Flat Stanley and Paper Napkins

I thought I lost Flat Stanley today. It would have been a catastrophe.

You may ask who/what is Flat Stanley. And I will answer you. Apparently there is a popular children’s series of books about a character named Flat Stanley who goes on all sorts of adventures around the world. He is flat, as in two dimesional. I am not sure if this is critical to the plot line of the stories. So American children read the Flat Stanley books and then they draw their own “Flat Stanley’s” on pieces of paper and send them on adventures. Like they would give the Flat Stanley to a truck driver and the truck driver would take pictures of Flat Stanley at various locations in the U.S. on his truck route and send the pictures back to the kids. Or they just send the Flat Stanley to relatives living in different spots across the U.S. And the relatives would take pictures of him and send the pictures back to the children. So I received Flat Stanley in an envelope from my mother approximately 2 weeks ago. This Flat Stanley belonged to a family friend, Jessie, who is in 2nd grade in Missoula. So I was instructed to take pictures of Flat Stanley in Russia and send them back to my mom and she would get them to Jessie. Later I was informed that Jessie’s entire class was talking about how Flat Stanley was in Russia.

I’m not big on the whole picture taking thing to begin with. Especially in Russia, where they might put you in jail for taking a picture. But knowing that the hopes of an entire 2nd grade class rested on my shoulders, I decided to suck it up and take Flat Stanley for a photo shoot on the banks of the Volga. So I did that and I sent the pictures off to my mother. Then I thought, I can probably get a picture of Flat Stanley by an onion-dome church without being arrested. So today on my various errands (Margarita thought I was at the library for 5 hours. I was not at the library for one moment.), I stopped by the church. Immediately I noticed two police cars. Churches, however, are one of the things you actually can fairly fearlessly take pictures of. So I pulled out the camera and then I couldn’t find Flat Stanley! He was not stuck in my planner where he was supposed to be. So I just took a picture of myself and the church and returned home. I was sort of relieved. I had begun to worry that the police men were really bored and would try to question me as to why I was taking a picture of this piece of paper with the church in the background. My Russian is not bad. It’s not especially good either. Even if I was completely fluent, the policemen would never have understood my explanation that Flat Stanley is a character from an American book who travels around the world and you are supposed to take pictures of him in different places and send the pictures back to the elementary school kids.
This is the sort of thing that captives people in the U.S. and everybody gets excited about finding the coolest place to take a picture of Flat Stanley. There is no way any Russian would ever understand this concept. Perhaps, they would. But I really don’t think they would. Mostly there would just be scorn at how worry free and trivial minded the Americans are. So I was sort of relieved that I had forgotten Flat Stanley at home and avoided any sort of atrocious conversation with the Russian police. After all, the churches always look better when they are lit up at night, so I figured I could just return tomorrow evening and take a picture when the church would be lit up. Then I got home and I still couldn’t find Flat Stanley. Panic began to occur. The Volga pictures were good. But Flat Stanley really needed to be photographed next to an onion-dome church before his tour of Russia could be done.

So I was freaking out about how I had lost/thrown away the piece of paper that Flat Stanley was drawn on. How the whole second grade class would be betrayed and heartbroken. Then I figured I could probably just draw another one and never tell anyone I had lost the original one. After all, it’s not important what Flat Stanley actually looks like, it’s just important what he’s standing next to in the picture. But then I found him stuck inside of my phonetics book. Thank goodness.

So tomorrow evening I shall take a photo of Flat Stanley next to the lit up церковь ильи пророка (Elijah the Prophet) and send those off to my mother as well.

My mom suggested I take a picture of Flat Stanley on the marshrutka. This is one of the most ridiculous proposals ever (sorry mom) and I refuse to suffer the humiliation of taking a picture of a piece of paper sitting next to me on the marshrutka.

Also, Laurel! Get excited about the fact that Flat Stanley is being sent to Paris! It has been requested that after his tour of Yaroslavl, he be sent on for some photos in Paris before being returned home to Missoula. Susanna, I’m not sure why Irkutsk didn’t make the cut. Sorry.

Other Things Unrelated to Flat Stanley:

I sort of went souvenir shopping today. As I have discussed earlier, souvenir shopping is a difficult task to embark upon for several reasons. I have no idea what anybody would want from Russia. However, whatever I purchase is required to be interesting, Russian, light (very-light), compact, easily packable, un-breakable, and cheap. It is sort of hard to satisfy all of these requirements in one gift. However, I came up with the brilliant idea of paper napkins from макдоналдс. These satisfy essentially all of the above requirement. Except that I think people would be underwhelmed when I return from Russia and proudly give them each a single макдоналдс paper napkin from the макдоналдс in Yaroslavl. So I scrapped that idea. But that is still my backup plan.

Kurt, I bought you the most awesome gift ever today. It is not a napkin from макдоналдс. I don’t think you actually read my blog. But hopefully Aiko will read this and tell you. It is awesome. And if you don’t think it is awesome, then I will just have to keep it for myself. You only have to wait ‘til February to receive it.

For a really long time I wondered what they called hair conditioner in Russia. I was smart enough to not go to a store and ask for кондитионер (conditioner) because then they would think I was requesting an air conditioner. Anyways I went to this small grocery store by our house to buy a bottle of shampoo and even though you get to pick out yourself the stuff, it was still stressful because the saleswomen were staring at me, so I just picked fast and left. And then I returned home and with the help of my trusty English-Russian dictionary which is now held together both with duct tape and black hockey tape realized that I had in fact purchased conditioner. I don’t remember the full word but it is long and starts with an “o”. So then I thought I would just pretend that the conditioner was shampoo and just use it. Except this doesn’t work because now my hair just constantly looks like a grease pot, even after I “wash/conditioner” it. So I went to another store today and actually bought shampoo. Good story. I know.

I can no longer pretend that this blog entry is a productive use of my time.