In the olden days

Yesterday I went to a ball. It was quite entertaining really, aside from the part where my big toes got slaughtered and getting thrown into a pole and several people. It was mostly a historyc ball, if you could call it that. half the songs were Walz (the dance that killed my toes and caused collisions), and the other half were Hustle (some bizare mixture of swing, discofox, and latin overall quite fun if not danced with some creep.) In prep for the ball we had mastercalsses whcih lasted about 3 hours, so I eneded up dancing severall hours each day aside from the normal ballroom dancing I go to twice a week. And this coupled with going to the club on friday killed my knee.
What I learned from the ball: 1. walzing with a hurt knee is horrible. 2. Tylenol is awesome. 3. somewhat creepy guys tend to be really good dancers.
But in any case. Being at the ball(and binge watching star trek), brought one speciffic though to my mind. People back in the day may have had (atleast partially) the right idea. Maybe I'm just tired, but I do find myself frequently wishing myself back in the 19th century where all a girl had to do was do housework and look pretty (the second not even being so mandatory). Arragnged marriages, and simple art and housework classes. Think of how easy it would be. No worries about anything. I'd have all the time in the world to do what I want to instead of studying all the time. But unluckily that's not the world we live in today, and that's what must be done to have a decent life in the future. (meh. it's probably just the looming 20 talking... hrhrhr.) oh, well. now I have to worry about not getting thrown out of college once again... If i could only care more about this stuff it would be so much easier... *sigh*

People

People are a strange thing indeed. There are always multiple variations of the same person, which exist within themselves; also several variations that exist within others. There is the person that you see, and interact with. And then there is the one that exists in their absence, the impression they leave behind. And these two rarely are one and the same. Why is it so, I wonder? I guess this is part of the reason why love towards another being can exist, whether it be platonic or romantic, or a mixture of the two. You speak with someone, then interpret their actions, words. An image forms, which may or may not wholly depict the truth of their nature. And based on that, within us It starts to grow. The more time passes, the more we get used to their presence the stronger It becomes, until at some point we might even reach a point where removal of It would render us crippled. Yet we always seek It, desire It, never doubting that such constriction would bring happines in the end. However often we are mistaken. It rips, we break, and a hole is left behind. It might be as small as a pinhole through a blank sheet of paper, and it might be as large as the hole a car leaves behind when driving through a wall. Yet life flows on. We live. We die. And nothing really changes.

So it Goes

First of all, I make no excuses for the tardines sof this post, as there can be none with me writing so terribly late.
I started writing this post at the end of last semester, so I'll leave you to read. I wasn't exactly happy at the time, and I’ve little desire to rewrite the account of those experiences... so here it is:

So, basically the most stressful few weeks of my life have finally come to a close. And it couldn't have been soon enough. You see everything started out just peachy, but then I failed the written math analysis exam, which isn't too great. However I studied, and somehow managed to convince the man who corrected my test to give me those two miserable points I needed to be allowed to take the oral exam, which I promptly failed. So basically epic failure right there; but that was just the beginning... the analytic geometry and linear algebra exam was next. Where, with my incredible luck I ended up with the same guy, my math lector, who failed me on my written exam. And the only reason that he ended up not failing me on this one, was because he thought that with two fails you are immediately kicked out, well lucky for me he found that out afterwards. "Oh. So I could have failed you," he said... peachy, just peachy. Well that all was great, and next was something that I thought that I actually knew: Chemistry. Well, it seems I was under an illusion there as well. I ended up with my seminar lady from the first semester, who, as soon as she walked into the door, caught me looking in a book (fyi: EVERYONE was cheating anyways, and I didn't even have enough time to look up what I needed, so another fail right there.) Well, after sitting around (and I mean that quite literally) for 2 whole hours she finally had mercy on me and began her torture procedures. And very rapidly my illusion that I knew Chemistry was quickly blown away as an unsuspecting lawn chair would be by a hurricane. In the end I managed to get my measly 3 (the not-quite-fail-grade) and I was off. But now the real tests began. The retakes, for us idiots who didn't manage to pass the first time around. But first of all let me explain how these finals work. You must pass every test. And you have a maximum of 3 retakes total (and theoretically no more than 2 in any one subject). If you fail more than that, well... you get kicked out. And that does not make for happy students. So woe
me, one of my not-so-dear-friends managed to persuade me to go try to pass in the first round. As I expected: I, again, failed miserably (later I found out that I actually got to an evil lady who hates all human kind and especially poor stupid students). Thus I went "slightly" deflated to my next retake. And curse my luck! I AGAIN got to my lector. Well... although he didn't want to... he gave me my thrice accursed three... and I was finished- mentally, emotionally, scholastically, and in every other possible way that one
can possibly imagine.

Thus ends the more depressing part of my tale. Now for some more fun stuff:

First of the summer: Soccer world cup. Drat the Spaniards! Curse their excellent trainer, and curse the German’s utter inability to play closed soccer. Their victories were splendid (loved the England game.) and their loss was tragic, though I must confess inevitable(no like we had the misfortune to see in 2006 with the Italians, the spaghetti-eaters). The Spaniards were far better. Though that does depress me somewhat…
Anywhoos. Some of you may have heard of the horrid smog (and unbearable heat) that we had in Moscow this summer. It was quite extraordinary. It seemed quite unnatural: Absolutely uniform. No wind at all, and everything was in a haze. You couldn’t even see, as one usually can, the speck of light that marks the position of the sun. you could hardly make out anything 100 meters ahead of you, only dim figures cloaked in shadows, hinting at the fact that if you keep walking straight ahead, you will walk into a wall. However, because of the heat (, and the fact that I’m not a fan of hot weather and sweating,) I went outside about 10-15 times all summer. And all (excluding two trips) were to get food at the market next door.
Now that I’ve made you interested in what those two trips were I’ll not tell you. Nah, I’m joking. The first is absolutely uninteresting: a haircut, which I’m quite happy with actually. I think I’ve taken a liking to professional hairdressers. And the second trip was a trip around the metro in Moscow. Now THAT is a sight one must see. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any place so richly decorated as the central stations. It absolutely dwarfs any of the castles I’ve seen in Germany, and exceeds any of the riches that I might have even imagined. And that is only what is left over from an underground station. This prompts the obvious question: how splendid and magnificent must the palaces have been. How Russia must have diminished the shine of Europe, had it not as always stuck up its high nose and pretended to see barbarians where honorable people stood. So yeah... that was a true eye-opener.

I’ll speak now of something more merry, namely merry making, aka: drinking. Let’s proceed in chronological order.

• Two nights before the chem exam was the first one. And excitingly I found alcohol to be quite a good solvent ;P of certain types of problems that is. I have an acquaintance who is not quite ‘indifferent’ towards me. And, who can resist a drunken girl, really. Well one of my other acquaintances obviously could not. Luckily he’s of the shy type, and I was not so drunk as to not be reasonable, though drunk enough to be all happy-like (turns out I’m a happy/quiet drunk, if I hadn’t mentioned it before). So basically: walking about with another guy quite disturbed the first one; Even so much that the next day he confronted me about whether I remembered anything, and upon my positive answer, grew quite furious with his friend temporarily, and quite cool towards me, which was a welcome change. And before the retakes the two of them had quite a bit of fun drawing on my legs, and seemed the best of friends. Hehe. On a side note: that day I learned that beer is perfectly dreadful even compared to vodka, and that Vermouth is quite yummy. The next morning, I felt perfectly fine.
• The next time, of course was when I’d already gotten back from the summer break. We decided to get our group together and finally try to socialize. To my greatest delight, the two boys who had up till then not ever said hello to me, came to the event. And I did enjoy myself. Since the two are great soccer fans, we brought a ball and played volleyball a great deal of the time, during which time the fire almost died several times. (and my legs were quite sore the net day) We made sausages on sticks, and when the sweet little boys left, we called our group’s alcoholic, who didn’t fail us. And I tried Gin for the first time - turns out its quite tasty, especially after the 4th cup, at which I lost count. I just continued drinking until all that was left was beer… in the end I was quite drunk, mumbled quite a lot, probably made many errors in my speech, but happily they did not laugh, and tolerated me. When we got back to the room, I lay down, saying that I’m not tired, and that I won’t sleep, and then I promptly fell asleep, waking up 4 hours later to change, and go back to sleep. When I woke up, I felt perfectly horrid. Worse than when I woke up in the bathroom on Halloween last year, and I still felt that I had alcohol in my system. After sitting around and breathing for n hour I finally was sick, after which I felt infinitely better and went to class. Now they say hello to me :)
• The next time was but two weeks after that. (Yes, it did make me feel like I was an alcoholic.) It was the consecration of the graduates into the brotherhood of university students (you may remember me speaking of the various fun group activities in the woods last year, with pushing people through the spider web and falling off a tree stump.) well this time I was one of the organizers. In the logistics department actually, we had a schedule for 5 groups, but we planned to split them into 6. So I had an hour to make a new schedule. However when I got there, the horrid idiots decided that they’d like to split into 7 groups after all, and I had to redo the schedule last minute. In the end the only problem was that we had to magically conjure up 4 extra places for the groups to have lunch but after that, all went well, and everyone was happy. Soon enough we again called our main alcoholic group mate and he brought alcohol. That day I learned that Vermouth tastes good only when you’re already drunk. The way back to the dorm was quite funny. The shy boy, I talked of earlier, lead drunk me, who led another even more drastically drunk acquaintance of mine (surprise surprise it turned out that he’s also a crush on me. I think there are very few other ways one might interpret the following actions: *kisses hand* “you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”) Anyways… Later that evening the organizers were to get together and celebrate ourselves, and that we did well. That, naturally, cannot possibly be done without alcohol. And I tried wine for the first time. To my surprise, it was quite tasty, but that might be due to the fact that (out of my observations) alcohol seems to taste drastically better when you have reached a state of not being able to walk straight. Well, I quite enjoyed the wine as you might guess, and got quite more drunk than I already was. The evening ended rather quietly, and the next morning I felt absolutely fine.
• About a week ago, I smoked my first cigarette. I’ll say it’s not exactly something pleasant. The smoke tastes horribly (although they were supposedly cherry flavored.) and they do quite make my head spin so much that I lose the will to do anything, even stand up. None the less, yesterday I bought a pack, and I smoked my second one. I felt absolutely dreadful afterwards. As if I had pulled the spine out of a living kitten, and thrown its brilliant blue eyes into the mud and trampled on them. I intend to make use of them during my self-destructive moods. And I’ll limit myself to less than one a week a most. I’d hate to become an addict. I’d hate it so very much.
• And today I gave blood. It was actually quite a funny story. Turns out I’m AB+, but that’s not what I want to write about. I was sitting there, giving blood, trying not to cough, as I’m still a bit sick. And I see the giant guy to my right starting to nod, and his head slowly falling on my arm. He’d fainted. About a minute later the guy to my left was asked to count, soon started mumbling, and also fainted. Another few minutes a guy sitting at the far table fainted. Then I felt the plastic tube that was sticking out of my arm touch my hand. It was so warm. So very very warm - the perfect temperature. From then on I started feeling bit by bit sicker and sicker, and I felt the noises mute, and my head starting to spin. But at that moment I was finally done. The whole day my head’s been spinning, and I didn’t go to any of my classes. I’ll go to the first three tomorrow though; A lecture, then English and finally informatics (though I may skip that, if I feel too unwell.) I’m going home to Moscow tomorrow, and then returning the day after laden with food and other good and useful things.

So I’ll write to you soon (I expect after the next time I drink, which I expect to be not much later than Halloween. One of my group mates expressed the desire to drink ;))

twosixths

I have successfully put behind me my first two-part final: molecular physics. And luckily it was a success story :D. The most interesting little thing that happened was that the three things the bugged me the most before the test, I ended up getting. In hindsight it was totally worth staying up ‘til 6 am, to have one of the other examinees explain all the laboratory questions to me. And it was also totally worth it getting up at 10am to write up the answers to the Joule-Thompson question and the thermodynamic potential question. Thus armed with the answers to a good 75% of the total 64 possible questions strapped to my leg I went out. Once there I met my lab lady from the first semester, and she let me pick a second questions sheet after I picked one that I absolutely did not know (I knew neither of the two questions, which is pretty much a fail right there.) the second sheet was a lucky one :) the only thing I couldn’t do was solve this one little problem about how many molecules in a gas with concentration n would collide before they travelled the mean free path. But my seminar teacher (who is pretty much one of the oldest and most important people in the physics department) yelled to the guy questioning me, when in doubt, judge in favor of the accused. Thus I got a 4 thanks to the cheat sheet strapped to my right leg :)
Now I have to prepare for my next final :Written math analysis, which will suck. You see for written physics, you may use whatever material you might deem useful aside from live brains other than your own (although that rule gets regularly broken as well), for the written math exam you may use nothing but your own brain(and that also gets regularly broken. I swear there are at most 10 people across all departments who will not be using cheat sheets on the exams.) so yeah. 2 down 4 to go :) Wish me luck!

Exam schedule:

• May 28 – molecular physics written
• Jun 02 – molecular physics oral
• Jun 07 – mathematical analysis written
• Jun 14 – mathematical analysis oral
• Jun 18 – analytic geometry and linear algebra
• Jun 23 – organic chemistry

from the frying pan into the fire.

So. I haven't been posting anything for quite a while now. As always, I’m waiting to have something to write and since I still don't I just decided to ramble about... well everything...

I’ll begin with school. This week has been the week from hell. Monday was alright. Everyone else had their bio final, which I didn’t have to take, simply because I went to the lectures and didn’t fail the quizzes. But that was the least of my worries, because, you see, on Tuesday I had to turn in my comp sci programs (which I ‘borrowed’ from my group mate) as well as 3 hellish physics labs to turn in. you see, that doesn’t sound like much, but turning in anything here is much harder than turning in stuff in the us. Not only does stuff has to be written down, but you also have to take a test and pass it to be allowed to turn stuff in. In the case of physics that means a bunch of derivations and explanations to deliver and much evil to ward off. Let’s move on to Wednesday: I had to turn in analytic geometry, which includes pulling an all-nighter copying the 60 numbers of hw (each rather extensive), and then coming to take a test which you have no idea how to do. After that chemistry, a 1.5 hour session of teacher dude, stinking of cologne, mumbling and pressing for answers to more stuff you don’t know. Thursday: Well today was the biggest disaster, it didn’t start out as that. English. Write the test get out of there and done with that. But then disaster commenced: physics. A test so evil it trumps evilness. Three numbers from a previous exam and no idea how to do them. I maybe solved one of them, if I’m lucky. Ergo: Fail. And now, it’s 3 am and I’m binging on Grey’s Anatomy whilst waiting for one of my group mates to finish the hw that is due tomorrow and copy it.

But that’s not all, of course how could it possibly be so?Warning: For all those of you who don’t want girly drama drama, skip this paragraph. So, I really need to stop doing this thing I do: see random guy, think he’s cute. Stare for a bit. Then he’s gone for a while, and the next time I see him, I can’t stay calm. All the while, random dudes keep bugging me, and bugging me, and bugging me, and I do nothing. Until I finally decide to screw it and alienate them all, because well, that’s what I do best. And best part. He’s a girlfriend now. You know the usual pattern. So yeah. Not exactly a happy trooper right now. It sucks. As always. It sucks. [end drama]

In other news. My mom is in state college right now, and there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll be joining her this summer, after I finish and hopefully pass my finals. If I come, then it’ll be sometime around july 12th-august 12^th or so. The only condition being that I’m not very keen on flying during any world cup dates. You see that time is precisely when the final match is supposed to be. So yeah. I hope to see lots of all of you people. And just so you know this is prolly going to be a onetime thing, so if you can, I would love to see you because the chances of me going again in the next five years are quite low. Also: you could always visit me :D *hint hint nudge nudge*

Damn it all

To all ye females out there: Happy March 8th!

(for those of you who don't kow: it's women's day)

and in connection with this wonderful fest i have several small things to write about.

1) Friday surprise.
well it so turned out that i skipped math since i hadn't done any of the hw, so i was sitting in my room. after class had ended my groupmate nina came by my room and we chatted for a while. at one point there's a knock on the door, and three of the guys from our group entered. with two bouquets. followed by this short and entertaining little speech: "a number of year ago our own native country, [thinking pause]... well it's not native and not ours for all of us... (nina is ukranian, and i'm.. well... me... great word choice :D) invented this wonderful holliday..."[rest is o mitted due to unfunnyness]. and then each of us got a wonderful three tulips and the boys left. unexpected sweetness on their part.

2)saturday:D:D:D:D
later friday night i went home, and returned saturday, since a 4 day break is obscene, and i wouldn't be able to get anything done. also saturday night the sutudents had a club night for anyone who would wish to come, and i wished and lera wished , so us two girls and a buch of others went to enjoy ourselves for a bit. when we gopt back roundabouts 11, my already sprained foot (no thanks skiing) was not happy and neither was my knee (also wrecked slightly by skiing) which was pretty much worthless at that point. none the less, i managed to convince lera to have a small blues lesson(since my roommates have mysteriously disappered), though she was just as dead beat as me. finally she realized that dancing was pretty much the greatest thing ever, and that she would from now on always pester me with lessons. which i will gladly do. once i get her up into shape, we'll go hunting for boys, and it will be epic.

3) sunday
although i went to bed at 2. i randomly woke up around 8. and the previous day, nina said that, volodia, one of her old schoolmates who's also at mipt (only a different subsection/college) asked wether we (nina, lera, me) would like to go out to see the ostankino tv tower. lera was sick so she didn't go, so it was but the three of us. luckily we didn't have any time restraints so we walked around slowly, as my foot wasn't exactly cooperative. however it turned out that getting into that tower is much more complicated than i t would seem, and much more expensive, so we just went to this happy amusement area place, and walked around. it was pretty cold though (a rather strong wind and -12C) so nina and volodia got pretty cold being from the ukrane and all (apparently it's warmer there. and they bothe had hats whereas i didn't, and were amazed as to how i wasn't cold. it's not like i was warm i just hate wearing hats too much :P ) and since we didn;t manage to see al of it we decided to come back another weekend and see the rest of it. and also go ice skating sometime, though not in moscow, since it's pretty pointless ot go there just to skate if you can do that here as well.

4) monday
so yeah today is a free day, and again. although i'm exhausted i woke up at 8. wtf!? my roommates still haven't returned, and somehow i think that it might have something to do with that. it's great to have a room to yourself, but it you can't sleep, that just defeats the purpose. so please excuse the myriads of typos in this since i'm sore everywhere and totally sleepdeprived, and lacking coordination. gah. so yeah. i've been doing absolutely nothing till now, and i still have tons of shit to do. two labs and that math hw... and then i have to go buy toothpaste... i finally completely ran out, so i'll have no choice but to go. also i had this little idea of giving lera, nina, and katia(yes, she has the same name as i, since in russia it's a rather common one.) each an anonymous rose today, since it's march 8th and all.


(lol turned out to be more of a recap of the weekend, oh well)

PS: you have no idea how tired i am of winter. i doesn;t seem to ever end! we still have snow lying around knee deep, and those evil places weher the snow has become so compact that it's as slippery as ice. damn it! Where is global warming when you need it!!!

whoooooooa! did that just happen?

So... believe it or not: Such a thing as a one sided fight exists. Remember that girl I told you about in my group? The really bitchy one? I think I called her CB in a previous post. But yeah… I went to visit her room to talk to the other two girls who live there, since we’ve become more-or-less friends, and I sit around chatting with them, when all of a sudden I hear sobs, quite loud ones. Dear CB was lying on the bed, sobbing. I mean I’ve heard that she does that quite frequently, but that was my first time seeing it. Well, I pretended not to notice it, since that was what seemed to be their policy, and we talked somewhat quieter. After a few minutes it seemed she was starting to feel better, and started walking about, still sniffing her nose a bit, but otherwise alright. When she finally sat down on her chair, there was a knock on the door, and I could almost guess who it was but that’s another matter. The person wasn’t allowed in, he (that’s an assumption) knocked again, but was again denied entry, and it seems left. What happened next startled me completely. She got up, opened the door, and started throwing her dishes with absolute ferocity down the hallway. She was at it for about five minutes and then walked around yelling various things along the lines of “why do they have to come to my room?! Why can’t they stay in their own room?! I have to get up early tomorrow! I hate everyone! You should all go die!” etc. etc. etc. [this is more or less a direct quote with swear words removed and, of course, translated.] peachy I thought. Just peachy. She had seemed a bit on edge the past few days, but WHOA! Chill! Meanwhile the inhabitants of the other rooms in the block got active, asking if everything was alright. {“mostly,” she said. Geh.} Well, once the circus was over she cleaned up the broken glass, and once done with that she turned her attention to me. “You know; that in the hallway was meant for you. I need to get up at six tomorrow morning.” WTF??? My reply: “If I’m in any way disturbing you, what prevents you from simply telling me. If you’d have told me that you want to go to sleep, and to please leave, I’d have done so without question.” With that I of course left the room. But seriously:

____________WTF!!!___________

The Folly of the Old

Old ladies… yes they’re something special. Very special I must say. Particularly dames like my dearest dear grandmother… I don’t even know where to begin the excruciating tales of her ignorance and downright baffling inability to comprehend simple logic. What follows are a few simple rules she knows by heart that are sure to drive even the kindest and most compassionate soul into hysterics.

1) No matter how often you’ve heard a story you’re always glad to hear it again, even if you are protesting vehemently.

Because we all love those war stories. Especially when we’re hearing them for the umpteenth time. They only ever get better and better. Oh and that reminds me: when I was your age…

2) Knowledge is never out dated. Especially medical knowledge. whatever was true 30 years ago is still true today.

Cancer is practically untreatable. Crappy outdated medicine that has been proven to be harmful is perfectly good. etc. I think I don’t need to tell you about how medicine (or anything else for that matter) has progressed and how annoying it is to listen to someone fail to comprehend that simple fact.

3) The TV NEVER lies! Ever!

AND YOU KNOW IT! and SpongeBob Squarepants really does live in a pineapple under the sea, and has a crush on a squirrel named Sandy from Texas.

4) When eating, people always want to hear about random recipes that you have heard of from some strange place.

It's interesting to hear you fantasize about them though you have no idea how to actually prepare them, and most of your random guesses are complete bullshit. They especially love hearing you tell about the wonderful things [random relative] cooked during war times and how everything was home grown, and though you had nothing you ate well. Oh on that note? Eat [insert random food here]. Why aren’t you eating? A young one like yourself has to be fed well. Eat! EAT!

5) Smelling like sweat and urine is completely normal.

Yeah… and people like to be hugged by that wondrous odor too… GAH!

6) Completely outdated and disproven beliefs are not completely outdated and are absolutely true.

Thus black people are ugly and their brain is under developed. When provided with a counter example (like Tyra Banks, who is neither ugly nor an idiot) insist that the person doesn’t look black at all. Right… and I’m the Easter Bunny.

7) Beauty and taste are not completely subjective. If I like it, You like it.

If something tastes good to me, then it absolutely must taste good to you. Otherwise you’re uncivilized or you’re too prejudiced against the food to understand that it’s good. people who eat things that aren’t tasty have something wrong with their brains. Same thing goes for beauty. If i think something is pretty, it is indisputably so. New trends are hideous and the old pompous days of glory are wonderful.

8) There are no different cultures. Only civilized and uncivilized people.

Where have I heard this one before I wonder?

9) Logic is absolutely overrated.

Refuse to heart reason whenever possible.

It pains me to know that I’m related to her… actually it pains me to have to communicate with her… GAHHHHH!!!!!!!

I’m SO glad that break is almost over! you have no idea!

festivities and failiures

ohhh boy..... i haven't posted anything in a real long time and i sincerely apologize for it. i'll not even try to make up any excuses since i don't really have any. i spent a shit load of time doing absolutely noting when i could have been doing something productive, or at least semi-productive like blogging. and i know it's terrible but frigging solitaire is ADDICTING like hell. and i hate it. but i love it. that's my really bad excuse, or lack thereof and i can't do anything about it. i'm sorry. i really truly am...

on the upside i do have a few things to write about. i'll start with the least recent as always. and as so often it revolves around a celebration, or rather lack thereof. christmas: an epic failure. no. let me rephrase. an epic failure beyond epic failure. first of all there's little old me thinking that hey, all my life we have celebrated christmas. i mean yeah, we lived in other countries where people do that sort of stuff but none the less. it's a nice excuse to make good food and sit down and chat within the family. well i thought wrong. it so turned out that there wasn't even anything remotely resembling christmas decorations up. the night before i left we put up the christmas tree. about which my dad ended up nagging a lot since it so turned out that we paid ~$20 too much for (boo-friggin-hoo). since it was an extremely pokey tree, by the time i got done putting in the light my arms ended up looking like i had the most horrid rash over them. then i got do decorate it with some of the ugliest christmas toys i've seen. i wouldn’t be surprised if they are back from the soviet days. i really wouldn't...

being more than mildly displeased, i ended up returning to the dorm for new years. just so you know. in russia new years is like christmas and the fourth of july combined. thus a pretty big deal. though it has never been that for me, so i decided to be selfish and willful for once.

the celebration itself was vastly amusing. and i did have a very good time. a bunch of us went food shopping in the local walmart wannabe. and we cooked all day the 31st. luckily we happen to have a cooking enthusiast amongst us. a second year. the funny thing is that he has no issues with cooking pork, but refuses to eat pork. (islam... go figure) we had some fun figuring out which of the two dishes was the one with pork, and which was the one with beef. but i'm pretty sure we got that right after we tested it on somewhat less religious people.
at 3am the university had a fireworks display sort of thing. and considering that the whole university does not exceed the size of state high, it was quite a stately firework. lots of shinies and explosions, and lasted a respectable amount of time. basically here it all amateurs trying to be awesome, and succeeding at it. though two of the rockets i'm sure went somewhere where they definitely weren't supposed to go: straight into the fence of the stadium. two people who were launching even had to throw themselves on the ground so as to evade the projectiles. but on the other hand the slight misfortune turned out to have a rather epic and prettyful effect. only lucky part was that the fireworks didn't end up shooting into the crowd. otherwise some people would have started the new year somewhat badly.

but that was not the only slight bout of misfortune that happened to come upon us that night. after the fireworks we all started walking back to the dorm, but being as we are Lera and i didn't feel like calling it a night. it just seemed like an extremely anti-climactic and to something that should have been great. so after failing to convince the others to come for a walk with us we just walked out and about. of course the slight complications that might arise out of the myriads of drunk guys walking about didn't occur to us. we had a camera and a baseball bat (as to how you go about acquiring a baseball bad in russia is very simple. you walk into a convenience store, and there they are. a wall filled with a variety of baseball bats. however they sell no gloves, no balls and no helmets. just bats. you do the rest of the figuring. and we simply borrowed it from one of the guys and forgot to give it back.)
so here we are two girl walking about pointlessly armed with a camera and a baseball bat. naturally, soon enough we decided to turn back, and went back in the direction of the dorm, but we still were reluctant to call it a night. basically we just stood there at a loss at what to do now. of course the drunks didn't loose a minute in seizing the opportunity.
we hadn't been standing there for more than a minute until the first guy walked up to us. whom after some difficulty we sent away. no sooner had we relieved ourselves of the pest, as the next came up. whom i sent away in a not exactly pleasing way. Lera made excuses that our friends are waiting for us at the dorm, which was true, and i insisted that we simply did not want to go with them, which was also true. after we got rid of the second one, we briskly made up our minds that we should go back. and we did, and saw our friends coming towards us. naturally, we stopped and started talking to them. unluckily the guy we just sent away yelled something over to the guys in out company. and one of them is quite the confrontational type. and the situation escalated slightly. our guy defending us. and the other guy being drunk and pissed that some kid apparently landed girls that he himself wasn't able to. then they went aside to talk "man-to-man" at this point Lera was ready to shoot herself. they went aside, clear of any obstacles, ant the aggressor event went as far as taking his coat off. luckily, our guy was not drunk. we hadn't let him drink, and were very thankful for that. after over 15 minutes our guy finally returned. unharmed. lucky for us that these were al students from our university, meaning that they actually have brains, and use them occasionally.
lesson learned: do not walk around outside when there are drunk guys about. bad things can happen.

when we got back to the dorm we still stayed together, as two of the guys were from other dorms, and wouldn’t be let back in even if they would have left. and there was cleaning to do anyways. naturally no one really thought about cleaning up after that strain on everyone's nerves. Lera got downright depressed. the rest of us contented themselves with simply chatting with another about various happy topics including, death, murder, torture, and any other unpleasantries you can think of in all their forms. that's how we spent the night and around 9 am we were all sufficiently tired. and finally called it a night.

now i've told you about the festivities, right? what’s this talk now about failure? well that's what i had been doing today (well technically it's already yesterday). namely i had been busy failing my mathematical analysis final. why did i fail it so badly: well there are several reasons.
reason 1: i spent the past week doing all sorts of shit including reading, sleeping, eating and going on an anime binge rather than studying.
reason 2: the math department has decided to have their arms up to their elbows in the blood of the first years this year because we're all idiots, and thus made the test diabolical.
but it's really mostly reason 1 for the most part.
right now i'm just somehow hoping that everyone else did just as horribly, or even comparably horribly as i did, and thus the score needed for a 3 (the lowest passing grade) will be sufficiently low for me to make it. and if that doesn't work i'm sincerely hoping that the wonderful institution of retaking the test will be able to save me. but here the world is tough. you fail once you go to the first retake. fail again: second retake. fail that: third retake. fail again: off to the army with you! see, here the army is forced upon all guys unless they're in university. and that sucks. the army is no threat to me, since i'm a girl, but i still don’t want to flunk out, because i think that if i do i might just not be able to make it back here, and that would suck... a lot... because if i do flunk out of the school i'm left with only one thing: this one question: "what am i supposed to do now?"