Out of touch....

.... but not so much that I would forget my big sister's 32nd birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SARA!!!

I hope you're having fun today!




Some general updates:

Even if I did have a computer at home I probably wouldn't be updating much anyway because this week is sheer insanity..... four RSL exams, finishing my final video for my 16mm film class, trying like hell to finish my artist book, other random end-of-the-year projects and gifts, of course ending up help coordinating buying the flowers for the RSL teachers..... ahhhhh shoot me. Though I do feel accomplished because yesterday I did perhaps the hardest thing I have done all year in Russia -- I spent just under 3 hours at the train ticket kassa near Kazanskii Sobor buying 18, yes, that is right, 18 train tickets. Somehow I did not fuck up buying 16 tickets for me and Meri to get all the way from St. Petersbug to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia (with stops along the way, clearly) and then 2 more tickets for me and Louis to go up north, to above the Arctic Circle, to check out Murmansk and the very tip of Northern Norway next week after classes end. It was stressful, there was fights between Russians about the order of the lines, I made the strategic decision to wait at one of the closed kassas that was on lunch break an hour and until she reopened so I would be the first in line, and then even so it took 35 minutes for her to book 16 of the 18 tickets (I bought the 2 international ones from Ulan-Udye into Mongolia first, upstairs at the international kassa). In the end though, I did it, my hands were shaking at the end from exhaustion and stress and nerves (that I would somehow fuck it up) and also significantly low blood sugar and I am DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE with that train kassa, possibly forever, which is a relief, but which also makes me kind of nostalgic and sad. There are a lot of things lately that I am both glad to be done with and still sad they are ending..... I guess that is how life here goes.......