2 months

That's about how much time has passed since I last posted. Quite a bit has happened really, so make sure you read to the very end =)) . Towards the end of December, exam session approached. And as so often that was quite an adventure. It began mostly with me not really wanting to do my theoretical physics homework, because honestly, it's not only a pain, but also a bore, aside from being rather difficult. So being the lazy piece of human that I am, I ended up procrastinating for rather a bit too long. And my dear seminarist (tiny uptight old lady in glasses who reminds me of a tabby cat.)  has this policy of 5 strikes and you're out. So there is basically no way humanly possible to turn in the homework, even in three sittings. And without turned in homework, you aren't allowed to take the exam. Two weeks before the DEADline (the point where they usually kick you out if you don't have everything done by then.) we were told that our little lady doesn't want to come back to the institute, so we were basically screwed. Thus, we went to our dean's office and the vice went with us to the Theoretical Physics Department, because apparently we had to be given the chance to turn in the hw at the least. We ended up talking to this nice old man and it was magically easy compared to sitting with the old lady. Sadly, somehow Chemical physics didn't go too well either, mostly because I had decided that I knew the subject, and didn't bother studying. So what ended up happening come exam retakes is this:
day 1: take written chem phys exam, then run and finish turning in theoretical physics, which worked well enough. The happiest moment by far, was when the one guy who was in the exact same situation as I and myself went to get our written exam results, and we both passed. THAT felt like an accomplishment. After thoroughly enjoying that brief euphoria, we returned and finished turning in the hw.
day 2: luckily I had run into one of the guys from my faculty the day before, and I got a full set of finished answers to all exam questions off of him, which very much simplified my task that day of cramming all that crap into my brain. Thanks, btw!
on to day 3: the exam. I ended up answering this young guy, who read us a few lectures, and ended up as seminarist for one of our groups. The exam itself was just like all the others really, so I won't bore you further. with that. Needless to say, I passed.
After that, i'm just going to skip a bunch of now completely uninteresting and forgotten stuff, and get to the interesting part.
As you may or may not know, February 23rd is a pretty big deal here. It's called something along the lines of "Day of the Defenders of the Fatherland" (and yes, it's actually the fatherland in Russia, not motherland) and all the girls get all the guys presents (actually I'll go off on a bit of a tangent here...

so February 23rd was coming up, so we have to do something for the boys in our group. So Lera and I banged out heads together, and thought real hard. We had gotten them tea and tiny toy water guns last year, so we need to get them something else this time. Tea was out of the question, as was a sit together, simply because our group isn't exactly the buddy buddy type (to the extent that I haven't spoken to one of the boys for over a year now). Well, so we though t shirts! t shirts are cool right? And we could put customized pictures on them so they wouldn't be impersonal. A different one for each guy and in different colors.
We thought YAY! We got our solution. So, that weekend we went shopping to find plain men's t shirts in different colors, I mean how hard can that be? Right? It's a totally basic item, that exists in multiple variations in every single women's store, so why not the same for men. Well, as you might have guessed, we were extremely wrong. So wrong, that the only plain t shirts we were able to find were like 1000 rubles (~ $35) a piece, and we needed 6, plus the paper for customization. Plainly, we really really didn't want to spend that kind of money on them. We kept looking and looking and looking and looking and.. well you get the idea. About 5 hours into the ordeal, we went onto this discount store, there we came upon the funniest t shirts. All of them black and with pictures; One with a giant hand saying "frick you" and the equivalent written on it; one with a gigantic smiling sperm; one with a zombie squirrel eating a brain; one with "sex, drugs, rock'n roll" and a condom, pill and microphone of the same size/shape; one saying "awesome dude", and one with "hide, devils, god's comming" and an evil smile. well, seeing as we were as tired as we were and the shirts cots 350 roubles (~$12) a pop, we decided that our work was done. We bought them! Luckily our boys liked the shirts very much. They even wear them! Which basically makes me fell like the most awesome person in the history of the earth! (although I know it's a clear exaggeration)

back to the topic at hand: men's day! Unsurprisingly, there was a disco dance night thing in honor of February 23rd on the following weekend, as always for any kind of holiday. There, aside from Lera, who I went with to celebrate her new found freedom, was this random guy that I saw during some of our lectures, and since we were the only ones he knew, he joined us. What followed was Lera's fascination with the mirror wall, so the three of us mainly ended up dancing with our reflections, which was interesting enough, plainly because it's interesting to actually SEE what you're doing. At the end of the evening, we talked a bit while trying to get out and back to our dorm. What followed was the typical progression. He found me on Russian facebook, we talked for a while. Then, as always, we went walking in the woods, ending in what else but a snow fight, consisting of throwing snow at each other and each other at snow =p. The next day, we repeat the pattern with a noteworthy variation: a kiss. Well, yesterday we wanted to watch a movie. Well, we did watch a movie, somewhere in the middle, "Boondock Saints" - it was pretty funny actually. But we basically just spent from 2pm to midnight laying around and talking (once again, during that time I confirmed that I really don't like people, which makes me happy, because I feel normal again). Tomorrow he might come with me to look at one of the base institutes in Moscow. There is going to be some kind of excursion. And on Saturday, we're watching another movie =).
As to the guy himself. He's pretty much what half my friends in the USA were like, so I like to think that I actually understand his manner of communication pretty well. Or at the very least it suits me. He actually watches anime, which surprised me quite a bit. But that is always a great indicator to how open minded people are to various things, and that's always very good. He's a gamer, and a fantasy nut, although he tries to cut down on that. (If you know me, you know that that's a good thing.) Looks-wise, he's pretty cute, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a beard, that looks rather good on him (I usually don't like them, but that's mainly because a lot of guys think that they can pull it off although they clearly can't), and also very toned, which is always a plus. Only bad point is that he's a bit short (although taller than me when I wear flats) but it's not like you can have everything =))