Боже мой!

I had my first violin lesson! It was lovely to get some guidance again. I miss taking lessons. It was difficult because I only understood half of what he was saying (Igor Dmitrivich, my teacher), but like my printmaking class it was made easier by sensory communication--showing, playing, listening, watching, and finally understanding. He's a great guy! He calls me "Nadyushka", the ultra-diminutive of Надежда, the Russian word for Hope. No, Nadya isn't diminutive enough for him, it's not a high enough level of cute. He needs to be absolutely sure that I understand how seriously little and sweet he thinks I am. You know, in English it'd seem unbelievably condescending, but in Russian it's just...it's just how it is.

My language skills are improving. My accent feels more natural every day, my tongue is getting used to the gymnastics of Russian pronunciation (thanks to a little help from my Phonetics class with Svetlana Borisovna), and I think I could honestly say I'm learning no less than one new word a day just in conversation, not to mention the vocabulary I pick up in class. Замечательно! That is to say, right on!

And life here goes on: Tuesday night I went to a rehearsal of the SPBU choir and afterward had tea with a girl from choir and her roommate, both named Dasha, both very sweet wholesome-seeming girls. They're a pair predestined: they grew up in the same city, have the same name, both study sociology at SPBU, and while I was visiting both of their mothers called them--and yet they didn't know each other before they became roommates. They invited me to...a concert? I'm not really sure what they invited me to, but it seems to me it could be fun. And I didn't have class yesterday so I stayed out late. I walked from bar to bar with what could turn out to be my regular Tuesday night crew, starting at an Irish-themed bar the size of our kitchen where they were watching German girls mud-wrestle on TV. Then, we went to the only Mexican restaurant I've seen in this country. We couldn't just pass it by without checking it out--Mexican food is like the Holy Grail here: many search for it, but it remains hidden or perhaps even mythical. Every so often somebody claims that they serve a taco or burrito, but the first ketchup-and-sour cream-smothered bite proves it to be a hoax. So we got what turned out to be passable, even tasty, chips and salsa and the bartender gave me a free experimental drink (who would have thought that Baileys, mint, vermouth, and grenadine would be good together? Let me amend that--who would have thought that any drink tastes amazing if you set it on fire first?). Then, onward in the rain to a Soviet kitsch-themed bar where I played chess with a guy named Maxim and lost spectacularly (I thought his queen was his king! The cultural barrier extends to the gender of chess pieces, I guess).

I have new flatmates. Xoi Shun, the Taiwanese girl who lived next door, moved out several weeks ago and now the room that shares a kitchen and bathroom with mine is occupied by two Italian girls, Consuela and Anatolia, whom I barely met Tuesday night on my way out the door. They seem nice, and they'll be my motivation to clean up and do my dishes (no longer will I live in squalor!). Yesterday we met more in-depth, and it turns out they cleaned the whole apartment, bought air freshener and paper towels, scrubbed the toilet. Thanks, ladies--only now am I acutely aware of how grubby my own room is. Some things will never change--I put everything in order and and and and a moment later my desk is invisible under a landscape of papers once more.

Thursday already! I can't believe how quickly time is flying. Before I know it I'll be on the plane back home. I'm already compiling a list of things I miss, and things I will miss.