I have a blister the size of a quarter on my right heel...

No, I don’t care that you didn’t need to know that. I needed to share that. It’s painful, and I can’t decide whether to cut off the dead skin (don’t ask why I can do minor surgical operations on myself with no problem but break down when medical persona try to stick me with needles) or just bandage it well tomorrow morning. I suspect that the culprit is the type of socks I have been wearing with the combat boots. Usually, I wear them only in the dead of Tennessee winters with wool socks. I’ve been wearing them with plain cotton socks as it hasn’t been cold enough for wool socks or warm enough for flip-flops (and there’s that whole I would really rather not pick up HIV from stepping on a dirty needle). I think the thicker wool socks are necessary to prevent blisters, because these boots normally don’t give me this many problems. And, well, it seems that tomorrow morning (and perhaps through the day, I wasn’t quite clear on the weather report via my host mom) it’ll be getting down into the temperatures normal for the dead of a Tennessee winter. Walking home this evening felt about like walking around in December and January in Memphis.

The intensive RSL classes have started. So far, I pretty much like all the instructors. They all seem to know roughly what they are dealing with and have appropriate expectations. They’re also kind so far. (My host mom thinks that two one page essays is two nights is a bit much, but that doesn’t really bother me.) I feel like my biggest problem right now is vocabulary. I feel good about grammar. My active understanding is less than it could be, but my passive understanding isn’t too terrible. Vocabulary, on the other hand . . . Speaking of grammar, the grammar instructor is a character and a half – she is what I one day aspire to be, wonderfully eccentric!

I went to McDonalds for lunch. I know – the shame! But it was good and greasy – even if Carli and I forgot to order ketchup for the fried we split. Tomorrow, I want to find a blini place or something near the Institute.

Oh yeah, there are plans in the works to celebrate the birthday of Aleksandr Blok in an appropriate fashion. As close to the Teatralnaya Ploshad’ as we can manage, I think . . . There are also plans (with the same group to infiltrate Russian Orthodox Cathedrals) during liturgy so we can see the areas forbidden to tourists. Yes, we will be appropriately attired, and no there will be no photos. I feel that the simultaneous planning of such activities is somehow appropriate – in a delightfully twisted way. (By the way, there are two Russian and Religion majors!) (And how many more times can I write appropriate in that paragraph?)

And now, back to reading a depressing story about lovers parting before a war and writing a short essay on Oscar Wilde... по-руссккии! I learned last night that trying to write a review of book when you have to coin new words in Russian in order to translate the titles isn’t the best idea ever. Who knew that the Russian language didn’t have a word equivalent to homoeroticism?

And this is what my name looks like on my visa – Деметрия Кэтлин Ворли.