The Jeremy Kraft Project

So there's this kid on my trip, Jeremy Kraft.

I'm going to go ahead and let the above phrase stand as its own sentence in order to help you understand the myth, the man, the american.

Jeremy Kraft is a 28 year old Russian Studies grad student at the University of Arizona and he's a delightful person to experience St. Petersburg with. Seriously, i would have it no other way. Jeremy Kraft (who must be called by his given and family name at all times) is the guy who's gonna get into a club for free, dance without embarrassment or self-censorship, hook up with a russian chick, and then buy everyone a free round (i've seen it, its awesome).

So the entire time we're in russia, he shot film for his "final project" which was most of our grade in one of the classes and we saw the final result last monday.

Now, i'm not entirely sure what i was expecting. Half the class thought it would be a really epic and well-edited interpretation of a sweeping russian classic, the other half had their money on a porno.

I can only describe the result as a quirky mix of the two. So he did his own take on White Nights (short story by Dostoyevsky about...like...the same stuff Russian Lit's always about, use your imagination) and he got some russian girl to be in it (Read as: why we thought it was going to be a porno) and it was waaaay to long, like the amount of time when nothing. fucking. happened. put Lost in Translation to shame.

But that's all well and good i suppose.

But it was shot in first person.

Yeah.

First person shooting is always a bit odd, but with the dialogue from white nights?!?

shit son.

So here's the scene -

Jeremy Kraft (not pictured, holding camera) as our protagonist walking around in a graveyard saying the following to the girl, who, by the way, is answering him IN RUSSIAN:

"Do you know what a dreamer is?"

"I'm a little shy around girls"

and, this, this is comedy gold:

"I'm a little bit of a freak"

...oh yeah Jeremy Kraft?

Anyway, i know he took it really seriously and put a ton of work into it, blabity blah, but the end effect was like, those commercials for girls gone wild that air at 2am. You know what i'm talking about, some guy holding on a camera is walking around at some party being like "Oh yeah baby, you a freak? why don't you show us your titties?"

and the next thing is like GIRLS GONE WILD, YOURS FOR $9.99 A MONTH.

And then the prof broke out the champagne and it was all good again.

Cussin' Russkii Style

If the Russians know how to do one thing, it's cook without any flavor. Seriously, they actively pursue the eradication of flavor (on a side note, georgian food has a ton of flavor...too soon?)

If they knowhow to do two it's banish flavor and curse in the most colorful, cutting, and visually evocative manner imaginable. As a special treat, our prof held a cursing class on the last morning. Here are some of my favs.

We say:

It's beyond useless.

They say: (the russian equivalent of)

It's like giving a drink to a cee-you-next-tuesday.

We say:

Bullshit

They say:

Stop talking from your snatch

And this, this is my absolute favorite,

We say:

Go fuck yourself.

They say:

Go take a flying leap and land on a dick.

colorful, evocative.

will TOTALLY get you bitch slapped if you use it in english.

...

still totally worth it

and the russian teacher is totally hitting on this kid nathaniel.

nope, that's about it.

FUCK...ITS ALL IN RUSSIAN

This may not shock you as much as it shocked me, but fucking EVERYTHING is in russian. like everything. They eat, sleep, and take cyrillic shits. I was not prepared. You seriously cannot be prepared for this after only a few months of interaction with slavic letters.

Example: i know how to say "My half brother wants to eat the sourcream covered fried potatos, thank you." (in fact, i think i might have said just that while trying to ask directions to the metro) but i can't for the life of me order a sangwich at subway (the arrows on the S and Y don't work out as well po-russkii)

It was terrifying. You try to distinguish between and pronounce your choice of three seeming identical breads while a russian is breathing down your neck to get to the chocolate cookies. it's totally intense.

in other news the white nights here are also crazy. it's as light at 11:30 pm as it is at 10am. i know this of course because i woke up after a nap at 6 one night at what i thought was 8:30 am, rushed to get a shower and get the hell out the door to class before 9:30. i got there without a minute to spare, but the door was locked. i called another girl in my class and the convo went sorta like this.

scratch that, exactly like this...

me: dude, do we have class today??
alyssa: you mean tomorrow?
me: uh, no, i mean RIGHT NOW
alyssa: ...it's 9:30 pm...

the soup for breakfast makes so much more sense now

Julia-ism of the Day

"Try to refrain from Joking. No jokes in a foreign language"

-Julia Titus, skeptical russian professor

UNDAHPANTS/OVERSHARE

So i'm out of clean clothes. Actually that's an understatement. 

I am so clean out of clean clothes i already wore my bikini bottoms and bought hipster undies from american apparel. 

But here i was, moved into my nice comfy (fairly, dare i say it, clean) house thinking that hey, i've gotta leave for russia tomorrow and laundry doesn't take that long so i'll just do it tonight.

DUMB THOUGHT. 

The heavyweight's dryer doesn't work.

Again, i know. I KNOW. I should be shocked and awed that a house full of guys even has a dryer, even knows what a dryer is. Still, i was less than happy dragging the bag of laundry to saybrook...in the rain. 

but the thought of clean undie-pants is there,

 man. it's there urging me to push on, the light ahead that draws me ever the closer. 

Seriously though.

 I never want to have to wear these things again...

To the Class of God, Love Amanda

i hope you guys are enjoying henley/ not partying too much.

Cause Lolo's a'watchin ya.

Aww come on Lolo, lighten up, you like to go out too sometimes!

Remember that purse dance?

yeaaaah you do

Julia-ism of the Day

"ze russians would not grow such a small zucchini, zhey have big, EFFICIENT zucchinis"

(speaking on the arm length, unspeakably thick monster of a zucchini present in both the former austria-hungarian empire and Russia proper)

Housing Assignments

So we got our housing assignments. Very exciting. I will be living with Galina and Vasily Volnukhin, "sports instructor" and retiree respectivley on Malaya Sadova.

Now most of my knowledge of Russian Appartments is from the Soviet period, meaning that in my mind, i'll be staying here:

But from what i've heard things have improved since then. Anyway, Alyssa, another girl in my class is staying with my school-year roommate Katy's host from last year, which should be funny because the highlights of Katy's home stay included the time:

1. when her host baked a pie all day, filling the apartment with the aroma of warm pastry before declaring, "NOT FOR YOU" and leaving with said baked good for the remainder of the night

2. when her host put a whole frozen fish in her purse from the freezer while eyeing them suspiciously before leaving

and

3. when her host fed her warm cereal and rice...no, wait, that was all the time.

i could not be more excited!

There Are No Words...

So i moved into the heavyweight house.
ahem.
Yeah.

And i know what you're thinking. Shut UP amanda. shut up NOW before someone there reads this and you have to live in the tanks for the next three days like a mole person whilst avoiding the janitorial staff (they're vicious).

But the truth cannot be silenced.

And i have to admit i should have known.





A house where this happens

And this:

An a little bit of this

would inevitably lead to this:

OK fine, so this is a bit of an exaggeration.

...In real life that plate on the floor in the middle isn't there.

But seriously, it took about four hours, two bottles of extra-strong cleaning solvent, five large trash bags, and several hundred four letter words offered in hushed tones for Matt "the tallest person I've seen in real life" Ramlow and me to clean the kitchen and bathroom.

But hey, there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

At the end of it all i still had a place to sleep.

And a year old frozen lasagna for dinner.

I'm Sure we Sound even Stupider than we Think

Every once in a while we'll be doing an exercise in class and i'll think about what it would sound like if we were learning english.

It's not pretty. 

Ex:

me: "I has eat eggy"

professor: "you has?"

me: "i mean, i have eat eggy"

professor: "sure, go with that"

me: "those pants look nice on you."

other student: "yes, these pants do look nice on me"*

me: "i have loved hot cereals the mostest"

professor: "you may want to work on your adjectival endings"

me: "oh sorry, i mean, i have loved hottly cereals the most mostlyish."

god forbid we start using idiomatic expressions.

*actual conversation the textbook made us have

A Tale of Utmost Gravity and Suspense

so we had class today, awesome, yeah, love me some russkii. But today it wasn't just me in class, oh no, today it was me at the table and all of my earthly posessions in the corner. 

Why? You may ask.

Why on earth would you bring all your shit with you to class.

Well comrades, sit back in your comfy desk chair and you shall come to know a story of great and terrifying woe, a tale of love loss and mortality, A tale of illegal living and spandex in too many places to count. 

Get ready. 

First let's rewind. The scene is LW, 2:35 pm. Yours truly has just gotten back from the Harvard Yale race and it's aftermath. Everyone's all a-gone to london. Everyone but me. The problem with this particular situation is that dumb me forgot to get the stupid keys from Taylor before she got on the plane. 

The other problem is that 403 elm is a rather difficult place to break into. good for the tennants, bad for an amature lock picker. 

At this point i'm freaking out and trying to figure out where the hell to live for four days and considering the following options.

1. locker room in the gym

2. alternating people's couches

3. the green

I decide on the gym. After all, we practically live there during winter training and it's probably cleaner than many people's futons.

seriously. 

problem is the gym is closed. 

of course.

ok, shit, what do i do now?? i'm thinkin RTH, the building next door where the coach's offices are, there's an extra classroom where maybe i can crash or at least put all of my stuff. 

everythings locked...foiled again.

i stash a bag behind a couch in the second floor conference room and move on. at the time it seems like a good move. 

ok so now i have literally nowhere to live. 

time to call matt barber, purveyer of all things rational and all-together logically thinking person. 

at this point i'm literally just trying not to go all turrets on the innocent bystanders. 

matt says he's gonna see what he can do.

i'm trying to move my shit out of LW before the security people wonder why entryway C is being propped open by a pillow and empty box of muscle milk. 

phoebe offers me the corner of her common room as a dumping ground for my various bags.

i check the forecast and pathetic fallacy prevails.

rain is on the calender for tomorrow. 

...obviously.

all i want to do right now. seriously, ALL i want to do, is rock slowly in the fetal position while eating large quantities of chocolate. 

then suddenly... a light at the end of the tunnel.

vince, who is now in my books as some sort of goddam messiah, lets me use his room for the week. 

HELLS YEAH. 

problem is, i can't get in until tomorrow.

and all my shiznat still has to be out by tonight. 

the one bag's already stashed in RTH, but there are about seven hundred other small containers that need to be moved as well.

three go to phoebe in the fifth floor of saybrook,

one gets stashed in the back part of the tanks through an open window,

and my suitcase, bedding, and large pile of dirty clothes get taken to my classroom under cover of darkness at 6am. 

class starts at 9:00. and i'm home free.

vaguely related, i haven't showered since friday.

no biggie. 

the moral of the story?

the class of god works in mysterious ways.

and when the school offers housing, just freaking pay for it.