world in terms of my personal life, at least I'm having fun in class. The bullsh--I mean, the general education requirements are out of the way, the major's thisclose to being signed, sealed and delivered, and now I really and truly am learning things that I want to know about. My Russian teacher is tougher on my grammar mistakes than the teachers in St. Petersburg ever were; I'm starting to realize that I like Russian literature a lot (a good thing, since I'm majoring in it); people are probably getting sick of my raving about my electronic music class; and music history, although sometimes a pain in the ass, is helping me appreciate all the music I couldn't stand as recently as two years ago. Once you know a piece's historical context, its composer's background, and the musical traditions that inspired it, it becomes so much more meaningful than before. It's like having a great conversation with a guy you didn't used to think was all that cute and coming away with a monster crush on him.
Speaking of that last class, here's something that amuses me: this college does everything within its power to oppose that...um...white Christian straight male hegemony thing...in all of its departments except one. I'll give you a clue: it ends with "usic." I was passing by the campus's big auditorium today, and I took note of the bas-reliefs of composers' names featured prominently on the building's front. Bach. Beethoven. Chopin. Schubert. Wagner. All of them straight (as far as we know; I suppose what with all the juicy biographies of Lincoln and Hitler and so forth it's only a matter of time before we read something about how Beethoven was playing both the treble and the bass staves, if you know what I mean) white European Christian males. One of these (Wagner) was a public anti-Semite; I'm sure the rest of 'em didn't exactly go around shouting "Mazel Tov!" at their friends' sons' bar mitzvahs either. So where are all the rabid protesters? The offended hoardes demanding bas-reliefs of Duke Ellington or maybe Tchaikovsky (who was and continues to be embraced by even the most homophobic of St. Petersburg residents)? If these people are going to take offense at the heteronormativity of having separate men's and women's rooms, they had better be prepared to go all the way. I'm waiting...

My haul for Valentine's Day this year:

2006-02-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

--Chocolate, courtesy of my mom and stepdad.
--An Ampelmann bottle opener, also from them (Ampelmann is, for those not in the know, the guy on all East Berlin traffic lights. He is awesome, not in the least because his name, literally translated from the German, is "traffic light man.")
--A carnation--one of those "Carnation-gram" things they set up outside the dining halls where you pay $1.50 towards stopping genocide and they send someone you like a flower on Valentine's Day--from Stephanie. I love both Steph and stopping genocide, but damn if I wasn't secretly hoping the flower would be from...someone exciting. Ah, well.
--A Valentine-themed coupon for a free frozen yogurt at 21 Choices. The same coupon every other person at my school got.
--The usual profound sense of self-loathing I've felt every Valentine's Day since I realized there's no way a single person can exist on Valentine's Day without seeming lonely and bitter. Any attempt at cynicism or wit is seen as a deflection; ignoring it or denouncing it as a Hallmark holiday makes you a hypocrite, knowing as you do that if you were coupled up, you'd be at that dimly lit Italian restaurant along with the rest of 'em; trying to reclaim February 14th as "Vagina Day" is just kind of scary.
My coping mechanism was to think about it this way: I'm bitter about the whole relationship thing most of the time, and V-day is the one day out of the year where I don't have to cover that up. It worked, to the extent that I didn't shoot myself or drink a lot, but I think by the end of the day I was starting to scare people. Sigh. There's always next year...

The 'intrige' is gone, baby...

2006-02-05T21:30:00.000-08:00

To the "Dick" who commented on my most recent post: "I trust you can correct that spelling"? I can only hope that was sarcasm, coming as it was from someone who thinks "intrigue" is spelled without the u. You people make me sick.
That is, unfortunately, the most interesting thing I have to write about at the moment. This whole reverse-culture-shock-I-don't-want-to-be-here-anymore -what-am-I-doing- with-my-life thing has plenty of drawbacks (I can't enjoy the classes I'm taking, even though they're all interesting enough; I'm late to work a lot due to my reluctance to wake up in the morning; I'm having trouble getting started on finding a summer job, which I should be doing even as I write this) but what I really can't stand is that I think I'm losing my sense of humor. More specifically, I'm losing my ability to find the inherent humor in most situations. This is something I've always prided myself on in the past, something I've used as both a coping strategy and a way to keep Blog Readers Like You entertained.
And now? Now I'm really fucking scared.
What am I going to lose next?

I swear I'll make this blog more amusing. I really will. But first...

2006-01-29T20:33:00.000-08:00

I never noticed before how empty this campus feels. On weekdays after dinner and weekends before brunch and during classes--actually, most of the time--you can walk across the quad and there will be nobody within a hundred-foot radius. It's completely silent except for maybe leaves rustling in the wind or birds chirping. Surrounded on all sides by perfectly groomed grass, impeccable landscaping and staid academic buildings, it's easy to feel like you're the center of the universe. Which, in a way, you are.
My advisor has been telling me I should think about graduating early, and at this point I'm seriously considering it. It almost sounds like there should be a catch. Like, in order to escape this tiny patch of sheltered academia in the middle of a cultural wasteland that was making me feel trapped and depressed even before I went abroad, I'll have to...save twenty thousand dollars? Wow, tough choice.

Why, Pomona?

2006-01-22T15:57:00.000-08:00

Sorry, the title was supposed to be a two-part pun on "My Sharona," but I guess it didn't really pan out.
Yeah, I'm back. And yeah, it's weird, and not in a good way. I'm feeling everything I predicted I'd be feeling before I came here, but the fact that I knew I'd be feeling this way doesn't make things any better.
Here's the deal: I like cities. I like it when there are a million things to do at any given moment, when the nightlife involves shows and clubs and the theatre and not the same old groups of people wandering around in search of a server of beer who will demand to see your (obviously underaged) ID but then serve you anyway. I like not having to rely on cars (or friends with cars) to get places. And I love feeling anonymous. In Petersburg I could, and regularly did, walk down Nevsky and just disappear into the crowd. Here in Claremont I'm lucky if I can walk from my dorm to the dining hall without seeing ten people I know.
It's not even just that everyone here knows everyone else. It's the knowledge that I'm spending--that I already have spent--a significant portion of my life surrounded only by a couple of thousand people who are almost exactly like me. I guess that's a draw for some people who apply to liberal arts colleges--"you'll have a chance to be surrounded by the best and brightest people in the country" and blah blah blah. I fell for that when I applied here, but honestly, there's something wrong with the assumption that you can learn more from talking to someone who got upwards of 1500 on their SATs than you can from someone who didn't. And while it's nice to have lots of people my age around, I miss the feeling I had when I lived in Petersburg: that I was, finally, interacting with the Real World, that my knowledge of big words and important concepts didn't mean I didn't have to deal with the same torturous commute and lousy food service that every other city inhabitant did.
Pomona College, man. It's not just a bubble: it's a cage.

Next!

2006-01-13T20:36:00.000-08:00

Since I've been home I've had the chance to catch up on some of the American TV I missed last semester (I watched the news and parts of serials with my host family, but had to constantly ask my host mom who was making what laws, who was dating who and who was avenging whose death. Not because I didn't understand the language, but because I wasn't at home enough to catch entire shows.) Not surprisingly, it hasn't gotten better in my absence. I checked out the MTV dating show "Next" because there had been a casting call for it last spring at Pomona. Nobody from there was chosen for it, as far as I know. Having seen it, I find it hard to believe that my PC liberal arts college was ever considered a possible source for such sound bites as "I'm more than just a pretty face. I also have a great ass!" and "I don't like girls who are cocky--unless it means they can't get enough of my *bleep*..."
The show can sort of be considered progressive in that it sometimes shows five girls competing for a girl, or five guys competing for a guy. I guess the lesson here is that gay people can be just as idiotic and shallow as straight people. Or that I should stop watching TV.
It's a little bit disheartening that upon my return to the US I am greeted with things like that show, Kevin Federline's burgeoning rap career, Brangelina's baby, and Bill O'Reilly's bitching about the "war on Christmas." On the other hand, without all that, it just wouldn't be America.

My Russglish is almost gone...

2006-01-08T19:08:00.000-08:00

...seeing as there's barely anybody around here to speak it with, and words like "metro-vat" and "perekhod-ing" don't have much relevance in a small town like Amherst anyway. So are other reverse culture shock symptoms I thought would last longer: the mentally rehearsing what I'm going to say to clerks and waitstaff five or six times before I say it, the amazement at being able to understand what people are saying in movies without even trying. Although come to think of it, "Brokeback Mountain" put me right back in Russia mode with its badly-in-need-of-subtitles Heath Ledger. (Other than that, the movie was good. I'd take Ledgyllenhaal over Brangelina any day.)
I have a feeling that the last symptom to go will be the one I didn't even expect: the weird feeling of trepidation I get before running the shower or turning on the gas stove. This is due to four months of having to light a match before doing either of these things. Now the idea of a stove that lights itself or a shower that gets warm by itself just sort of creeps me out.

There's no place like Piter.

2005-12-30T12:29:00.000-08:00

I wrote this two and a half weeks ago:

This morning I was halfway to the Nevskii Prospekt station on the metro when my iPod, set on “Shuffle,” started playing Weezer’s “Surf Wax America.” Wedged as I was between a fur-coat-wearing middle-aged woman and a sketchy-looking army guy, the song—and surfing in general—seemed so foreign to me that it was all I could do not to crack up.

And this:

My babushka never ceases to amaze me. I was telling her about how my music class listened to Shostakovich’s 5th symphony, and she started talking about Shostakovich, who, as it turns out, she remembered as being “very modest, but very talented” when she knew him as a piano player.

And this:

My final meeting with Marina was a visit to the English class that she teaches, where I got to sit and look awkward and answer ninth graders’ questions about America. My favorite was this one girl who asked if Americans “take mushrooms in the woods.” What she meant, of course: do Americans, like Russians, go out into the woods to pick mushrooms? I answered that I didn’t know anyone who does so, but I’m sure it happens. Towards the end of the class Marina let the students ask questions in their native language. That same girl: “What kinds of mushrooms do they have in America?”

Now that I'm home it's almost like I have to struggle to hold onto those memories, to that mentality I had in Russia. Already the whole experience is starting to seem less and less like a part of me and more and more like a well of stories from which I will be drawing for a good long while. And I know that's normal, but it's also really depressing.
Part of it, I know, is the sensation of being home for winter break, which, despite my having been abroad, is the same it's always been. Same old town, give or take a sushi restaurant or two. Same old attempting to get caught up on what's been going on with my high school friends, leading to the same old kicking myself for not being better about keeping in touch. And that same old combination of familiarity and weirdness so eloquently immortalized and set to a faux-indie soundtrack in Garden State.
On the bright side, I spoke to Natasha, my host mom, today. The conversation reminded me that, yes, I really was in St. Petersburg and all my memories from there are of things that really happened to me, personally. It also reminded me of just how much I miss it there, especially when Aleksandra, the babushka, tried to talk to me and couldn't hear my voice through the telephone.
Finally, it reminded me that I need to actively work on keeping my Russian sharp. Two weeks out of Russia and already I've forgotten about vowel reduction and the proper use of imperfective aspect. Look for me in Russian L.A., soliciting grammar advice from grocery store clerks.

So here I am in America.

2005-12-29T10:03:00.000-08:00

Land of the free condiments. Where toilet paper is not only in ample supply, but double-quilted. Where my limited ability to speak the native language is no longer a viable excuse for romantic rejection.
I'm still not quite ready to accept that things are over, though, so here's some stuff I wrote in Germany:

I think the thing that’s been irritating me about being in Berlin is the same thing that made this visit so necessary: being here shows me how un-special my semester in Russia really was. Spending these few days in this one city in this one country in Europe reminded me of how much there is out there that I haven’t seen and how many languages I still don’t know. I mean, on Christmas Eve I was the only American among Russians, Germans and French people. Everyone at the table except me was fluent in German. Most spoke both German and French, and nearly everyone knew at least a little English. As a speaker of English and an awkward speaker of Russian, I was the least able to hold a conversation of anyone. Not to mention that almost everyone at the table had been to the U.S. and Paris and London and other such places, and all I could say I’d seen in Europe was a few cities in Russia and, uh, Berlin. I came out of Russia feeling totally accomplished, confident and worldly. I will come out of Germany feeling like a mute idiot.
On the plus side, my German has improved during my week here. It makes me think I could learn it relatively easily: there are plenty of English and Russian cognates, and after Russian the grammar will be a walk in the park. My passive vocabulary is sufficient enough to understand what people are talking about most of the time, even if I can’t tell what they’re saying about any given topic of conversation. My active vocabulary is slightly worse. Here are most of the phrases I can say, put in an order that approximates one end of a hypothetical conversation:

--Please
--Thank you
--The chicken is very spicy
--I don’t understand
--I have no idea
--I speak no German
--Do you speak English?
--That is wonderful
--All is clear
--Merry Christmas
--Fuck safely
--Goodbye!

Here’s one of my biggest problems with coming back from study abroad: somewhere in between getting beaten with birch branches by a Russian sailor and club-hopping in Berlin with a bunch of older German guys, I realized that my life has the potential to be—and sometimes is—interesting. I’m not quite ready to give that up for life in (shudder) Claremont, where the most interesting thing that will happen will probably involve my boredom-induced suicide. No matter. I may have to work a little harder at it in America than overseas, where even ordering fast food can be a life-altering experience, but life next semester will be interesting. Whether it wants to be or not.

So where is it?

2005-12-22T08:11:00.000-08:00

The Big Finish? The Final Thought? The Witty Yet Deep Musings That Tie The Semester Together, complete with a dash of Things I Have Learned?
I'm putting it off for a week. Until then, I am gallivanting around Berlin in the company of my grandfather's friend Liz and occasionally her son (recently featured in a prominent German tabloid as part of the German Brad Pitt's "party squad.") To actually take time to reflect on my semester in Russia would be hazardous to my well-being, so I'm saving it for when I'm back in the States. Although I will say I was amazed when I used the restroom at the German History Museum--there were five rolls of toilet paper in my stall alone, which is more than exists in all the public restrooms in St. Petersburg put together.
Tschuss! (or however you spell it)

I have no time for anything but...

2005-12-18T15:22:00.000-08:00

Do svidaniya, St. Petersburg.
Love, Rayenka

In preparation for my return to the US...

2005-12-11T10:54:00.000-08:00

...I decided to do the opposite of what they told us to do in Russia during the "culture shock" lecture: make a list of five things I will not, in any way, shape or form, miss about St. Petersburg.

All right. So I won’t miss the metro. I’ll miss the metro’s existence, the beauty of its stations, its low prices, and its reliability, but I won’t miss riding on it. That’s one.

I won’t miss the biting cold, or the near-constant darkness, no matter how absolutely gorgeous the city looks in the snow and at night. That’s two.

I won’t miss the lousy food service, although I will miss a lot of the food here (blini!) and its cheapness. That’s three.

I won’t miss the fact that Russian girls sound like they’re whining no matter what they’re saying. Although some of them are really quite nice, and in general I enjoy the existence of Russian girls—they make me work harder than usual at looking presentable, and their outlandish fashions make the dreariness of commuting more entertaining. But still...that’s four.

Finally, I won't miss the scary, android-like rhythmic clapping at plays, operas, ballets, concerts and yes, even jazz shows. But realistically, how many plays, ballets, operas, concerts and jazz shows am I going to be able to go to back in the US? They're so cheap and so easy to get to in St. Petersburg--and did I mention how freaking amazing most of them, even the cheapest ones, are? That's five.

Shit.

What is it with this country and preserving things?

2005-12-08T03:20:00.000-08:00

About half of the ACTR group ended up at the big hockey game last Saturday—that would be St. Petersburg’s own “SKA” (I have absolutely no idea what that name means, unless maybe it’s a tribute to the city’s ongoing love affair with upbeat, Jamaica-based, horn-augmented music) versus Moscow’s “Dinamo.” I split my attention between the actual game and a group of guys sitting a few rows down from us who kept shouting various inspirational chants. This wasn’t just any group of rowdy, drunken fans: they had, apparently, rehearsed each cheer quite thoroughly, complete with rudimentary choreography. To see a dozen or so full-grown men chanting “SKA! Sankt! Peter! Burg! SKA Sankt-Peterburg! Hey!” while waving their arms and clapping in perfect unison was an entertaining enough sight, but then, towards the end of the game, they all lit up blindingly bright flare sticks. The final score? 2-1, SKA. Take that, Moscow!
I finally made it to Kunstkamera. This would be St. Petersburg’s first museum, founded by Peter the Great himself in an effort to get his new city educated. The actual educational value of the museum is dubious at best. There are various exhibits on the different peoples of the world (I can only assume the museum decided to keep these up in tribute to Peter the Great’s rampant Orientalism) but the main attraction is the Hall of Anatomical Rarities. This is a collection that Peter the Great bought from a European doctor/trainer of midwives who, thanks to his profession, had no shortage of anatomical rarities to preserve in his "special mixture of brandy and spices.” What kind of rarities, you ask? Let’s just say it’ll be a good long while before I tell or laugh at a dead baby joke again. The weirdest thing I saw was not the two-headed babies, nor the ones with enormous brain hemorrhages, nor the ones with fused legs and no arms. No, it was a man and a woman ambling around the room hand in hand, gazing adoringly at one another. In a town full of gorgeous art, cute little cafes, amazing views and myriad places to get married, who the hell takes their date to the Big Room O’ Deformed Babies In Jars? OK, maybe that’s exactly the kind of thing I would do, but that’s beside the point.

What's wrong with her?

2005-12-06T03:02:00.000-08:00

Russian, like German and French and pretty much any non-English language, does that thing where every noun, even if it’s inanimate, has a gender. I was completely OK with this logic before Sunday morning, when, while working in my room, I overheard my host mom and my babushka complaining about how “she doesn’t do anything useful” and “something’s wrong with her.” I was ready to burst into tears until I realized they were talking about the new dishwasher.
About a month into this semester, I got up the nerve to start taking my iPod to school, but so far it’s been worth it. Here in St. Petersburg the songs in my music collection take on different meanings and characteristics than they do at home. My morning commute on the metro, for example, is best accompanied by the kind of old-school punk rock I thought I'd jettisoned back in high school: “Teenage Lobotomy” by the Ramones, “God Save the Queen” by the Sex Pistols and, naturally, the Clash’s “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.” And then there was this one time when I was doing the daily red-to-blue-line transfer (the basic procedure: stand in crowd of commuters until train pulls up, align self by one of the doors, almost get knocked over by crowd exiting the train, join crowd attempting to enter the metro, get violently pushed or kicked out of the way, swear under your breath as car doors close and train leaves the station, repeat until you can find a square inch of space in a metro car to call your own) and the approach of the train and opening and closing of doors synched up perfectly with “Toxicity” by System of a Down. How appropriate.
My collection of wimpy college “rock,” from Death Cab for Cutie to Rilo Kiley, has about as much relevance here as do the Pomona Student Digesters that keep showing up unbidden in my e-mail. I wonder if I'll even be able to listen to it once I'm back home, or if it will just depress me that I've returned to that mindset, so juvenile-seeming in this city, in which I can identify with Ben freaking Gibbard. Ugh.

In praise of Russian rock, and dead animals.

2005-12-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

So I've been frequenting the Internet cafe more and more often to try and work on this research paper, although (as you can see, or rather, read) I get a little sidetracked sometimes. On the other hand, I did make a pilgrimmage to Rubenshtein 13, the former address of the Leningrad Rock Club, yesterday, and while the actual club has been shut down for some time, it was really interesting just reading the graffitti on the walls. I had no idea, for example, just how influential Viktor Tsoi, former lead singer of Kino, was (and still is--he's basically the Russian Kurt Cobain, except he wrote better lyrics.) And I love, by the way, how I've gradually acquired this great respect for Russian rock over the course of this semester, especially since before I came here I thought it was a novelty thing. I guess lately it's been headed in that direction (witness the godawful rap-metal group Kirpichi) but the stuff that Kino, Alisa and Aquarium came out with in the '80s was absolute lyrical, if not musical, genius. Especially if you compare it to the music American groups were recording around that time--although I acknowledge that "Cum On Feel The Noize" is genius in its own right.
A quick side note: today on the metro, I saw the first anti-fur ad that I've seen since coming here. It had a picture of a mink and the slogan "His life is more important than a fur coat!" and it was pasted over a giant ad for the clothing chain "Leather and Fur World." It struck me that all those rabid PETA activists have been focusing their attention on the wrong country. Walk around the streets of St. Petersburg for five minutes and you'll see coats made out of just about every animal found in nature, as well as half the cast of "Sesame Street." I wonder how these people would react if someone threw paint at them. They'd probably find some way to make it a fashion statement.

There's no place like...dammit!

2005-12-01T08:14:00.000-08:00

So even those of you who know me might not know that the title of this blog was intended to be completely and totally ironic (my first choice, the oh-so-original californialove.blogspot.com, was taken.) Right now, I'm feeling anything but love for Claremont. Well, mostly just Pomona, who yesterday released its list of available rooms and room draw numbers for next semester. Turns out I'm number 105...out of 117 people...competing for something like 56 beds. Katie, ever the conscientious one, sent an e-mail to the housing director informing her about this discrepancy, to which she replied: "We're expecting more rooms to open up once we know who's going on leave and who'll be moving to off-campus housing next semester." Riiiiight. So suddenly 49 people will up and leave Pomona in the spring? I was joking earlier about having to pitch a tent on the quad, but now I'm seriously considering it. It would sure seem warm after this semester...
Yep, that's right. All college-related bitching aside, here I am in St. Petersburg in December. It's officially winter now, and it shows: the locals' fur coats are getting heavier, the food is getting heavier, the street PDAs are getting heavier. And I've only got 19 days left in this city. That's 19 days in which to accomplish everything I've been telling myself I'd do since back in September: go to all the museums, attend a ballet at the Mariinsky, swear a hockey game, that club where every night is New Year's Eve. Not to mention write a research paper about the development of Russian rock music, which has recently been taking me down all sorts of philosophical detours (should Russian rock groups sing in English in order to preserve rock's musical "drive", which the Russian language itself has a tendency to suppress? If so, can their music still be called Russian rock?) which, while fascinating to me as a sometime music perception researcher and on-and-off aspiring rock journalist, are hard enough to express in English, let alone Russian.
I guess it'll all be over with soon enough, whether I like it or not, and then it'll be back to mundanity--and my tent...

There are no cows in Moscow...

2005-11-29T03:47:00.000-08:00

…but this past five-day weekend, there was my friend Sam, who made it from Budapest, where he’s been studying this semester, to the gate at the Sheremetyevo-2 airport, where I greeted him with a look that was part happiness to see him and part outright disbelief that he was, in fact, there. The plan “poluchilosed,” as we fluent Russglish speakers say, after a few weeks of frantic e-mailing and a whole lot of sketchy visa-related situations. But hey, without the sketchiness, it just wouldn’t be Russia.
In the four days that followed that first landing in Moscow, Sam and I managed to experience what was basically a condensed form of my entire semester in Russia. And yes, that includes a dacha. This happened thanks to Moscow’s ACTR group, who rented a three-story house in the middle of some forest on the outskirts of the city. After checking Sam into his hostel, I hailed us a taxi so we could meet up with the group. The group included most of the Moscow ACTR people, the other three Petersburg girls, and quite a few Russians of unknown origin.
So by the time we got there, two very dangerous things had happened: people had started in on the vodka supply, and all the dinner food had been eaten. Making matters worse, I had “slept” on a train—plotzkart, what else?—the night before. Fortunately this situation ended up working out very well for me, in that I passed out at such a time that I missed the more *cough* interesting parts of the evening, but I still got to introduce Sam to the wonders of the Russian banya. Well, technically it was a sauna, but people kept pouring various liquids on it. And there were birch branches, which automatically add that magical element of banya-ness to any situation.
The next day, after a harrowing detour through the Russian wilderness (we left earlier than everyone else, and the directions we got to the station were less than stellar, and I really like the word “harrowing”) we took a train back to the city center. Here we took in the impressive grandeur of Red Square and the even more impressive grandeur of the nearby Teremok (fast-food blini, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure.) We wandered around downtown before heading to the Bolshoi for an opera. And yes, we went to the Bolshoi Theatre on Thursday night wearing the same clothes we’d gotten dressed in Wednesday morning. The opera itself—“Love for Three Oranges” by Prokofiev—was both trippy and hard to follow, even with the libretto. Fortunately, the giant mechanical rat made it all worthwhile.
After the opera, we ate a Thanksgiving dinner—well, sort of—at Gudenov, an upscale Russian restaurant. And I mean upscale. Not only did we get free bread (a miracle in this country), there were also free puff pastry things with caviar on them. Needless to say, we only ordered appetizers, along with the restaurant’s horseradish-infused vodka. Except that then we decided said vodka was so good that we had to have some to take back to Claremont, so we paid a massive amount for half of a water bottle full of what we thought was vodka but was, the next day, revealed to be some kind of honey-based drink, forcing us to go back to the restaurant two days later, where we finally received our rightful beverage after relating our sob story (in Russian) to the manager. But anyway.
The next day, our cadre of Pomona students (Steph, Katie, Sam and I, along with Kathleen, who I keep forgetting doesn't actually go to Pomona) visited the Armory and the New Tretyakov modern art museum, after which we headed out to one of Moscow's best--or most crowded, at any rate--clubs to see "5'Nizza" (pronounced "Pyatnitsa" and meaning "Friday.") It was a lot of fun, and the music wasn’t bad (“reggae,” they called it, even if a lot of it sounded either Russian or Jack Johnson-esque), although the band didn’t play the only song of theirs that I knew. Maybe this was because of, and not in spite of, my loudly and beligerently requesting the song every five minutes, but who knows. After the concert, we met up with Oleg (do I even need to add an “of all people” here?) for all of about five minutes, after which we had to hightail it to the metro before it closed for the night.
Saturday morning was a trip to Izmailovsky market for souvenirs. I didn’t get anything, but I helped Sam get low prices using my minimal Russian bargaining skills. Maybe it’s the Jew in me, but I looove bargaining, even if Katie’s tactic—standing there and looking indecisive until the shop people offered her a good price—worked better than my blunt “Will you give me that for cheaper?” This was followed by the ferris wheel at the All-Russian Exhibition Center (so much fake wheat!) and the Cosmonaut Museum, where they had Yuri Gagarin's space capsule and a couple of display cases that contained either statues of the first dogs in space, or...uh...the dogs themselves.
Sunday, our last day in Moscow, was just all-around Russian: a visit to Lenin, followed by Sovietskaya champagne, cheap caviar and "Red October" chocolate on a park bench across from the newly rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The dirty looks we got from Russian passersby were so worth it.
In summary, the visit further confirmed my suspicions from when my dad visited: in order to be a tourist in Russia, it is necessary to know either Russian or a Russian-speaking person, although the fact that Sam learned how to read Cyrillic and had spent the last few months gallivanting around random European cities made things much less stressful. In fact, thanks to him, my visitor-to-robbery ratio has gone down an entire third! Any potential travelers can now rest assured that only 67 percent of people who come see me in Russia get something stolen. Of course, I managed to lose a ring, a glove and long underwear over those five days, but that's another story entirely.

So, uh, how 'bout that weather...

2005-11-22T03:24:00.000-08:00

It got cold. Not spit-and-it-freezes, have-to-amputate-your-frostbitten-extremities, cut-open-an-animal-to-stay-alive cold—at least not yet—but pretty damn cold. It snowed once back in October, but that melted in a couple days and it continued to be fall. Incidentally, this fall was the warmest fall St. Petersburg had seen in over 140 years. Which made it even more devastating when, this week, the weather decided to stop screwing around and get back to the business of kicking all of our asses.
Yes, there’s snow. In the parks it’s pretty, but on the streets it turns into disgusting brown slush when it’s not blowing directly into your face. And that’s another thing: the wind. It’s indecisive. One minute it’s coming at you from behind, one minute from the side, and the next minute you could lean forward with all your weight and the wind would keep you from falling down.
The city, though, is totally in its element in this weather. The buildings seem more elegant, the metro seems more welcoming, and the streets and apartment buildings seem more…shall we say, Dostoevskian. Even the natives have a kind of spring in their stiletto-heeled step when treading on the freshly fallen snow.
Another sign of winter: the not-so-gradual disappearance of the sun. Every day now, the sun rises three minutes later and sets three minutes earlier than it did the previous day. Yes, the sight of the sun rising over the Kazansky Cathedral is both beautiful and awe-inspiring, but this should not be happening at nine-fucking-fifteen in the morning! It's getting to the point where I can literally say I spend all my daylight hours in class. Makes a pretty good case for human hibernation.
In an effort to stay warm and possibly burn off some of those blini, I went to my tutor’s “aerobics and shaping” class--that would be the class my tutor teaches, not just one that she goes to. All I can say is, I now know why Russian girls are so skinny. Aside from the cryptic, impossible-to-repeat aerobic steps that made me feel even more clumsy and awkward than I normally do in this country, there were a lot of exercises that involved large wooden sticks. Honestly, what is it with Russians and sticks, and the presumption that the latter is always good for your health?
On a more positive note regarding classes, I now have a new goal for the semester: convince the teacher of my “Muzikalniye Proizvodeniye i Ispolnitel” class to give up teaching Russians and come live at Pomona. Seriously, he’s that good. I've only been twice, but as far as I can tell it consists of him talking about whatever music-related things come to his mind, and they’re always really interesting and—here’s the key—understandable. It helps that he’s just so incredibly enthusiastic and interested in everything music-related, especially music perception. It’s a welcome change from my conversation, phonetics and grammar teachers. Not that I can blame them, of course—if I had to teach English to a bunch of Russian students who only got excited about learning when the vocabulary had to do with drinking, enthusiasm would be the last thing on my mind.

In Soviet Russia, cultural experiences have you!

2005-11-16T06:39:00.000-08:00

No matter what anyone says about Russia, it most certainly is never boring. That’s what I told myself when I ended up hanging out (if you could call it that) obscenely early this past Sunday with one of the girls from choir. She told me her friend Sergei would pick me up, which I didn’t find unusual. Of course, that was before I arrived at the designated meeting place to find a middle-aged man and his two kids. Sergei was waving a red flag, and, upon our meeting, informed me that he had been asked by the museum staff—we met at the Narvskiye Triumphal Gates—if he was trying to start a demonstration. So anyway, it turned out Sergei had been to America over ten years previously and was aching to practice his English on someone, even if that someone actually understood him better when he was speaking Russian. We drove to the Museum of the Political History of Russia—after getting and changing a flat tire on the way—where we met up with Olga, the girl from choir. I asked her how she knew this Sergei, to which she replied, “He’s my friend.” Uh, OK.
The museum itself was pretty interesting, and it would’ve been a rewarding trip had I not been dead tired and had I not been worrying about my presentation due Tuesday. Of course, after that, we had to do a tour of the cruiser “Aurora,” from which was fired the shot that started the revolution. Interesting stuff, except the tour had to do with the ship’s engines and involved an old guy talking at great length about…I have no idea what…while we had to stand in an uncomfortably warm room with very little to look at. At least Sergei paid.

Another thing to file under "cultural experience": a while ago, I went to the Russian movie “Garpastum.” Do not see the Russian movie “Garpastum.” It takes its cues from sappy period sports movies where the heroes overcome enormous odds and historical context to win the big game. Except it’s Russian, so nobody wins and in fact most of the heroes get shot or beaten to death. Oh, and every so often there are random explicit sex scenes. I’d blame the film’s crappiness on the language barrier, except that the Russians I was with said they didn’t understand what was going on either.

Altogether, though, things aren't bad, to the extent that I'm dreading the end of the semester and my return to the States. Instead of making a list of all the things I like about Russia, as the orientation people suggested as a means to deal with culture shock, I'm going to have to make a list of things I don't like about it. At least back home I won't have to worry about suddenly finding myself standing by the side of the road in the rain watching a policeman watch a middle-aged Russian man named Sergei change a flat tire.

From “Dacha” to Dacha, or: Fun With Seamen

2005-11-08T03:48:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday—that would be the weekend before Halloween—Steph and I finally made it to “Dacha,” the St. Petersburg club that someone must have built as an answer to the seemingly rhetorical question, “What could possibly be more crowded than a weekday morning metro car?” Regardless, the drinks were cheap and the music was awesome—even American clubs don’t play American ‘90s rock anymore—so we stayed, and on our second or so trip to the bar we encountered a pair of Russian seamen. Uh, make that Russian sailors. Anyway, here's the miraculous thing: they weren't at all sketchy. They were drinking, but not a whole lot, and they didn't try anything, and they made intelligent conversation. The four of us hung out and talked (in Russian! So much language practice!) finally ending up at a Subway, of all places, before dispersing for what was left of that night.

The next day we ended up hanging out with them again, along with their friends Petya and Alya. We were supposed to see a movie, but the movie was cancelled. Or we got the show time wrong. Or something. Anyway, what we did do was a marathon “progulka”—gets lost in translation, the closest approximation is “aimless stroll”—that took us practically all over the city. Somewhere in the course of this, we got invited out to this one guy’s dacha, where they were planning to go the following weekend. A dacha, for those of you who are uninformed, is a country cottage, and this particular guy’s dacha was fairly large and had a banya. More on that later.

We already had train tickets to go to Petrozavodsk that weekend, but Stephanie, Kathleen and I decided to exchange our return tickets for earlier ones. So it happened that we took an overnight train to Petrozavodsk on Thursday night, spent the day there Friday, took another overnight train back Friday night, slept, took the train out to the dacha Saturday afternoon, stayed at the dacha till Sunday afternoon, then took the train back to Petersburg, arriving Sunday evening. Phew.

Despite the weekend’s pace, it ended up going well. Petrozavodsk was fun—I couldn’t reach the people I’d lived with five years ago, but it was a blast seeing familiar places, souvenir shopping and going to random museums. At night we decided to try a banya in preparation for Saturday, which was quite an experience. First of all, it took us literally an hour to find the banya, despite the tininess of the town: we traversed literally the entire length of the street the banya was on, overshooting it numerous times. And then there was the banya itself…

A banya consists of one room with showers, benches and wash basins, and another that is basically a really humid sauna. You go back and forth between these two rooms—completely naked, of course—washing yourself in the wash room and “steaming” in the steam room. “Steaming” involves “veniki,” birch branches that, if applied in the proper manner, help circulation or something. The proper manner? Beating. (What did you expect? This is Russia!) So I guess Kathleen and Steph and I looked like pretty obvious foreigners, because one of the banya employees, a capable-looking middle-aged woman, decided to show us what the banya was all about. I was sitting timidly in the steam room when she grabbed a venik and told me to bend over. There are very few situations in which being naked and beaten with a stick by a woman you don’t know is a perfectly natural and wholesome thing. The banya is one of them. She repeated this procedure on my friends, then, once we were out of the steam room, scrubbed us each in turn with a two-handled washcloth. And yes, this was also very wholesome. It might have seemed sketchier if the banya hadn’t been filled with women all doing the same thing to each other, but as it was, it seemed like a wonderful idea. I left there feeling cleaner than I had in months. Of course, the overnight train ride back pretty much destroyed that, but then, there was another banya to look forward to on Saturday.

The train rides were perhaps the low point of the weekend. We rode plotzkart, the cheapest but least comfortable option. Thursday night we slept—or tried to, anyway—across the aisle from a guy who snored so loudly it was a wonder he slept through his own nasal eruptions. Friday night, we were next to a group of Russian preteens. Preteens are the most unpleasant Russian people to deal with in general, but especially so when you haven’t slept for over 30 hours and they’re running on hormones and a Fanta high. Fortunately, I had berushki (earplugs) on me, and while getting to sleep with foam things in your ear canals is unpleasant, it beats listening to 12-year-olds screaming “Smack my bitch up!” with hideous accents.

So it was that, the following day, we set off to spend a night in the middle of nowhere with people we’d only known for a week—LET ME EXPLAIN, LET ME EXPLAIN!!! I suppose there’s no way to make the situation sound safe, but it was. The company consisted of the three American girls, the guy whose parents owned the dacha, our friends Vanya and Oleg, their friend Petya, and Petya’s wife and two sisters. The dacha was extremely well heated, and us Americans were given our own room to sleep in. As for the dacha’s private banya—well, the girls wore towels, although some of the guys weren’t so modest. So basically, I'm sure there are things to be said for following parents' advice and being cautious all the time, but sometimes a situation that has massive potential to end in unspeakable sketchiness can instead become a fun and memorable night of banya-ing, grilled-meat-eating, vodka toasting, and talking around the campfire. It was the most quintessentially Russian experience I've had in Russia thus far. And I'm sure it was worth at least five conversation classes. Or so I plan on telling my teachers when they ask where my homework from this past weekend is.

St. Petersburg, from the outside in.

2005-10-27T03:15:00.000-07:00

So my dad and grandfather were here from this past Thursday through Sunday, a visit that provided me with an answer, once and for all, to the question, “Why doesn’t Russia get more tourists?”
Before they arrived here, they spent a few days in Moscow with the help of a tour guide. They had hired no guide for Petersburg, assuming that I’d be sufficient enough. And I was. For all of about 45 minutes, after which we got on the metro and pickpockets lifted my grandpa’s wallet.
This unceremonious welcome to St. Petersburg was followed by us running to a cell phone store to try and put minutes on my phone in order to call the credit card companies, which, as it turns out, couldn’t be reached on my cell phone. So I took them back to the hotel, where they called the companies and canceled the cards. The wallet hadn’t had a lot of cash in it, so it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but it was an inconvenience—especially since, in order to prove to the credit card companies that we had reported a crime, we got to experience the wonders of the St. Petersburg PD. It was amazing how inaccessible the police department was, though, especially for tourists. It was located in a less-than-clean alley off of one of the main squares, through a door that wouldn’t open until I pressed the “Вызов” button on an ancient button panel. After that there were three flights of stairs in a dubious-looking stairwell, followed by an iron door marked with a small sign (written, of course, only in Russian) that we had to knock on several times to get through. Once we were actually in the police department, I had to act as a translator between my painfully American family and the oh-so-Russian policemen. (“Of course the police here speak English!” the desk clerk at their touristy hotel had cheerfully reassured them.) I was actually doing really well until they said one word I didn’t know—I think it was an official word for paper money—at which point I was like, “Huh? What? What does that word mean?” and one of them said to the other, “She’s not a real translator! Ha ha ha!”
Regardless of the police’s condescension, we ended up with the necessary document and headed back to the center on the metro. Well, we thought, that’s over with.
Five minutes later, my dad noticed the conspicuous absence of his digital camera.
Well, shit. There was no use looking for the thief or going to the police, and both my dad and grandpa assured me that it wasn’t my fault. Which it really wasn’t, now that I’ve had time to think about it, but back then I was kicking myself—why didn’t I warn them? Well, I did warn them, but why didn’t I warn them more? Why didn’t we avoid the metro altogether? Et cetera?
Sigh. On the other hand, there were much worse things that could have happened on the visit than a couple of things getting taken, and after that unqualified disaster of a first day, things couldn’t have gone better. We went to the Hermitage (nearly two months in St. Petersburg, and that was my first visit to the Hermitage—pathetic, no?) to a couple cathedrals, to the Amber Room and to an opera at the Mariinsky Theater, but the best experience by far was a dinner with my host family. Here you’ve got to imagine two generations of Russian woman, neither of whom speak more than a little English, and two generations of American men, neither of whom speak any Russian, and one Russian-speaking American, from yet a third generation, constantly translating between the two camps. It was discovered that my host mom’s job and my grandpa’s former job have a lot in common (including a lot of hard-to-translate engineering terminology) and that both families had much to criticize when it came to my eating habits (at which point I threatened to stop translating.) Bush-bashing was also something all five of us, especially my grandfather and babushka, could do without anyone getting lost in translation. Apparently there are some things that transcend cultural boundaries, and dislike of our president is one of them.
All in all, I’m happy they visited, even if they left Russia a few possessions lighter. At any rate, you don’t get that kind of experience vacationing in the south of France. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to the traveler.

"But Rachel," you say...

2005-10-24T05:21:00.000-07:00

"What about your love life? Does the fact that you haven't been keeping us posted about your multitude of romantic humiliations mean that there haven't been any, or that--miracle of miracles--you've found a Vladimir Ivanovich to settle down with?
Sadly, no. Before I regale you with my account of the by turns disasterous and wonderful parental visit, here's a conversation I had (entirely in Russian) yesterday.
Scene: A pirozhnoye (bakery/cafe). I am sitting at a table with my dad and grandfather. One table over is a middle-aged woman--not quite a babushka, but getting close. She catches my eye and beckons me over.
RUSSIAN WOMAN: You're Jewish, yes?
ME: Uh, yes.
RUSSIAN WOMAN: And you live here?
ME: Kind of. I study here.
WOMAN: (incomprehensible Russian) And I thought you lived here. Are you here for long?
ME: Until December.
WOMAN: Still, it might be worth it...I was thinking I would acquaint you with my son. How old are you?
ME: Sorry, I'm not interested. I'm only here for two more months, then I go back to America...I don't think it would be worth it.
WOMAN: Oh, OK. I'm sorry if I offended you.
I sit back down at my table. Two seconds later, the woman approaches me again:
WOMAN: Are you sure we shouldn't exchange telephone numbers? Here, look at him. (WOMAN pulls out two photographs from her purse, both of a kind-of-attractive, if not my type, Russian guy. One is a head shot, the other is full-body. Thankfully he is clothed in both.)
ME: Um, I really don't think so.
WOMAN: Are you engaged back in America?
ME: NO! And I don't want to be. I mean, I'm not ready.
WOMAN: OK. I'm sorry if I offended you. (leaves)

I guess that could be thought of as flattering...either that or proof that I look like what I've always dreaded being thought of as: a nice Jewish girl. Ack.

Russian life, unabridged...

2005-10-15T04:04:00.000-07:00

Instead of a chronological account of things I've done, here are some random musings I've been accumulating on my laptop for the past week and a half or so.

It’s kind of a shame that everything I could possibly say about language acquisition in a foreign country has already been said, more humorously and incisively, by David Sedaris in “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” On the other hand, that book is amazing. Read it.
I especially identify with the part where an entire French class explains Easter with only a basic grasp of vocabulary (see: me on Yom Kippur, trying to explain to my babushka that the reason I wasn’t eating had nothing to do with the quality of her food) and about how the fiercest critics of Americans in foreign countries are other Americans (the fanny packs! the map reading! the loud, obnoxious English speaking!)
There are some things that are specific to Russia, however, like the fact that even six-plus years of studying Russian only gets you a few feet (meters?) into the great labyrinth of Russian grammar. I only learned a few days ago that when Russians use the imperfective aspect of a verb in the imperative form, it means they are telling you to continue a process that had been interrupted. Suddenly I realized that every time my host mother puts a plate in front of me and says “kushai,” she is not telling me to begin eating, but rather to pick up my eating process from where I left off, before it was interrupted by such things as classes, meetings, and life in general.

I went to “Tuesdays,” the oh-so-strange indie music gathering that occurs every Tuesday night chez Yuri Kasyanik, a veteran experimental/avant-jazz musician for whom I’ve been doing some translation. I ended up in a trippy jam session, if you could call it that, with Kerry (from my ACTR group, plays bassoon), her host mother’s brother (piano) and Yuri himself (flute, when he wasn’t reading poetry.) In addition to having no idea what I was doing and the fewest years of musical experience of anyone there, I was also playing an ancient, five-stringed guitar with a third of a pick. Basically I just played whatever I thought went with what other people were playing, based on my (limited) atonal music and free jazz experience. The results were recorded on tape, much to Yuri’s delight and to Kerry’s and my dismay.

Only in Russia: a show advertised as “heavy metal” turned out to be, as explained to me by a random sketchy Russian guy, “ochen tyazholiy (very heavy) techno.” And this after we bought the tickets (not very expensive, but still) and waited three-odd hours for the show to start, since we thought it would be at 8 and it turned out to be at midnight.
A couple of days later, however, Hilary and I made it to the local metal club (and that would be actual metal, not “heavy metal” that is really “tyazholiy techno.”) For the most part it was like any metal show in the U.S.—loud guitars, lots of cigarette smoke and guys with long hair waving the rock sign in the air. A couple of bands even sung in English (although it was hard to understand all that many lyrics besides “Kill!” “Die!” and “Revenge!”—but again, that’s like any metal show in the U.S.)

On Saturday, I went to the opera for the price of a latte back in the States. Sometimes I really love this city. Carmen was gorgeous. The singing in Russian was a little off-putting, but they managed OK, and it helped me get a little more of the plot than I would have otherwise. Those of us who were unsure of the details but knew it had to end in tragedy got confused when, at the end of the second act, the cast bowed and the audience started clapping in rhythm (the Russian equivalent of a standing ovation), especially since the act had ended with the entire cast singing “Freedom awaits!” all happy-like.

The problem with good-looking guys in St. Petersburg is that they’re all metrosexual. I don’t mean that in the figurative sense of the word, although that’s probably true as well. No, I mean it quite literally: Metro. Sexual. These are the guys you see in metro stations, on metro escalators and inside metro cars. Although really, you only see them from the nose up: the rest is obscured by the impossibly thin, bored-looking Russian girls wrapped around them as if they contained some kind of hidden air supply. You want to scream “Get a room!” but I think if I tried to express that in Russian, it would be more like “Receive a room!” I could try “Rent an apartment!” or “Sleep in a hotel!” or maybe just “I know she is very pleasing to you, but is it not possible for you to move so that you are more than a centimeter from my face?”

Some of the stranger techno remixes I have heard:
Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
Dire Straits, “Money for Nothing”
Phantom Planet, “California”
Don McLean, “American Pie”

Finally, a quote from the other night:
Me: I’m pretty sure my family shares a phone line with our neighbors.
Alison (from the ACTR group): You mean you have a party line?
Me: Yeah…a communist party line! Ohhh!

2005-10-11T03:58:00.000-07:00

I'm guessing my main problem with the random deletions has to do with posting pictures; therefore, I'm going to try and find one of those online gallery things and use that. So there'll be no more pretty pictures on this blog. You'll just have to use your imaginations...
Where was I? Oh, yes. Vladimir. Umm, really, besides the cathedrals, there's not much to Vladimir. Our second day there, we took a trip out to Suzdal, where we went to this one cathedral where the guy in the bell tower controlled all 20 or so of the bells via a system of ropes and foot pedals. The resulting performance sounded a little like Balinese Gamelan and looked, from a distance, like a guy struggling to keep up in a step aerobics class.
Here's what I wrote a week ago about our trip to Moscow:
Monday afternoon and evening was spent exploring the more touristy parts of the city and getting acclimated to the metro system. It’s slightly more complicated than ours, but what really threw me off was the recorded voice that tells people when the doors are about to close. I have to say, I like our guy in Petersburg better—he’s much more fatherly and reassuring.
We started off Tuesday with the requisite Lenin visit (surprisingly, less creepy than I’d remembered) and Kremlin tour. The afternoon was spent at the Honey Fair. You know how there are things like the “Apple Festival” or “Pumpkin Day” where there are one or two things having to do with the fair’s namesake surrounded by generic fair attractions like craft booths, games and rides? This is not the case with the Honey Fair. Imagine, if you will, a fairground packed with literally hundreds of booths. At each booth, there’s a bowl of tasting sticks next to a row of honey jars and a honey seller attempting to convince you that his or her particular kind of honey is superior to all the others. I bought a tub, basically at random, to give to my host family. This left me free to wander around, tasting at will. I didn’t think it was possible for me to overload my taste buds’ “sweet” circuits, but I damn near succeeded.
More to come, soon, I promise...

What a short, largely uneventful trip it's been...

2005-10-05T11:15:00.000-07:00

Apologize for the lack of posts of late, but hopefully this long one will make up for it. I even wrote it in advance so that Blogger won't be able to delete it (although it will certainly try.)
Two Fridays ago, we got on the overnight train to Vladimir. This made the overnight train I’d taken in Russia five years ago seem like the Grand Hotel Europe by comparison. Rather than the expected individual compartments with four beds each, the 30 of us got a train wagon lined with impossibly narrow bunks. We hung out and talked for a while, but eventually it came time to sleep. It was here that I learned a valuable lesson about overnight trains: I can’t sleep on them. The noise and the movement and the uncomfortable bedding combined with the paranoia that someone was going to take advantage of the doorless situation and steal my bag made for a joyless five hours of listening to music, lying in bed with my eyes half-open and making a huge show of being awake every time someone walked past my bunk.
We arrived in Vladimir Saturday morning at around 6 am. We had about three hours to sleep before our grand tour of the city. So, uh, this is Vladimir:

If by any chance you have a cathedral fetish, come to Vladimir. You will not be disappointed. Those pictures represent exactly half of the cathedrals we visited that day.
Actually, that one in the middle by the lake was fun, if only because in order to get to it, we had to walk through an enormous, goat-filled field on an impossibly warm and sunny day. It was gorgeous to the point that I would have burst into song if it weren’t for the complete lack of sleep.
Well, shit. I wrote about Suzdal and Moscow, complete with pictures, and Blogger deleted everything after Vladimir when I tried to publish. I can't do this now. Expect more, shorter posts as soon as humanly possible.

Something weird is going on.

2005-09-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

With this blog, I mean. The preceding post is the one I thought Blogger accidentally deleted, but I guess instead of deleting it the site must've recovered it, then posted it today. Minus a picture and a few paragraphs. But I'm happy that at least some of the time I spent working on that post wasn't wasted.
This, by the way, is my last post for September. Starting tomorrow, our group is going on a weeklong excursion that was originally supposed to be to Nizhni Novgorod and Kazan, but is now to Vladimir and Moscow thanks to a hepatitis outbreak that spread along the Volga. I personally am not too disappointed--I like Moscow more than little provincial towns with cathedrals--but I told my babushka I'd take lots of pictures of Kazan for her, and now I'm not going there. Hopefully she'll get to see it sometime, either herself (not too likely) or by proxy.
I figured I should take this opportunity--I'm at the internet cafe with no laptop, and thus can't post pictures--to talk about Russian food. It's good. Contrary to what I believed five years ago, most Russian food really and truly is tasty. It doesn't hurt that my host mom knows how to cook. Of course, with the amount of butter and oil and mayonaise she puts on everything, she could make just about anything taste good, but I choose to ignore that little fact.
Food is also dirt cheap. We only have about forty minutes for lunch on the days when we have school, which leaves us just enough time to go to a cafe next door to our university. Lunch there is usually about $2--that's $2 for blini, a salad, and tea. I can't believe, by the way, that there isn't one fast-food blin restaurant in the U.S. Those things would sell like hotcakes--which I guess they are, actually. Anyway. The one problem with cafe food is that in order to get to it, you have to go through the food service employees. On most days, this means facing the Wrath of Lyudmilla.

Lyudmilla: I'm listening.
You: I'd like blini, a salad, and tea.
Lyudmilla: We're out of salad.
You: OK, I'll take blini and tea.
Lyudmilla: No blini.
You: OK then, tea.
Lyudmilla: Fifteen rubles.
You: (hand her a 50)
Lyudmilla: (gives back 25.)
You: This is only 25.
Lyudmilla: Fine. (gives you 10 rubles as if you're the one trying to steal from her, and not the other way around)

All these things didn't actually happen on the same occasion, but they've all happened to me and to my friends during various lunches. All I can think is that if this is what Lyudmilla is like at a fairly nice cafe, what would she be like if she had to work the 5 am shift at Dairy-Mart? How many Americans would survive?
That's it for now. Do svidanya...until October.

Apparently not just for porn anymore...

2005-09-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

To the loser who hacked into this site: very funny, and get a life. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant what you were saying about it being your last post on the site, and if you sully my beautiful weblog with any more of your ramblings about how you're going to commit suicide, I'm going to finish the job for you. Anyway...
Last week felt as long as hell. The major event was that Stephanie and I joined a Russian choir, one that practices for six hours a week and has a concert coming up in mid-October. It renders my phonetics class irrelevant--who needs lectures about vowel reduction when you're one-fourth of the first soprano section and you're singing a folk song that involves sixteenth notes and a time signature that alternates between 5/4, 4/4, 3/4 and 2/4 and the words are "Razigralsya dobry kon, kopitochkom zemlyu byot, prosit by mnye tri rublya..."?
Other things: my Russian tutor and I went to St. Isaac's Cathedral and took pictures from the top of the collonade, from which you can see downtown St. Petersburg in its entirety. Here's a picture of us:

I should explain about the tutor. As part of our study abroad program, each of us gets provided with a Russian about our age with whom we're supposed to hang out--and, of course, speak Russian. Mine is Marina. She's my age but already has a job teaching English at an elementary school. She does this when she's not writing her thesis or teaching aerobics classes. I'd say our personalities couldn't be more different, but I have absolutely no idea how much of my personality gets lost in translation when I'm not speaking English. I mean, I can't be sarcastic in Russian--I'm still working on the proper intonation to use when asking where the bathroom is. My attempts at dry humor usually get corrected for their grammar before they can be appreciated to their full extent. What's left is an awkward foreigner who smiles, nods and states the obvious a lot. "Today cold. I like cheese." The other day, I actually had an entire conversation with my host mother about cheese. We can't really talk politics, but we can talk cheese.

Anyway. The cathedral was Tuesday. The choir was Thursday. Wednesday was a day-long excursion to Vyborg, an ancient castle up near the Finnish border that I'm sure would be fascinating if a) it hadn't been cold and windy and rainy, b) we'd had more than two hours to spend there, and c) if we hadn't had to spend a total of 5 hours on a train travelling there and back. Here's a picture, if anyone's curious:

Kind of cool, yes, but not worth it. At least I got through the first third of "Nochnoi Dozor," a popular Russian novel about vampires, on the train.

Stupid, stupid Blogger.

2005-09-20T03:52:00.000-07:00

I wrote a long, detailed update, with pictures, and the site somehow deleted it. Included was a rebuke to the asshole who managed to post his suicidal ramblings all over my beautiful site. Expect more, soon, but for now I can't repeat what I wrote in the next ten minutes. Argh.

Update the second.

2005-09-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

Am having trouble starting. I get distracted a lot in this cafe--there are the artsy types smoking at the table across from me, the urban-professional types smoking in the corner, and then there's the couple sharing a table with me, conversing in broken English and--what else?--smoking like chimneys. Welcome to the world, I suppose.
OK, then, here's a picture:

This was taken in my apartment by Mark, a student who stayed with my family two summers ago. He came for dinner this past Thursday, which was a cause for celebration among Natasha (my host mother, far left), Tanya (her sister, who visits occasionally, my left) and Aleksandra (my babushka, on the right.) The celebration was mostly because he'd stayed with them, partly because he's the son of family friends, and partly--I think--because he's a guy. There was a certain intensity that I had previously only seen in girls who attend women's colleges. "It's a man! A MAN! Get out the good china!" Regardless, it was fun.
Life in Stalinland's as normal as it can ever be. I finally got around to photographing "my" mural, the one I walk past every day:
I'm not sure who that guy is supposed to be, or what the shady people standing around the table to his left are supposed to be doing. Maybe I should ask my babushka.
Unfortunately, I can't take pictures of the metro station, as awesome as it is. Apparently in Russia it's illegal to photograph metro stations, bridges, government buildings, or factories. They don't tell us why, although presumably it's to protect government secrets or some such. Assuming America would actually want to learn Russian government secrets these days.
A few words about the metro, while we're on the subject. I have the utmost respect for the Russian metro. It's cheap (about 30 cents a ride), efficient (it goes everywhere and is ridiculously easy to use) and reliable (without fail, your train will come within two or three minutes of your arriving at the platform.) This doesn't mean it's enjoyable. To compare your average metro car on a weekday morning to a sardine can wouldn't even begin to cut it: not only is the interior of a sardine can much less tightly packed than that of said metro car, it also smells a whole lot better. Not to mention that due to my height, I almost always end up smushed against some guy's armpit or shoulder blade. This happened a few days ago when I was wearing freshly applied lip gloss and the man in front of me was wearing a white suit jacket. I hope his wife went easy on him.
This past weekend, a group of us returned to Petergof for its 300th anniversary celebration. We walked around the shore of the gulf of Finland...

...then came back to the main fountain area for the festivities. There were sparks shooting out of the fountains and dancers in full 17th-century getup, but the most impressive thing was the 40-minute fireworks display, of which I unfortunately have only one good picture.
Doesn't really cut it, does it? At least that's Peter the Great's palace in the foreground. Trust me, though, it was spectacular. It was even worth the ride back on a marshrutka--a form of public transportation that's kind of a cross between a bus and a taxi--that was filled to about three times its normal capacity thanks to the special occasion. Hello, armpits...

The update...

2005-09-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

OK, here I am in the internet cafe with my laptop (wireless is SO much cheaper than using the computers here; the only price I pay is having to carry my laptop through a pretty sketchy area after dark...) and I have no idea where to start. Let's see.
I'm living with a host family consisting of a middle-aged physics professor and her 95-year-old mother. I'm in the Narvskaya region of St. Petersburg, otherwise known as Stalinland. I'm not kidding. This is the view from my window:

Not to mention the huge statue of Kirov right next to my apartment building, the bas-relief in the metro station of a group of happy workers holding up a banner that reads "Glory to Labor" and the enormous mural across from the metro station that contains the slogan "Proletarians of all countries unite!"
My apartment, too, recalls the Stalin era, maybe because there are very few things in it that are less than 50 years old. Not that I'm complaining...much. The location sucks--I pretty much have to find someone who lives in the center and has a couch I can crash on when I go out on weekends. But my family is adorable, especially the babushka. She survived the Communist revolution, and now here she is in 2005, telling me to take another cookie and then complaining about how greedy Americans are.
School is interesting. This, by the way, is why I'll never get lost on the way to school:

I love how totally nonchalant Russians are about these things. If I were asked the way to the Russky Gosudarstvenny Pedagogichesky Institut imeni Gertzena (that's my university) I'd be like, "Well, you exit the metro, turn left, cross the street, then turn left again. Or maybe you could just find the building right next to the ENORMOUS FUCKING CATHEDRAL!"
Anyway. Whoever placed people into groups presumably did so by skill level, but whoever it was screwed up. The people in my class are all a few years behind me as far as Russian experience is concerned. It makes class and homework ridiculously easy, but that's not why I'm here. Nothing in Russia is supposed to be easy, dammit!
I've been keeping busy enough in my free time. This past weekend, hung out with Stephanie (from Pomona) and my Russian professor Kostya (also from Pomona, on sabbatical) at an ultracool club called Che. This club--and actually, all of St. Petersburg--is a mecca for people-watchers like me. On any given day, Nevsky Prospect has much in common with your average runway: it’s filled with impossibly skinny women wearing things that no sane person in her right mind would even think about calling “clothes.” The other day I passed a woman wearing a skirt with a slit such that passersby could see not only London and France, but also Munich, Stockholm and possibly Lichtenstein. There also seems to be an overabundance of denim, which apparently is an attitude left over from the 80s, when denim was in short supply. The problem is, all these damn Russian girls are so tall and thin and blonde that they can get away with just about any fashion faux pas. If one of then had visible panty lines, a cameltoe and half a roll of toilet paper trailing from her shoe, I’m betting she’d still look more put together than me.
I also went with a group of people to Petergof (Peter the Great's summer palace), where I was treated to sights such as this:

and this:

Seriously, how cool would it be to be Russian royalty? Not only did Peter the Great found St. Petersburg, he got to design at least two or three dream palaces, complete with fountains he engineered himself. And I'm betting he didn't have to pay for it either. Ah, to have serfs...
And to think I haven't even been here for two weeks. More updates, of course, to follow.

Argh!

2005-09-01T06:01:00.000-07:00

I definitely have more things to write than what you're seeing. Problem is, I'm limited to this damn Internet cafe and I never have enough time for this after e-mails. HOWEVER I found out they have wireless, so will update (with pictures) whenever I have the strength to schlep my laptop here.

Welcome to Russia.

2005-08-28T02:44:00.000-07:00

It's my third day here, and I'm still decompressing. The flight was long, longer than I remembered it being five years ago, but maybe that's because I didn't sleep. At all. Because of that nasty time change, the result was that I ended up awake for about 30 hours straight. In retrospect, going to a bar that first night wasn't such a great idea (um, hi Mom...) Ended up staying there all of a half hour before going back to the hotel and crashing for what seemed like a year, but was actually more like 12 hours.
Yesterday, had an overwhelming in-city orientation. All this stuff about the metro, and phone cards, and God knows what else because it was all in Russian. Also got some more info about my host family, whom I'm meeting in about an hour (!!!) Unfortunately, I'll be about twenty minutes away from anything or anyone in my group--we'll see how that works out when I go out at night and try to get back after the metros have stopped working. Fun stuff.
Finished off yesterday with dinner at a Georgian restaurant and a trip to Money Honey, a rockabilly bar with pictures of Elvis and confederate flags all over the walls. The band played fairly credible versions of hits from the 50s, and I only felt out-of-place when I tried to order a drink. Generally, though, my--and the rest of the group's--American-ness has been pretty evident to most natives here. We're the only ones walking around wide-eyed, money pouches visible, taking pictures of buildings that most Russians pass daily on their way to work. I've got an entire semester to learn how to fit in, though, and a small amount of money to spend on makeup, impractical heels and short skirts, which seem to be essential to most Russian women.
Damn these Internet cafes--I was about to comment on the quality of the food (good) the rudeness of the servers (ouch) and the fact that NOBODY smiles here, not even for pictures, but my time is up. Do zaftra.

I'm here!

2005-08-27T01:18:00.000-07:00

And that's all that I have time to say.

My last post in America.

2005-08-22T19:36:00.000-07:00

Oh, wow.
First of all, where the hell did this summer go? One minute I'm cleaning out my dorm room, the next I'm sitting at my grandfather's house, about to go to D.C. for a two-day orientation followed by an eight-plus-hour plane ride to Russia, where my autumn will officially begin. I'm sure I did a lot of things in between those two minutes, but I have no idea what they were. I did come away from the summer with a few life lessons, the most important of which involves not stopping for gas in South Central on July 4th. Unfortunately, I failed to learn any life lessons about packing up all my belongings, despite having done it four times this summer (my room to Mudd-Blaisdell, Mudd-Blaisdell to the professor's house, the professor's house to Amherst, Amherst to Russia) and leaving, I'm sure, a few of my possessions behind each time.
As of now I'm as packed as I'll ever be, but I can't help thinking I forgot something incredibly important. It's always like that, of course. I'd never forget the box of Pad Thai mix, or the LeBron's Lightning Lemonade Bubblicious Bubble Gum (a gift for Russian kids) or my five hundredth H & M tank top, which I'm taking to Russia, along with its multicolored brethren, because what if I wake up and feel like wearing something yellow?
No, I'm forgetting something absolutely crucial to my survival in Russia, but, because of the way these things work, I won't know what it is until I step off the plane. I'll just have to wait and see.
See you on the other side (of the Atlantic Ocean)...