Lent

With Febuary coming to a close and Lent fast approaching, Wednesday to be precise. I thought I'd let you guys know what I'll be doing.

Actually it's not that interesting. Of course I'll me going to Ash Wednesday Mass this Wednesday. There I will recieve ashes and then go home.

Anyways slightly more interesting than that is the fact that I went to the new chinese food restruant that recently opened up and it was basically the best food I've ever eaten. The food was excellent and to add to that it was incredable cheap, like any meal would be under 5 bucks. It also served the best green tea I have ever had. Overall it was an excellent meal and I can't believe a restruant like that exisits in Vladimir. So I'm quite happy.

Let's see we also had another birthday last week and there will be another this week. Birthday parties are always fun.

Other than that, not much has happened. I'm still 2 weeks away from our St. Pete's trip. Can't wait. I guess it's been about 5 weeks into the last semester? Really it feels like time is going to fly. After Petersburg we have a week an then 4 days of independent travel, then a week, then it's Easter and another excursion, then a week, then I'm off to Sochi for 2 weeks, then it's exams and I come home. Well, I guess its about 11 weeks no matter how you look at it, whatever.

Back Online

I'm starting to lose faith in my current internet cafe. I came in yesterday to finally get back online after a weekend away and I find that the power is out, again. That was the second time the power has gone out in this place. Oh well, not much I can do, this is just about the only game in town, I really don't like the other place.

Ok so, last weekend I was in Suzdal again. I really like that little town. The food was excellent, they have this really good pork fired in egg and covered with cheese, and the best blini (like a pancake) desert I've ever had. Plus we went back to the hotel we stayed at last semester for a little pool/sauna fun. They have a really great pool. So Suzdal was fun.

Coming up this Thursday is a Russian holiday, Men's Day. It's actually not that big of a holiday, but we do get the day off from school. The big day is Women's Day on March 8th, I hear that is a huge holiday. But this Men's Day is also my friends birthday, which of course we will be celebrating.

In other news, I've offically passed the 1st month mark for this semester, only 3 more months in which to live in Russia. I'am sure I'll miss it when the time comes, but I'm itching to get back to UMD and America in general (when I say get back I mean get back and stay back). I'm pretty tried of lugging my life around in suitcases. It will be nice to feel at home again. Still, I've got a lot to look forward to here. in 2 and 1/2 weeks I get my Petersburg trip, can't wait!

Batman

Some of you may know that I have a certain affinity for the Dark Knight. Well, I stumbled onto this story and thought I'd post it for your reading pleasure. (By the way, I'm also a Frank Miller fan).

Holy Terror, Batman!

Silence

I notice that I’ve been pretty quite for a couple days. I do apologize, but let me explain. Lately I have found myself unusually busy. For some reason This whole week has been filled with at least 3 hours of homework a night, plus various other projects I’ve had to work on. Well it is summer job season and as always I’m a bit worried about my prospects, although this year looks promising. So basically my time at the internet café has been filled with many emails to various people and a bit of researching as well, with much more still to go. Do you guys realize that I actually have to register for classes soon!? Exactly how that will go done with me being in Russia and rather restricted when it comes to internet access, I don’t know, not to mention I’m not entirely sure how this years worth of credits will pan out. Aside from that online job applications take a long time when you only have an hour a day in which to do them. Plus I also have the little things like school, home life, and my various appointments. Example? Well today was basketball. That probably took up 2 hours of my time after school. But I had to keep up my dominance on the court (man I had this sweet 3 pointer in one game).

So long story short, or whatever, My blogging access has been severely restricted. However, I have been keeping up a few posts at home and if you scroll down you will be sure to see them.

Russian Hospitals

So I promised a Russian hospital story right? Well over Christmas break my friend flew down to Turkey to visit some friends. While he was there he happened to be bitten by a cat. Weird right? Well by the time he got back to Russia the bite had turned into an infection and he had to go to the hospital to fix it.

First let me describe the American procedure to this problem. Walk in, talk to the doctor, receive quick treatment and antibiotics, then live. Form what I understand from my friend this was not an overnight problem.

Ok so here is what really happened. He went to the hospital and was treated. This involved slicing open the wound and draining it, then applying some antibiotics (this doesn’t really affect the story but in case you wanted to know …). As it turns out, a blood infection earns you a two week stay at the hospital, that’s right two weeks, no less. So my friend found himself in a ward with a couple other Russian men, all in for various things, although I believe they were related. My friend spent 9 days here until our teachers finally convinced the hospital to let him leave. It actually took the doctor ordering the hospital to let him leave, they were really bent on the 2 weeks.

During those two weeks my friend received daily injections of something (he wasn’t quite sure), two shots right in the butt, which is apparently pretty painful. Other than that his stay was pretty boring. Every week the nurses would “sterilize the room.” This involved them wheeling in a big ultra violet projector and basically irradiating the room clean. Whether or not this actually works, I don’t know. What I do know is that the en in the room are simply asked to cover their eyes for the ten or so minutes they are doing this. Needless to say my friend was conveniently absent from the room the next time they did this.

Something I found pretty interesting from the whole story was the room dynamics between all the guys. They really get to know each other and become good friends. My friend said that they would frequently raid the hospital store and cook up some home made “spirits”(i.e. rubbing alcohol). They also managed to smuggle in some vodka often enough.

My friend got out of the hospital a few days before classes started, and was plenty thankful to be out. Of course it’s funny to talk about it now, but he would definitely never want to go through that again. This brings me to another funny point in that a few weeks later he got another infection, this time a staff infection, in his arm, possibly from the Russian hospital? We may never know, but this time he happen to be in Moscow when the infection got bad again and got to use the Western hospitals available there.

Pretty crazy right? Basically I try not to think about the hospitals here, it’s just easier that way.

Something ...

It’s been pretty warm around here lately, like -10s or something. I’ve been enjoying it. It’s pretty weird that I will walk out into below freezing weather, but still feel thankful for the warm weather. Things have certainly been going over here. This weekend I’ll be in Suzdal again. I like that little town. However were staying at a new hotel, the last one had a bowling ally, billiards room, sauna, pool, and like 5 bars. I can’t say if this new place will live up to my expectations, probably not though. Still it should be fun. Of course after this weekend I have 3 straight weeks and no trips (I know! No traveling for free for 3 weeks, you guys must feel so bad for me). I learned today that Vladimir has no decent video store. My friend and I were looking for various DVD’s to buy and found none, oh well that’s what Moscow is for I guess.

The one thing I have been doing is watching the Olympics. Were only 2 hours ahead here, which is pretty nice. Actually I’m really looking forward to the Men’s hockey which starts today! We don’t get many mainstream sports on TV here, so it will be a treat to watch. By the way, if any of you bothered to watch the women’s hockey you might also know that Russians women’s team is pretty bad, they lost 7 goals to Canada in just the first period of the one game I saw. Surprising, it really just adds to my suspicions that hockey is not has big here as everyone (or at least me) thinks. Actually I’m pretty curious how is the Olympic coverage in the US? Here, unless you watch the sports channel, you only see little updates on the News. I get the feeling it’s not as popular here, but I could be wrong, my observation area is pretty small. Don’t worry through I’m still rooting for the USA.

3 Weeks .. or maybe 4

Well the time has slipped my mind for the moment, but I'm somewhere around week 4. Things are good, I gotta says this semester has been so much easier then the last in terms of just about everything. But I still have lots of work to do, so don't worry about me, I keep busy. I've been working on a rather interesting post about the Russian hospital experince (not mine). Look forward to it.

Letters

I thought I would let you guys know what you could send me this semester if you so decided again. I know last semester I aked for swedish fish (and that offer is still open, yes I will accept and eat any swedish fish sent to me for FREE). But I'll be honest you don't have to send to bucks to ship those out here unless you really want to. What would be great to get are letters. Letters are cheap and fun to get, Nothing special just a hello, maybe a picture, who knows maybe I'll return a reply (well, you'll at least get a thank you email).

Anyways my address is

600000 Vladimir, Tsentr Russistiki KORA,
ul. Vorovskogo, d.14, Joseph Tercero, Russia

(Ya, there's my real name, oh well I suppose)

By the way, If you would like to use my courier services go ahead and send me and email, space is limited, so first come first serve. I can bring back anything really, just let me know. Delivery date: May

So I'm Back

Yup, back from Moscow again and back into another week of school. Moscow was fun, as usual. We were able to see the armory museum in the Kremlin, which was cool, and the World War 2 museum, also neat. The Armory is full of tons of things owned by the Tsars. Thrones and carriages, dresses, dinnerware, personal items, and an awesome weapons section. It was well worth seeing, but how much can you say about a museum. The same goes for the World War 2 museum. It had some neat guns and stuff, as well as several battlefield dioramas (those were particularly awesome). Aside from the museums I also went to Gorbushka, Moscow giant indoor music and video market (that is pirated music and video), plus it has a whole bunch of electronics and related things. I picked up some DVDs and a CD by a band called "Naive" (great russian punk band). This CD I had wanted for a year or two, but for some reason I could never find a place online to sell it to me, don't really know why. That was cool. Other than that there were a few bars and meetings up with Moscow friends. Not much to say of the bars, it's still hard to find a dark beer in Russia.

Moscow

This weekend I'll be in Moscow. Yeah for that! So of course you probably won't see a post until I get back on Monday. I know, you can hang in there.

So tomorrow marks the week point and I can say with confidence that I am settled in again. (Much faster than last semester). Classes are in full swing and have actually been fun so far (we got to do a little political debating about Yeltsin in class today, it was hard in Russian but fun none the less). It seems this semester we have picked a new place to be "Our Cafe" and this one has a movie theater too (no dark beer though). Speaking of which, last Friday I saw "Cry Wolf", Of course it was in Russian but moving pictures aren't that hard to understand in any language, especially horror flicks. The movie was well ... I liked the idea, but not so much the presentation, plus the last five mintues were stupid.

I don't think my sleep schedule has caught up with me yet, I still wake up a couple times a night. Last semester this didn't go away for like a month or two. Oh well I guess.

See you in a few days!