4-2-07

4-2-07

Holy buckets, it’s April already. Tempus fugit. My alarm clock has a countdown feature. Originally it was counting down to travel week, but once I got back I set it to countdown til we leave. Not because I’m particularly anxious for that date to get here or anything, more just because I’m weird about knowing the amount of time I have left, because it drives me to do things. Unfortunately, something’s gone wonky with the countdown, because my clock is now trying to tell me that I’m leaving in 963 days. Something about that doesn’t seem right. Whoa, scary though—I have NO IDEA where I’m going to be in 963 days. 2.64 years. I suppose it’s entirely possible that I could be here, then. Oh well. 963 days and counting it is.

It would appear that we have achieved a final solution to the long-standing question of WiFi. The answer was placed in our laps, as the CIEE office set up a wireless router in the English Sanctuary (The room with the bookshelf where we’re allowed to speak English), and you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be there, tomorrow afternoon, uploading this entry. It’s weird. It’s comforting to finally have a simple, free solution to posting regularly. But at the same time, the quest to find some new spot with WiFi has been a driving force of a lot of city exploration for us. Not that we won’t continue to explore the city. It’s more like we’ll just use the English Sanctuary to do what we need to do—upload pictures, send emails, etc. and then suddenly we’ll have more time freed up to go wander around.

The weather’s been great wandering around weather. Unfortunately, this week it’s cooling down and supposed to stay in the 30s and 40s most of this week, quite a contrast to last week when we got into the 60s. Just imagine, less than a month ago I was still wearing long underwear every day. In fact, tomorrow will be the one-month anniversary of the first day I went long underwear-less. See, anniversaries, countdowns, these kinds of things occupy too much space in my brain.

This would be a great opportunity to say something like, “Speaking of things that occupy too much space in my brain…” but I really can’t think of anything else other than the obvious: trivia. Don’t think that my time here has diminished my trivia-absorbing abilities one bit. In fact, be forewarned, I’m storing up aimless bits to bring out at random times. For example, did you know that the St. Petersburg Metro is the deepest subway in the world? Now you do!

The NCAA Championship is tonight. In about 8 hours, I think. I did so horribly in my bracket pools this year. I’ll take the opportunity to go ahead and blame that on the fact that I’m, you know, on the other side of the planet. Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that I usually plan my brackets based on irrational biases usually involving the mascots of universities.

Maybe it’s because it’s spring and there are more ingredients available, but Marina’s cooking’s really getting better. I honestly could never eat borscht again and be happy. But really, dishes have—gasp—spice and flavor. Today my usual ground meat patties w/ rice were accompanied by salad of cucumbers and hardboiled eggs. Here’s hoping that this change isn’t just something in the air that’ll fade.

Speaking of things in the air, the dust is going to drive me insane. I’ve been dealing with the exhaust all winter, but now the dust the snow covered is up and all inside my nostrils and lungs and it’s disgusting. Kate remarked that she just wants to give the whole city a power washing. But soon, I hope, things’ll be greener and there’ll be hints of leaves and the aura of spring will make me forget how much it burns when I breathe when I walk home from the Metro.