From The Grass Harp, by Truman Capote:

"A person to whom everything can be said. Am I an idiot to want such a thing? But ah, the energy we spend hiding from one another, afraid as we are of being identified...it's the uncertainty concerning themselves that makes our friends conspire to deny the differences. By scraps and bits I've in the past surrendered myself to strangers--men who disappeared down the gangplank, got off at the next station: put together, maybe they would've made the one person in the world--but there he is with a dozen different faces moving down a hundred separate streets."

Humility II

Last night, I attended a piano concert, in which a young man with a frizzy Afro and thick glasses curled his entire body into the piano as his fingers pounced at the keys. He reminded me of the Russian chess champion who lost to Screech in that one episode of Saved by the Bell (Man, have I been waiting to say that!). The institute purchased our tickets for us, but I glanced at mine and saw that it had cost 100 rubles, which is about $3.50. I remembered that during a discussion at lunch a couple of days ago, one of the students here mentioned that the theater is relatively cheap here, and that movies are in contrast very expensive, so many more Russians go to the theater than to the movies.

When I got home, I decided to impress my host mother with my vast knowledge of Russian culture, so I remarked to my host mother about the inexpensiveness of the tickets. I said that in America, tickets to any sort of live concert are much more expensive, at least $20, and that if I lived in Russia, I'd go to the theater all the time.

She replied nicely but sternly that concert tickets in Russia are just as expensive to Russians as concert tickets in America are to Americans, though they may seem cheap to us. I guess I sort of knew that, but I hadn't thought it through. It wasn't embarrassing as much as it made me ponder silently how skewed Americans' perceptions are of their place relative to the rest of the world. I've actually considered moving here for awhile and living like a princess because I'm so much richer than everyone else--an apartment the size of my studio in Chicago is less than a fifth of the price, for example, and food, books, CDs, you name it, are all ridiculously inexpensive. You can get an ice cream cone for about two cents.

Does toying with that idea make me a bad person? A materialistic person? I already know I'm materialistic, but...to move to a country where a good percentage of the population are living in more poverty than the average American can dream of just to take advantage of their shitty economic state so that I can have more material things...is that morally wrong? I'm not asking that rhetorically. I'm genuinely curious.

Staritsa, Green Stops, and Danielle's Further Linguistic Embarrassments

Our trip to Staritsa on Saturday was my first glimpse of rural Russia. It was a mix of rotting old churches and church-like buildings with TasteeFreeze tops, and waves of green hills overlooking the slate-grey Volga river. First, we went to a museum of Russian history. It unfortunately smelled like musty death and my memory of it is staticky and black-and-white, but was enriching that stuffy-history-museum kinda way. Then we caught a little stray calico kitten that was romping through the weeds and took many pictures with it as it mewed in fear. This was the most exciting thing that's happened to me so far in Russia. Finally, we climbed up a hill to have a picnic lunch in the rain. I was wearing platformy shoes. Draw your own conclusions.

Just as we were about to leave for the hourlong drive back to Tver, I realized that I desperately had to pee. I asked our tour guide, Dasha, if there were any bathrooms anywhere. No, there were not. Why would there be bathrooms anywhere?

I ended up peeing in a forest that surrounded somebody's dacha while their dogs barked at me and I cowered in fear, and while the rest of the students waited in the van. Dasha told me that peeing in the wilderness is such a common Russian pastime that they have coined a phrase for it: zaliotaya ostanovka---"green stop." Glad I got to partake in an authentic Russian experience!!!

And now for Danielle's Further...

...Linguistic Embarrassments. On the way home from the institute yesterday I stopped at a bookstore. After perusing the selections in decreasingly intellectual order, I finally decided to buy a book called, "Luchshe skazky dlya dyetei." That means "Best Stories for Children." Upon arriving home, I eagerly opened it up to the first story, about a goat, her goatlings, and a mean and nasty wolf. It was six pages long, including illustrations. It took me an hour and a half.

Humility

So, my host parents speak very little English, so our conversations are usually a circus of Host Family Repeats Something Slowly, Danielle Stares Dumbly and Grins, Host Family Laughs Exasperatedly. But sometimes when my host mother is trying to explain something to me and I'm just not getting it, which is very often, my host father will jump in and attempt to translate what she's saying with broken English. Like, my host mother will say something, and I'll stare and grin, and my host father will say, "She say, you can to eat breakfast." And I go, "Ah! Da, da, da!" and think to myself, isn't it cute the way he tries to talk in English but gets it all wrong?! How adorable.

But then I realized that if he's translating from Russian to English what I don't understand, that means he speaks better English than I speak Russian. I speak worse Russian than this: "From seven hours thirty minutes to seven hours seventeen minutes I do morning exercise," which is what he told me yesterday. I CAN'T SPEAK RUSSIAN.

Unrelated Thought

In Russia, the male:female ratio is 5:6, which is why Russian guys can afford to act like assholes, and presumably why websites like this flourish. In China, the male:female ratio is 6:5 and it's considered this huge problem. What if we just opened up the borders and had a free-for-all? What a great idea!!! Yeah, there's like cultural shit to get over, plus the communism thing, but sex is involved!! Does someone out there speak good enough Russian to suggest this brilliant plan to the government?

HELLO AMERICA!!!

I have ten minutes to describe my Tver experience so far. Then we leave for Staritsa, a little fishing village about 60 km north, whatever that means. With this limited time, I shall attempt to introduce you to my new mental vocabulary, triggered by a comment made by a fellow Tver Intercontact student named Zack alluding to the...

Tver Dodge. This refers to the quick sidestep/trot/gallop a person makes while crossing the street to avoid being whacked by oncoming cars. Let me take a moment to ensure that you, reader, fully appreciate Russian driving. On the "freeway" from Moscow to Tver, there are long stretches with no lane dividers whatsoever. For the most part, cars facing you stay to the left and cars not facing you stay to the left, except if some asshole is only going 100 km an hour, in which case, oncoming traffic? What? And even when there are lane dividers, at least four cars just toddle along directly on top of them. Are they trying to move to the next lane? Are they challenging you to a drag race a la Paula Abdul's boyfriend in the Rush, Rush video? No, they are just driving Russian-style.

Anyway, I have taken it upon myself to create several new terms following this template (wow, speaking a lot of Russian apparently turns my writing textbookariffic). So far, there's the...

Tver Stare. This is my reaction whenever any Russian says anything to me in Russian. It involves me blinking, smiling helplessly, and shrugging. If they repeat themselves, I sometimes giggle helplessly, or look skyward and repeat what they are saying slowly to myself, and then smile and shrug again and say, "I don't understand. Sorry."
The institute put me in Intermediate Russian, which is the third-highest level out of four. This is funny, but I am determined to stick it out. Yesterday, we ("we" being the teacher and the German couple who speaks eight languages. there's another girl my age in my group, but she was hungover and skipped class.) were discussing what kind of finishing school someone needs to attend in Russia if they want to be, say, an architect. A pilot. A lawyer! Then the teacher turned to me and, I thought, asked me why I was studying Russian. That's kind of a random question, I thought, but I shrugged and answered, "Literatura." The teacher snickered, turned to the German couple, and said, "Ona ne ponimayet!!" and the German couple laughed. EXCUSE ME TEACHER AND GERMAN COUPLE, BUT IF I UNDERSTAND ANY RUSSIAN PHRASE, IT'S "SHE DOESN"T UNDERSTAND!!"
Also, my host family doesn't speak any English. With them, I have perfected the Tver stare. Luckily, they're really nice...at least, I think they're really nice, since they smile whenever they speak jibberish to me. For all I know, they could be saying, "You stupid American. You foolish little cretin. We will eat you for dinner." It doesn't help that the word for "he/she/it goes" is pronounced "idioht." Every time my host mother says, "My husband is going to work," or whatever, I'm like, "What did you call me?!"

Tver Stink. This is the unpleasant odor emanating from the collective people of Tver. This may be related to the fact that many parts of the city are lacking hot water--including, incidentally, my host family's apartment building. My host mother heats up a pot of water on the stove, dumps it into a bucket that sits in the shower, and calls, "Danielle! Zharkaya voda!" I don't mind that much--it makes me feel all rugged and outdoorsy--but I dislike the resulting stinkrays from those who apparently don't like washing with water from a bucket. Or maybe they just don't like washing in general.
Another aspect of the Tver Stink is the weird, sickeningly sweet smell that pervades Patterson's, the supermarket across from the institute. I think it was in the Flowers in the Attic series by V.C. Andrews that every time there was a funeral--and there were a bunch--an overpowering stench of flowers would emanate onto the mourners, and it was supposed to be all symbolic. Every time I enter Patterson's, I feel like I'm in a V.C. Andrews funeral. I don't know what it's from, but it's related to the...

Tver Swallow. This is what I force myself to do at mealtime. I met a Russian girl on the plane who was just returning from a year in the States, and she said that for the first two weeks she didn't eat anything, because the food "just tastes different." I completely understand now. Case in point: Tvorak, which I thought was the Russian version of cottage cheese. I happily told my host mother upon my arrival that yes, I ate tvorak, and to please feed me tvorak. The next morning, she gets me out a plate of tvorak, and I discovered that tvorak can best be described as a congealed loaf of bland, thick, curdless cottage cheese gone wrong. I thought it might be the exorbitantly high fat content, so I bought some fat-free tvorak at the supermarket. It tasted like bland, thick, plain yogurt gone wrong.
My host mother gives me a lot of hamburgers, and they just taste...weird. As I swallow, I tell myself, "don't think about what part of the cow this is from. Just don't think about it..."

Next time: open air markets, scary foreign alphabets, an ode to Russian starishkas, and the definition of "green stop."

Privyet! Well, my quest to embarrass myself on all seven continents has so far been a screaming success, even though I'm not exactly sure what continent Russia is on. More updates later.

Christ on a Cracker!

Yes, I have been lackadaisacal about updating. I have been busy with finals, cleaning my apartment for the subletter, showing my mom around Chicago, buying summer clothes, and packing. Packing for where? you may ask. Why, Tver', Russia, where I will be studying Russian language and literature for eight weeks. Yes, RUSSIA! RUSSIA! Shit, I'm terrified!

With any luck, my next post will be from the great Slavic slab 'round the world. Until then, I leave you with this thought:

My ma, Burcu, Lucas, and I saw Finding Nemo on Saturday night. It was adorable. Just adorable. But while watching it, I realized that there have been kids' movies anthropomorphizing and inducing pity for every commonly-eaten animal. EXCEPT COWS.
Chickens: Chicken Run
Pigs: Babe and Charlotte's Web
Fish: The Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo
Sheep: There doesn't need to be. Who wants to eat little lambs? Oh, there was that one episode of The Simpsons...

I'm surprised today's children haven't all become raging vegetarians. Anyway, I think there's a wide open niche in the movie market! Someone should hurry up and make Bessie the Wonder Cow before it's filled forever!

I am being photographed by the Chicago Tribune at this very moment. Writing to my weblog. I've hit the big time. This is extremely awkward.

Problem

Burcu is sleeping in my bed. She said to wake her up in an hour. It's been forty minutes. I have a craving for "Rush" by Paula Abdul, a craving that I cannot suppress much longer. GOD IN HEAVEN, HELP ME!!

OH GOD, let this paper be done. PLEASE GOD, let my reading be over quickly. PLEASE, don't let me have to pull my teeth citing sources. DEAR LORD, I hate writing papers.

Lyrics from a Moody Blues song:

"I know you're out there somewhere
Somewhere, somewhere
I know you're out there somewhere
And somewhere you can hear my cries.

I know I'll find you somehow
Somehow, somehow,
I know I'll find you somehow
And somehow I'll return again to you."

My parents really love the Moody Blues, and when my sister and I were eleven, we went on a family outing to the Santa Barbara Bowl to see them play. It was my first concert.

As they played the above song, I rested my chin in my hand, gazed dreamily out at the ocean curling onto the beach, and sang along softly. To JTT.

It's very draining to read for one week straight about such uplifting topics as the shenanigans of the Serbs, the barbarisation of German warfare on the Eastern Front, and graphic descriptions of the blown-off heads of WWI English soldiers. But that's what I get for slacking off on my European War and Genocide class until the week before a fifteen page paper is due.

Last night, I dragged Burcu to BoomCrash, the Chicago Maroon party. Neither of us are big partygoers. For example, our big outing during Winter quarter was to a party thrown by the literary magazine Euphony (it's a testament to the nerdtasticness of our school that the biggest parties are thrown by student publications). Three months later, Burcu ran into the guy at whose apartment the party was and barely caught herself before exclaiming, "Hey dude!! Great party!!" Three. Months. Later.

So, right. The invitation said it would start after 10 pm-ish. We were all aflutter about when we should set out. The clock crept to 10:45 and we were still deciding, "Hair up or down? Shirt tucked in or left out?" We panicked. We wanted to show up late, but not too late. We didn't want to be rude, for heaven's sake! We left at eleven. When we got there, the party consisted of seven people sitting around woodenly, holding drinks and chatting awkwardly about how cool previous BoomCrashes were. After five minutes, Burcu turned to me and whispered, "How long do you want to stay?"

But then, hoo-ee! The real party started. At its peak, it consisted of seventy people standing around woodenly, holding drinks and chatting awkwardly about how uncool U of C parties are. Everyone except me got really drunk and started giggling a lot, and their eyes got all droopy. The head copyeditor Margaret kissed me on the cheek which was cool. She was intoxicated. I said hello to a guy I used to date. He said, "Hey, how are you?" I said, "Good, how are you?" and he said, "Good! How are you?" He was intoxicated. Two guys wrassled on the couch. They were intoxicated.

Then the crowd grew hushed, as the Maroon tradition of "Space Wine" was about to begin. People who decided to leave were halted at the door, with aghast-looking Maroon staffers asking them, "Aren't you gonna stay for the Space Wine?" Burcu asked me, "What's Space Wine?" and an eavesdropping bystander said, "Oh, you'lllll find out. You'llllll find out!!"

Well, Space Wine consisted of taking wine-in-a-box out of the box so it was just in a clear plastic sack, and one person held it up so another person could drink directly out of the pump thingy while all the nerds stood around them pointing at it and yelling, "SPAAACE WIIIIINE!!!! SPAAACE WIIIINE!!" Many people took turns. I guess it was kind of a bonding thing. Then they draped the deflated sack of wine over a canister of peppermint patties which I thought was kind of a waste of good chocolate.

Then some of the nerds took the opportunity to smoke cigarettes and hit on girls they would never have the balls to talk to while sober. We took that as our cue to leave.

Wow, this is a really caustic review of a U of C party. I actually really like the kids at my school, but I guess I wish they wouldn't regard alcohol in a sack and cigarettes as their stepping stone from the dorkiness of their high school years to ubercoolness in college, still judged by a high school standard. NOT ALL OF THEM DO THIS, just some, and it's annoying.

WOW!!! My Disney cd just randomly started playing. I think THAT'S a cue if I ever heard one!!! Everyone together now: "Go on, unfold your meeeenu take a glance and theeeen you'll be our guest, oui our guest, be our guest!!!!!!!!"

The Move

My weekend was so cool. Really, just fantastic. In fact, if I could upload a jpeg of vomit to this weblog, then you could all see just how wonderful it was.

In short, my apartment-mates and I are disbanding, for various reasons, most of them amicable. Burcu and I have studios in the same building, and Leah is living like half a block away with some other folks. We assumed that, though our lease officially ended on the 31st of May, our landlord would allow us to stay until the 15th, when finals were over and when the new tenants wanted to move in. WE WERE WRONG, MY FRIENDS. DEAD WRONG.

So, on Thursday, our landlord calls us up and casually informs us that we need to be completely moved out by Saturday night. Let me emphasize the gravity of this request. We have three huge couches, half a dozen big chairs, a dining room table, a kitchen table, three beds, huge shelves, desks, computers, and gallons and gallons of spoiled-American shit. The sheer amount of garbage scattered throughout our apartment is too unbelievable to fathom. Furthermore, none of the leases on our new apartments start until the fifteenth of June. Even I am not badass enough to sleep on a mattress in a dark, rainy alley for two weeks. In fact, I am actually not a badass at all!

So, anyway, the landlord lets me move into my apartment early because the tenant left long ago. I will not call this studio small, but...let's just say it gives new meaning to the term, "Hubbard's Cupboard." Naw, just playin'. It's actually quite nice. However, we had to move all of the above furniture either out to the dumpster or into my apartment, along with approximately fifty humradasquillion boxes of miscellany, and leave enough room for Burcu to sleep on my floor.

But shit, man! We did it! My arms are currently dangling from their sockets and I am typing this with my chin, but we did it! Three smallish girls and a shopping cart, with NO help from anyone with a penis. I set up my computer and desk myself, and telephone service and my alarm clock and even made my bed! TAKE THAT, MOVING MEN! WE DON'T NEED YOU!*

Then, on Sunday, when we'd finally finished, I got to start studying for the three finals I have this week.

Luckily! My weekend was punctuated by a lovely amazing humorous trip downtown where I discovered that

Ira Glass IS Charisma!

That's right. Leah and I attended the live show of This American Life on Saturday. We took showers. We lined our eyes. And we smuggled peanut butter, celery, carrot sticks, and hummus into the Chicago Theatre. We had decent seats. And we swooned over Ira, who does radio as if he's conducting a symphony, who has the entire city in the palm of his hand, who I would want to be if I were a forty-year-old Jewish man. Ira Glass walked out of the Chicago Theatre approximately five feet away from us, and I immediately ran in the other direction. Put Brad Pitt in front of me and I could probably talk to him all day. Maybe. But Ira Glass? Ira Glass and the Chicago Kings are the only people who starstrike me, which probably means that I am not only a nerd but sexually confused. But OH! WHAT WONDERFUL CONFUSION!!

*OH GOD! IF ONLY A MAN HAD OFFERED TO HELP, NOT ONLY WOULD I HAVE ACCEPTED, BUT I WOULD HAVE GLADLY GIVEN HIM SOME SORT OF NON-SEXUAL FAVOR!! I CANNOT BE A FEMINIST WHEN MY ENTIRE BODY FEELS OF WET-SAND COVERED LEAD!! IF ONLY A MAN HAD OFFERED TO HELP, I WOULD NOT HAVE CLUTTERED UP THIS BLOG WITH MY BITCHING, BUT I WOULD HAVE HAD MORE ROOM TO SPEND ON VERBALLY FELLATING IRA GLASS!!