Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

Жизнь—как сон.  Sometimes I'm really not sure if I am dreaming or not.  At least once a day I have to ask myself, «Is this real life?».   I can't seem to wrap my mind around the fact that the strange, bizarre, wonderful, funny, melancholic, ironic events that occur daily are real.  Never in my life have I encountered so many unexpected experiences.  This is one of my favorite things about living abroad: never knowing what will happen, even seconds into the future.  But to be honest, this is just life in St. Petersburg.  Life is just strange here.  My host sister Katya keeps telling me that only сумасшедшие (a word that's real meaning gets lost in translation; basically crazy folks) live in St. Petersburg.  I think that she might be right (which explains why I love it here so much!).  Because of the unpredictability of my life at the moment, I’ve resorted to just going with the flow (my normal inclination, but even more free).  In the words of Bob Dylan, “Don’t think twice, it’s all right.”

I wish that I could recount all of the ridiculous things that happen every day, yet that would involve me typing my life away.  There is literally too much to tell, and I always struggle with the question: “What is blog-worthy?”  So instead I’ll describe to you a few events of my weekend to attempt to give you an idea of how much of a joke my life is at the current moment. 

Friday: Go to of class; spend an hour tutoring first-year Smolny students in English; talk with them about the semi-pornographic picture that I made in printmaking class and the etymology of American rock band names; watch Masyana “chicken” cartoon with the Masha’s; go to buy stamps with Meagan and see 3 cats inside the post office; spend an hour and a half on the metro, walking, and on the metro again to find TGI Friday’s for my friends who are in need of an American food fix; receive the most intense “you stupid American” faces when I ask the nearby Megafon advertisers if they by chance knew where Friday’s was located; having found the restaurant watch as my friends ravenously consume such delicacies as buffalo chicken tacos and parmesan crusted quesadillas; leave restaurant to find that swing dancers and their band have taken over the mall; watch dancers as we ride down four flights of escalators; spend twenty minutes trying to decode the sign system in the mall in order to find the bathroom; go home and sleep.

Buffalo Chicken Tacos

Swing Dancers

Saturday: Wake up to snow yet again; stop into Sennaya Market on the way to printmaking; become, yet again, intimidated by the purveyors, however, manage to buy lavash without problems; spend the next hour taste testing pastries and drinking tea until I’m sick at printmaking class; actually begin my work; rock out to sixties jam and French music while printing; somehow end up with a print that looks nothing like my original concept but something that Yuri, my teacher, loves; unsuccessfully attempt to scrub ink off my hands for fifteen minutes; eat Thai pizza and drink apple juice at my friends apt; speed walk to club Radio Baby; watch my friend Anya’s boyfriend, Danila, play guitar in a band with other Smolny students; hang out with my friend Lena and talk movies and books; leave club with Lara, Styopa, Lena, and Mitya to have an impromptu jam sesh in front of the Nevsky metro; watch as the drunks gather to dance, the militsia looks on rather than kick us out, random guy busts out his harmonica, people give us money, and multiple friends that we know continue to walk by; go hang at our other friends' apt, where lightening bolts get painted on my face; celebrate the last daylight savings time EVER in Russia, per decree Medvedeva so that cows will make more milk; go home and sleep. 

Results of Printmaking

Mitya rocking out.

Sunday: Wake up to even more snow; lay in my bed trying to catch up on correspondence; go to meet some friends at a bookstore café to study; get attacked by kids with “Free Hugs” signs outside the metro; submit to hug after hug; get asked to dance by random fairytale characters on the street; study at café next to a little boy building a princess castle with his babushka; walk home; eat fried eggs and fish sticks in bed as I study; commence in hours of non-productivity; ultimately go to sleep. 

Free Hugs on Nevsky

I’m sure that the majority of this doesn’t even make sense.  Don’t worry.  It doesn’t make sense to me either.  My life is a joke, but I’d have it no other way.  It's all right.