Following last Sunday's ironic Maslenitsa snow, the weather calmed down considerably. Friday morning, for instance, it was raining, and I was excited. That meant that the temperature was finally above zero outside, or, because Fahrenheit sounds less cold: the temperature was probably like, 35! Maybe even 36! Warm enough that the snow was melting into rain well above street level, anyway. The day was uneventful; that afternoon, Corinne and I decided to go shopping, because we both were in need of some new footwear if the temperature was going to continue to climb.
We went to the Galleria, about three blocks from the apartment, because Corinne knew of a shoe store called Centro Обувь. They had some really nice, relatively cheap boots, but I fell in love with a pair that came out to just under US$45. Light tan ankle boots with some adorable little buckle details. I figured they were worth it, because I'll be able to wear them back home when it cools off some in October and November. They fit quite nicely over my ingenious double-sock setup (one pair of the fuzzy green socks I got for Christmas--thanks Bill!--over one pair of regular socks), but they aren't too loose when my feet are less padded. They're super-cute, too! At some point I'll ask Corinne to take some pictures and upload them. I could have spent days in Centro, though, as anyone who has seen me within 100 feet of a shoe store can attest. If putting on shoes weren't such a production here, what with the double layers of socks all being carefully tucked between layers of thermal leggings to keep everything in place, I would have been trying on shoes left and right (pun definitely intended).
We stopped in a few other clothing stores, including one called Be Free, where Corinne bought this adorable brown sweater dress, and saw a dress she'd bought at the same store in Irkutsk, on sale for less than half of what she paid at the time. :( Aww. Well, you win some, you lose some. We also saw some sweaters that Alex and Liz had bought; they're the strangest things, just solid-color knitted wool sweaters with random words on them in a variety of colors. If I recall correctly, the selections were "Black" (black sweater, white letters), "White" (white with black), "Blonde" (light blue with white), "Smart" (salmon-pink with white), "Perfect" (blue with light yellow), and "Cactus" (green with black). Alex has a Black sweater and Liz got a Cactus one. They were like 100p each; we'll just have to go back and see if they're on sale, because I want a Smart sweater.
I like seeing merchandise with English writing on it; in one store, they were selling pillows with strange designs on them that incorporated some English words. One pillow had a weird, Adventure-Time-esque happy face and a speech bubble with the words "Am I trendy?" in it; another said something like "Give to me please money on the beer." To be fair, that's basically a direct translation of the same statement in Russian, but that doesn't make it any less funny. I almost wanted to buy it. Almost.
A couple hours after we got home, our roommates arrived, with Elizabeth in tow; apparently they'd already gone out someplace for dinner, and also stopped at a produkty for snacks and booze. Elizabeth's dinner had consisted of a couple of drinks, so she was already rather drunk by the time the group reached our apartment...which is why she thought it was a good idea to buy a one-liter can of beer at the produkty along with her sandwich ingredients. I didn't even know they made one-liter cans of anything before I came here. They are comically large: about 12 inches tall and 4-5 inches across. Elizabeth shared her liter of beer because she really didn't need that much to herself, and it made the ensuing game a lot more interesting.
I Googled around a bit but I couldn't find a name for that game where everyone writes down a famous person's name on a card and sticks it to someone else's forehead, and then you have to guess who you are. Head Bands? Celebrity Heads? Whatever, that game, you know it. They played it in Inglourious Basterds. And we played it in our kitchen, with Elizabeth (and one of Jorge's friends, but he came later). It was only a drinking game in the sense that most of the players happened to be imbibing alcohol at the time; we didn't institute formal rules like "drink if you guess wrong" or whatever. We played three rounds; I was Anna Karenina, Amelia Pond and Sleeping Beauty (although that one was revealed by accident when Corinne blurted it out, so I didn't guess it). The names I wrote down were Batman (for Corinne), Jack Daniels (for Liz) and Salvador Dali (also Liz). I don't remember who wrote them or whose heads they were on, but some of the other names we had were Spiderman, Harriet Tubman, Dracula, Pinocchio, Henry VIII and Beowulf. So, yeah, it was an interesting game, especially watching the more intoxicated players try to keep track of the clues they'd received. Many laughs were had by all, and afterward everyone else went out somewhere. I went to bed; they all came back at around 4:30, and Elizabeth spent the night with us because the metros were closed and she was too drunk to walk home alone.
This afternoon, when everyone woke up, Liz and Corinne spent some time planning and booking things for this Baltic spring break trip they'd been talking about for a while. Elizabeth and I are also going. :) I'm excited; we're going to a music festival in Estonia for 2-3 days, then kicking around Latvia and Lithuania for the next week-ish, bringing our total trip to about 9 days. We'll all have our passports and shiny new extended multi-entry visas by the week after next, and the trip is at the end of March; I think it's the 28th/29th through April 7th-ish. We're traveling by bus and staying in some really nice-looking hostels. I haven't decided if I'm going to bring my laptop; probably not, though, because most of the hostels have computers available for general use. And it's not like the apartment will be empty for those nine days; Jorge and Alex aren't coming with us, so they'll be there. The only problem I'll potentially run into then is keeping my iPod charged, because all I have is a USB cord, but even then, Corinne's iPod charge cord might fit my iPod (I dunno how old her iPod is).
The total cost for this trip looks like it's gonna be probably close to US$550, including bus/music festival tickets ($121/$45), hostel fees ($300 total), and food (~$90). With any luck, my Stetson refund check will be processed soon and I'll have a considerable chunk of change dropped into my account. I've already set aside $466 in my savings account, so I know that I'll at least be able to pay Liz for the bus tickets/hostel booking fees, Corinne for the festival tickets and the hostel for my bed. I'm not hurting for money right now, or anything, but with a $5 non-Wells Fargo ATM fee on top of however much I withdraw, each time I withdraw some cash (usually around $70, but the exact amount fluctuates with the exchange rate), I know I need to stay on top of my spending. $5 adds up over time.
No comments:
Post a Comment