In Which Things Are Weird

12.11.2008

Today was just a weird day. When I woke up, there was no sign of Tatyana, which was bizarre since I didn't wake up particularly late. Then, while eating and getting ready to leave, I kept smelling wifts of something rotting. It smelled like a dead animal. Which freaked me out, because I thought Mysh might've choked herself to death on something or somesuch and was hiding dead in a corner. Then, when I was leaving, a woman's dog tried to attack me on the steps of the apartment, but, she held it back, plus it had a muzzle on. But still, it was unnerving. Then when I came home tonight the woman was leaving with her damned dog. I stayed clear.

After that... I noticed that ... it was very quiet, for some reason. I could hear my own footsteps when I crossed the street. It was just a very eerie silence, and it unsettled me a little bit. So throughout the day I had an impending sense of DOOM, so to speak.

That... was pretty much it. I thought I had more to say, but apparently not.

I learned about the breakup of Yugoslavia and the "War of All against All" today. That was exciting, since I didn't know much about the topic beforehand.

Uhm, I thought I had more to say... But I can't remember anything.

Apparently I spoke too soon when I said I fought back illness -- I'm still fighting. And it seems I've unfortunately developed a cough, plus a sinus headache earlier today. No good. No good at all. I don't want to waste the little remaining time I have on being ILL. I still have so much more to do!

I'm making a conscious decision to skip classes, tomorrow. I hate both of the classes, and I just don't feel like I can put up with them, tomorrow. Nor do I want to do the homework, tonight. I kept switching back and forth in my decision, because I feel really uncomfortable skipping class, but I decided I'll just go to the Smolny library tomorrow and do work all day. Indeed, that would actually be more productive than going to class, sadly.

I was going to try to apply to be a CA at Goucher, but then I realised that I can't 'attend the winter retreat' from January 23rd to 24th. Of course, they might not even have let me apply since I'm abroad and they seem to want a lot of person-to-person contact with the applicants beforehand. Which is unfortunate. The idea of lording over other students and having the ability to get angry with jackasses who are too loud was appealing for about two seconds. Alas.

As for language things, I feel like I could speak Russian better two weeks ago than I can right now... I don't know, maybe I've just been completely out of it all week. I'm not sure what's happening, but it's mildly distressing. On top of that, I really feel like I'm missing a LOT of basic vocabulary and basic constructions, or, I KIND of know them, but can't use them, or don't understand them enough and try to use them anyway but completely fail.

I've also been feeling a little homesick, recently. Not really in that I DON'T want to be here, so much as I DO want to be HOME. As in, I'm ready to leave now. I'm not really in a bad mood -- I'm excited to go out and do things. I'm just MORE excited that I get to go home soon enough. ... Soon eenough being like.. a little less than two months. BUT apparently RSL ends in like five weeks. Which means only five more of each class. Thank god. I realised that I get like half a month of free time to wander around St. Petersburg and such, which is fantastic. I plan on visiting Finland and the Baltic states during that period. Which is exciting, because that will be my first foray into the EUROPEAN UNION! Apparently, Helsinki is really interesting because it has very similar architecture to St. Petersburg, since, you know, Finland was a part of the Russian Empire during that time, but everything else is just entirely different. What kind of makes me uncomfortable, though, is that I will have to speak English with everyone, which makes me feel like a stupid American for the most part. I mean, I COULD speak Russian with them, but apparently they don't like it very much. For understandable reasons. We'll see. It'll be an interesting experience.