inoctiluci

I went to Turkey. I'd like to go back someday, because one week is not nearly enough. I did things like get scrubbed from head to foot by elderly women, drive a car across the countryside, sit in on prayer at mosques, try to communicate with Turkish men carrying large guns, etc. The people were very nice, and the food was tasty.

Yesterday was my three-year anniversary of living in Irkutsk. Today starts my fourth. :)

Yesterday was sunny and warm, until it got really dark at around 5:00 PM and then started hailing and snowing. I'm not sure what this means about the next year in Irkutsk.

I was reading through some old livejournal entries today. I have changed so much since those first few months I spent in Moscow 4.5 years ago.

I'm in Irkutsk, safe and sound. There were many adventures, which I'll write about later.

I am having a bit of culture shock, and really wish I had some friends here.

There are mountains nearby, and beautiful places near the city.

Go here to see a satelite image of my university next year.

I'm working at the YMCA of the Rockies right now. The mountains are beautiful, especially in the early morning. Today, on my way to breakfast, I watched a snowstorm up in the mountains. Soon it'll snow here in the valley. There are so many Russians here that I've started dreaming and thinking in Russian again.

I fly out of Kansas City on September 14, get to Moscow on the 15th, leave Moscow on the 16th, and get to Irkutsk on the 17th.

I've changed the appearance of my livejournal, but I've also made an entire new website that is being hosted by math.grinnell.edu. I hope it'll be ready to share soon, and I'll post the link here when it is.

This computer rocks.

I want to make a webpage through iweb on my mac. I want to post it somewhere other than .mac, because I don't want to pay for that service. Can I to that? Is there another place I can post for free?

P.S. I love my macbook. I'm thinking of naming it Sasha (for Sasha Belyi from the Russian gangsta series, "Brigada"), because it's white ("Belyi" means "white") and it's badass (just like Sasha Belyi).

Life's pretty good right now.

I bought myself a macbook (should get here by June 27), I have an apartment lined up in Irkutsk for a decent price, my job should start in the next few days, and I've figured out a Father's Day present to get my dad.

I've been relaxing a lot so far this summer, and it's been quite nice (when I'm not bored out of my mind). I go to sleep at around 11pm, I wake up at around 11am. Stress. I have been going to the gym almost every day. Last week I put way too much weight on the squat machine, and I'm just now able to do stairs without cringing. It turns out this machine is at a different incline than the one in Grinnell.

That's about all the news around here.

Looks like I'll be a full-time ACE Hardware Cashier this summer. Woo! a job! C'mon, be excited.

Also, I think I've decided to go for the MacBook. I get a free ipod nano, a free printer, and a student discount until the end of June. The only thing that worries me about it is the little camera installed above the screen. I might be just paranoid enough to make a little cover for it. I mean, what if I'm picking my nose in front of the computer and it gets broadcast everywhere? However, it could be very cool for talking to folks from home when I'm in Irkutsk. Or for making videos and burning them to DVDs on the computer and sending them to people.

I'm buying a laptop to take to Russia. Margo suggests the tablet PC. I like the MacBook. Dad thinks I should get a Dell.

Does anybody else have any suggestions? I'm fairly clueless, but I'd like to get something that's good and affordable. Also, I like long battery life and lightness/smallness.

I think the main reason I like the macbook is the operating system. It's just much sleeker and prettier than Windows.

Well, after not living with my parents for more than a week at a time since high school, I'm back in KC for the summer. I'm not totally sure what I'll be doing here, but it might include planting a vegetable garden, cleaning out the basement, having a garage sale, attending Quaker meetings, volunteering, working at a coffee place, and traveling. If you're here, it should definitely include hanging out with you.

I've decided that I don't want any more STUFF until I've made a downpayment on my own house.

In-country Fulbright orientation is in July in DC, and I move to Siberia in September.

I got the Fulbright!!!

There was a message on my machine when I got back from graduation, and after a series of return calls I found out I'd won the grant.

I. am. so. excited.

I participated in my first 5k jog today. It was called "Hoofin' It" and the proceeds went to MICA. I did walk some of the way, but we finished in 37 minutes, which I feel is something.

I have a plan:
1) graduate
2) get rid of as much debt as possible
3) get a job
4) make money
5) get a job in Russia
6) go to Russia

I think I'm also in the camp of a certain housemate of mine who says she plans on "not getting shot and not getting pregnant." That also sounds like a good plan.

Things I'm looking forward to:
- having a vegetable garden
- living at home
- walking the dogs
- not writing any more papers

I went to the doctor today to try to fix some of my allergy problems. He prescribed a steroid, which has the following side-effects:

- inappropriate happiness
- bulging eyes
- increased hair growth
- changes in the way fat is spread around the body
- insomnia

I'm imagining a lumpy, wild-haired, bug-eyed Elisabeth jumping around (Spiker style) at 3 in the morning while laughing manically and perhaps drooling, for good measure.

I'm ready to go back to Russia. This summer I'm going to try to make money at any job I can find, and then I'll go back to Moscow. I've been looking at Language Link as a possible program that might allow me to earn money. Does anyone else have better ideas?

We had the last performance of my dance/theatre production on Sunday. In the end a it was successful show, although it was a lesson in just how difficult experiemental theatre can be. We started rehearsing three months ago with no script, no real idea of a final product, eleven performers of various experience levels, and two directors. Through the process we had to deal with a lot of uncertainty, but there were also incredible bursts of creativity and eventually a respectable product. It was a good first try, and I'd eventually like to do something like that again.

Timur Shaov, the visiting artist at Grinnell (a Russian bard) and guest in my senior seminar for the last few weeks, did a concert on Sunday at the annual Slavic Coffee House (Russian food, Russian talk, etc.). I'd invited Artyom and his parents, and they'd asked if they could bring a couple of friends. After the dance show ended I headed over to the Slavic Coffee House to help set up. I glanced out the window shortly after 5:00 and saw Artyom in the midste of a herd of children and parents. I think there were about 20 of them total, including about 12 Russian kids. It was fantastic, and I'm so glad we had enough food. The Grinnell Russian professors were all serving food, offering dishes to the kids in Russian. The looks on the faces of those kids when they heard an adult speaking their language and eating their national food was really heartwarming. A lot of the kids have been in the US for less than a year. After dinner, we all went into the other room for Timur's concert. Timur sings songs about whiskey, daydreaming, women, politics, love, the mafia, etc., and the kids were almost falling out of their chairs when they heard the first song. All the pieces have a lot of Russian and American cultural references. Timur wasn't expecting a group of kids to be at his concert, much less a group of kids who speak Russian, but he played it up after he realized who they were. They all got autographs afterwards.

In tutoring today we were doing vocabulary exercises, and I was asking for sentences to go with the new words. Here's what I got for "perceive" with the definition given by the teacher as "understand, introduction:" "When I first got to America, my parents didn't perceive me."

Ever wanted to see Elisabeth dance and act? Well, this is probably your only chance.

imPASSe: Friday and Saturday at 8:00, Sunday at 2:00.

Artificial! That's the word I was trying to think of. It's interesting because the Russian word includes the Russian word for "art" (iskusstvenniy, where iskusstvo = art). I'd never thought of the word "artificial" as having anything to do with "art" until I heard the Russian version. I suppose it has to do with art being an interpretation or copy of the real thing.

I need to write two short (2-3 page) papers today. One's on the Dennis v. United States Supreme Court Case, in which I need to reference Schenk v. United States, Abrams v. United States, and Korematsu v. United States. The other one's comparing FDR's "Four Freedoms" speech and Truman's "Truman Doctrine" speech (asking the Congress for money to help the Greeks fight "Soviet-supported" insurgents in 1947). They're interesting topics, so it won't be so bad. I think my main problem will be limiting them to 2-3 pages. After this, I'll only have 25 or so more pages to write in English (and 30 more to write in Russian...) before I can graduate.

We went to the Grand Canyon yesterday, even though it was raining. We walked up to the edge and saw gray. It was so foggy, we couldn't even see the top of the canyon, much less the bottom. So we took pictures anyway for the irony, and kept driving. Luckily, the rain cleared up a bit and we did get a chance to see the canyon in all it's glory. We even saw a rainbow inside it, and I managed to get a little sunburn while we were in the brief period of sunshine. The others had wanted to see Las Vegas, but I wasn't so keen on it. I was trying to be fair and let everyone decide what we were going to see (although I am the only licensed driver and it is my car, so in the long run I don't think they have much of a choice), but once they saw the canyon without all the fog, they immediately decided we need to see the rest of the parks on our way to Denver instead of going to Vegas. Yay. Last night, we stayed in such a pristine place, in a really nice and cheap hotel. The only bad part was the Super WalMart interrupting our view of the painted desert cliffs.

Oh, and next time I travel with a group of foreigners I need to explain the concept of packing light for a road trip. We picked them up at the airport and just started laughing. I ended up shipping some of Dinara and my stuff back to Grinnell. How ridiculous is that?

Went to the Very Large Array (VLA) (of Contact fame). Saw a huge Jackrabbit. Saw some of those huge cacti with the "arms." Climbed into some Pueblo ruins. Ate Mexican food. Had a wine and chocolate party.

Yesterday we went to Red Rock National Monument and it was fantastic. We photographed the 2nd most photographed place in the country (I kind of wondered why we bothered since there's obviously so many other pictures of the same rockout there). I was tired and cranky, though, because I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before (we had to sleep 2 to a bed now that we've picked up Polina and HieDay, and I don't do that well). How do you explain that you love being with people as long as you have sufficient time without them? (without hurting anyone's feelings...). Last night I slept wonderfully, though. Like a rock.

Today we'd planned on hitting up the Grand Canyon, but it's gray and rainy outside. Perhaps we'll do Vegas first?

We've seen the world's deepest hand-dug well, a town named "Hooker" in Oklahoma, metal political cartoon artwork on the side of the highway, too many prairie chickens to count, lots of baby cows, an extinct volcano (where we walked around the rim), and some cliff dwellings and pueblo ruins. Oh, and we drove through the rockies in NM.

Sometimes my vegetarian resolve wavers when I'm in Grinnell. What would the harm be in eating one burger (especially the ones my mom made on Thursday night, which I know are delicious) or a little sausage with my breakfast? But then we drove past the feedlots of New Mexico and I was reminded why I'm a vegetarian. Okay, good.

Today we're off to Phoenix to pick up Dinara's friends, and then we'll head to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon, and Colorado with a full car.