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21 Sivan/3 June, 2010
Jun. 3rd, 2010 11:00 pmWe are packing already. I’m ready to go home, these two weeks passed quickly. I will be sad to leave, it has been a really good vacation. Next time I would really love to show Bear the place.
This morning we separated and while Mama took the metro to go shopping again, Papa and I took a trolleybus to visit our schools. First #16, my school where I transferred in fifth grade and where I was studying until we moved to America at the end of seventh grade. It, like Papa’s school, used it be a school specializing in math (and physics), now, as it was explained to us in Papa’s school, there are no more specializing schools. They let us go inside my school and we walked on the first and second floors, being extra quiet with exams were still in progress. (The school year ends at the end of May, June is just for exams for 9th and 11th graders.) Everything is exactly like I remember it – all the hallways. The smell is different, though, probably because most students are done for the year.
Then we took a metro to Papa’s school and walked inside it too – he showed me some classrooms. Then we walked through Gorky Park and VDMKh building where there is still a book market. (Papa used to sell books at the book markets as a hobby when I was little, he would get them on his business trips, and I would sometimes help sell them. He only recognized one person now who still sells there.) I bought a cross-stitch kid of a bear sitting on a toilet reading a book. That was just perfect.
It was too hot to be in the book market for very long. There are no air conditioners in most places here, since it doesn’t get too hot that much, but today was a really hot day - 30C at least, even hot by New York standards. When Papa went to buy us ice-cream, there were very few brands left – everyone was cooling off how they could.
My feet were already tired by the time we got to Katya’s but we all left to go eat at that fast food place – I got draniki again, I’m feasting on them while I’m here – and then we walked toward Pushkin monument. Then we rested at Katya’s again before we went home while Katya and Lenya come over there a bit later to say goodbye, since Katya is working tomorrow.
I got an email from Graduate Chair with a schedule for me which I think will help me finally finish my frelling dissertation.
I showed Katya my Vermont photos before Aunt Vera, Sasha, Katya, my parents and I had a big dinner on a special living room table that only gets taken out on special occasions (I spend almost every new year at that table when I was little). Lenya was throwing a bit of a fit in the other room about not being allowed to go play outside alone with a friend, so he missed dinner. After dinner, Katya and I went through the whole Minsk book that Tanya gave to me yesterday and looked at all the pictures – that is one awesome book. We could even see Katya’s windows from the air shot in one picture. We said goodbye to Katya, which was sad to do. She said that she would come to New York for my wedding, once I have one. Should I count it in my game? It is really sad to say all these goodbyes.
I finally finished “Dune” today. I feel really sorry for Princess Irulan – why does she deserve that fate – to be a wife in name only because she is just a political pawn and a way for Paul to gain the throne. The book was alright in prose and general culture feeling but the plot and the characters just bugged me. No sequels for me. I will start on Neil Gaiman’s “Smoke and Mirrors,” a short story collection next.
This morning we separated and while Mama took the metro to go shopping again, Papa and I took a trolleybus to visit our schools. First #16, my school where I transferred in fifth grade and where I was studying until we moved to America at the end of seventh grade. It, like Papa’s school, used it be a school specializing in math (and physics), now, as it was explained to us in Papa’s school, there are no more specializing schools. They let us go inside my school and we walked on the first and second floors, being extra quiet with exams were still in progress. (The school year ends at the end of May, June is just for exams for 9th and 11th graders.) Everything is exactly like I remember it – all the hallways. The smell is different, though, probably because most students are done for the year.
Then we took a metro to Papa’s school and walked inside it too – he showed me some classrooms. Then we walked through Gorky Park and VDMKh building where there is still a book market. (Papa used to sell books at the book markets as a hobby when I was little, he would get them on his business trips, and I would sometimes help sell them. He only recognized one person now who still sells there.) I bought a cross-stitch kid of a bear sitting on a toilet reading a book. That was just perfect.
It was too hot to be in the book market for very long. There are no air conditioners in most places here, since it doesn’t get too hot that much, but today was a really hot day - 30C at least, even hot by New York standards. When Papa went to buy us ice-cream, there were very few brands left – everyone was cooling off how they could.
My feet were already tired by the time we got to Katya’s but we all left to go eat at that fast food place – I got draniki again, I’m feasting on them while I’m here – and then we walked toward Pushkin monument. Then we rested at Katya’s again before we went home while Katya and Lenya come over there a bit later to say goodbye, since Katya is working tomorrow.
I got an email from Graduate Chair with a schedule for me which I think will help me finally finish my frelling dissertation.
I showed Katya my Vermont photos before Aunt Vera, Sasha, Katya, my parents and I had a big dinner on a special living room table that only gets taken out on special occasions (I spend almost every new year at that table when I was little). Lenya was throwing a bit of a fit in the other room about not being allowed to go play outside alone with a friend, so he missed dinner. After dinner, Katya and I went through the whole Minsk book that Tanya gave to me yesterday and looked at all the pictures – that is one awesome book. We could even see Katya’s windows from the air shot in one picture. We said goodbye to Katya, which was sad to do. She said that she would come to New York for my wedding, once I have one. Should I count it in my game? It is really sad to say all these goodbyes.
I finally finished “Dune” today. I feel really sorry for Princess Irulan – why does she deserve that fate – to be a wife in name only because she is just a political pawn and a way for Paul to gain the throne. The book was alright in prose and general culture feeling but the plot and the characters just bugged me. No sequels for me. I will start on Neil Gaiman’s “Smoke and Mirrors,” a short story collection next.