A letter home from study abroad
Well, it's the 4th of december and I've slacked off and not written for a
while. It's come to my attention that there are some people at utopia who
aren't interested in receiving my journals....Well, I've got two
suggestions: 1) As the messages are BCCed to junk, you might set your copy
of eudora to trash mail sent both from and to me. or 2) you can bear with
me for 2 more weeks...during which I doubt i'll write more than twice...
Well, today we had an excursion to the KGB museum...it was sort of
interesting. they had a series of displays of spy stuff they'd confiscated
from western agents... I've got new-found respect for the CIA's tech
people....Afterwards, leslie, jocelyn and I went off in search of fresh
salmon as we're planning to make sushi on thursday. (don't laugh....we did
it last week with tuna and it was great) We found a supermarket near the
KGB building that didn't have fresh salmon, but they did have all sorts of
great western things like LIMES..This was the first time since august that
I'd seen a lime..They also had all sorts of name-brand western goods that
I hadn't found here before. After that, we headed to a bookstore, where I
purchased my very on copy of the russian translation of "The New Hackers'
Dictionary."
This evening, jerry, emily and I grabbed dinner at mcdonalds
before heading home. Once we got home, a Korean girl who lives next door
came over to hang out....At some point, she asked us if we wanted some
kim-chi..Well, of course we did....So, we ended up in her room slurping
kim-chi and rice.....that was some seriously good and spicy food.....
I tried to give a friend back home a ring, but discovered that my
calling-card was no good....and so I got switched through to the ATT
calling card center....who called my mom to verify that I was me....Well,
after my mom told them that I was her son, they hung up and my mom hung up
and I waited on the line for the ATT operator who didn't pick up
again....but my mom did...so we talked for a few. I'm 99 percent sure
that we weren't being charged for talking, as I never dialed my mom and
they were calling her to verify that I was me.
Well, that's it for today...what's happened in the past few
weeks...well, lots of things....my dad and brother have come and gone
again, taking home about 1/2 my stuff. Oh, yesterday, I finally mailed
off some chocolate to a friend studying in italy. I'd tried to mail it on
monday...I waited in line for 20 minutes at my local post office:
Jesse: Hi, I'd like to mail this to italy.
Disgruntled Postal Worker:To where?
J: Italy
DPW: Oh, Italy...you can't do that here.
J: Well, where can I do it?
DPW: Only at the central post office.
J:Please?
DPW: What's in it?
J:Chocolate..it's a gift
DPW:Well, come back later.
(At this point, I realized that it would be a bad idea to mail it there.
So, on tuesday, I went to the central post office and waited in line for
10 minutes
J:Hi, I'd like to send this to italy
DPW2:You can't do that here
J:But my post office said i could do it her
DPW2:No. You have to go to Clean Ponds metro stop. you can only mail
letters here.
J:But this isn't very big
DPW2:this isn't a letter. this is a small parcel. You can't mail small
parcels from here, only letters.
J:But my post office said that I could only mail this from here
DPW2: You can't mail this here. Go to clean ponds metro
Later that evening at the post office clean ponds metro, I waited in line
for 20 minutes, only to be scolded for sealing my parcel. I opened it up
and the DPW scolded me for not sealing the box of chocolates. I just
couldn't win. She took the box of chocolates and wrapped it in
twine..then stuck it back in my padded mailer...then she wrapped my padded
mailer in brown paper. I was then told that I had to fill out a customs
declaration in quadruplicate. The only thing I really messed up on the
declaration was that I merely wrote "chocolate" under "contents" instead
of "chocolate, one box." After paying about 8 bucks for airmail, I was
told that I was done. I asked when I might expect my package to arrive.
The DPW refused to answer....I asked a number of variations on the
question which she also refused to answer.