John-fuckin'-Denver?

So, an interesting day, to say the least. Class today was... well, it was a bit of a mindfuck. Our professor, while nice, spoke entirely in Russian. Even our instructions were in Russian, which was mildly confusing. I woke up not feeling well, and got steadily sicker as the class wore on. By the end of my nearly 4 hour class, I could barely answer questions, I was so sniffly.

Side note: Russians hate to give change. I purchased a banana for breakfast, for 11 p. When all I had was a 100p note, the clerk took my 1p coin, and asked me to come back later with 10p. When I did, different women were working, and were very confused by my trying to give them a 10p note, rather inexplicably.

After class, I slept until about 6, and awoke feeling better. Sniffly, but better. Chris and I ate dinner (soup, amazing mashed potatoes, and some sort of stewed apple with a sauce on top.) As the party we were due to attend didn't begin until 9pm, we had time to kill. We joined the rest of the Americans in the internet cafe for sodas.

Tarabeth and I ran up to her room to grab her nail polish remover (my nails were DISGUSTING). On our way back, we ran into a security guard in her hall talking to a very cute girl. She is Polish, named Agata, and she translated the guard for us. Essentially, pleasantries, where do we live, etc. But Agata lives alone, and the other 2 Polish girls live together, so she is lonely. We exchanged numbers, and I told her I would invite her out with us.

Chris ended up being too sick to join Elizabeth's little party, so it was 3 American women, and American man (fluent), 3 Russians and a very nice German boy. Elizabeth's boyfriend, Dima, is one of the funniest people I have ever met. He speaks decent English, peppered with curse words. It is actually quite amazing. Perhaps my favorite of my curses was "My fucking uncle fucked my pigs." He also has a way of moving, with somewhat overdramatic movements, that reminded me of someone on stage. Finally, Whitney (aka. "Memphis," an American I didn't know before, as she's in a different program, but I plan on hanging out with more often) pointed out he looked like Peewee Herman. Elizabeth was horrified, but, after being shown the videos, Dima seemed pretty keen with his new personality. Dima and his friend Roman also pantomimed the behavior of... dammit, I cannot remember the word. But essentially the boys we need to stay away from... "Russian guidos."

Perhaps the funniest of the evening's jokes was that of the "licked." Elizabeth claimed that her Russian sucked when she first moved here. Dima and Roman disagreed, and claimed it "licked." "Licked? That makes no sense!" "Licked... you know... its halfway to sucked!" Dima is... pretty hilarious.

Eventually, after the lot of us killed a second bottle of vodka, the boys brought out a guitar. They sang Russian and German songs, and finally, a few American songs... most notably, "Take me Home, Country Road." Yes, we sang Bob-fucking-Denver.

Side note: While walking home from class, the street lights were stuck. Cars didn't move, and kept beeping, while us pedestrians were pooled on the sidewalk, freezing. One woman made a break for it, and a cop stepped out of his car, wrestled her passport from her, and they walked to the car together, presumably so she could be ticketed. We also saw a motorcade... Two police cars around two very nice Mercedes driving past us about this time. Finally, we all got fed up with standing in the cold, and, en masse, waled across the street, backed up with cars. The cop was too busy writing the woman up to bother us. The lesson: don't fucking jaywalk, unless there are several dozen other people who also are. Safety in numbers.