Third Blog Entry (the other abandoned ones are available if you scroll down)

This is now the third WORD document I have open on my computer in hopes of typing a successful blog entry. The first one started out good and turned into me talking about how much I love Russia. Although it’s interesting to type and try to explain my reasoning (there is no reasoning), and I spend a lot of time thinking about this lately, there’s no adequate explanation. Any “normal” American or Russian, in fact, probably any person in the world would want to live in America before they would want to live in Russia. And so it’s pointless trying to have people understand what I like about this country so much. I feel like I’m a puzzle piece and I sort of fit into the America puzzle, but you have to bend the piece (me) in order to get it to fit. But the puzzle piece fits into the Russian puzzle perfectly. I also don’t like my “I like Russia SO much” writing because I’m afraid that the moment I return to America, I will realize how much better America is and then I will have to look back at these blog entries read by lots of people in which I spent all my time talking about how awesome Russia is and I will feel like a fool. But that will not happen. I will always still love Russia. Ahh. We’re back on the “love Russia-ness.” So I abandoned the first WORD document.

Second WORD document. This quickly turned into me talking about how bad reverse culture shock is going to be (returning to the U.S.) which although is not directly saying that I like Russia a lot more than America, that’s pretty much what it’s saying. So I abandoned it.

Third WORD document. This is it. I refuse to allow myself to transition into my poetic thoughts about Russia-ness. So I will objectively explain important events which have occurred in the past days.

I went to basketball on Thursday for the first time in a while. I missed it while I was in Archangelsk, once to go watch a Loko game, once for Thanksgiving dinner… And one of the girls, Masha, asked me when I was leaving. And I had to say “in two weeks.” It always used to be “I don’t know, either in December or in June,” then it was “in six weeks,” “in five weeks.” And suddenly now it’s “two weeks.” Granted I’m not leaving Russia for probably 8 weeks. But I’m leaving Yaroslavl on Dec. 17th. Then I’m coming back for like 3 days with Susanna, but that’s too complicated to explain in Russian. So I just go with the 17th as my final departure date. Then she asked if I thought I had improved a lot in my Russian while I was here. I really don’t like this question. I can’t tell if I’m better. I feel like the more you know and the better you get, maybe the better you realize how little you know. Does that make sense? And so I went with my standby answer of “Well I understand a lot more now.” Then she told me that the first day at basketball, the only word I said was “Da.” So apparently I have improved. But I still share the fear with Natalie that we will return to Midd and people will not believe that we have spent the past what 7/8 months speaking Russian. Like we’re still bad. But then I remember the first days of summer school when like we just never talked (at least I didn’t). And if we did we talked very slowly. Now I talk and at a fairly fast rate, granted the grammar is sort of a nightmare. I don’t know what the point of this story was….

I don’t remember what I did on Saturday. Oh yes. I bought Love Actually in Russian. It cost 4 dollars. And now I watch it. A lot.

Sunday was the elections to the State Duma. So I tagged along with Margarita when she went to vote. After she showed her passport and received her ballot, the guy looked up at me. I just shook my head and backed away from the table. I wonder what would have happened if I had produced my U.S. passport to him. I bought one of the Russian Federation Passport Cover Things for it. So now people are especially surprised when they open that and see the damn American eagle flying about the pages and other general American looniness.

Anyways, Edinaya Rocciya (United/Unified Russia) won like 63 percent of the votes. Then the Communists, then LDPR, then Spravedlivaya Rocciya (Just/Fair Russia) all got the minimum 7% of the votes to make the cut to have seats in the Duma. So now Putin and Единая Россия can do whatever they want since they have a constitutional majority. So probably soon Putin will resign from the presidency, so that he will have the necessary amount of time out of office and be able to run again in the March presidential elections. Except maybe he won’t. But I think he will.

Also today in politics we talked about if the elections were democratic because already huge delegations of election auditor people decided not even to come oversee the elections (I already wrote about this.) They said Russia was making it hard to get visas. Russia said America made them pull out to make Russia look bad. But some big European group/organization/thing that came and oversaw elections just made some announcement that the elections were undemocratic. I don’t really know that much about it. Except today our politics professor was talking about it and said the solution to the problem was for Russia to stop being a member of that organization. That Russia was the largest, richest member of the group and paid the most money to support it, and if they were going to claim our elections were unfair, then we will just not be a part of their organization any longer. That is brilliant. Perhaps I should be appalled at how disrespectful it would be for Russia to pull out of the international organization. Perhaps I should be worried about their claim that Russia’s elections were undemocratic. Actually I feel like Russia is proving a worthy opponent on the world stage. Russia is doing things that only America is allowed to do. It’s brilliant.

I don’t think I like the fact that Единая Россия has that much power. It does seem sort of undemocratic (not the elections) but the fact that they will clearly dominate Duma. But the Communists are old and outdated and LDPR (which translates as the liberal-democratic party of Russia) is well crazy. Jirinovski (their head leader) is essentially the entire party. Margarita told me he is a very brilliant man and that a while ago, he proposed a law allowing Russian men to have more than one wife, because there is a severe imbalance of Russian men and women (as in there are a lot more women than men). I think the fact that he was brilliant and his wedding rule proposal were two separate things in our discussion, but anyways. He’s crazy. And справедливая россия is a really young and relatively weak party and they barely made the 7 % barrier.

I think I would have voted for Edinaya Rocciya. Maybe that’s only because I have spent the past month reading all of their pre election handouts and programs and propaganda and ads and such. But I just think that life in Russia gets better every year. They move further away from the failure of the Soviet Union and closer to the level of European/American lifestyle. Although, Russia will NEVER be Europe or America. Which is a very good thing.

I don’t know why I approve of Putin. Maybe it’s because they always talk about how awesome he is on the television channels. He’s always in a different part of Russia or different countries having some meeting, with leaders of Iran or miners in Kamchatka. They can’t make up the fact that he is having these meetings. He does do a lot of work. Does Bush ever meet with people? Aside from during election season. I guess I never watch the news in the U.S., but I get the feeling that Bush hangs out in the white house or farm/ranch in Texas or various undisclosed locations. Even if Putin’s politics are bad (which I don’t think they are), I feel like you have to admit that he is a good politician. Perhaps the fact that he is a good politician automatically makes his politics questionable. Ah. Now I’ve even confused myself.

Maybe I like Putin because he is making Russia strong. And an equal of America. I feel like America needs some opposition. Otherwise we’ll just go around starting wars with various countries. Today on the news, there was some news item about the U.S. and Iran. And some politician saying (I think) that we (U.S.) need to be careful with the U.S. and Iran, because Bush tricked us all last time into starting the war in Iraq. Are we about to start a war with Iran? Isn’t the world more stable when there are several strong countries than when there is one bully country that just does what they want? I’m tired of thinking about politics.

Sunday I purchased a ticket to the Loko game tomorrow (Wednesday). I have now done this three times. The woman at the ticket office is tired of me. There was an audible sigh when I approached the window on Sunday. Also, buying tickets is really much more than necessarily complicated. First I explained I wanted a ticket for Wednesday for the price of 150 roubles. Then she says, what section of the arena, as there are like 6 different sections of the arena where seats cost 150 roubles. So I said section 13 because I have sat there before. Then she said what row? And I asked what rows were available and she began to read them all of. Does it really matter if I sit in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd row? So I said 3rd row. Then she asked another question. I didn’t understand it, so I went with the go-to answer of “yes.” That was not the right answer. She started listing off more numbers. I heard her say “first” and I immediately said yes. Only after I had agreed to “first,” did I realize she was asking me what seat number I wanted. I actually didn’t want the first seat as it’s on the aisle, but there was no way I was going to change my mind and ask for the 6th seat or something like that. Also during this discussion, she asked me how many tickets I wanted? Two? I was so flattered by her suggestion that I was in fact not only buying a ticket for myself, but also a ticket for some hot, hockey-playing Russian man. But, alas, I answered “no, one.”

But is it really necessary to pick your exact seat? Can’t you just pick the price and they figure out the rest for you? Is there this abundance of choice in the U.S.? Like if I went to buy a ticket to an N.H.L game would I actually get to pick not only the section and the row, but the specific seat. Especially if it was a cheap ticket. Granted a cheap ticket to an N.H.L game is way more than the 150 roubles, 6 bucks to the Loko games. But still. Wouldn’t they just assign you a seat for whatever price you were going to pay. So now I have a ticket to the Loko game tomorrow. Woot Woot! Also, there is a Loko game on Friday, the final one while I am in Yaroslavl. Well, Susanna and I are hopefully returning to Yaroslavl while there is another Loko game so that we can go to it after I “leave” Yaroslavl on the 17th. But that doesn’t count as me being in Yaroslavl as all of my luggage will already be in Moscow (hopefully, must call and order taxi man tomorrow). So essentially this means that probably on Thursday, I will have one of my last chances to buy a Loko ticket. And hopefully I will be able to successfully pick out a section, row, and even seat number and the women will not sigh (too loudly) at me.

Tonight I just returned from my zachyot/ interview/ final exam for my mainstream class. Essentially, this consisted of me having a 5 minute conversation with my professor about the fairy tale Cinderella (Золушка). So if anyone is interested in my character analysis of the various characters in Cinderella or explanation of some of the 31 events that often occur in fairy tales (and which ones can be found in Cinderella), I am well prepared for such discussion.
Then after returning from such exam. I allowed myself to write this blog entry. Well to start three different ones and finally finish this one. And now I have to do my grammer and my phonetics homework. And it is midnight.

Also tonight Margarita gave me this hunk of chicken to eat for dinner. There was lots of redness and bone and skin and just general not acceptable-ness occurring in said meat item. Plus I just don’t like chicken. Perhaps I should be ashamed to reveal this, but I would take a hot dog over chicken hunk any day. So I sort of ate the chicken. Meaning tried to disguise it by eating a piece of chicken followed immediately by large forkful of pasta or gulps of water/apple juice. And then when Margarita went to go turn on the chainik, I skillfully took most of the chicken and wrapped it in a napkin and put it in my lap and hoped that our cat, Vacya, wouldn’t catch on and suddenly start attacking my chair until it was revealed that I was smuggling gross chicken. Then the chicken was successfully thrown away on my way to class. Good story. I know. When I move back to Russia, I will not be eating hunks of chicken. Am I actually allowed to use “hunks” in this context?

Going to do my homework…