58 Buckets

Jan 29, 2008

I counted, there are 58 buckets in the bathroom. Why? Counting the number of buckets in my apartment reminds of that scene in Knocked Up where the two guys are on shrooms in Vegas and they count the different kinds of chairs in the hotel room, except here I am not on shrooms, and the situation does not seem delightfully funny as it did in the movie.

So today was the official first day of school. Nothing too exciting, except for the fact that I was placed in group 1. (commence cheering and excitement-woot) That means that out of three groups, I tested into the most advanced group. But this is Russia, so nothing is as good as it seems. Since I am one of four returning students, for whatever reason, my school decided that all returning students would be placed in group 2, the intermediate level. WHY?!!! This is absurd. The administrator claimed that it was a scheduling conflict of some sort, and that all returning students had to be placed in group 2. If that was the case why did I spend 3 hours taking a placement test? As a result of this crazy rule/system, I am placed with the intermediate students. This makes no sense. It is in no way beneficial to the other students to have an advanced student in the class. One of us is going to suffer, and pray let it be them. Nothing in Russia makes any sense whatsoever.
So as a recap, the administrators in an effort to provide a well-rounded second semester for the four returning students decided it would be best to demote us to a lower level group, smile, and blame scheduling conflicts. Can I just say WTF!

Sadly the next tale has nothing to do with Russian, but rather an interesting tale of power, and rebellion. I’d like to call this number “Girl with a pen and without limits” Let the story commence:
Class was made a bit interesting today when one of my fellow classmates began to chew on her pen during class. It wasn’t a ballpoint pen, but rather one of those inkwell pens, the kind of pen it is especially not smart to chew on. I mean I don’t mind a good pen chewing every once in a while, but some pens are simply off-limits, and trust me, if u saw this pen, you would all agree- it was strictly a “no chew pen.” I suppose this girl likes to live on the edge, because even though everyone in class was staring at her, she began to chew the pen, and the teacher practically was left speechless when the ink started running down her lips but the girl kept on pushing the limits of the chewing. A real badass. We were pleading with our eyes to tell her to stop, she was taking it too far. One girl almost fainted from the horror and impending tragedy surely to follow from such a performance. No girl has ever been so bold, so daring. She was simply chewing that pen beyond what is humanly possible. A ballpoint pen, maybe, but an inkwell, never. Suddenly she stopped and looked down at her ink stained hands, and realized that she had gone too far, pushed too hard, simply shouldn’t have chewed on the “no chew pen.” Im not sure what made her stop chewing the pen. Maybe the taste of ink in her mouth was too great to bear, or maybe it was she couldn’t take the staring any longer and decided to give up the battle. I guess we will never know, fore, after she stopped, she loudly excused herself to go the bathroom, came back 45 minutes later with food and some water, and still had ink everywhere.
(just as a note, this girl was in Russia last term too, and to refrain from writing too much about her.. I could go one for days about all the absurd things she does… I just want to say one thing that might help give everyone a better grasp of her personality, she didn’t bring a coat to Russia and wears shorts almost everyday and complains about being cold) ( I won’t comment further, make your own opinion of her as you will)