Don't worry, I'm alive and well-fed

For those of you who read my post from last Friday, I wanted to let you know that I am alive, fed, and spending cash like it's my job. She offered to lend me money (I declined, but it's nice to know she was willing to help) and then she and Sveta helped me get to an office phone where I made an international call and sorted everything out with the bank. What a relief. Don't use Chase if you need to go to Russia. They will block your account. Anyway, it was great to have the support of Sveta and Evgeniya Nikolaevna. At one point I was nearly in tears and on the brink of trying to buy a ticket home (not really, but I was upset).

Anyway, my friend Matt, the Fulbrighter living in Novosibirsk, visited this weekend. It was really great, first of all to speak some normal American English, and more importantly, to be able to have a conversation with someone and understand each other so simply and naturally. In another language, it can be so hard to explain yourself, not just because of a lack of words, but because of different cultural experiences. When I was talking to Matt, relating about our teaching experiences, I felt as though I could read his mind, just because I knew so much about the sort of experience he must have been having over there as an American from a similar background. We agreed that Linkin Park is the favorite band of 90% of Russians and that it is not even worth explaining to Russians the concept of being too snobby to listen to mainstream music, let alone too snobby to admit to listening to standard alternative or independent music. These subtleties of the young American mentality cannot be translated into Russian.

Anyway, it was really great to have Matt here, and if it wasn't for a whiney, hung-over Ukrainian girl who complained constantly, the weekend would have been perfect. The weather was incredible. As Matt said, every Russian seemed to sense that Saturday was the last day of somewhat tolerable weather. He was right. Yesterday it was wet, windy, and voobshche merzkaya. Today was the first snow. I knew it was supposed to snow in the next few days, but when I looked out my window this morning I was terrified. For some reason my brain didn't process what my eyes were showing it properly. Something seemed very wrong. Matt and I were saying that we've heard so much about how harsh the winter is going to be, but that we really don't have any concept of what it's going to be like to live in it. It just seems like it will be so inescapably endless. Oh well, we'll see!

Love ya',
Jason