What I haven't been up to:

Going to museums or doing anything touristy, that's for sure.

Actually, that's a small lie. I stopped by the Russian Museum on my way home from school last week to sit in front of the Filonov paintings for a while (the professor teaching my Russian avant-garde art class is the world's expert on Filonov), and then this weekend I saw an exhibit of old recently discovered Russian photographs of Southern Russia from the 1880s as the Russian Photo Center "Rosphoto," where I went once this summer.

Okay, so then maybe it's just by my high standards of compulsively always needing to be busy that I feel like I've been sitting around doing nothing, but I kind of have been.

I prepared myself so much for my first arrival in Russia in June, and then I prepared myself even more for my first arrival back in the U.S. in January, but I really had no idea what to expect of this semester coming back..... I was worried for a long time it would be really hard coming back, I'd have to readjust, I'd remember everything I'd been missing while I was at home, yadda, yadda, yadda, I'd go through culture shock all over again, but no, not quite. For as much as I loved my time at home for those two weeks, I just as much love that I came back, and that I am staying back in Russia until the end of June.

What I didn't realize was that coming back for second semester is entirely different than my summer plus fall experience. I mean, summer was definitely different than fall, and by the end of fall I definitely completely felt like I was some kind of living here, having a daily routine, not needing to look at my map anymore to get around, having most of the metro memorized, not even thinking twice about asking someone for directions or an item in a store, walking around without that continuous tourist paranoia.....

But that feeling was so much stronger upong coming back and immediately getting thrown into a ritualistic, normal, average kind of daily life pattern. Sure, there are still touristy kinds of things I want to do -- I haven't been to the Nabokov Museum yet, I've only been to the Hermitage once in the whole time I've been here (shhh, it's a horrible secret of mine) -- but it's not with that urgency anymore of feeling like I have a limited amount of time in this place, not a trip that is running out anymore, but just my average, daily life in which I want to fit in things like that. I think about going to those museums now in the same way at Wellesley I think about how I really ought to get myself into the Museum of Fine Arts during the weekend, or check out some photo show in Winchester. Living on my own in the apartment with Lauren definitely contributes to that -- things like grocery shopping and paying the phone bill and having people over to hang out and drink wine and watch Flight of the Conchords are all things I do in my regular life at home, in the U.S. Therefore, these tiny little things all add up and really make me feel as though I legimately live in this city right now.

I think the biggest thing of all that contributes to this feeling is my new experiences in the field of cooking. I was born of a non-cook of a woman who only learned how to bake a good chicken out of pure necessity (my dad tells the story that when he first went over to my mom's apartment when she was in grad school all she had in her refrigerator was nailpolish and strawberries), who was born of a woman who is a pretty damn good cook, but who hasn't cooked a meal for something that wasn't a holiday or a special occassion since about 1980. When you're seventy-five, you do what you want, and if that means eating at Legal Seafood's, so be it.

Up until this point in my life, I've always been living in some kind of situation where food as been provided for me..... my non-cook of a mother making dinner all through high school, the mandatory meal plan at Wellesley, my Russian host family kept me full for the past seven months, even summers when I'd be staying in my house on my own I would find ways for others to feed me.... a date at a Thai place with my then-boyfriend, finding my way to my grandmother's house.... when left to my own devices, cereal was the name of my game.

I realized though before moving into this apartment though that five months of cereal, three meals a day, was going to get old pretty fast, especially as Russians aren't really into an enormous variety of delicious, dry, cold cereals like Shredded Wheat or Fruit Loops. The only two kinds of cereal that Lauren and I can locate in the produkti down the street from us are Honey Nut Cheerios (which taste just ever so slightly off in their non-American-manufactured state) and Nestle Fitness cereal, both of which are delicious, but both of which Lauren and I have already gone through 2 boxes each in just our first week of living together.

This was not going to cut it. Lucky for me, Lauren is not only a very talented cook but seems to enjoy it (something I am shocked to see as so few people I know in my life like this phenomenon..... excluding my dad, who does enjoy cooking, but rarely engages in the task as he is "too messy in the kitchen" according to certain family members.) In my time back, Lauren has already made chili on Valentine's Day, banana bread to welcome me home, eggplant curry the other night when Carrie and Cathy were over, chicken teriayki before we went to Zach's party on Friday, homemade tomato soap with real tomatoes and no cans, oatmeal with ginger and nutmeg on Saturday morning before printmaking, and probably about sixty other delicious things I am forgetting. Our system involves a lot of Lauren cooking and me cleaning, which I am perfectly content with as she is keeping me well fed.

But! The point of this semester was not to find basically another host mom to feed me! (Though that is how we've starting jokingly referring to Lauren.) I want to learn this basic life skill, at least to be able to make a decent chicken for a group of people and some brocolli or something like my mom, and not survive purely on pinkish milk and Lucky Charms.

And! I am proud to say, I have started to learn this task..... I actually even, kind of, maybe, enjoy it...??

There was something unbelievably satisfying about waking up this morning and going through the following thought process:

Q. What do I feel like eating?
A. Hmm.... how about eggs. Over easy.
Q. How many?
A. I think two would be perfect. And a nice piece of bread.
Q. Do you want them now or after you shower?
A. Mmm.... now.

And then, having established that, going to the refrigerator, getting the eggs, making exactly two eggs, one piece of bread, eating it, and taking a shower. I have never had so much control over what I have been eating before, and I really enjoyed it. For the first time not relying on the whim of whoever is being so kind to keep me well fed, I could become a picky eater again like I was back in the day if I really wanted. Instead though, I think the opposite is going to happen..... it's kind of a creative process, this cooking situation, especially when you have two college/post-college girls living together on student budgets. You look in the cabinet and figure out what you can make out of stale bread, cheese, three cherry tomatoes, arugula and some pepper. Open-faced melty sandwiches? Sure, sounds great.

So, right now, I'm getting a little thrill out of this situation. I've already successfully executed some fried rice, macaroni and cheese "Russian style" (when you just melt the cheese on top of the pasta, next I'll try it American style where I'll actually attempt some sort of an Annie's-esque cheese sauce), a couple of forms of pasta, and several different styles of eggs.

What is especially interesting and entertaining to me, is when Lauren and I want to make something that is completely not-Russian in any way, shape or form, and trying to concocte it out of the Russian versions of the ingredients in the produkti that we find. For example, for Lauren's chili, canned beans don't exist so much in Russian, not canned beans as we know them. So Lauren bought hard beans, soaked them in water, and then threw them into the chili, figuring they'd cook with the rest of the ingredients..... we learned soon after that it's probably better to boil the beans a little bit first before adding them in if you don't want too much of a crunch, but we're figuring things out as we go. My biggest planned cooking challenge is going to be creating some kind of version of Nunni and Mom's infamous Italian red sauce for pasta out of whatever I can find in the produkti. Somehow I don't think they sell here that particular brand of Pastene canned tomatoes that come in those big yellow jars, Mom.

At this point all of you reading this are certain that someone has hacked my blog and that this is in no way the E.B. Bartels you know and love writing this essay. My dad is probably remembering that time I tried to make apple pie filling when I was little and used the opposite proportions of cinnamon and nutmeg, making a horrible, horrible mess of some innocent apples. But no, I can assure you, this is still me. Isn't this nuts though?

Could this homey little life I am leading in St. Petersburg actually make me some kind of.... domestic??

We'll see.

Jeez, take me out of Wellesley and throw me into one of the more sexist countries in the world for a mere nine months and look what happens.

Basically, in summary, I feel so damn settled back here already I find it hard to believe I only arrived back a week and a half ago.

Now, excuse me. I have to go write an article for the March issue of Counterpoint basically plagiarizing this blog entry. Hey, you got a sneak preview, look at that.