Friday, November 20, 2009

The day of the longest 2.5 hours ever

Wednesday: Nov 18

3 days later, I don't even remember what happened at school, so obviously nothing. Oh no, wait. I do remember. Valentina complained about the "new"(new as in not our old one, not new new. Man, they really need to get black boards already....) chalk board they put up in our classroom a lot until the matinence staff came in and she yelled at them a bit. And then the yelling turned into joking and they put our old one back. It was interesting to hear so many imperatives being thrown around, especially since we had JUST learned some of the ones that they were all using(the whole lesson was us basically saying :_______ is_______. It isn't in the right place. __________ ________ from___________ and put it_________. using the different verbs for items and for people for to lay, hang, and to stand. It sounds simple, but some objects that one would think would "stand" actually "lay" AND furthermore you have to remember to keep track of what goes in the prepositional case and what goes in the accusative case. For example: The books are laying(object, not human) under the coffee table(instrumental case) on the floor(prepositional case). I(dative) need to to grab the books) and put them(genitive)( the version of the verb that means "to place standing up") on the shelf(accusative case because it is motion not location) of the bookcase(genitive).
Oh cases.....they make me so slow.
Now that I've got that complaint out of my system.
After classes I walked home and made a mean sandwich. Russian cheese and cheddar cheese(the last of it, sniff!), onion, euro mustard and really good pepperoni. Picked up some onion for the first time at Okay. Damn, makes a sandwich 1000047 times better. At 7:30 Yunji and I headed to Etazhi to meet Hannah and Max. There were like 4 people there. Usually it's packed in there. I originally though "Rumba" was playing(Belgian film, looks quirky and cute) but I guess that is next week, instead was "о чём речь." My first thoughts were "Oh well, at least it will actually be in Russian so I don't have to listen to a bad dub job again" but then it started. And the movie had no dialog in it. That wasn't so bad but it was so weird(and not in a good way). It won at some Russian film festival so the quality wasn't amazing, and it was just so...pretentious. And did I mention long? It didn't help that the director didn't cut ANYTHING. Like, lets watch someone wake up and get ready in the morning. In silence. For 10 minutes. MY GOD. There was hardly a plot either. A writer looks at photos of people in his life and then "writes" stories which the audience sees play out. And they are bizarre. A guy walks through a creek and is carrying a small milk jug. He sets it down in the river, sits on a rock and reads a scrap of paper floating in the water. Then a lady comes across the bridge with a large jar of milk. Then he fills up his from the lady's . Then she takes the small jug and he takes the big one. That is all that happens. For like 20 minutes. WITH NO TALKING. I mean, it wasn't even beautifully shot or anything. I found no saving graces. I was checking the time every 20 minutes thinking "how long can it BE!?"