4-12-07

4-12-07

Happy Cosmonaut Day! 46 years ago today, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. I haven’t seen any parades or anything, but there are plenty of posters up around town about it and commercials on TV.

Yesterday we had an Office mini-marathon in the English Sanctuary. It was the kind of thing that starts out as, “Let’s watch an episode!” And then, “We have time for one more, you think?” Then, “Oh heck, there’s plenty of time to watch another one…or two.” I still have two more episodes that my viewing companions have not seen, plus there’s a new episode tonight that I’ll download at some point this weekend, so we’ll finish up the marathon sometime next week.

After that I had a late lunch (4:30) and came home and hung out a bit until Marina got home and had an appropriately late dinner. I’m thinking that Marina’s come into some kind of fortune. A potato fortune. There are a bunch of potatoes lying on a newspaper on the floor in front of the stove, and there are two large jars full of potatoes that recently appeared on the windowsill. I made a rough count that put the number of potatoes at 50+. That’s a lot of potatoes to just suddenly appear one day. I’ve, you know, never had anything against potatoes. But goodness gracious, I’ve been eating a lot of them recently. Last night my meal was a potato with vegetables. It was filling, for sure. Those potatoes just sit in my stomach like concrete. But it does get a little tiring. Note to self: Potato moratorium for the first week I’m home.

Today was a short day, and Mattison, Hannah, and I hoped to accomplish something, as the weather was sunny. It was kind of chilly and really windy, though, so we got absolutely nothing accomplished. We just hunted through three of the DVD stores near Cherneshevskaya looking for Last of the Mohicans. Yeah, I bet that was the last movie you expected us to have a craving to watch. But there are like 6 of us just jonesing for it. We’ve contented ourselves with enthusiastically humming the score up until this point, but it’s really getting to the point that we all want to see it. Probably more than I’ve ever wanted to ever see that movie in my life. This country is doing weird things to my brain. Side note: Last of the Mohicans was the first R-rated movie I ever saw.

My butt hurts. Right now, Tavrichesky Gardens, the park we cut through on the way to the Metro from school, is closed. There’s a fence around the entire park, and all of the gates are locked. It’s much, much faster to cut through the park, so we did what any sane person would do. We climbed over the fences. These are not little white picket fences, oh no. They’re taller than I am, made of metal, with pointy tops. At some point during this process, I pulled a muscle in my gluteus maximus. At least I didn’t almost impale myself like Hannah did, and I didn’t shove my hand into the pointy top like Kate and Mattison. I should point out that we’re not the only people that do this, there were plenty of people in the park, but they all used the same method to get in as us. Or there’s a small gap in the fence on one side that you could crawl through, but it’s muddy.

Not really sure what the weekend holds. On Sunday, I’m planning on going to Tsarskoe Selo with Kate and Rachel Eve to see Catherine’s Palace. After that, I just have Peterhoff in terms of palaces. I’m kind of getting palaced out. We only have 4 weekends left in the city, because we’re in Pskov the last weekend in April. And that 4th weekend, I leave on the Sunday of that weekend, so it’s not like I can be out bopping around all weekend. I’ll have to, you know, pack and stuff.

So weird. I’m not used to having such paradoxical ideas existing in my mind: Wanting to go home and not wanting to leave. Usually at the end of the semester at IU, I’ll be apprehensive about leaving the people, but I’m usually ready to get the heck out of Bloomington. Same with the end of the summer and Portland. But here, I’m weird about leaving the people, but also the place. I feel like I’ve finally got this city figured out. Ah well, just means I’ll have to come back, and bring people with me.

Anyway, as for the rest of the weekend, there’s no telling what we’ll end up doing. Museum of Bread? It’s always a possibility! UFO Museum? A likelihood! Staying inside all weekend? Surely you jest! The weather this weekend is supposed to be amazing! Maybe Saturday night we’ll have a picnic on Yelagin Island! …I think I used more exclamation points in that paragraph than in the last month of posts. That’s definitely a sign to turn the computer off and get some sleep.