An International Kinda' Life

Our washing maching speaks German. This is a problem. As an American living in Moscow, who doesn't speak a hell of a lot of Russian, and who studied Spanish in high school, "Ach!" "Aus," "Schlundern," and degrees in centigrade (I think that is what the numbers on the dial mean) cripple my poor tired brain at 8am as I try to cram my whites into the machine's mouth. Why 8am? There is one machine for an entire floor of people. You gotta' get while the gettin's good.

My lack of laundering fluency made me late for class today. It's not a complicated story, but it's not interesting either. I won't get into it. At any rate, this inconvenience is only one of a few lingual oddities here. Like my body wash - it speaks French. So, I thought I was buying an exfoliant ... but no, those are just bath beads that make me smell like roses.

Damn, I should not have taken Spanish.

Still, that mishap was better than when the Japanese lotion I bought turned out to be hand soap. What a discovery to make! Thankfully, it was only my arm that was caked in soapy goodness.

The lotion that I did buy, though, I mistook for cold cream. Actually, let me rephrase: I thought I was buying lotion, but when I got the substance home I thought its texture was too much like cold-cream's. Trying to avoid another lotion application mistake, I decided to put my misguided purchase to good use: I would wash my face with the cold cream.

That would have been a good idea if it was cold cream. It was, in fact, lotion, which I discovered in the shower as I tried to scrape the oily mess out of my eyes.

Thankfully, beer and vodka are universal. The day I mix up vodka with something else ... that's a sad day. Like the day I thought I was going to eat cottage cheese -- only to discover that it was a "unique Russian variety" of sour cream (which means extra sour). Yum. What a lovely breakfast that was!

These mishaps, though, are joyous ones. I laugh 'em off because this trip is, separations and longings aside, a once-in-a-lifetime endeavor. Like tonight: tonight was the invited dress for MXT's new production of Gorky's "Васса Железнова" [Vassa Zheleznova]. Tonight I sat next to some of the most famous and respected actors in Russia. I couldn't tell you who they were exactly, but they were there (the skinny bastards: the downside to being in a top arts program -- all the people around you are damn beautiful and spend their days doing calisthenics). Hopefully my life will be filled with more events like tonight, if I play my cards right.

The events of the past few days have put me in a nostalgic place. All the griping about vanity aside, I'm damn lucky. I'm damn lucky to have the people around me that I do, and the people who are only an ocean away.