They've got spirit

Well, I've been through the first few practices with IU. Not only am I excited to be playing again, it's refreshing to be in a completely different situation. That's not to say I don't appreciate all of my time on g-dub, but I hope people can understand why I'm excited for this unique experience -- having played under one system for four years and now having to adapt to an entirely new set of realities and expectations.

Really, though, I'm just glad to be back in the game. For the first few days of physical activity, I really felt soreness and tightness in some traditionally difficult areas (hamstring, knee, groin). Now though, having gone through the first week of practice and throwing, I'm feeling great, and I'm praying to the various deities that I can stay healthy for once. But I do think I damaged my hand, maybe even broke or fractured it. It doesn't hurt that much but damn does it swell when I hit it on stuff. Oh well, I guess I won't be cold-cocking anyone until the spring anyways.

I have to say, these new duties seem daunting to me right now. At GW, only in my last semester did I really have a position: D-line handler. Before that, it had always been "defense," but varying things besides that at the discretion of whoever was in charge. Now, it is abundantly clear what the Mama?s want me to do for them: be the #1 or #2 handler. I've had different reactions to this, from pride to downright trepidation.

It's nice to know you're needed. From the first visit I made after I told these guys that I was coming to IU, I felt like they really wanted me here. When I started coming to practices, and I was introducing myself, people consistently said "Oh, yeah! I've heard about you." Of course it's extremely complimentary, but it's also kind of scary in that people already have expectations for me. I have never been a great offensive player. And furthermore, I've always had some kind of physical limitation to keep me from playing all season at full power. But now I have to be on every point, and start calming down, hucking, and dealing with moody O-line players (not a comment on IU, but O-liners in general. D-line is crazy, and I know how to deal with crazy, but it's O-line drama queens that I could never deal with). Another big thing is that I can no longer consistently bitch about O-line sucking it up, since I will now be integral to its suckitude.

So far, I'm not as into the team dynamic here as I was at GW. Granted it's probably just because I'm new here, but I feel like g-dub was a lot tighter as a team. Hopefully I can play the part of social nexus and get a good solid... I hate to say clique but I guess that's what I had at GW... here. It's funny, I've been walking around campus for a good solid two weeks now, and I've only encountered members of my team on maybe two occasions. Much different from walking down 20th between E and F at 11:00 and seeing half of the ultimate team on the way. I think the sheer size of the school and breadth of non-ultimate activities available to people draws down the closeness of the team. We'll see though, I mean, this is definitely a group of guys of which I want to be a part.

We had roughly 60 rookies come out, which has thinned to about 25-30 on any given day. A few of them are pretty promising, and fewer nerds show up than did at GW on the first few days. I'm looking forward to doing my favorite thing in the world -- teaching sports -- for the next few months. It's always exciting to single out the few kids that actually want to learn and ask questions and get better, even if they do suck at first. Hell, I sucked at first. I can barely remember my first day, but I can remember Faust throwing with me and putting up with what were, I'm sure, a terrible display of ultimate retardation.

Today we practiced for the most part separated: people going to Heavyweights this weekend, and the rookies who would not be going. At the very end, the current Mama?s scrimmaged a team of ex-Mama?s and community players. One kid, who has been trying his damnedest to improve his throws and comprehension of the game, stuck around for like an hour, just watching, and trying to pick up how the game really went. That's the kind of kid you need to keep around, because years down the road, when he's tearing up the field, he'll be able to look back on people helping him out, and produce the next generation of converted players. Why? Because athletes from other sports don't think that much of ultimate, and it's hard for people who have been playing forever to connect with people who aren't sure this sport is for them. Sure it's great to have people who already come in knowing how to play, but there's something noble and respectable about someone who comes to practice and throwing every day, even though three weeks ago they didn't know what a flick was.

Anyhow, that's enough of the emotional stuff for now. Look for a post about Heavyweights sometime mid-next-week, since the beginnings of weeks are absolutely murderous for me when it comes to readings. Hopefully this weekend will allay my fears about my new exceedingly young but talented team.

Beginning of another semester

I have possibly the greatest schedule I've ever had.

First of all, my silly program doesn't want me taking too many credits. They don't want me to learn too much all at once I guess. I only have to take 30 credits (not including language) to graduate with my M.A., so spreading it out over two years is going to result in some strange scheduling.

Second, my first class is never earlier than 10:00. Granted, it's a 20-minute walk to campus, but still. Not bad.

Third, they gave me a stipend in addition to free tuition, so there's not a heck of a lot motivating me to start working at some shitty job. No missing stuff for work.

So my semester's schedule is going to look like this.

Mondays are going to be kind of crummy. I've got Russian from 1000-1115, followed by a nice heaping portion of my dream class, "Geography of Russia," until 1230. Then from 1600-1800 for some reason, I have my introductory seminar. I don't really see the point of this to be honest, since we're all here because we've been studying Russia for so long. What the hell, do I need to go through the Cuban Missile Crisis again??? I mean seriously that's n00b shit and I've already gone through it in THREE SEPARATE CLASSES. Khrushchev got pantsed and the world saw that he didn't have the balls to step with us, I GET IT.

Anyhow, Tuesday is only one class, from 1430 to 1700. It's about the Baltic countries in the 20th century, so that should be reasonably interesting. If not I can always drop it. I'm taking 12 credits, and my adviser really only wanted me to take 9. I couldn't bring myself to take 9 credits though. I would feel like less of a man.

Wednesday is the same as Monday, except without the asshole evening class.

Thursday is a big steaming pile of nothing.

Friday I have Russian for fifty minutes in the morning.

So that's it. Aaaannnd the nearest liquor store is two blocks north on College Ave. Let's be a grad student!

Back to our regularly scheduled programming

If I ever get around to it, I'll finish my Russia postings. Truth be told, I stopped taking notes about halfway through because we went to a summer camp, and then after that I was sick for like 4 days. By that time, I said fuckit and just figured I'd go off of memory. Also, that last week was not particularly interesting. Either way, I'll finish that isht later on at some point, if I can find time.

For now though, I'm at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. I will be here for two years getting my M.A. in Russian & East European Studies. I got a bitchin' stipend, so I live in a bitchin' apartment. I'll get video eventually. I wanted to do that earlier but it turns out that when I replaced my burned-out motherboard, I bought one that doesn't have a FireWire connector on it. Bummer indeed. I haven't even been able to start the video yet (eek).

Anyways, moving so far from home has been taxing. Buying furniture sucks, and buying a bed/bedding is the biggest rip-off since GW Housing. I have been to Target easily a dozen times, also to the mall and (for the first time ever) Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Okay, so, boring stuff aside I was at the mall the other day. I was looking for a tie to match the lovely outfit that my lovely date the lovely Jenee will be wearing to Courtney and Caitlin's wedding. That's two whole discussions in and of itself (one, finding a tie, and two, a discussion of the impending wedding-related awesomeness sure to hit the blog afterwards)... so I'll stick to the point.

At the mall, walking around aimlessly as people seem to do there, I saw a pregnant woman sitting in one of those free try-me massage chair deals. She looked like she was having a good time, but it made me wonder... could she have given her child shaken baby syndrome while it was still in the womb? I mean, wasn't there a case where some batty woman left her baby on top of the turned-on dryer and it kicked the bucket (or... laundry hamper I guess in this case?)? Wouldn't the massage chair be ten times worse, seeing as sitting on a dryer is AT LEAST ten times less satisfying than sitting on a massage chair? I sincerely doubt that anyone out there is an expert on neonatal health, but honestly... it definitely evinced a second thought.

My Russian Birfday

Day Six was 12 July, which, as some of you might know, is my birthday. We were horribly late getting to school because of the ridiculously inefficient system we use to get there. Our host families do not like to have us walking around by ourselves, but they also try to minimize the number of people who have to walk us to school. So, what’s become the norm at this point is having Yelena Viktorovna walk with me to meet Christina by her family’s house, then take the bus to the Gimnasiya. The whole process takes a little more than a half-an-hour, when the walk from my host family’s house to the Gimnasiya takes about 10 minutes.

Anyhow, upon arriving at the school, the younger students were all waiting at the gate, and lined up to scream “Happy birthday!” at me. Inside, I discovered that they had made a bunch of decorations for me, balloons and a big flower with little wishes written on the petals. Examples include “David- We wish you to find your perfect girlfriend!” and “We wish you to learn Russian perfectly!” They had also covered the chalkboard with paper flowers, which made teaching an ordeal for the rest of the day. Luckily, they spent most of the time making me birthday cards, at the direction of the other teachers at the school.

The kid I may have mentioned before, Yegor, is 8 years old and draws like a champ. He drew for me a picture of a pirate (of course) and presented it to me proudly. I got a whole bunch of little birthday cards from my students. Strangely, one of the cards had nothing more than a Christmas Tree on it, but I guess the thought was still there. I got a lot of presents, from paintings by the little students to stacking dolls, to a bottle of… I shit you not… tonic infused with deer blood.

There was some teaching to be had too. The older kids had apparently told one of the other teachers that they wanted to do something harder. This was good news, since I was kind of tired of “I like bananas,” “I don’t like kiwi,” and the students’ consistent inability to remember the word “cucumber” (our first two lessons were fruits and vegetables). So I started something new which turned out to be completely over their heads. I guess it’s back to the drawing board in finding something a little bit more challenging.

Hot Lunch Review was a B- today, given that there was chicken noodle soup (a familiar taste, albeit with far too much dill) and then some sort of cabbage pie, which smelled like a big egg roll, but tasted far less satisfying.

After lunch I was lead into my classroom with my eyes closed, and all the older students sang the Russian happy birthday song to me. They also had sparklers which left my room with a nice gunpowder smell for the rest of the day.

After school, we went home on what was a very hot day and I relaxed watching TV and reading more of Atlas Shrugged. One of the shows I noticed was a Russian version of that annoying as hell TV show “The Nanny,” with the exact same characters and setting, except with Russian actors and such. After that, we had some soup in the kitchen. Ilya told me that he likes to eat soup when he is angry. Interesting… I thought. He then explained himself a little later saying something like he can still eat dinner afterwards if he eats soup in the afternoon. “Ohhhh,” I said. “You mean you like to eat soup when you’re HUNGRY.” “Yes,” he replied, “sorry.” I explained that eating soup when you’re angry would be a very peculiar habit.

In the evening, we had my birthday dinner. Since Russian apartments are generally too small to hold a lot of people, we had a dinner in the cafeteria of the Gimnasia. Here, my family and the two other families (the one with the bath-house and Christina’s host family) assembled and we all ate (and drank) together. I can proudly say I did shots of vodka in a school cafeteria. We had a pretty good dinner, made by the lunchlady, Natalya Viktorovna, who put in some overtime to make a big dinner for us.

Presents-wise, I got a wooden shot-glass/snack plate set. I think the cups might actually be for eggs, but we definitely used them for shot glasses. I also got my own woolen banya-hat, complete with red star and hammer-and-sickle of the front. Finally, I got a bottle of vodka, courtesy of Christina’s host family. Cards and stuff were also given, which was very nice. All in all, I drank only about 8.3% as much vodka at my 22^nd birthday as I did for my 21^st. I guess that’s for the better, though.

After the dinner, Christina’s host father brought me to his pharmacy (he’s an anesthesiologist and also owns his own pharmacy as a side project) and here I used the internet. 34 emails later, and I was back home for the night.