5-8-07

5-8-07

The past hour has confirmed my fears—I’m getting sick. Dangit. My colds usually start by waking up one day with a sore throat. But about an hour ago my nose suddenly started running and I got a headache in the general sinus area. Wonderful. Maybe that means the cold’s progressing at a faster speed than usual? I hope so. Flying while sick is pretty much the crappiest thing ever. Thank goodness it’s flying home, though. It’s worse to fly while sick knowing that you won’t even be in your own bed at the end of it. I’ve got 4 1/2 days to try and get this sucker out of my system. Yeah, I’ll let you know how that goes.

So today I found out that I got a 5 on the written part of my Conversation exam. Yay! The only grade I’m worried about is Grammar, which as I said (Probably a little too much) in my last post, is lame. There are so many other things I want or need to do before I leave that it’s just kind of hard to even think about finals.

That said, I got a big To Do done today. I shipped stuff home. I consolidated it into two packages: My freaking awesome Russian Postal Service box with random heavy crap, and the bag I bought at Apraksin Dvor with my big coat, two pairs of boots, and my books in it. The Russian postal system is pretty much what you’d expect. I filled out a total of 13 forms today. 4 customs declarations for each, 2 of some other form for each, and for the box a sticker to put on it. The box is being sent back to the states via airmail so it might actually get home before I do. The bag is going by boat and who knows when it’ll get there.

But it’s traveling in style. It, like every large bag people sent today, is in its own custom-made burlap sack sewn by a woman at the post office while we watched. Over the stitches at one end, there are like six gigantic brown wax Russian Post Office seals. The address was written by yours truly with a blue marker on the burlap sack. Oh yeah, I know you’re jealous. Flying British Airways back will be nothing like taking a boat in a burlap sack with wax seals.

So we were there for about 2 1/2 hours in total. Luckily it wasn’t super busy or that place would’ve driven me crazy. Well, crazier than it drove me. As I was walking home from the Metro, I stopped and watched some workers for a while. Apparently the property that used to house the Iguana clothing store (Iguana being a brand name, it wasn’t a store of lizard apparel) is now some swanky watch store. They were lifting the gigantic new sign into place. They had about 10 guys and a system of pulleys and it was really interesting to watch. I’ll have to check it out tomorrow morning on my way into town to meet the bus to Peterhoff.

This whole sickness business is really not making me happy. Oh well, tomorrow is Peterhoff, which should be fantastic. Then fireworks and back here to finish up some Grammar work. Speaking of which, I should get to some of that right now. Only 4 full days left. I kind of have to keep saying that to myself because it doesn’t sound real.