The time I laughed the hardest (July 17-23)

Thursday, July 17th, 2008
One of these days we went to Tolstoy's house. I liked it a lot. A lot of original furniture, including his room and desk where he wrote the last few novels of his life. His garden was really nice.

We went to Pushkin's house too, I think it was the following week. It was not as cool as Tolstoy's... it was more of a shrine than anything.
Friday, July 18th, 2008 Successful aortic mobilization -- then Sergei blatantly killed it to look at the anatomy. After surgery, vodka with Zarine & Sergei-- refused for awhile, frustrating. Garage, Tema, Bilingua - home at 6am. Daria, danced, kissed, maybe fell in love.

Saturday July 19th, 2008
Morgue: Double knee and shoulder surgery. After, went to the market where I bought authentic soviet propaganda poster-- Irina translated it to say something like, "You should work and relax so you don't get tuberculosis. Evening, we went to Asya's flat; she cooked us dinner, watched part of a Soviet black and white film and part of Master & Margarita. I used her internet for like 6 hours while J and A watched more movies. Daria pissed.

Sunday July 20th, 2008
Whole group went to the Armory and the Diamond Fund. I mostly just made fun of the guy's voice who spoke through the self-guided tour thingy. Evening, went to FAQ Cafe to see an alternative jazz band play; it was pretty cool. Night, met Asya really late by Pizza Girl's flat. Talked to her for a bit. D apologized for being mean the night before.

Monday July 21st, 2008
House of the Romanov Boyars with Asya. Evening went with Irina & Natalya to ridiculous Ukrainian restaurant where they were dressed up in costume, and misspelled everything on the menu, or just translated it completely wrong. Some of our favorite food descriptions:
-Cream is creamy (instead of cream cheese)
-Raspberry-colored (no clue; had it listed 20 times)
-Cabbage fermented (sauerkraut)

Tues July 22, 2008
The lost day. I have nothing written.

Wed July 23, 2008
After class, Katya took us all to the Chinese Circus. She had free tickets from her parents. It was an acrobatic show of sorts, geared more towards kids, but I thought it was really freaking cool. We had the last dinner with Nastia before she left for vacation at Sushi Planet. Then one of the most hilarious nights ensued: First Irina asked J and I to come back to the Main Building to carry in groceries. She had a ton of food and liquor she bought for the next night's Blini Party. We carried them up and hung out in her room. We opened up a bottle of wine, which lead to opening a bottle of another, and another. Nick the Dr. was there, and Irina told us that it's a tradition for Dr.'s to receive cognac as gifts. So he pulled out his cognac and we drank the bottle. Then we drank another bottle of cognac. There were only four of us drinking and gorging on the food that was to be saved for the next night. So you can imagine our states of mind at this point. At about midnight we decided we should go to the Look Out at Sparrow Hill to enjoy the nice view for the weather was quite nice. We trek drunkenly, carrying another bottle of wine for arrival. We make it about an hour later to the Look Out and this is when it started to get good.

Let me remind you, Dr. Nick is a surgeon at one of the better hospitals in Moscow. He goes on to tell us as we're pouring the 4th bottle of wine and after 2 bottles of cognac that he has to go to work int he morning. Justin and I find this hilarious; what the heck is he thinking. Meanwhile, Irina has to go to the bathroom so she jumps the cement retaining wall and slithers down the steep cliff to find a good pee-spot. She's wearing this very Russian dress. Shortly, while J and Dr. N are carrying on, I hear Irina's cries for help. I jump the wall, and immediately slip on the wet grass on the hillside. This hill is freaking slippery. I very carefully in my dress shoes, dress shirt, and khaki pants, slide down the hill without staining my pants too badly, and only slipping once. I reach her finally about 50 feet down; she's laying in the weeds on her back. She can't climb up this steep monstrosity and wants me to carry her. OK, she's really light, but come on, i couldn't do it, not up that thing. So I yell up to J. and Dr. N, "Hey guys come down here, Irina needs carried up the hill." So, Dr. N is like a street fighter or something he kept telling us all night. He looks sorta like a shorter version of the Russian boxer in Rocky. He's built. But remember, he's wasted.

Without hesitation, he mumbles something in half Russian half English, and hops the cement barricade swiftly. Sadly, however, his landing on the other side wasn't so swift. Immediately, he loses his balance on the hillside, and starts rolling head over heals down the hill. He looked like something out of a cartoon, or kind of like one of the acrobats i saw earlier in the day, but Russian. After about 25 ft of that he seemed to slow down, but no, he turns on his side and starts barrel-rolling, BARREL ROLLING!, laughing his head off, like a child, the whole way down the hill until he reached Irina and I at the bottom. I haven't laughed harder in Russia. J's up at the top dying laughing. Dr. N struggles to stand up, laughing maniacally. By the way, he's dressed up too, only he's wearing all white dress pants and all white dress shirt. Nice clothes. Not nice anymore. Now there were more of a tie dye of green grass and brown mud and dirt. He comes to Irina, picks her up in his arms like a baby, and starts his climb back to the top. I couldn't believe what i was watching.

He did make it to the top, eventually. And we did make it back to the dorm eventually too... at about 4:30 am. We put Irina to bed and whipped out the video camera in front of Dr. Nick. We start interrogating him. He speaks very poor English, but we understood that he has lost all his credit cards out of his pocket, as well as his pass into the dorms. He now has to go back to the hill and look for these items before he can go to bed. He tells us he has to perform surgery at 9am. It's an hour metro ride away. Freaking Russian Doctors.