So, on wednesday, I got up at about 7 am. you see, I was going to talk to 5th and 10th graders at a moscow school about the american way of life. It was way to early for me. I had to be there at about 9 and it took an hour to get there....but it was worth it. I started off talking to a classroom full of 5th graders...the deal was that they asked me questions..here are the first several...in order: "What's your name?" jesse "Do you have any pets?" a dog and a cat "How old are you?" twenty "Do you have any children?" no "Are you married?" no I'll chalk it up to cultural differences or the fact that I didn't shave that morning or something. They were really sweet over all. I told them to ask me strange questions....and one kid took me up on it "What do you know about aliens?" "Real aliens or movie aliens?" i asked. "Real aliens." and then I tried to explain the mars rock to them. Then two of them read stories about their imaginary friends to me. One of them had gone so far as to make a model of his imaginary friend. (one of those pompom dolls) He presented me with it as a gift after class...it's sitting on my desk. The second class asked more normal questions. Several of them were excited about the fact that I was into computers....One asked me if I'm a "hecker" (russian pronunciation of hacker.) I was somewhat taken aback....but said yes. He said that he was too. After class, one kid brought a notebook up to me and asked for my autograph. Before I knew what was happening, I was being mobbed by fifth graders who wanted my autograph. so I gave it to them. Then several wanted my email address...I'll see if any of them actually write me. (Could one of you wes people look to see if my homepage has any hits from .ru?) One of the girls asked me if I had any russian money. When I said yes, she tried to offer me 300 rubles (about 5 cents)...I refused....i just couldn't take money from a little kid. After that, it was off to the 10th grade. The 10th graders weren't nearly as interested or interesting. Afterwards, olga fed me and then I got payed for october (150 000 rubles.) Then I went on my merry way home....where I immediately collapsed for a 2 hour nap. After that, I did some homework and headed out to meet Sara for dinner at Baku Livan, a middle-eastern cafeteria.... On my way out of the dorm, I walked past a number of soilders unloading wooden crates and coils of wire in the lobby. I have no idea why they were there or what's in the crates....and i'm not about to open one of them up. Who knows, maybe my dorm's a new artillery dump. it was really good and cheap... .although it appears that the restaurant was being renovated and that we were eating in what was normally the restaurant's kitchen. Once I got home, I studied for my Chekov test (it got postponed till thursday) and napped for a bit and hung out in cath's room.... At about 11:30, the lights went out, but only in the rooms on my side of the hall. We decided that there wasn't any point in even _TRYING_ to get it fixed then. ps the vote on russian domains (gu vs kanga) was pretty much neck and neck...so I've decided to go ahead and register them both once secondary dns gets set up. Most "programmer types" seemed to prefer kanga while almost everybody else seemed to go for guru.