24 hours till birthday

24 hours and 30 minutes until BIRTHDAY. About a week ago I was really depressed about life and I was less than excited at the prospect of this birthday. Because this birthday has so much going along with it, and whenever anything is hyped up I can't seem to enjoy it. But now, 24 hours away, I actually feel kind of excited. Besides obvious reasons (aka the elephant in the room.... getting krunk legally!), it's kind of exciting that this will be my last exciting birthday for awhile. I mean... this is kind of it until I'm 30. That's a stupid, naive idea and I'm sorry mom, because I know you're rolling your eyes, and I know it's so shallow and doesn't even scrape the surface of what it means to deal with getting older. I just feel like since I turned 19 it's been a two year countdown to this damn birthday and it'll be nice to just do it. And do it safely, of course. One nice thing about living in a town that is roughly 3 square miles in size is that I'm in walking distance of the bar. It is literally around the corner... so no worrying about cabs!

I'm so boring, I'm sorry. I have nothing to talk about. I saw a movie for class tonight called "The Linguists." It was obviously for my linguistics class. It was actually a really funny and also sad movie about the reality of colonization. Linguists predict that by the end of this century, there will be only 10% left of the languages that now exist. There are now 7,000 languages in the world, and there will be only 700. On one hand I know there's so many other things we should worry about besides the dying languages of the world, but everyone has to do something with their life, and not everyone can teach HIV prevention in Africa, and not everyone can promote Habitat for Humanity, and not everyone can work against human rights violations. So someone's gotta go into Siberia and take down recordings of Chulym, a language in Russia with only 4 speakers left as of 2008.

After the movie Erika and I talked to our Russian professor Ludmilla, reminiscing about Russia. We talked about Shesh-Besh, the Uzbeki restaurant near the Moscow Zoo. We talked about Teremok, the blini chain. Sometimes I miss it so much. I was thinking today about the little triumphs that used to be so elating when I was there. At the university there was a coffee machine, and you paid 30 rubles for a little cup of coffee or cappucino. They had different kinds of stuff, you could get hot chocolate or black coffee, or just cappucino with milk or with chocolate. I remember the first few days I was staring at the options and saw the word "ванилний." I don't know why but it just puzzled me. Every day I'd get coffee, I'd see the word and try to figure it out, but I always forgot about it and didn't look it up in the dictionary. One day it just hit me, it was vanilla. In Russian "в" makes a "v" sound, but it looks like a english b. "B" in Russian is "б." So in my head I was thinking "banilni" instead of "vanilni." And even though that's a stupid thing to get mixed up, I was still so proud when I figured it out. That made my whole day. Nothing makes my day like that back in the states.

But hey, I got it good here. I shouldn't complain. Except about my willpower. I've been trying to cut processed carbs (and food in general) out of my diet (except for cereal, which is too delicious to forgo), which has left me with an insane craving for anything carby. I gave in after the movie and downed a brownie and a lemon square at the reception. Oh well. Better luck tomorrow, as they say.