From Russia With Dave - 4/14/2010

Hello again friends!

I will make up for lack of quantity with length.  So I’ll give you a minute to get ready.  Stretch out your back, hold all calls, turn the TV down, tell your friend or colleague you don’t care who they saw at Chipotle. 
…

Ok here we go.

So its March (at least it was when I started this damn thing).  Which means spring right?  Spring.  That wonderful time of year when trees blossom, flowers grow, people fall in love, everythings good, everyones happy….right? …..WRONG.   Spring means the 130 year snowstorm that hit St. Pete has turned into the 130 year puddle.  That’s right.  The snow which was last seen by Benjamin Franklins peers has melted and the whole city is one giant puddle.  Which is worse than snow.  God forbid anybody walk around here in expensive shoes.  Or expensive clothes for that matter.  It’s all one big puddle.  But surely a city of over a million people like St. Pete should have a decent drainage and sewer system right?  Or at least a waste disposal organization which has in its best interests the public good?  Haha.  Please, Californians, enjoy what you have.  The level of unbelievable convenience you have really is an unbelievable blessing.  So, what’s the situation here.  The situation is the snowiest winter in a century has melted leaving the city and its inhabitants basically in an unprecedented dilemma.  And Russians are not especially adept at dealing with dilemmas.  The answer to most problems here is to light another cigarette and switch from the small shot glass to the large shot glass.  So the snow has melted on the street, yes, but what about the roofs?  By the way, what’s the plural of roof:  roofs or rooves?  I don’t know, and by consequence none of my students know either.  But as I say whenever I don’t know the answer to a question about English:  “whatever sounds right is the right answer.”  For example when they ask:  why is it “leave the keys on the table” instead of “stay the keys on the table”, I say it’s not “stay your keys on the table” because it sounds weird.  Then I follow it up with a rule:  if it sounds weird, don’t say it.  I think that’s the basic rule of all languages:  if it sounds weird, don’t say it. 

So where was I?  Oh yeah, the snow is melting and turning the city into the La Brea Tar Pits, except instead of dinosaurs and saber-tooth Tigers getting trapped it’s 80-year old babushkas in wooden shoes, which if seen from far away you might mistake them for a giant walking Coke can, but with less teeth.  That’s the thing about Russian women.  In the springtime of their lives they are unmatched in beauty (and feistiness), but in the winter time of their lives they suddenly, inexplicably, disastererously turn into hunchbacked walking Coke cans.  There is no in-between.  One day they’re Miss Universe, the next day they’ve fallen and they can’t get up.  Just don’t try and take that cigarette from their lips or they’ll give you a scolding which’ll send you back to…well, Russia.

But I digress again.  So the city’s underwater, let’s talk about the roofs (or rooves).  Or I guess the correct word here would be ceiling.  I live on the top floor of an extremely old building with an extremely old ceiling.  This old ceiling has been badly damaged over the years but instead of fixing it they just put in a makeshift ceiling underneath the original.  You know one of those office ceilings with the removable tiles and whatnot.  To make a long story short when the snow melted from the roof of our building, all the water basically just poured into my room, taking down a quarter of the makeshift ceiling with it.  This happened in the dead of night while I was peacefully trying to slumber.  I awoke with a bang and saw this catastrophe before me.  The old ceiling was exposed and looked something like a cross between Bleu cheese which has been left in the sun for a month and the surface of the moon.  The wallpaper came along with it.  Our antichrist landlord sends his sincerest apologies and says it’s the responsibility of the municipal authorities to fix it.  Which basically means your on your own pal.  We have gotten a discount on rent and actually I’ve gotten quite accustomed to my new surroundings here.  My Russian room looks like a modern art display.  I call it “Russian Room”. 

Another tell-tale sign that you live in Russia:  you can’t go to work because some strange man tried to enter your flat using the wrong key, which then got stuck, which then took 4 hours to get free.  Yes, I was in my flat just about ready to leave for class, when I heard somebody trying to unlock our door.  I looked in the keyhole, didn’t recognize him, then told him in English to get his key out of the door (which there’s no chance he understood a word of what I was saying).  He started cursing and trying to pull the key out but to no avail.  Then he went downstairs to get our little old chain-smoking maintenance lady who likewise started cursing and trying to yank the key out.  Then they both left and never returned and I was trapped in my flat.  My roommates were both at work so I was pretty much stuck.  I called in to cancel my class, and funnily enough nobody sounded surprised when I told them the reason I couldn’t work today.  “Yeah, sorry, I can’t come to work today there’s a key stuck in my door and I can’t leave.”  I broke a couple knives trying to lodge it out but it was stuck and stuck good.  My roommates finally came home, they couldn’t get it out, they called our landlord, and of course the main maintenance guy of the building was on vacation.  So we had to resort to calling in some weird specialist who arrived about an hour later with a tool which looked like Arnold Schwarzeneggar’s gun in Predator.  Frighteningly loud noises and vibrating doors ensued and finally the key emerged.  Just another day here in the land of plenty.

Ok, so now its mid-April and the good news is the weather has turned, the city has dried out (for the most part) and I’m enjoying sometimes sunny 45-50 degree weather here, which feels like a balmy tropical paradise.  I was in Prague for a week, which coincidentally was at the same time president Obama and Russian president Medvedev were there signing some nuclear treaty.  Spent some time in a hotel with the parents and then in hostels filled with filthy Australians.  Those Australians are everywhere.  My girlfriend had her 30th birthday dinner and I made a lovely toast to her entirely in the Russian language, then afterwards we went to a club and I made a mockery of myself by drunkenly surrounding myself with every girl there except the birthday girl.  She wasn’t too happy about that.  Hell hath no fury like an angry Russian girlfriend.  Good God.  But everything’s fine now, I guess.  Nothing a bouquet of flowers can’t fix.  Have I mentioned the Russian females obsession with flowers?  Well, they’re obsessed.  There’s all sorts of rules about the number and colors of flowers to give.  For example, never give a Russian lady an even number of flowers (which are for dead people) or of the yellow color (which are the “goodbye forever” flowers).  There are literally flower stands on every corner here, sometimes more.  Flowers everywhere. 

And last story before I leave you all.  Flashback about six months ago I was in a pub and some Finnish girls called me over to sit with them.  I dutifully obliged and started talking with them.  A few minutes later some old man inexplicably came over and started talking with them too.  Who was this guy?  I whispered to one of these girls that this “creepy old man” should go away.  The old man heard me and got offended.  “I might be old,” he said, “but I’m not creepy.”  His anger started escalating and I felt it best to leave before people started breaking beer bottles to use them as knives.  Now come back to the present.  I’m at the same pub with a friend of mine.  We’re talking at a table and my friend recognizes someone she knows and calls him over.  To my horror it’s the exact same creepy old man I just told you about.  We’re talking and it seems as if he doesn’t remember me and I let him not remember.  And now the kicker.  I asked him what he’s doing here in St. Pete and he answered to my utter surprise “I’m the General Director of Ford Motor Company”… !!!!...  Haha.  I called the general director of Ford a creepy old man and got away with it.  Only in Russia.

Well that’s all.  The days here are getting longer.  Gets dark at about 10pm now.  I included some pictures below.  Until next time, whenever that might be. 

p.s.  you know in an email address people say “at” for @ right?  Not here.  Russians say “sabaka” for @.  What does “sabaka” mean?  Dog.  Russians say “dog” for @.  Say your email using dog, it’s a guaranteed laugh.  My email address would read as “daveray four dog gmail dot com.”  Ok bye.

From Russia With Dave - 1/16/2010

Well hello friends, been a while eh?  Maybe too long.  To catch up this'll be a long one.  So starting at the beginning since last time:

December 1st, the first day of winter is here in the north of Mother Russia.  And actually for St. Pete the weather is tolerable.  And by tolerable I mean around 40 degrees.  Let me tell you that 40 degrees feels like Bora Bora at this time of year.  Global warming is here folks run for your lives!  Not too much snow yet either.  My big, obnoxiously heavy, furry winter coat is still hanging on the coat rack where it belongs and my big clodhopper winter shoes are still snug underneath my bed, where I'm guessing it serves as a little house for the mouse I swear is doing something under there.  Probably starting a family.  On that same subject there is a rotten watermelon in our kitchen which has been sitting on the floor for at least 5 weeks and has now turned into something resembling a hatched Alien pod.  Maybe thats whats underneath my bed.  I'm having visions of John Hurt right now.

Anyway so whats been happening?  Well I was in Paris for a week with the girlfriend, her 2 girlfriends, and their 3 respective children, 2 girls and a boy, all 6 years old.  We all shared the same flat.  Sound exhausting?  Something bordering on the outskirts of hell?  Well it wasn't that bad but now I know what its like to take whiny children on vacation.  No thanks Dr. John.  We did go to Euro Disneyland though which was hilarious.  Only because every Disney character speaks French, which is hilarious.  Buzz Lightyear was the funniest, "To Infinity and Beyond" just doesn't sound as cool in French.  We also visited a waterpark in which I was forced, yes forced, to wear Speedos instead of my swim trunks.  Yes I had to buy Speedos, put them on, and walk out into public.  In Speedos.  Oh horror of horrors.  It was like Apocalypse Now except no Dennis Hopper.

What else?  I had my birthday on Dec. 14th.  Some of my classes were kind enough to get me gifts.  Besides the obligatory coffee mugs and men bathroom stuff, one class got me a bottle of vodka, a jar of pickles, a can of herring, and bread.  Either a traditional vodka snack or they're worried I'm not eating enough.  And another one of my classes actually made me something.  Yes, put time and effort into silkscreening me a T-shirt.  In this particular class I say "Crystal Clear" a lot.  As in "is that understood?  Is that clear?  Is that crystal clear?"  So, bless them, they made me shirt with a bunch of crystals on it which said Crystal Clear?  I've decided that Crystal Clear? is the new Got Milk?

So then I went home for a week for Xmas, after missing a couple flights and spending the night in indiscriminate airports of course.  When I left St. Pete everything was normal, it was snowing but just normally, nothing to write home about.  But when I returned after my week in the States I was shocked and awed into discovering the place had mutated into a veritable Matterhorn of snow (including that still-extremely-scary snow monster).  No seriously, the city was covered in mountains of snow.  It was amazing.  I then learned that during the week I was gone, St. Pete experienced its worst snow in 130 years!!  Yes, 130 years!!  The last time it snowed like this there was this strange and possibly devilish thing called "electricity" forcing its ways into the traditional lifestyle of everyday people.  The Soviets never saw snow like this.  So to sum up, there's a lot of snow everywhere.  A friend gave me present of a scarf, which is about 10 feet long, and after wrapping it around my neck about 6 times I look like the Michelin Man (you know that tire guy).  The trees have taken on a fantasy-like white color and its really beautiful here right now.  Winter wonderland.  And everybody has jolly red noses.

And then New Years happened here.  If you all remember from last year New Years here is like Xmas and New Years wrapped into one mega-holiday.  New Years is the day that Santa comes and presents are exchanged.  Except they don't call him Santa Claus here they call him "Grandfather Frost".  And he wears a long red robe (sometimes blue), and sometimes even carries a long scepter, which I want.  He also has a granddaughter which I think is just plain wrong.  I know that Santa has a Mrs. Claus but the thought of them producing children is just way beyond my already vivid imagination.  So I spent New Years with the girlfriend, her sister, her sisters boyfriend, and the daughter.  The boyfriend brought a bottle of whiskey along, which we both finished, which was hilarious.  I was feeling no pain when my girlfriend informed me we would be visiting her fathers house.  I had never met her father before and all that whiskey I drank had suddenly seemed to be a bad idea.  But it was okay because when we got there her father was drunk too, and had a big old thick mustache which I coldn't help but admire.  I forgot it was New Years and if anybody wasn't drunk it was because....well there was no reason for anybody not to be drunk.  This is Russia folks.  People drink.  So me and her father had a merry time.  He knew about 5 completely scattered English words and he spoke those to me all throughout the night, no matter what the topic of conversation was.  He was also extremely pleased to offer me an Israeli cigarette.  It was like a Japanese tea ceremony when he gave it to me.  This is Russia folks.  People smoke.  So then I woke up the next morning with a bad headache (caused by what I dont know) and found that my girlfriend had gone to work (when she works its for a 24 hr period) and I was in charge of babysitting her sick child all day and night.  Happy New Years Dave!

All of Russia shuts down for the first 10 days of January.  I'm guessing to give everyone enough time to recuperate.  Nobody works, nobody goes to school, everybody just freezes their ass off in the streets with a constant alcoholic beverage in their heavily-mittened hands.  My roommates were all gone, I had the place to myself, and the internet was down for the whole week.  Hell on earth?  Yes.  The antichrist is here and he's unplugging everyones internet.  By the way Russian landlords are not efficient people.  Just had to get that off my chest.  Actually everytime we go to pay rent we have to give it to this strange bald man who is either in a bathrobe or in head-to-toe leather biker gear.  It's genuinely scary.  Then we have to call 5 or 6 times the next week to remind him to turn on the internet.  The antichrist is here and he's dressed in bathrobes or head-to-toe leather biker gear.  And he has no hair.  And speaks Russian.  And is our landlord.  My God.

But now its back to work teaching classes.  The weather has improved a little but you never know what the next day will bring.  It'll either be just plain cold or....the worst snow in over 130 years.  One of those two.  When I told my classes I was in Los Angeles for a week everyone was shocked to hear that I was a little disappointed that it was about 60 degrees.  Most Russians would sell their next of kin into slavery for constant 60 degree weather.  They are also always interested in the types of questions I get and the attitudes Americans have about Russia.  Most Russians think that Americans think that there are vodka-drinking bears walking down the main streets of Russian cities.  Which I for one, wish was true.  I tell them that except for almost everything, America and Russia are a lot alike.  Just people dealing with their problems the best way they know how.  The difference being Russians just have so many more problems.  The main one being they live in Russia.  But come on I make it sound worse than it actually is.  Weird as it may sound I kinda like it here.  (Usually) Friendly, sad, deep, hospitable, no-nonsense people with a history of alcoholism who like to eat, drink, innertube down mountains, wear dark clothes, play strange musical instruments and go on vacation.  Russia.  Crystal Clear.

Til next time.

From Russia With Dave - 10/30/2009

Hello everybody back again.  It's almost coming up on my year anniversary of living in the land of plenty.  The celebration will be with rain-drenched bread crumbs.

The first day of snow officially happend on Oct. 13.  Ouch.  And boy did it snow.  It hasn't snowed since then, but the rain has more than made up for it.  The heat has been turned on in our flat thank god.  By the way, the governement dictates when the gas is turned on and off to heat all the living areas of the city.  Everybody knows the day the heat will be turned on and if its really cold before that than tough.  Put on a fir coat you whiners.  I've also had to tape up all the cracks in my windows to ensure no frosty wind makes it way into my room.  Hopefully it will keep the bears out also.  I just learned that my femail roommate is from the great nation of Belarus, or Belarussia to some.  It's funny cause I didn't know anybody lived there but my roommate is testament to the fact that indeed human beings live in Belarus.  So first it was female Siberian roommates and now its a female Belarussian roommate.  And a predominately Ukrainian girlfriend.  Hmm.  A funny situation happened the other day.  My male roommates parents came to dinner at our flat.  They spoke no English so Sergei, my roommmate, was the interpreter.  His mother was wearing very funky socks and I wanted to point out that I liked her socks.  The word for socks is "noskie".  But I made a slight mistake and I said I liked her "soskie".  Everybody's eyes bugged out of their heads and Sergei started cracking up laughing and then informed me that "soskie" is the word for NIPPLES.  I told Sergei's mom, a Russian woman I'd never met before, that I liked her nipples.  It was unbeleivable.  Everybody laughed it off but now I have one of those classic mistaken-translation stories.  I've always wanted one of those. I also happened to visit the local circus here in St. Pete.  That's right, the circus.  It was great.  They had lions and acrobats and clowns and the whole shebang.  They had Apes dressed up like the Las Vegas Elvis doing his honky tonk dance and, my personal favorite, Apes dressed up like Hassidic Jews and doing that funny dance with their arms crossed and kicking their legs up in the air.  I was going bananas.  Apes dressed as Hassidic Jews!  Only in Russia!  The MC of the circus was also dressed up as a giant grotesque wizard which had to have been frightening to the children.  Not to mention the constant dung flowing from every animal.

I leave for Paris tomorrow with the girlfriend, her daughter, her two girlfriends, and their daughter and son.  It will be me and six Russians walking around Paris like chickens with our heads cut off (yeah, I used that one again Mike).  We're sharing an apartment, which will be hilarious, we're going to a French water park, which will be hilarious (speedos), and my favorite, we're going to...Euro Disneyland, which will be completely hilarious.  I will die a happy man if I can hear Donald Duck speaking French.

Other than that not much else is going on.  November 4 is a national holiday to celebrate the time in the early 1600's when Russia freed themselves from Polish control, which I think is also hilarious.  I wouldn't want to be a Pole in Russia right now, both the people and the actual things.  Halloween is coming here also.  Halloween is a very recent thing to arrive in Russia and many people still have mixed feelings about it.  The new generation love it of course, but the older people look on it with derision and call it "the devils holiday".  However trick or treating is not part of it.  I guess its hard to trick or treat when its 35 degrees outside and the rain is making your spiderman costume turn into a Jabba the Hut costume. 

ok thats all.  See you next time.  At the year anniversary.

From Russia With Dave - 9/28/2009

Well, well, well, somebody decided to return to Russia of their own free will.  That's right.  My contract was up, everything was in order, no obligations, no dictator forcing me to build an enormous gas pipeline, no nothing.  And I decided to come back to brave another frozen 5 month Russian winter.  Remember all those winter stories?  Remember spending 45 minutes to get ready to walk 20 feet to the market?  Well I'm gonna do it again.  Good thing I didn't get ride of my whopper furry jacket.  That thing's a whopper.  But my girlfriend just informed me that I look like the Russian equivalent of a wife beating trailer inhabitant when I wear it.  They call those type of people "gasterbaters" here.  Yeah that's right...gasterbaters.  Which is now my new favorite word in ANY language.

I moved into a new apartment which overlooks one of the main, and probably busiest, squares of the city.  It's like the Times Square of St. Petersburg.  I fall asleep by guessing which color will reflect on my wall from the giant TV screen across the square from my window.  This is heavy downtown where you can find all the people with big jackets and when they open them up they have watches for sale.  Whatever happened to those people?  The answer is they moved to Russia.  More specifically 500 yards from where I go to sleep at night.  No thanks I already have my fake gold watch which everybody thinks is real and I gladly let them beleive it.  My apartment's nice and big though and I'm liking it so far.  I live with one of my former students named Sergey and then we found a girl from the internet to live with us and now Sergey and aforementioned girl don't find it necessary to sleep in seperate rooms.  It's Russia after all they need to conserve space.  I have a nice big sofa bed covered in flower-design blankets and giant flower-design pillows.  Bougainvillas anyone?  I also have a TV in my room which oddly enough only plays shows in Russian.  I never thought the show Scrubs was funny... until I watched it in Russian that is.  Our refridgerater broke (it's Russia), we put in a request to get it fixed three weeks ago (it's Russia) and the fridge is still broke (it's Russia).  Which reminds me of a popular Russian joke:  someone buys a car but the dealer says he can't pick it up for five years to the day from when he buys it.  Five years the guy asks? Why?  Well, the dealer said, there's a lot that goes into selling somebody a car and we're already backed up as it is.  Okay the guy says, then remembering something he asks, but what time five years from today?  What does it matter the dealer asks, it's five years from now.  Because, the man answers, the plumber's coming in the morning!  Haha, that's just a great one.  But the fridge situation is actually okay with me cause now when my roommates make deliciously aromatic food they can't save it so by default I have to eat it when they sleep.  Give me potatoes!

My second round of classes have begun and I've learned that as long as you make the people laugh in class, you can pretty much teach them whatever you want and it's all good.  I think I want to start a new class "How to Speak Like Forrest Gump".  By the way Forrest Gump is an enormously popular movie over here, as is Harley Davidson and The Marlboro Man starring Mickey Rourke and the great Don Johnson.  I've also wisened up and acquired some private students who come to my flat for lessons aka no pressure at all.  I'm learning more Russian now and everybody tells me I have great pronunciation.  If you've seen Rounders 15 times you'd have great Russian pronunciation as well.  God Bless John Malkovich.  The girlfriend is doing good, as long as she fills my belly with borsch everything's good.  We're taking her daughter to a Russian water park not unlike Wild Rivers in the next couple days.  That should be a hilarious experience.  Watching Russians at a water park that is.  8 words:  Russian men with weird looking bodies in Speedos.

Alright thats all for now.  Autumn is here and all the trees are changing colors to a beautiful orange and red.  I feel sorry for the poor bastard who has to rake them all up.  Talk to you soon.

From Russia With Dave - 8/10/2009

Hello all, back again.  Its been 9 months now in Old Mother Russia, though its felt like its been about 10.

Just got back from my first trip to Moscow, the heart of the evil empire. Just flew there in the morning and flew back at night.  I felt glorious and downright powerful standing in Red Square and the Kremlin.  All that was missing was an AK-47 in my hands and a horde of dysfunctional inter-continental ballistic missiles.  I saw the cryogenically intact body of one Vladimir Lenin.  First of all there's a line practically extending to St. Petersburg waiting to see it, and second of all, it stunk.  Not like it was stinky but that it was not that great.  There was just a little yellow plastic-wax looking man in a glass box.  10 seconds and its over and you're just like "and what?"  Lenin stunk.  The real pleasure was just standing in red square amidst communist icons galore.  They loved their communism there.  Hammers and sickles everywhere.  That big onion-dome church which everybody associates with Moscow (and Tetris) is amazing.  I couldn't get enough of it.  It really is a spectacular view.  Also went to a museum devoted to a single battle in 1812 during Napoleons russian campaign which featured a 50' panoramic painting of the battle.  Needless to say I was in heaven.  The center of Moscow really is impressive, its probably one of my favorite city centers I've been to.  But once you get out of the center you're just in a boring, industrial workers "paradise".  Plain buildings and grumbling people.  Probably cause they're working.  Former communists love to work.  And the customer is never right.  Come to think of it the worker is never right either.  Thats something about Russia - the worker AND the customer are never right.  Another thing about Russia - frequent unpleasant surprises.  But everyone learns to deal with it and expect it and you learn not to get upset when plans go awry - just take a shot of vodka and keep on keepin' on. 

Before I forget I just want to say that I really miss Kraft Macaroni n Cheese.  OK I said it.

I've been going to my girlfriends dacha a lot recently.  For those of you who aren't Russian pretty much every Russian family has a "dacha" out in the country which is basically their equivalent of a summer house, the only difference is instead of a nice house near the beach, its a shitty house in the forest.  Its actually a nice area near a pristine lake with a little beach and great water to swim in, but its still a shitty house.  2 words:  No Plumbing.  Yes, you have to drive 10 minutes to the communal showers (I passed on that attractive option), walk 3 minutes to the communal sinks and walk another 5 minutes to the communal outhouse - which was one of the worst experiences of my life.  Just a big wood box with a hole - kind of like the beginning of Slumdog Millionaire.  Still it was comforting to see the same English doodles and phrases you see in any public restroom in America.  My favorite is always the one that says "What are u lookin' at?" on the wall right in your line of vision.  You also have to pass by the most ferocious guard dog in history to get there.  It's like a mini version of The Odyssey.  And don't get me started on the mosquitoes.  But again, the Russians like it, learn to deal with it, and have a great time while they're there.  Just take a shot of vodka, eat 'til you explode, and keep on keepin' on.

Alright thats all folks, I'm coming back to the States this Thursday for 10 days.

Til next time, whenever that may be,

From Russia With Dave - 7/15/2009

Hello all.  I've been gone for a while and in that time many new, strange, and downright revolutionary things have occured.  So now I'm back and lets get to it.

So last time I left you summer was just getting underway in Petersburg and everything was sunny with birds chirping and guys in speedos strolling down the boulevards to some old Motown rhythm.  Well, right after I wrote that the rain started.  And continued.  And continued.  The weather in Petersburg is one of the strangest phenomena period.  Hardcore sunshine bliss is instantly and inexplicably followed by hardcore sludge rain bogusness, usually in the same day.  The audacity.  It certainly makes it hard to choose an outfit for the day.  I really should've bought that waterproofing spray.  And then it stays light outside til about 1am every night.  You can read perfectly fine outside at midnight here right now.  Not that I've tried it.  Actually I have.

Also by some twisted turn of events I have a Russian girlfriend here.  One of my American colleagues who has a Russian wife set me up on a blind meeting with the wifes daughter and its just been gaga since then.  And by gaga I mean I already took her to Istanbul.  Olga's the name.  Not gonna lie not a huge fan of it.  The name that is.  I'm actually at her house right now and hoping she doesn't come in and read what I just wrote cause then I would get a hilarious chewing out in perfect Russian.  Her English is pretty hilarious also.  And just in case any of you were wondering... yes, she did used to ride dirtbikes competitively.  Thats not a joke.
Summers pretty slow here for teaching work and I took a little holiday.  First went to Istanbul with aforementioned Olga.  Amazing place.  Turkish people might take the award for perseverance in trying to sell you stuff.  Walking down the street we were bombarded with Turks one right after the other with the usual line like this:  "Hello, Where you from?  You wanna have a nice evening with your lady?  I give you best table"  or something like "Hello, where you from?  You need some leather pants?"  Then the olgameister and I parted ways, she back to mother Russia and I off to Madrid to meet some friends from the states.  We were in Madrid for one night and unbeknownst to us it happened to be the largest gay pride festival/parade in Spain, possibly in all of Europe.  Not that theres anything wrong with that of course. 

Then it was off to Pamplona for the running of the bulls for 3 nights.  Yes I ran and yes it was terrifying.  It starts very early in the morning and like most people I just stayed up all night then did it, and also like most people my body was not free of intoxicating liquids.  I made it out okay (read: not mauled) and am the better for it.  That's something that'll really wake you up in the morning.  Then it was off to Barcelona for a night, which really just turned into an extended nap.  Didn't help that it was probably the one day of the summer where it rained all day.  Then to the tourist Disneyland known as Rome for 4 nights where nothing out of the ordinary happened and hence doesn't belong in this email.  It was a heck of a trip, my body feels like a symptoms list for Propecia.  So now I'm back in my old mother russia.  I'll stay here for a few weeks then I plan to come back to america the beautiful for a couple weeks.  I say a couple weeks and not forever cause I now plan on staying in Russia for a bit longer than originally expected.  If any of you think the girlfriend has anything to do with that decision then you're absolutely right.

Alright thats all for now.  I'll try to get these emails off at shorter intervals but you know how it is.  Hopefully I'll see some of you when I'm back in August.  Right now I'm shooting for somewhere around the middle two weeks.

ps.  It just started POURING right now after a nice sunny day.

From Russia With Dave - 5/6/2009

Hello.  Hello.  Hello.

Well now its May and the city has literally transformed overnight from a gloomy, frozen, mullet-infested swampland to a vibrant, exciting, tourist-haven paradise.  Mullets still included though.  Outside seating at cafes, which was unthinkable a month ago, have sprouted up at many places.  I remember when I first saw people wearing sunglasses and was like "whoa, look at that".  And when I saw the first signs of green on the trees I was like "whoa, look at that".  And when I saw the first Russian woman wearing clothes that didn't cover every square inch of her I was like "whoa, look at that", and conversely when I saw the first Russian man wearing nothing but speedos near the river I was like "nothing to see hear folks", then I wanted to gouge my eyes out.   There are little beaches along the river here and Russian men just love wearing speedos all over them, packed very tightly.  And, holy of holies, I even saw a bunch of guys in speedos playing soccer in the park!  Just speedos and sports shoes.  There should be laws against that.  Yes, the sun is bright and shiny and jackets aren't really necessary anymore.  T-shirts are becoming common.  But since I'm in Russia they're real cheesy T-shirts with cheesy slogans in English on them like "I Don't Play Nice" or something like that.  Russians are about a decade behind in terms of pop culture coolness.  I think I actually saw a shirt that just said NOT in big letters. The last day of official snow here was April 17.  I know cause I visited the Hermitage again for the 3rd time for no particular reason.  The city is hardcore gearing up for the tourist season, porta-potties and beer gardens are springing up like inedible mushrooms, and there's no pleasure like being able to walk around the city amidst the throngs of masses with a beer in your hands and and an ipod in your ear.  Also I've been playing a lot of frisbee on that glorious green stuff called grass.  However out of habit whenever the frisbee might hit a pedestrian I yell out "Heads Up!" but nobody ever puts their head up cause they can't understand a damn word I say.  I think "Heads Up" needs to become an international phrase like "Ok" and "uh-huh".

I went to an opera for the first time I think in my life and to make a long story short I left at the first intermission.  Everybody told me there are English subtitles at all the operas but of course I picked out the one opera to go to that was in Italian with Russian subtitles.  So I was just kinda sitting there while these weird people sang in strange voices on stage.  I couldn't get comfortable in my chair either which there are no words to describe how annoying that was.  The only thing that made it worthwhile was the theatre itself.  The Maryinsky theatre is world famous and rightly so.  Absolutely decadent and ridiculously opulent.  Fit for a Tsar.  Next up - the ballet. 

A couple more quirks about the Russian people.  Whenever anything surprising or slightly upsetting happens to them, they use the word "oy" to express it.  If they drop something its "oy", if they say the wrong answer its "oy", if the subway suddenly lurches to one side its "oy".  Everything is "oy" and "oy" is everything.  I find myself unconsciously using this little word now much to my own amusement.  And the next quirk: popular Russian vacation destinations!  In order from most popular to least popular:  Egypt, Cuba, Turkey, Finland, and.....SRI LANKA!  I think everyone I've met has been to Egypt multiple times, some people I know are getting married in Cuba and some of my students just got back from a 3 week getaway to the peaceful, serene, non-war zone paradise of Sri Lanka.  Complete with Frosted Flakes featuring Tony "The Tamil" Tiger.  Anybody?

May 1st was a holiday known as "Workers Day" and there was a medium sized parade which was just made up of anybody who wanted to be in it.  I guess they were workers.  May 9th is also a holiday and besides New Years its probably the biggest holiday of the year.  Its Victory Day and celebrates the defeat of those Nazis.  There will be a huge military parade which I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to seeing.  I really hope there are ballistic missiles involved but I'll settle for uniformed soldiers walking in unison each one with an AK-47. 

Alright thats all for now.  I'll be back again sometime soon.

From Russia With Dave - 4/6/2009

Hello all, back by popular demand.

At the half-way point with my time in the land of plenty...

Ok, so its Spring here in Russia, which means that now instead of freezing cold, its just cold.  For the most part it isn't snowing anymore and the ice has melted from the river and canals, but the wind blows, and the rain falls, and its just a big sloppy mess.  There isn't a very effective way of dealing with snow or rain buildup here.  When there's a big pile of snow, they throw some unidentified powder on it so it turns into a giant puddle and after that and a few cigarettes, their work is done.  The days are getting a lot longer though and the sun shines now on a regular basis.  It gets dark around 9pm here, in a couple months it will stay dark until after midnight.  More people are out on the street and you can feel the beginnings of excitement towards summer.  The time changed by an hour the other day, which I had no clue about, and I missed my class for the day.  Oh well, I am in Russia after all.  Nobody cares.  I'm back to working about 15 hours a week which is just fine by me.  I've also increased my weekly intake of drinkable yogurt, which is also just fine by me.  Oh and there's been a new development in my regular Russian diet....Frozen Pizzas!  Lots of 'em!

My shedule now is all evening classes with one day class where I teach 10 year olds at a school.  Me with the kids is just an absolute farce.  I walk into class with some word searches or other such nonsense, put some paper in front of them and then brace myself for 2 hours of chaos.  Its seriously no-holds barred in my classroom.  Wrestling, spitting, throwing sharp objects, and drawing obscene and grotesque monsters on the chalkboard - which is nice cause I usually forget to erase the board when I leave.  It's always fun when some of the administration surprises me and sits in on the class, then I have to spontaneously act like I'm teaching something and come up with some ridiculous lesson that has nothing to do with anything that everybody, especially the kids, knows is just stupid.  And the classroom I teach in isn't really a classroom at all.  Its seriously about 15 feet long and about 6 feet wide.  We're squeezed in their like a long prison cell, which is exactly what it feels like and exactly how the kids act.  Like criminals that is.  Ruthless ones.  Another native speaker with a similar group of kids is having a similar experience to me.  Only he's about 60 years old, curses like a sailor, uses weird antebellum-era racial slurs in his everyday speech, constantly makes fart noises with his mouth, and is from Nebraska, or as he calls it "the land of nothing".  He's been here for about 5 years, has a Russian wife who he met at a Russian dating service, and whom, according to him, doesn't understand English except for 2 phrases he taught her: "bring me this" and "now take it away."  He's a character.  have a pretty good laugh about "teaching kids". 

With my free time in the day I've been doing a lot of walking around the city.  I'm a walking fool.  I can walk like the wind blows.  Kind of like Forrest Gump, except walking instead of ruuuning.  By the way, Forrest Gump is a surprisingly very popular movie among the Russians.  I'm still trying to get an impression out of one of them though.  I can die a happy man once I hear a Russian imitating Forrest Gump.

One of my roommates got flooded out of her room when the neighbors upstairs attempted to do a (relatively minor I'm sure) plumbing repair.  Half the ceiling drywall collapsed along with all the wallpaper.  It actually might've been an improvement to the overall decor.  So she's been living in the dining room which is random.  Better than me though.  We have workers here now fixing her room.  And when I say workers I mean an old married couple who chain smoke and laugh heartily while doing the job.

Oh, and some group of people blew a big hole in a prominent Lenin statue last week.  Blew a hole right where his rear end should be.  So now there's a big Lenin statue with a big hole in his ass.  People will probably start living in there now.  Speaking of Lenin, from my observations, people look on it as a relatively good thing that communism collapsed here, but there is still widespread mistrust of America.  It's still a sensitive topic talking about the fall of the USSR.  People enjoy the economic advantages capitalism has brought but theres still that feeling that "America won" and that does not sit well.  I think the young kids who have been brought up with American culture will have a different attitude.  Also, people just accept it as a given that their government isn't really democratic and there is no real opposition.  They just laugh it off as a normal and unchangeable part of life.  Just like bad hairstyles.

Alright that's about it for now.