Week Five
What a week this has been. The weekday part of it was hellishly busy. Classes were long and teachers gave extra homework ; the temperatures were in the upper 90’s ; every day after class I ended up trudging somewhere or other difficult to find and in some way unpleasant ; once I got home I talked to my parents on the phone for a long time trying to straighten out all of our travel plans which, as always, are so complicated they seem to have taken on a life of their own.
Exciting news : from Thursday until Tuesday I’ll be in Turku, Finland ! I’m thrilled. I’ve made a long list of people and places I want to see and the foods and things I want to buy. I think the prettiness and orderliness of Finland will do me good. I have a 6 hour afternoon train ride both ways which will go across Karelia and I think will be gorgeous.
Well, now a little about this past weekend. On Friday after classes I went home and sat in my room staring at the wall in exhaustion and directing irritated thoughts towards Russia in general. On Saturday, Alla and I left very early in the morning for the dacha (summer cottage), which is about two and a half hours away. We spent the day there with her best friend and her best friend’s grandson. It was marvelous. We swam in a dirty lake. picked strawberries, blueberries, and elderberries, read lying in the sun, napped, and played badmitton. Saturday night I came back to the city tired, sunburnt, and very happy, to go out with Robyn and some of our friends from the program. I wont go into all of the details of the night here, but it involved lots of vodka and terrible Russian elektronica and was quite fun. At one of the clubs we went to, the bouncer tried to confiscate this enormous chocolate bar that I’d bought, and but I argued and refused to give it up so after a while he just started laughing and let me through with it, which was funny. He had a completely surprised look on his face. I don’t think he’d ever had a foreigner girl 1/3 his size argue with him over a chocolate bar before. Clearly he didn’t understand my love for chocolate.
Exciting news : from Thursday until Tuesday I’ll be in Turku, Finland ! I’m thrilled. I’ve made a long list of people and places I want to see and the foods and things I want to buy. I think the prettiness and orderliness of Finland will do me good. I have a 6 hour afternoon train ride both ways which will go across Karelia and I think will be gorgeous.
Well, now a little about this past weekend. On Friday after classes I went home and sat in my room staring at the wall in exhaustion and directing irritated thoughts towards Russia in general. On Saturday, Alla and I left very early in the morning for the dacha (summer cottage), which is about two and a half hours away. We spent the day there with her best friend and her best friend’s grandson. It was marvelous. We swam in a dirty lake. picked strawberries, blueberries, and elderberries, read lying in the sun, napped, and played badmitton. Saturday night I came back to the city tired, sunburnt, and very happy, to go out with Robyn and some of our friends from the program. I wont go into all of the details of the night here, but it involved lots of vodka and terrible Russian elektronica and was quite fun. At one of the clubs we went to, the bouncer tried to confiscate this enormous chocolate bar that I’d bought, and but I argued and refused to give it up so after a while he just started laughing and let me through with it, which was funny. He had a completely surprised look on his face. I don’t think he’d ever had a foreigner girl 1/3 his size argue with him over a chocolate bar before. Clearly he didn’t understand my love for chocolate.
posted by Julia | 5:57 AM
2 Comments:
hey julia, i finally found my way to your blog! it looks beautiful in russia. i started my own at worobs.blogspot.com. ive been searching frantically for your email and cant find it again (the worob organization:) anyhow, you should email it to me so i have it for certain at s_worob@hotmail.com glad to see you are doing well.
-love sukha
Hey Sukha!
Yeah I'll send you my email. I read your blog and France and India sound like they've been a terrific adventure. Have fun travelling and I'm sure you'll have lots of great stories when you get back.
Love, Julia
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