summer?

Finally!

Finally I have finished my thesis, made a little book out of it, presented it to a bunch of old smart dudes (including an academic), and gotten an excellent grade for it (that part was obvious from the very beginning, but it's nice to finally have it in deed and not only theoretically.) So now I finally have completed my bachelor, and absolutely nothing changes.

Well, not really nothing. I get paid about 30 dollars a month for 'working' at my base now, and I'll be spending more time there than I will in the MIPT main campus, but overall it's all the same. Continuing education. but for now, it is summer, and I get to watch the Tour de France and the Universiade (where Russia is currently beating everyone really really badly.) I actually watched the opening ceremony. Like the vice-president of the Russian swimming federation and member of the IOC said. "What will Sochi be like?" basically they made a huge deal out of it. It seemed more like a trial run for the Olympics than some weird Universiade that has existed for but 27 years. I'm thinking that this competition will become quite a big deal from now on. In short the opening ceremony was spectacular. complete with dragons, myths, golden wish fishes, dancers in a huge pool of water great singers and her and there some perfectly bizarre choreography and costumes. The ceremony lasted a whopping 6 hours.
But enough of that. aside from getting a fancy piece of paper, I've also done something terrible: I've spilled orange juice on my computer a while ago. So now my computer hates me. This, I have determined thus: usually the computer in on one of three states. It thinks that I'm continuously pressing the space bar, which I'm obviously not; it decides that I never press the spacebar, which makes typing a pain in the behind; or whenever you press any key, it goez berzerk and prints out the symbol about 300 times, which is terrible as well. I tried to clean the keyboard which, it turns out is actually quite difficulty, because sony has to have obscenely complicated buttons. And, of course the only thing we have to clean it with is home made vodka from the soviet days. The stench of the stuff was impossible. I don't even want to know what they distilled the disgusting liquid out of. ugh! so yeah. But that of course, wasn't the worst part. I had to write my diploma, and doing that when every half hour your computer decides to make fun of you in new and interesting ways, it is three times as frustrating than it would usually be.
Well, that aside there has also been a few good things in the mean time. As I'm sure you remember I went to the Ukraine - Kiev to be precise. So here’s a few words on that; it was awesome! The city is wonderful, much friendlier and cleaner and somehow nicer than Moscow. The air is much fresher, and smells of growing things, which I found quite surprising, especially the fact that the smell is really not uniform at all. In one place it is flowers, in another something like the sea, and then an old car goes by and you remember that you’re in a city. So, we walked about, and looked at a few of the church-y places. But the thing I probably remember the most vivid is the sheer size of the river. It’s… well, quite frankly I haven’t seen anything that size. D and I decided to take a walk and we walked through some park by the river, and as we came to the bridge, we decide to cross it. It didn't seem to far to the other side, so we started walking. Well, it turned out the that shore ways away was actually an island on the river. There was just as much river on the other side. It probably took us half an hour to reach what we now knew to be the actual shore. Well when we got there, the bridge ended, and there was a huge traffic knot, but then the whopper came when I saw another shore just as far as we had already come still ahead of us. Apparently, we were now on a bigger island, and the river is absurdly large. And consider, this is not even the widest part of it by far, you see further downstream it becomes so huge that, when on a boat in the middle you cannot see either shore… so, consider your horizons expanded - literally. And, of course there was the staircase of death. The institute, of course was on a hill, and there was a very long staircase, which also had this effect of fooling you. When you look up, you think, ok I can do this, it’s not too far. It’ll be fine. You start out, and it’s ok. Half way up, you drag your feet, panting, but you keep going because you’re half way there and you grind your teeth and squint through the bright sun and keep going, and finally you get there. And then you see that there is just as much to go. You see, at that point the slope changes in such a way that you can’t see the second half from the bottom, because it’s not as steep. You might think, hey isn't that good, the second half is half as hard, the worst is behind you, right. But the fact that you thought that you should have been done already weighs you down, so the second half is just as difficult as the first half. So basically the people who built the university have found the ideal way to torture their students, not only mentally, and psychologically, but also physically. But luckily we didn't go to the university even half as often as we should have, and the staircase was but a minor inconvenience.
Well, in other news I can reiterate my endless complaints about the weather here. Soon after the snow melted, the heat set in. and it’s been ridiculously hot for the past month. See, as I've probably already mentioned, Spring, doesn't exist here. There’s winter and summer, and a week’s transition during May-April and then a rainy gray miserable period that lasts all November. Apropos rain. There’s a ton of that too. Just recently we had a little rain shower which turned all the roads into little rivers over ankle deep. Oh Russia. You’re perfect just as you are, no need to imitate the tropics, silly thing. But then again in the tropics you get this adorable thing where you have gushing rain from 1:30-2:30 each day. Here it’s more sporadic, which makes it more inconvenient if anything.
 As for inconvenience, there’s another thing that’s really not something you want to do. Break the locks in the front door. I did that the day before yesterday after coming home from food shopping. My dad was out and when he came home, he realized that the door will not open no matter how long he jiggles his keys in them. In the end he had to come in through the window, which is rather comical if you've ever seen my dad. This morning we got up a bit earlier to attack the problem. We unscrewed the covers, juggled keys about, poked it with screwdrivers and did whatever we could think of. When all hope was lost, and my dad wanted to go out the window to buy drill bits to saw the thing out of the door one last attempt was made, he wanted to hammer the key in. who knows, it could help. Well the door opened smoothly. Apparently door locks are afraid of hammers… 
Ah, yes, there is one more interesting thing I’ve forgotten to tell you. In the past year or two I’ve developed an unpleasant tendency - if I’m in a stuffy hot enclosed space for a length of time - I faint. This usually happened in buses, but now I’ve managed the feat in the local train and the metro as well. This is probably due to my having low hemoglobin, so whenever a shitload of people stay in stagnant air for a length of time, I don’t get enough oxygen and I go ko. It’s an odd sensation, really. And you can feel it coming before hand. You get unreasonably hot first, and your head starts getting really slow and heavy,l you get very weak, and at some point you just can’t manage to stand anymore because you don’t have the strength. The odd thing being that as soon as you sit, it goes away. Same thing when you feel a cool breeze. Well, there had been an accident in the metro that day. The rails lost electricity and the train was stranded in the tunnel for 4 hours. No one was hurt or killed, of course, but no one was happy about this either. This had happened earlier in the day but apparently there were after effects, and the metro was so packed as I had never seen. When my train was stranded in the tunnel for half an hour between two stations (it normally takes 2-5 minutes to get from one station to another) at one point that happened, and someone sat me down and I got off the next stop. Luckily I could take the train from there and get to dgap, and didn’t have to walk, and as an added bonus I got a sitting spot in the train, which prevented an unpleasant relapse. btw, the photo really doesn't show the extent of the packed-ness there. Just take what you see and multiply the sensation by 20, and you get an idea.
well anyways that's about all of it. I’ll write again soon-ish. Toodles))

i yet live! muahahahahahahahahaha

Hello my dears!
again I am guilty of neglecting you all, but that was most;y because first I was way too busy with work, then way to busy with fun, and then there was to much busyness with sadness and lazing about, and now I finally am writing. In lieu of an apology there are pictures! Which I will explain. if you don't care, feel free to skip ahead to [***] The shiny wood things on the weird piece of paper (the one to the immediate right ----------------------------------------->), are, as you can probably guess, the wood carvings I did. A celtic knot type thing, and a fox type thing, just in case they confuse you, which I'm sure they do. The earrings (yes, those are earrings. and they're on a giant pile of real fir tree needles that I had made into a wreath, which turned into a pathetic tangle with a pile of needles underneath. and the snowflake is on that pathetic pile too.)  as well as the rose up top are presents I got. the roses are now happily dried and adorn my bookshelf. the snowflake was inspired by a VK post. I though it was cool and decided to try it out. I like how it turned out. this beauty --------------> is one of the multitudes of corsets that I am now a proud owner of. *yays* I'll spare you the glorious details because... well actually partially because over half of them are still in the US and it's probably be about a month before I get them, and I must content myself with but three pieces.

[***]

well, and now to the last unexplained picture. the one on the top right! I bet you can guess what it is! you got it! homework! theoretical physics to be exact. the thing that I am again procrastinating on. only this time I'm not studying for the exam >.< but I still have all day tomorrow, so I think I'll be good. I have printed out a mini version of the lectures for the material, and all that's left to do is find it in there, and look up any stuff that's not in the lectures and write it onto tiny pieces of paper that I will stick into a pocket, or a belt, or a boot. I haven't decided on that one yet. On the up side, this semester has been the best one grade wise ever. Aside from some random alternate course which I got a 3 on, because I hadn't been to a single lecture, all my grades have been 6 or higher, though I think this will change as soon as I am done with the theoretical physics exam, where 6 is probably the highest I could possibly get, because that's my rating for the seminars.  (holy shit, that's a long sentence!) But on the up side that also means that there's a 90% chance that a 4 is the lowest grade that they might give me. So school is going pretty well, I'd say. I'll just go ahead and blame that on "quality relaxation time."

Now about some more fun things!
Before D left for new years to talk to this dude at home about a pet project of his (which in the mean time has failed miserably since the guy never showed up, meaning the trip was kind of pointless, unless you count that I got to have a bit of a new years adventure as a positive outcome of said trip, which I will tell you about shortly.) we went to see the Hobbit! And we even ended up going on a bit of an unexpected journey of our own. Basically, I told him that either we'd need to see the movie before He left, or I'd simply go see it myself, because I've been waiting for it for... round about 10 years O_o (damn, I'm old!). But unfortunately it seemed like we wouldn't be able to do so, since neither of us had time with all the final projects and final tests that were happening at the time. But luckily one of my things got pushed back to the afternoon on a wednesday, which I, of course forgot. and managed to remember only on tuesday (the day before). Well, luckily, he found a movie theater that had it in the morning, and had tickets. But the location of that theater... oh my. Well... train, of course, then metro from one end of one line to the end of another line. and then a loooooooooong walk. That was something. When we went out of the metro we started heading towards a direction we thought was right. Then we asked random lady if we were going towards the MKAD (Moscow Circular Automobile Road - this huge circular highway around moscow where the cars move at snail's pace because of traffic jams.) and she told us it was the other way... well, turned out she was wrong... So after a long time of walking in weird circles and some unorthodox crossing of roads we ended up walking the same way we started, only we had lost about a half hour of time. Well, now at a quicker pace we walked... soon enough I felt that it was too hot, and ended up stuffing scarf, hat, and gloves into my bag. When we finally got to the MKAD (about 40 mins later), we walked along it, and soon enough came to the intersection one of those bridge types of the MKAD and some other large road. Note that by large road I mean 5 lanes in each direction. The MKAD had about 4 or 5 as well, though I didn't count. And we had to cross this monstrosity. We were so close to the theater, and yet so far. We ended up having to cross the road via bridge, descend from that via exit, then there was this little river that we had to cross. luckily there was a bridge there. A wooden path with concrete around it. Then up the steep bank, and along a snaky slippery path (remember this is winter and Russia, snow and ice everywhere.) with the road on one side and a steep fall towards the river on the other. And only then were you able to come to the mall, and there searching for an entrance, which took the aid of some random dudes in neon orange jackets, and then and only then we finally made it to that movie theater. We were quite happily tired when we finally arrived, though we did end up missing the first 10 or so minutes of the film. The movie itself was, of course, amazing. And aside from the bit about Azog, who according to Tolkien, is actually long since dead, I loved it all. All the addition wonderfully compliment the film and gave it a form that is so much more than the fairy tale version of Tolkien, and puts it into context with the great changes that would be triggered in that world. I'm already very excited for the continuation! After the movie, we ate, and then made the journey back. Only we were both very late to our respective thingies since the food in our stomachs sapped our strength, and the way back took us much longer. Through the woods and over the bridge to our base institutes we go! >.<

An now, the promised new years celebration! As I mentioned before D was away, so I ended up celebrating with my friend Lera. As always, we first planned to have just us two, but as things go here every year, three more girls ended up joining us. around 11pm we finally all assembled, and 15 minutes to midnight we had our heaps of food ready, which we left on the table to go see the fireworks and Putin talk, because that's what Russians do on new years. They listen to the president wishing them a happy new year. We grabbed our bottle of champagne (and to my delight I found that it didn't make me want to puke, as champagne always had done ever since halloween during first year, but rather it was quite good.) After the address, and the fireworks (which were organized by this, my tiny little, institute and lasted a whopping 15 minutes) we went back to the room to gorge ourselves on food and alcohol, which included salads, apples, pickles, tuna sandwiches, chocolate, red wine and vodka with some sort of berry juice. Once we were all well buzzed, and dancing around the room to crap music, we decided it was time to go dancing. Thus, we left for the dance party in one of the dorms. and we danced for a while, punching random dudes in the stomach with our elbows when they got to close. All was well, until this old guy crashed the party and broke it up because apparently someone was firing some sort of explosive device inside, and that was apparently a bad idea (I hadn't noticed it at all.) So we waited for the crowds to disperse as we sat on a couch, and disappointed that the evening should end so soon. Luckily, one of the girls had a way out of this dilemma. And after a while we went to another dorm, this time some room, and not the dorm club, and continued the partying. This time including free drinks! (mostly because we're girls and we're awesome.) So we drank and danced and danced until we were tired, at which point we moved to the kitchen, and ended up chatting with some of the locals. It turned out that one of the guys from my former German class lived in that apartment, and we had a good chat about all sorts of things, beginning with the language, and ending with life in general. At some point we sat and Lera joined us with some other guy I have no clear memory of, and we kept talking, at some point they all just went to bed, and Lera and I kept talking, and had a bit of a hear to heart, until about 5 30, and then went home because we were tired. I made it back to my room fine, but she, apparently, wandered around the dorm for several hours trying to find her room. And apparently she was so trashed, that she remembered little of the previous night. >.< for once, it wasn't I who had the memory gaps, and I got to tell her what had happened the next day.

So, friends, I think this is enough for one post. I haven't written a monster such as this in quite some time. But there you go. There was something to tell of this time around =) yays!

Happy New Year! Merry Christmases! Hanukkah! Kwanza! Whatever!  (insert any random holiday that gives you an excuse to have fun and/or drink!)

  

i'm alive!

The time for a new post has come and passed without me actually writing one, so now, instead of doing theoretical physics homework, which I won't be able to focus on anyways, I'm doing this. So first things first. The bf limbo is finally coming to an end. He's returning on Saturday  and all that business on his hospital end seems to be going well. So, yeah...
Otherwise, I've been feeling quite swamped with all my studies. Too much stuff to do, I guess. But I'll start with something positive. The saturday before last there was the annual open student's ball in honor of MIPT's birthday. I had been doubtful as to whether I wanted to go, but I ended up going, and I hadn't had so much fun since D and I spent a cold rainy night in a tent in the woods, which was at the very beginning of summer. There was lots of awesome dancing, and I mean REALLY awesome, both with guys and girls, because the organizers of this dance, are not homophobic, and appreciate a great lead, even when that person happens to be a girl. I danced almost continuously, got asked quite a number of times, which is always very pleasant, and have some photos to show for it. I also found out that waltzing when your calves are cramping is terribly uncomfortable and painful, and I couldn't walk without muscle pain for two days afterwards, but it was totally worth it. Last Saturday there was the small matter of my birthday. I didn't really celebrate, but my mom surprised me with a flower delivery which included an obnoxious balloon, singing happy birthday. But as cliche and kitchy it was it was nice. that day I also had a bit of a big presentation of my semester project. For some reason, I got a pretty good 'potential' grade on it. And here I say potential, because it's more of a trial run. the actual presentation is going to be two weeks from next saturday, and by next week I need to not only finish the project, but also have a paper ready to turn in for review. Also labs, and oh god theoretical physics. that's going to be my one big worry this year. the work at the base has been relaxed up till now, but is probably going to pick up soon, since half the allotted time is passing, and I have to have a literature review on the topic done by the 10th of December, which is a bit of a complicated matter, mostly because I still don't really know what I'll be doing. Well, enough of this. You get the gist of it. tons of work. And this, of course is the time that D has to come back. The busiest freaking time of the year. Well, he has reinstatement exams coming up too, so we'll both have stuff to do, but at least we'll be able to see each other now and then. Well, surprisingly this is really all that is happening, at the moment. lots of work, little else.
Oh, actually I've had two little wood carving projects, one I've made in the likeness of a fox, and the other is a very simplistic Celtic knot thing (a surprisingly thing to carve, actually. much more difficult than the fox - mostly because of the intersections and all the curves, etc.) The wood was obscenely hard, so I kind of killed my fingers a bit when I just started, but after spending 12 or so hours on it, the skin on the fingers becomes a bit tougher, and the pressure hurts much less, so I didn't even need band aids to save fingers from friction for the second piece. So yeah, all out of things to say for now, so cheers!
 I've now doused both in bergamot oil (mostly because it's the only type I have, but it has the plus of making them smell heavenly.) The idea that inspired this was, of course the upcoming holidays. so, as you can guess, these will be presents.)

first snow and other calamities

So, as the title suggests, we got our first snow. I know, what you're thinking. It's not even November for ****s sake, but this is Russia, and that's just how we roll. Or rather, that's just how mother nature likes to eat it's humans, either fried or in popsicles. And as you know, (or maybe not) the first snow, though it's a bit early this year, it always herald to the lazy people like myself, and many others, that it is high time to start doing all the coursework that you've been baling on for the last two months. (There's an analogous rule for the spring, where it's time to work, when the snow thaws) Well, aside from this sudden, downturn in weather, there's not all that much going on otherwise. aside from the usual programming for one class, reading for another class, more reading for both this class, and multitudes of others as well. Lots of busywork...

Today, however, there will be a lecture (in English) on exoplanets. I've no idea what they are, but I'm planning on going just for the sake of listening to some good English. And after that i get to stay up all night programming for my physical methods of investigation project, which i'm actually going to have to have half done by the end of November. and then there's the base labs, and, and, and, and, and... *sigh* so much work...
on the up side D might actually be returning earlier than I though. Here was thinking he'd be here only towards the end of November, but it turns out, that he'll have his last (or pre-last) rounds of tests around the 1st, and if the rest doesn't take too long, then maybe he'll be back by the 17th (which would be lovely, since I could drag him to the ball with me, and that would be quite fun.) well, soon enough, we'll see how it all will work out. all that's left to hope is that the whole hospital crap will actually work. That's my one big worry at the moment, aside from all the other crap.

On the up side, my nails are long now, and I bought decorative stickers for them, and they improve my mood every time I see them, which is kind of awesome I guess. *yay! for pretty nails*
well, folks, that's all for now. Got to run!

Oh, snap!

So, I was walking to my base institute today, when I walked past car crash. like a real legit car accident, with somewhat shmushed cars, airbags, police and, of course, a big ol' traffic jam! I didn't see any injured people, but I'm tihinking that there were some, because just as I was walking past, a freaking helicopter flew by above me. There it is on the picture. but what entertained me far more is that I actually was able to watch it land ( That was the first time I ever saw a helicopter land in real life, which was somewhat exciting.) Funnily enough right next to my base is a birthing hospital, which apparently didn't have a helipad, so the helicopter landed in the parking lot of the hospital, as weird as it was. but the most entertaining part was when i thought everything was done, I crossed the street, and just as I was approaching the fence (it's like 3 meters high) around the hospital, Two dudes in blue with backpacks were climbing over it.
I saw how two grown, intelligent men, in their 30s to 40s clamber across a freaking fence and then proceed to run towards that selfsame car crash, where they would probably be stopping a nosebleed. (The cars were in pretty decent shape, and there was much calmness so I'm assuming that it was not a serious accident as much as some serious person. and by that i mean someone with a lot of money.)  

free stuff!

A few days ago, we had a visit from the gas guy. The gas guy is this random maintenance person sent from whoever gives us our gas for the stove, and completely unsurprisingly, our 40 year old stove leaked, which is really not good, if you know aught of gas stoves. Happily, a bit of the old system still survives, and according to it, people on pension have the right to be given one from the government. As, you know we live with my grandma, so yesterday two men came and installed a new stove. For free. Just like that. I think that's pretty awesome. There used to be more programs like this one, but they kind of died in the 90s for various reasons. So you can say socialism sucks all you want, but there really can be no complaints about getting free stuff.

!?

Ok, so now I'll get to the actual good part! Or I guess it would be the good part, if you're a sucker for these things. But I'll start out a bit more obscurely. Imagine this scene.
It's early evening by a lake. And a dark wood, with many tall bushes and small alcoves within them. In one of these alcoves is a sort of camping ground for three tents, though only one was set up, and in the center - a fire pit with a flame crackling. Next to the fire stands a tree stump - a makeshift table of sorts and on it: a candle burns and there are two wine glasses with a bottle of red wine. In the background - a swing. You know, it's one of those things that you usually only see in those horrible chick flicks, where this random guy prepares this ridiculously elaborate surprise for the main heroine. You know the ones that make you want to either kill the screenwriter, or be in them, and you can't decide which it is you want more. And that actually happened. Like in real life. and it was awesome. But yeah, as you can guess by now,I got a new boy. and you'll laugh when I tell you about our first date: first we went to this random playground, then went on a very long walk and finished by watching the European championship in soccer! (I really really wanted to watch! If you didn't know, I become a soccer nut for a month every 24 months.)but yeah, since It's summer break, he's home and I'm home, so we don't see each other at all, (except when he's coming to Moscow just to visit me next Monday. But that's all we'll get to see of one another till the semester starts.) But he's awesome, very thoughtful, and cuter than a kitten if that's possible. So yeah. I'm happy. =)

Was stressed

Ok. Well idk if I even want to tell you about the ever constant homework serenades. You've all already heard them multiple times, and aside from minor deviations, they're always the same. Therefore, I'll keep it short. The most noteworthy instance was that I ended up turning in the last of my math hw in front of the new building at about midnight when there were a number of drunk students on all the other benches. Makes you kinda feel hardcore. Everyone's partying, and you're studying equations of mathematical physics. We totally rock. NOT!
Well so that was over and exams went as usual. Got a 5/10 on economy, which wasn't hard. Then barely passed those equation thingumses. And gave the final blow with the state exam on mathematics. So, aside from the exam I'll have to take to get into the masters program, I'm finally done with math!
Another interesting instance was how I passed my elective course. Here elective is meant in such a way: we got to pic between molecular biology, or 2 weird craps, that are not only boring as hell, but also a pain in the behind. So, needless to say I picked molecular biology, which as so many things not math or physics were a simple repetition of the SCAHS curriculum. I think went to 5-6 lectures of like 16, so I slept though almost half of them on location, which is quite the accomplishment. But the fun was how the final happened. The teachers gave us the option of doing a 5 minute presentation on a virus instead of actually having to answer questions pertaining to the material. Everyone, including myself jumped at the opportunity, of course. Now, for the epic story:
The night before the due date. I'm of course making the presentation. Once done at around 1 am, I find it's twice as long as it should be. Must. Not. Sleep. Must. Sift. Through. Hep. A. Virus. Info. Shorten. Pres.... well, you get the idea. I went to bed around 5 probably, and at 8 I had to get up. Lucky fro me, the window was open, and some workers decided that 10 am was a great time to make a hellish noise dragging metal stuff over asphalt. that woke me up. My first thought. @#!$##$%#!$#$%!#@#~#@$%&*&**%$##$%^(*&^%$##@~~#$%!!! My second thought: action! I got dressed in record time, and almost rand to the lecture hall, where I arrived at the very very end of my group. a minute later, and I'd have had to learn stuff! Think of the peril! I rattled off the presentation extremely quickly, (I made the 5 min limit although I had more like 7 mins of material) and even better got a full mark on it, and the whole course. Basically this was an exercise in awesome. For once in my life!


Now to bigger and better things. but first, I'll tell you the sad sad story of failure and idiotism, that killed much fun-ness. 'T was before the computational mathematics test. As you may or may not guess, I know nothing of computational mathematics, and thought that it would be good not to fail the test. To do that I supposedly need to study. (note the conditional clauses.) Unfortunately, just before the test there was this field trip thing. kind of like a sports/competition festival sort of deal. And, if you know me, then you know that I'm a sucker for these things. I love them to death! but, being the studious, good girl I am, I decided not to go in favor of cramming some more. Well, how do you think that turned out for me? Well, like 80% of the people who bothered showing up, i also totally failed it. Ergo: not only did I miss something I would have remembered for the rest of my life, but also totally f***ed up the test. yay me...

NOW, on to bigger and better things. Namely, the circus!!! I'm sure I haven't written about this yet! Winter (it was March 14th, but I say winter because it was still cold as f***.) Well, as you can see on the picture, I went to see Cirque Du Soleil. I went with my mom and dad. Dad didn't like it of course, because he's way to conservative to appreciate showmanship, but my mom and I liked it a lot. Very spectacular, to say the least! The music was interesting, and the costumes were the very best part. They had these weird white people in the most bizarre guises running around everywhere all the time. Their clothes were often wildly exaggerated, and each one was completely different and totally silly.


I'll stop here for today, since I'm tired of writing. (And I haven't even gotten to the most interesting part yet!!!) but more is soon to follow!! 

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 =))