6/5/09б 10:00 p.m.

as i write this, i am sweating my life away
apparently all the mild weather we came with is gone
it was fine until monday,
then it kicked up into the eighties
and we have 90º days and higher next week
awesome

in a few short hours, it will be the sixth
most of the western world will be celebrating d-day
as well they should, it was an important day
here in russia, we'll be celebrating something different
[something the russians actually care about]:
aleskandr pushkin's birthday
he'd be 210 this year
the group is going to a concert tomorrow night for him
they'll be reading some of his works aloud
while playing musical settings of them intermittently
i'm hoping for some excerpts from евгений онегин
the poem or the opera

classes are going [and going and going]
our movie class started up last week
this week we watched the first half of руслан и людмила
in honor of pushkin, of course
we'll finish it next week
our classes got scheduled really badly
this week we have double periods of each class
[every day we have two periods, first and second,
and they're usually two different things
like phonetics then culture, or grammar then phonetics]
so this coming week we'll have three hours of the same class
every single day except wednesday

random story of the week
darrin and i were sitting on проспект ленина
waiting for the womens to get done with their shopping
and this guy comes up to me asking for directions
i gave them very badly, then he asks me if i speak english
turns out he was a foreigner too [go figure]
his name was felipe, and he was from southern spain [valencia, i think]
he was on his way to новосибирск from севастополь
he had an overnight in volgograd, so he was seeing the sights
it was random, but it didn't surprise me in the least
i guess russia's rubbing off on me

on sunday we're having a barbeque with the nigerian students
they're all awesome people, and really friendly
i guess they're all been studying russian for about four years
they wanted to have a get together while we're all here
so we're gonna grill chicken on the banks of the volga
should be good times