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 ;))