Day 8 (or the first day that I didn't lose my shit outside)

OK, PEOPLE, I WOULD HAVE POSTED THIS SHIT TWO DAYS AGO, BUT THE INTERNETS WEREN'T WORKING, SO I'LL BE POSTING ANOTHER ONE RIGHT AFTER THIS ONE.

Yeah, so today I went outside and finally didn't lose my shit. No hyperventilating or fight or flight. Yay!

Still a little shaky toward the end of my forced walk (forced by my overseer obviously, who insists that I need to see the sun everday), but not as bad today.

And speaking of the sun, I've encountered an interesting phenomenon here. Everyone cheerily tells me to look at the sun every morning, and when I point out that the sun is this little yellow circle in the sky that gives off warmth, and which there isn't the slightest sign of anywhere in the sky, and all I see are gray fucking clouds, the response is "right, that's the american sun. Here, when we say 'look at the sun', we just mean look at how not dark it is." So this basically surmises Russian attitude. It's like "we know that it's all cloudy and shit, but somewhere behind those clouds, there's a sun, and that makes us piss ourselves with happiness. Just knowing that it's there." I'm going to have to adopt this somehow, or I won't last here.

Let's see, my mum and I went to exchange some of my dollars to rubles, the exchange rate being great for me because the ruble is totes losing it's value again. Yes! This country is heading straight back for the third world financially, again. So when we went to do this little exchange, the guard wouldn't let me go with my mum to the cashier because only one of us can go at a time so as not to "distract the cashier." I hadn't realized that we look like such con artists, or that the cashier who handles foreign currency has ADD, but whatever.

So then the guard is like "why do you need to go in there anyway?" And I calmly explained that I hadn't changed currency in a long time and wanted to see how it's done here. His response was to ask me if I'd spent my schooling years in a "special institution." I can only assume that he basically just asked me if I was in special ed. But that's ok, because I just responded with a dirty look and he lost interest in me completely.

Then we went to a really nice tea house where I got some awesome soup and a piece of pie for something like 6 dollars altoghether. I kind of love that about this country. Ok, so maybe Russia's not so bad. I'm still on the fence though.

And, on the plus side, I finally found a manicure place. They also do wax facial hair removal. So good by mustache! No need to come to the motherland looking like Yosomite Sam. The best was when my mum asked this very polite and well groomed lady at the counter if they plan on ripping my whole face off with the wax, or just the mustache. The lady gave her a sarcastic look, and my mum was like "what? You're putting hot wax on her face. Doesn't it ever happen that you burn a person's face off or something? Do you do these often?" The lady kind of stopped looking or talking to her at this point and just directed all of her responses to me. Which I encouraged fully.

And the last little bit of info for today is that I found an awesome hostel right here on Nevsky, smack dab in the middle of the city and only about a five minute walk from where I'm staying. A four person room is about 30 bucks per person per day. These are perfectly European and reasonable prices. They also have 8 people rooms that are a bit cheaper. But the place is awesome with wireless internets and a kitchen and private bathrooms and showers. Totally clean and polite. So if anyone wants to come for a visit before I get my own place, this is something to keep in mind.

Ok, so that's it for today. I khow it wasn't that interesting, but it was more of an informative post for those who are taking an interest in the motherland.

Oh, and here's a pin up of me that a lovely photographer named Grace took shortly before I departed our loving country.