| Area Youth feels: Contact me: Yahoo ID: narcissistic_etrend 06/29/2003 - 07/05/2003 07/06/2003 - 07/12/2003 07/13/2003 - 07/19/2003 07/20/2003 - 07/26/2003 07/27/2003 - 08/02/2003 08/03/2003 - 08/09/2003 08/10/2003 - 08/16/2003 08/17/2003 - 08/23/2003 08/24/2003 - 08/30/2003 08/31/2003 - 09/06/2003 09/07/2003 - 09/13/2003 09/14/2003 - 09/20/2003 09/21/2003 - 09/27/2003 09/28/2003 - 10/04/2003 10/05/2003 - 10/11/2003 10/12/2003 - 10/18/2003 10/19/2003 - 10/25/2003 10/26/2003 - 11/01/2003 11/02/2003 - 11/08/2003 11/09/2003 - 11/15/2003 11/16/2003 - 11/22/2003 11/23/2003 - 11/29/2003 11/30/2003 - 12/06/2003 12/07/2003 - 12/13/2003 12/14/2003 - 12/20/2003 12/21/2003 - 12/27/2003 01/04/2004 - 01/10/2004 01/11/2004 - 01/17/2004 01/18/2004 - 01/24/2004 01/25/2004 - 01/31/2004 02/01/2004 - 02/07/2004 02/08/2004 - 02/14/2004 02/15/2004 - 02/21/2004 02/22/2004 - 02/28/2004 02/29/2004 - 03/06/2004 03/07/2004 - 03/13/2004 03/14/2004 - 03/20/2004 03/21/2004 - 03/27/2004 03/28/2004 - 04/03/2004 04/04/2004 - 04/10/2004 04/11/2004 - 04/17/2004 04/18/2004 - 04/24/2004 Home
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Saturday,
September 27, 2003
In which I eat the oogula, and get a job Friday, I fell victim to food poisoning. Many people would look at this as a negative thing, but I am choosing to focus on the positive aspects. For one, I didn't have to go to boring, boring class. For another, I learned lots of fun new vocabulary words, like "barf." At one point, Sonya barelled into my room. I was half asleep, which made the conversation even more otherworldly. "You have to eat the 'oogula!'" she announced anxiously. "Wait. What?" I wittily replied. "The oogula! The oogula! The activnaya oogula!" She handed me a glass of water. Oh, I thought stupidly. I thought the word for water was 'voda'? Maybe it's alka-seltzer? Then she handed me what was basically a tiny charcoal briquette. "Swallow the oogula!" she insisted. "It'll soak up the poison!" So now I know the word for active charcoal! Although I didn't think food poisoning involved actual poison...maybe she knows something about Russian restaurants that I don't? By 3:00 I was feeling about normal again, so I decided to venture into town to hang out with my tutor. However, on the way to meeting her, I was practically kidnapped by one of the program coordinators, who took me to a middle school. I'd, at some point, requested more information about tutoring kids who were learning English. Apparently the local English school and the university administration took my expression of interest as a job contract, because now I'm supposed to be teaching an English class once a week. Every Friday. There's a textbook and everything. I am a little scared. But I toured the school and met the real teachers, like the ones who went to teaching college and stuff, and it seems like it'll be okay. If the Russian children don't eat me alive, that is. I start next Friday. I also called the place where I have my internship, and told them I was well enough to start working again. But unfortunately, I got the evil receptionist. Me: This is Liusia O. I'm supposed to be working there, but I had bad bronchitis. Receptionist: Wait, who are you? Me: Liusia. I'm the ACTR student who is supposed to be working there? Receptionist: (aghast) And you haven't been coming to work? Me: It's an internship. I'm working for free. And I was sick. Receptionist: For free? Me: Yes! To learn. I'm a student. Receptionist: Oh, you're Elizabeth. The American. Me: No, I'm Liusia the American. Receptionist: Elizabeth is the one who was sick. Me: I was sick too. Receptionist: So you're Elizabeth, then? Me: No! I'm Liusia! From ACTR. Receptionist: So I should tell Olga that Elizabeth called. Me: No! Liiiiuuuusia! Receptionist: Oh, Liusia. When are you finally coming to work? Me: I don't know. Do you know when I'm supposed to come? Receptionist: When do you like to work? Me: (confused) Well, Monday is a nice day. Receptionist: Come on Monday then, Elizabeth. Me: LIUSIA. I'll be there at 4 pm. Receptionist: Whatever. I'm pretty sure the problem wasn't my language abilities. - declared by Liusia @ 1:49 AM Thursday,
September 25, 2003
Yum, babies! After class today, Kait and I tried to go clothes shopping, and instead ended up in the Summer Garden. Russian magic! Do you know what else is magic? Russia is making me lose weight. It turns out you don't have to exercise or eat right, you just have to move to Russia. And get sick with the galloping consumption. The Summer Garden is really pretty, especially since now it's more like the fall garden, and the trees are starting to turn color. 
Kait and I decided that the only thing that would make the Smmer Garden even nicer would be some tables, so one could play euchre, because sitting in the Summer Garden and playing euchre would be very surreal. And speaking of things that are surreal, here's my favorite statue from the Garden: 
It's Saturn eating his baby! The statue is all beautiful, illuminated by the light glinting through the trees and lovingly carved from milky marble, with graceful curving lines, and depicts someone chomping on an infant. Heh. - declared by Liusia @ 1:58 PM Dude! Gorbachev didn't poision him, but it was still tragic! Man, The Two Fates was just a emotional rollercoaster last night. So, it turns out that poor Vanya wasn't poisoned by Gorbachev, he just had a normal old heart attack. So he went to the hospital and got better and then went home. And then the coup happened (and failed) and these shifty-lookin' guys came to his home office, and tossed the place, looking for evidence that he was behind the coup, but they didn't find it, 'cuz Vanya'd hidden the evidence in the most clever place of all - a wall safe cunningly concealed behind a picture. And then the guys were all, okay, guess it looks like we can't take you to the gulag. And it looked like things were gonna work out for poor Vanya! But then one sketchy guy turned around and punched Vanya in the stomach! And while he was reeling, the guys threw him out the window! And then they left a suicide note that was all like, "I can't take it anymore, so I jumped out the window. Love, Ivan Kuzmitch" and snuck out of the house! It was terrible, y'all. And no one came to the funeral, on account of Vanya being a big traitor and all. Russian soap operas are really grim. - declared by Liusia @ 6:53 AM Wednesday,
September 24, 2003
In which I am immersed in art. Also, beer. It's been a Russian art extravaganza the last few days! Yesterday, I went to the Church on the Spilled Blood with my tutor, Lena. The little excursion was awesome. I understood the tour guide almost entirely, even when she was talking in specific architectural terms! It was gorgeous. The outside is crazy beautiful (I posted a picture here) with all the big clashing Russian onion domes, but the inside is just stunning. It's entirely covered in mosiacs. They say that it was done entirely by six guys, which seems impossible to me. It's huge! And the mosaics are made up of tiny chips! Insanity. I couldn't take pictures inside, but here is a website. The pictures on there are kind of bad and don't do it justice, though. The cathedral was built on top of the place where Alexander II got blown all to hell by a bomb. Inside, the actual spot where he got hit is fenced off by a marble cupola thing, and the actual cobblestone road he bled on is preserved, with symbolic red carnations scattered over it. And the iconostasis at the front of the church looks like wood, but it is actually rare tan marble, exquisistely carved! So basically, it is full of the usual beautiful Russian weirdness. The restoration is really impressive. They had pictures of what it looked like before the restoration started, and it was basically bad. According to the tour guide, the tiles were already going all wonky because of the bad Petersburg climate, and then there was the whole Revolution thing, and they started using the church as a morgue, and then as a vegetable storage warehouse. And then it got hit by lots of bombs during the Siege of Leningrad. So, yeah, the restoration guys had their work cut out for them. Then, today, Katia, Kait, Lena and I went to the Russian Museum. There is a big statue of Pushkin looking noble out in front, even though Pushkin actually spent most of his time looking drunk and crabby, as far as I can tell. Inside there is lots of Art. I enjoyed all the Art, especially since I had to study this Art big time in a class last semester. It's getting a capital A, because my professor always capitalized it. I particularly enjoyed seeing all Repin's scruffy-lookin' portraits, also, the Last Day of Pompeii by Brulloff, in which lots of attractive people wrapped in bedsheets get hit by lava. There was also a random statue of a satyr taking off a nymph's shoe. She's only wearing the shoes, so I don't know why he's bothering. But the look on his face is priceless. So lascivious. There was also a statue of Mephistopholes that Lena said looked just like a friend of hers. Heh. In less classy and cultured news, I spent all last night watching TV with Sonya. My favorite show is this soap opera called The Two Fates , which is about these two families and takes place in Historical Times (I guess it at the start of the series it was like 1950 and the episode we watched last night occurred during Perestroika). The dad in one of the families is a communist bigwig and of course now he is part of that whole coup thing, and there was a cliffhanger last night! He might have been POISONED by Gorbachev! It's a crazy show. There were also all these beer commercials (I've seen them before, but I actually paid attention to them this time) for brand called "Okhota." They're all about how manly, manly men drink Okhota. My favorite shows a bunch of Finnish fishermen bringing in big catches all day and getting all manly and stinky, and then walking in slow-mo from the ship onto the dock, drinking Okhota and looking manly! (You may have noticed a theme.) Sonya couldn't figure out why the show and the commercials were making me giggle. I couldn't explain it, either. There's no word for "kitch" in Russian. - declared by Liusia @ 7:20 AM In which I am revolted Google hits that led people to my site in the last 24 hours: "vincent kartheiser penis" "david boreanaz wet photos" "wisc ogg hall photos" You are disgusting people!  Ogg Hall. Shudder... - declared by Liusia @ 6:32 AM Tuesday,
September 23, 2003
In which I give a shout-out to my French homies So, I took a look at my little site-monitor-thingy and discovered some strange things about this website. For one, I seem to have a surprisingly large contingent of French readers, or at least people reading my blog from computers in France. So I guess I am now internationally famous. At first I thought it was just one French guy who really liked me, but it seems to be coming from a number of IP addresses, so... A Note to My French Readership: On behalf of the US, I would like to apologize for some of the stupid events of the last year. I think that whole Freedom Fries thing was ridiculous, and while I have, in fact, laughed at the phrase "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," I only laugh because the idea of cowardly monkeys who love themselves some bree is really amusing, not because I think French people are wussy. I mean, I'm sure there are lots of really wussy French people, but it's not like y'all have a patent on it. Moreover, I do not blame the French for the French and Indian War. Who among us has not thought about trying to take over Ohio? Plus, George Washington totally started it. In conclusion: while I pretty much dislike everyone, I don't dislike French people any more than I dislike everyone else. Thank you for reading my stupid, stupid blog, French people. And here are some of the stranger Google hits that led people to my site: "my narcissistic girlfriend" "poetry despondent white maiden" "petersburg madison pushkin menshikov" - okay, you can't TELL me this person wasn't looking specifically for me. "prank calls of sling blade" "american journals of narcomania" "king eroica horn" - declared by Liusia @ 8:30 AM Sunday,
September 21, 2003
In which I see mutants, lose myself, and save some Canadians Saturday, I got lost. Sunday, I also got lost. Getting lost is practically my hobby! Katia and Kait really need to get un-quarentined, because I am apparently totally incapable of going anywhere by myself. However, getting lost led to my seeing some cool things! And really, this blog would be even more boring if I didn't tell you about my stupidity, so it's a good thing I keep doing dumb things. Yessir. So, I was supposed to meet with my tutor, Lena, (all the US students are assigned Russian tutors who are supposed to help us with our homework and show us around the city, apparently on the assumption that we are not only dumb, but incapable of finding social interaction. But my tutor is cool) at the Petrogradskaya metro stop. Well, I managed to make it there only 10 minutes late, which is quite amazing for me, given my track record with the Russian mass transit system. We went to a nifty little museum of antique Russian toys, which was fun, and then walked around a bit and chatted. She dropped me off at the metro, where I proceeded to, well, get entirely lost. I took the metro to Nevskii Prospekt, with the goal of getting some lunch. Once on Nevskii, I decided that I really craved Thai. So, I looked in the Yellow Pages, and found a Thai restaurant. On the phone book map, it didn't look like the restaurant was too far from a nearby metro stop. Ha, ha ha ha. Trying to find the restaurant, I ended up in some totally random region of Petersburg, in which there were no busses, mashrudnayas or metro stations. There were, however, a bunch of bridges with random sphinxes on them. 
The sphinxes were cool, but the area seemed, well, sketchy. Lots of extra-super-grumpy thug-lookin' folks and drunkards and suchlike. As such, I was reluctant to whip out my map (although at least the map is in Russian) and reveal myself to be a confused non-resident. Finally, a tramvai came lumbering by, and I hopped on, on the assumption that tramvais generally go somewhere. This assumption turned to to be deeply stupid. The tramvai drove to an even MORE remote and creepy area, then stopped, and the controller shouted at us all to get off immediately. But ho! A mashrudnaya, barrelling down the road at high speed! I stuck out my hand, and it slammed to a stop, practically going into a spin. The sign on the door had some random metro station on it. I figured if I got to a metro station, I should have no problem getting back to civilization. It took me to the single most Soviet area I've seen since arriving. There was a gigantic mural on the side of a big industrial-looking building, showing Soviet soliders generally kicking ass, and the metro was just dripping in hammer and sickle engravings. There was also a gigantic, gorgeous archway over the road, possibly copper, as it was bright green, with angels and guys with chariots and rearing horses on top. If anyone reading this actually knows about this region and can tell me what on Earth it was, I'd appreciate that. I couldn't get to a good angle to read the inscription, and I was reluctant to whip out the camera and reveal my tourist-ness, for obvious reasons (the obvious reasons being the swarms of thugs and gypsies, in case it wasn't actually obvious.) I was supposed to go visit Katia, but at this point, it was about 7:30 pm. I left Lena at about 2:00 pm. Yeah, you can do the math. The idea of standing on the metro/walking/thinking any more than absolutely necessary was repugnant. I rode the metro home. Sunday, I woke up early enough that I could have gone to mass at the Catholic church on Nevskii, but intead, I elected to go back to sleep. I'm sure that God understands about my profound laziness. I finally left the house around 2 pm, in order to make it to my 3 pm doctor's appointment at the Euromed clinic. They had scheduled a follow-up to make sure I wasn't, say, dead. I was late to the appointment, of course. I would have been on time, but I took the bus, and it turned out that Sunday was election day! So the downtown was just swarming. (For those of you who might care about Petersburg politics, the election was for the new governor. But no one won, because there were too many candidates, and no one candidate got a high enough percentage of the votes. So there'll be another election. Sonya was scandalized by this, as "elections are expensive, and the candidates are all bastards anyway.") But the appointment only took ten minutes. European doctor: And how are you feeling in yourself now? Me: Better. I'm still kind of stuffy, though. European doctor (alarmed): Is there bad pain? Me: No, no, just phlegm. European doctor: Fle....? Me: PHLEGM. (coughing demonstratively) European doctor: You still having the streptococcus. Here are more pills. Please place them in your oral cavity twice daily and dissolve. At the risk of vulgarity, I'd rather place these horrible pills in just about any other "cavity." Sucking on them is like chewing tinfoil. Ack. After my appointment, I was supposed to go visit Katia (since I'd flaked out yesterday). But I was pretty early, so I decided to wander around the Kunstkammer. 
On my way to the Kunstkammer, I rescued some French Candians. I mean, they could have been actual French people, but they were three chubby upper-middle-aged people dressed like Americans and speaking French, hence my clever deduction. They were standing on Nevskii near me, saying "SomethingFrench somethingFrench somethingFrench Ermitage?!" to random passers-by. Maybe they got separated from their tour group, I'm not sure. But they seemed extremely lost and extremely linguistically incompetent. Then, they got on the same bus as me, and asked the controller, "Ermitage?" and she just glared at them, and yelled at the guy to pay the fare. So he gave her some random large bill, and they sat down, looking confused. And since the stop nearest the Kunstkammer was also near the Hermitage, when I got off, I told them, "Ermitage." So they got off the bus, and stood around looking lost again. I headed off toward the bridge, but in an unusual surge of altruism and kinship for my fellow directionally-challenged North Americans, I went back to them, and sighed, "Ermitage." I made the universal gesture for "follow me." So, they followed me. "Bateau?" one of the ladies asked. "FrenchFrenchFrench bateau FrenchFrenchFrench Ermitage?" "Bateau?" I made a kind of boat-like hand gesture, seizing on the one French word I recognized. "Bateau by Ermitage?" "Oui!" There's a boat dock behind the Hermitage. I figured it close enough to the Kunstkammer that I might as well take them there, before they got their stupid selves mugged or something. When we got to the Hermitage, I said, "Vot, Ermitage." And I pointed at the docks, and was like, "Vot, bateaus." And they were all "Merci beau coup!" and other excited French that I, of course, did not understand at all, and the older lady hugged me twice. I muttered "Nichevo, do svydanya," and hurried off, because she looked like she was going to start up again with the hugging. I crossed the bridge to to the Kunstkammer. The Kunstkammer is where Peter the Great kept his mutants. Dude, for real. Supposedly, he was miffed that people thought two-headed calves and legless stillborn babies and so forth were signs that God was pissed off, so he made a museum of "monsters" to educate people about the science behind it. But basically, it's a freakshow. It's mutants, collected and preserved in jars. Sadly, the original collection was destroyed by fire in the 1700s, but they've rebuilt a collection resembling the old one. Oooh, it's freaky. There is a whole anthropology exhibit on the first floor, about clothes and customs of indiginous peoples and whatnot. I felt obligated to look at that first, so I wouldn't be one of the freaks who just went to see the freaks. Except, I totally was just there for the mutants. There was a huge section about Eskimos, and I looked at it for quite a while, wondering to myself, "why would there be a big exhibit about Eskimos in a Russian museum built 300 years ago?" Yeah, shut up. Eventually I remembered who the US bought Alaska from. So, the mutants. Suffice it to say, they are super creepy. (Jessica, you would love it.) I brought my camera, and I paid the extra 20 rubles to get a photography permit (the ticket seller gave me the Russian student price, even though I actually had to talk to him to get the permit! Huzzah!), but somehow it felt really wrong to take pictures. Maybe I'll take some when I go back with Katia and Kait, though. The only thing that actually bothered me, though, were the baby heads. Somehow, an entire baby in a jar wasn't disturbing, but a decapitated baby head was. Amusingly, they had the skeleton of a guy with gigantism. (That's not the amusing part.) In a nearby, unrelated exhibit, they had some of Peter the Great's clothes. Based on the clothes, he was bigger than the giant. Heh. When I left the museum and headed for Katia's house, I got lost again. Oh, not right away. I crossed the river with the goal of walking to Nevskii and catching a bus over to Katia's place. On the way, I stopped by the Bronze Horseman. 
Seeing it in person was really surreal. I've had to study the statue itself in two history classes and an architecture class. I had to read the Puskin poem for two separate literature classes, and memorize chunks for the play this summer. And all of a sudden, there was the gigantic Peter the Great on his gigantic horse tramping on a gigantic snake, standing on a gigantic rock. So I recited the introduction of the poem to myself, and took a picture, smiling like a big dork. Heading toward Nevskii, I saw this framed painting hanging on the side of an apartment building. 
It wasn't near any of the doors or windows, and didn't appear to be the name of either the building or a club contained therein. It also didn't seem to be an advertisment, not having any addresses, phone numbers, products or weblinks. I can only guess that some person who is really in favor of decadence stuck it up there for the fun of it. Russia is so weird. I also walked past another museum. In front, there were statues of naked guys wrangling horses. Statues of naked guys wrangling horses seem to be all over Petersburg. I really don't understand. They're nice statues, though. Both the horses and the guys seem to be very athletic. And, anatomically correct. 
So, I got to Nevskii. And I got on a bus, a bus that supposedly goes not only near Katia's neighborhood, but past mine. So, the bus headed toward Katia's neighborhood, and toward it, and then...turned off. And crossed a big bridge. And drove to the middle of a random island, filled with factories and tenements. And then it stopped, and the controller yelled at us all to get off. (I am beginning to see a trend here.) Unfortunately, there was no convenient mashrudnaya. So, I walked, pretending to be as Russian as the day is smoggy...and walked...and walked...and finally found another bus stop, and at the bus stop there was a bus that took me home, where Sonya made me drink some kind of tepid juice from a box. The box says "Dacha Pumpkin Nectar" in Russian, and has a largish picture of Lenin next to a picture of something that looks like a peach. She insists it is good for me. It IS pretty tasty, although it scares me. Then I took my assortment of pills, and went to bed, because it was ridiculously late. This whole getting lost thing really sucks up the time. My two kinds of bronchitis pills, my ear drops, and my strep throat lozenges, along with a lovely flower arangement and some industrial-strength Ibuprofin: 
Ahh. Russia. - declared by Liusia @ 9:39 PM
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