So, today is November 16th.

It's kind of odd to me that it is finally November here, and I'm actually planning things like when I'm going home and all that stuff that six months ago I was like "Oh, sometime in November I'll figure that out..." It's also November 16th, which means I am now in my last month of being 20 years old. That also kind of freaks me out. How old am I? And this month is going by so quickly. And there are only less than two months left now in this semester before I go home for a visit and I am half-way through my year in Russia. That one really blows my mind.

I wasn't planning on doing anything on Friday night, but I ended up sitting in a café for a good long while talking to Emma and Ilana and drinking locally brewed beer and finally fell asleep at Emma's house. The best part of our night though was the waitress who served us. There was one pretty drunk guy who was one of the four other people in the café and he kept wandering over to our table and asking Ilana to dance and telling us we were pretty and at one pointed he petted Emma on the head. He was totally harmless, even kind of cute, just really drunk and annoying. But at the moment of the head-petting our waitress appeared out of nowhere and was suddenly standing in front of Emma asking the young man to leave us alone. When he persisted she simply folded her arms and her generic celtic-weave design tattoo popped out on her upper arm from under her white t-shirt and she just glared. And he left. And we enjoyed the rest of our night untouched. We were so impressed with this waitress that we left her a 30% tip (which is big when in Russia a tip, if given at all, is 10% absolute max) and a note on a piece of paper torn out of my journal written by Ilana: "Dear waitress, thank you for the protection from the drunk young hooligan. We love you!" and we signed our names. So we'll be going back to that establishment.

I had printmaking yesterday. We did more engraving prints, made from boards we prepared last week.... Cathy and I etched drawings we did into plywood type board and then put glue on certain parts that we wanted to be bright white and let them dry for.... two weeks. But, yeah, we made prints from them. And they look really cool. The technique makes everything look murky and dark and mysterious so even two apples on a table looks interesting. I liked the technique a lot, just not the part when you have to rub all the ink off the plate with newspapers before you make a print. My arms were actually tired after that.

We also celebrated Maneka's birthday a little last night. A decision was made to go to one of the three Indian restaurants in St. Petersburg and we ate things that had actual spices (more than just salt) involved and were going to do something afterwards to celebrate further but then everyone got lame and wanted to go home. So we did. And I slept a lot.... the first time I slept without an alarm set for.... years? Who knows. Anyway, now it's Sunday. I'm going to go meet Emma for a little bit to do some coffee-drinking.