90% of yesterday was terrible.

I guess this is the slump that I have been anticipating all summer. Everything has been going so well for the past almost three months that I have been waiting for the day that things would get shitty. That was yesterday.

Nothing specifically bad happened. The whole day was just so fucking frustrating. We came to school to find out what groups we had been placed in for our Russian as a Second Language course and, of course, I got placed in the second-to-last group and, yeah, I know, this doesn't matter, what matters is me trying to learn this language at my own pace or whatever, but it just kind of pissed me off so much to have all these new people who show up who have no idea what is going on and have most of them be so much significantly better at Russian than I am. And I have been here for almost three months. When am I supposed to get better? When is that whole thing going to sink in? So clearly at this point yesterday I was feeling like this is never going to happen and being here in general is dumb and it's even dumber to major in this and maybe I just am really bad at learning languages. That's such a great feeling. But even despite my not-as-solid knowledge of complicated grammar like non-real situations and a lack of a lot of vocabulary that teachers love passionately, Katya has been teaching me slang and even swears and in a lot of ways my getting-around-language skills and talking to actual people and understanding how they speak is at a much higher level than all these bookish skills. But at the same time the whole situation made me feel like shit about myself and in my first class of the day the professor speaks in a way that I find difficult to follow and that only made me feel like the whole situation was even more hopeless because maybe I don't know Russian at all and am just never going to learn it ever. And it was raining and it was cold and the weather just sucks already and I was just like this was the dumbest decision I have ever made to be here.

But then by the end of the class day I was frustrated in the exact opposite way, because by the time I got to my conversation section I discovered we are using the same textbook I used this summer ("Speak Russian!") and, not only that, we read the same story I read this summer from it and did the same exercises. This made me feel like Smolny is being idiotic and placed me too low because it is totally pointless and not at all helpful for me to take the same class I did this summer TWICE. Already this summer I felt like things were too easy most of the time and that didn't exactly motivate me to try really hard..... especially as I was learning how to adjust to living in Russia and all that. But now I am culturally adjusted, I need something in class that is actually going to make me work really hard and maybe help me actually, eventually, one day learn this language. So today I have to get to school early and speak with the head of the Russian as a Second Language (RSL) department about what class I should be in. BECAUSE I JUST DON'T KNOW.

So I had to leave Smolny after all that. I couldn't stick around and do my homework there as planned. Instead I went to a café with Matt and Ilana and we did our work there, and that was calming and it was nice, and then we decided to eat some dinner together and went and bought food at a produkti (see, I am not scared to go into produktis anymore or ask for things there. That's something, right?) and had a picnic by one of the fountains on the 7th line near the metro simply because it had stopped raining and it was one of our last chances, even if it was already gray and overcast and chilly. We ate cheese and bread and pickles and it made me feel better about my life. We saw two stray dogs that looked like Gwen. That also cheered me up in a weird sort of way.

And then last night, after our picnic, Ilana and I went on our bonding experience to see the Sigur Rós concert. We had planned to do this at the end of the summer and splurged on the expensive tickets and we went last night together to the concert hall on Petrograd and, man, I am so glad we went last night. I really needed that. Sigur Rós is such a calming band..... but not in the way that they put on a sleepy kind of concert that makes me feel well rested and like I took a nap when I leave. They actually put on a really intense, energetic show. But all of their songs blend together into this one beautiful, pulsing, Icelandic sound that made a warm ball that kind of settled in my chest and made me feel better. Their sound reminds me of the ocean and Orca whales and things that are bigger and more important that RSL classes. The only disappointing thing was that they didn't play "Starálfur" which is my favorite song by them, but maybe that was a good thing, because if they had I am pretty sure I would have burst into tears right then and there after that day I had.

God, this is such a whiny, self-indulgent entry. Sorry about that, guys. But I just had to vent.

I came home after the concert to find Katya and Stas home from the hospital. They said Olga is doing fine but it seems like she is going to be there for a few days at least. I am not sure how bad the break is. It's hard to talk about medical things in Russian. But I'll keep you updated. And then I just passed out in my bed.

Things already feel better this morning, though the weather is once again shit, but I guess I am going to have to get used to that one. Bryan said it's officially fall now and to get used to it raining every day until December. That's when it starts snowing. But I am a New England resident, right? This is old news to me. Whatever.

So, off to the second day of RSL classes. Let's hope it was better than yesterday.