Yum.

I'm freaking myself out by being used to the food here.

For instance, the soup yesterday was a thick, greasy broth with potatoes and onions and something else amongs bits of pork, which were mostly big pieces of lard with a little meat attached.

It was delicious.

It's like my American self is watching me eat everythign and is disgusted, but the rest of me just thinks that it's good food.

Yesterday was classes, and then a reading by a Russian author. The book was very interesting, but extremely compicated in any language, so our translator/professor did an alternating translation. It's called Lupetta, and I believe there's a website at http://lupetta.ru with english.

Then there was an optional tour that I didn't want to go on, so I went home and bought some new knitting needles- I had forgotten that one should never buy full length or small gauge needles of the cheap bamboo sort, and had bought a set of fourteen inch 3.5 millimeters. They were so bent they were hardly usable by yesterday morning, and by yesterday afternoon had acquired a case of the Mysterious Stickies, feeling as though someone had dunked them in maple syrup and then put them back in my knitting.

So, I went to the store and bought a new set. Or tried. there was some sort of oil involved in their packaging, apparently, so all of the price stickers had gone transparent and unreadable. Of course, only on the size and material I needed. The rest were fine. Then it took the three shopkeepers ten minutes to figure out how much they cost- one of them asked me why I hadn't gotten one with a legible sticker, and I had to explain in my terrible russian that there WEREN'T any with legible stickers. Finally managed to pay them and leave.

It's interesting here- no one trusts you not to steal anything, no matter how inexpensive. There are locks and alarms on all the soda coolers here, so that it's a big rigamarole of asking for what you want, waiting while it's unlocked, listening to the alarm, then waiting for it to get relocked, then paying, then getting your soda. Same goes for chocolate bars, which they don't even leave the locked glass cases overnight. Then if you want to, say, buy some needles, or a clasp, or a little bit of zipper from the store, you tell them what you want at the counter, then they write you a slip, then you take the slip to the register and pay for it, then you take the reciept from that back to the counter and they give you what you bought. You're also not allowed to take backpacks or large purses into any grocery stores- you have to leave them in a locker or check them.

Anyway, after that whole rigamarole I went home and was introduced to a guest, an ex-student of Lyuba's, and then went and hid in my room to do homework. I succeeded at that, if "Falling asleep in your armchair with knitting in your lap, then waking up an hour later with a neck permanently bent at right angles to your body" is what you mean by 'doing homework'.

Aaaaargh I'm sure there's more to say, but I don't know what it is.

Comments

I think that I'll be very content with Canby when I get back- our couch is in Canby, next to our kitchen and surrounded by our dogs. The opera can give me none of these.

And Victor, without yarn, I would be a little slavering monster in the corner of my room at this moment, probably unraveling the rug just to have something to do with my hands.