linesdivide

Just days after I graduated, my family and I took off for Russia for a few weeks. I’m fortunate enough to be able to travel extensively with parents, brother and sister but this trip has seen the addition of two more people: Suzy, my brother’s fiancee and Carl, my sister’s boyfriend. Yes, I’m a veritable seventh wheel. Kidding aside, we’re having a great time in St. Petersburg but the whole sun-never-setting thing kind of screws up any chance we have of getting acclimated to the time change.

Our usual routine goes something like this: eat breakfast together, meet up with our driver/interpreter, go on some sort of tour in or around St. Petersburg, stop for lunch, continue the tour, return to the hotel, nap and finally meet up for dinner around nine or ten. This is exactly what happened a few nights ago, but the whole group was not thrilled about finding a restaurant to eat dinner at outside the hotel, so my dad and I checked out the cuisine on the different floors of the Hotel Moscow.

After checking out each of the floors, we decided that “Grill Bar” on the first floor looked the best and the most reasonable. After meeting up with the others, we walked back over to this restaurant only to notice that the lights were dimmed and that the stage at one end of the room was now illuminated, such that the pole in the middle of it was clearly visible.

Yes, without even trying my dad and I had managed to invite the rest of the family into a restaurant/strip club for dinner. Yikes. It’s a good thing that the dancing had not yet commenced, otherwise Pops and I would have had a bit of explaining to do. I’d post a picture of the very obvious sign I clearly missed but this particular Russian internet cafe lacks any sort of English instructions and while my understanding of the Cyrillic alphabet is getting better, it certainly isn’t good enough for me to get a picture onto Flickr.

I’m so happy that I’m enrolled in “Sociology 100: Classical Sociological Theory” during my last quarter at UC Davis. My classmates keep me entertained during what would otherwise be a fairly boring bi-weekly overview of theories that are 100+ years old. We just had third “midterm” (more of an exam, but that’s neither here nor there) which we reviewed for the day prior to the exam.

Just before the review got started, one of the other students was chatting with her friend in a tone of voice that easily allows everyone else to here. And then there was the actual content of her story. It started in a classic manner:

“Have your nostrils ever really hurt? I mean, like they’re burning?”

This statement alone got my attention. I decided to listen further. Her friends asked why her nostrils felt like they were “burning”, so she explained further.

“Well, my fiancé and I decided we were going to have our separate pre-wedding parties with our friends, and last night was my party. I can’t remember the last time I drank so much. I’m so hung over right now.”

Of course, that didn’t really answer why her nostrils were en fuego. I was waiting for the punchline and stood to be disappointed, but she quickly wrapped up the story.

“Yeah, I mean, have you ever thrown up through your nose? It hurts so much!”

Well, consider my curiousity satiated.