Yup, that's right. I had hoped that my next blog would be filled with SUNSHINE AND SPARKLES, and tales of all the FUN THINGS I've been doing. Don't worry, there have been many of those, and I will make sure that I get around to writing about them at some stage. For the moment, however, I think it's best for me to get the less-than-pleasant week I've just come through out of my system. As a compromise, if you read (or skip through) all the way to the end, I'll give you a major sunshine-and-sparkles moment from the other day. Deal?
1) I'm numbering this for no reason other than that I'm lazy and can't be bothered to write in proper paragraphs. We all know it's true, so I may as well admit that that's why, and then we can all get on with our lives.
2) ILLNESS. This is probably the third time in two months here that I've been pretty badly ill. I can't be entirely sure what - various suggestions include the food, the water, and the cheese - but something has been wreaking havoc with my stomach. I'll keep it PG and not go into details, but rest assured, it has been Bad. Classes are a ten-minute walk away and I felt weak just doing that. I turned down going to a restaurant with my friends (ME? Turning down FOOD?) because I was feeling too weak. I missed Church on Sunday and Bible Study on Wednesday and have been really missing all the wonderful people I get to see and talk to there.
So no, it hasn't been pleasant. But I'm getting better. My stomach may still be feeling 'wobbly' and I may still want to do nothing other than stay in bed and re-watch Game of Thrones, but I am definitely getting better, and I definitely have a dinner date tonight with my favourite French-German devushka (who also speaks English, Italian and Russian. Yes, she's THAT talented).
3) CASTLE BLACK. The heating in my accommodation is centrally controlled, and likes to vary wildly between extremes. It's currently cold enough in here to make Castle Black look cosy and appealing. If you think I'm exaggerating, think of this: last night, I drank some water out of a bottle which had been sitting around in my room for a few hours (nowhere near the window). It was as cold as if it had come straight out of the fridge.
I'm just really looking forward to them adjusting the setting back to 'Mordor'.
4) SHOWERING. 'Oh golly,' I think, waking up on Tuesday morning, 'it is cold in my room! I simply cannot wait to have a nice, hot shower in order to warm myself up'. LOL. As if life ever works like that. Just as my room became a fridge, the hot water in my building was turned off for a few hours. I could have lived with this if it hadn't been a hair washing day, and my hair had not been super greasy.
I know it's pathetic, but I simply could not bear to take a cold shower. Maybe I'm a princess, maybe modernity and the invention of electric water heaters has ruined mankind. Maybe I'll never be an Ubermensch. I don't know, and I don't care. I felt pathetic, but I couldn't deal with it, so I found a way around it which I am actually pretty proud of. If you ever find yourself in this situation, here is what to do
a) Boil the kettle
b) Pour the boiling water into an empty 5 litre bottle (which you will have on hand, because it's Russia and tap water is foul). Fill the bottle up with cold water from the tap.
c) Proceed to shower, with great difficulty, by pouring this bottle over yourself, topping it up with more cold water every time you use half of it, in order to make the hot water go further.
d) Cry with relief that you're semi-clean and the whole terrible ordeal is behind you.
5) THE SMELL. Speaking of my accommodation, an added bonus this week was to be told by one of our teachers that the main building of MSU (where we live) has a distinctive bad smell which clings to everything, and that she can smell it when she opens our exercise books to mark them. I can't remember whether she actually came out and said that we smell of it or if that was just implied, but either way, that's what she meant. We smell. Yay.
6) COOKING. I decided that in an attempt to prevent future illness, I would start to cook for myself again. I used to cook for myself all the time at the beginning of term, and had only started to get ill recently, when I had been going to the canteen most nights. I was very very hungry by dinner time last night, and was happily cooking myself some pasta and Dolmio sauce (the height of my culinary abilities). I took the saucepan of pasta over to the sink to pour out the water...and that's when I noticed it. Woodlice. Crawling all over the sink. Bllleeeehhhh.
'It's okay,' I told myself, 'They haven't been near the pasta. I'm holding the pasta in my hands, I'm holding it away from them, it's okay. I can still eat this.' Impressed with my own refusal to be phased by the appearance of a few woodlice in the (filthy communal) kitchen, I took the pasta back to the table beside the cooker and started to pour on the Dolmio. If only I hadn't turned my head to the left, maybe things would have been different. I might have had a filling dinner yesterday evening. But alas! I turned, I saw the woodlice crawling all over the hob next to the one I had used, I almost vomited, and I ran. I ran away, threw out the pasta, and dined instead on dry, cardboard-like crackers. I also messaged a very many people to tell them that 'I am 1000% done with this country'.
7) PIPES. I share a bathroom with one other girl, and the floor tends to be quite wet after one of us takes a shower. So, when it was absolutely soaking last night, I assumed that she must have taken a shower not long beforehand. This assumption was proven incorrect at 9am this morning, when I was awoken by a loud thumping on our outer door. I opened it to find the lovely little babushka who sits behind a desk in the communal area on our floor and helps us with any queries, accompanied by a grumpy-looking maintenance man (they seem to be constantly grumpy here. I think it's called 'being Russian'). They were here to fix the problem with the pipe, which had caused water to leak all over the floor. The babushka took one look at me, still in pyjamas, and told me to go back to bed. Occasionally they banged on the door and asked me question which I either didn't understand or didn't know the answer to. They left and I huddled up under the covers, my sleep- and cold-addled brain unable to comprehend much of anything that was going on.
When they returned an hour later, I pretended to be asleep and they let themselves in. I must have actually fallen asleep, because when, at 1pm, I finally summoned up the courage to get out of bed, they had gone. The bathroom had been rearranged and lots of things covered in plastic bags, but the floor was dry. I checked with the babushka that it was safe to shower; it was. And I would just like to say that I am proud of myself for sleeping in and not trying to face up to the world until I was ready to. Something about being woken by loud banging and shouted at in a language I'm very far from fluent in upset me a lot this morning, as did the thought of not being able to shower. It may seem pathetic to have retreated from it all and stayed in bed until a ridiculously late hour of the day. But personally, I know that it was the right decision for me and for my mental wellbeing today. And I'm happy and proud that I took that decision.
8) !!!SUNSHINE AND SPARKLES!!! I made it through a tough old week, you made it through a long old blog post. Well done us! Here is your dosage (and mine) of sunshine and sparkles: On Thursday morning, I had breakfast with my friends in Shokoladnitsa, aka a delicious cafe chain and probably what I'll miss most about Russia (aside from the people). We ate together, we worked together, we chatted. It was lovely.
'I'm really going to miss you all,' said Silvia, in a happy-sad moment, 'This little international group, comparing how we do things in our different countries. I'm going to miss it.'
TLDR: Friends make everything better.
