token popular culture post

So I just discovered something really exciting.

I found a list of the nominees for the Foreign Language Film Academy Award. And included in it was....a film from Kazakhstan! I was amazed. It's called "Mongol" and is directed by Sergei Bodrov, a Russian-born director who directed the movie Kavkazskii Plennik (Prisoner of the Mountains), which is apparently a really good movie that was also nominated for a foreign-language Oscar in 1996. So. I obviously can't do anything about the results, but I'm happy for good publicity for Kazakhstan from the film industry (we don't need to talk about Borat), and I want to see the movie. It's about Genghis Khan.

Then another nominee also excites me. It's a movie called "12" and the plot summary is: "12 Russian jurors decide the fate of a Chechen teenager charged with murdering his stepfather." It's directed by Nikita Mikhalkov, a really famous Russian director who is also, oddly enough, the son of the composer of the Soviet and Russian national anthems. He's been nominated for several Oscars and won one. I saw part of his film "Anna" about his daughter. It was really fascinating and I'd like to see the rest of it.

Anyway. I thought it was interesting.

[schu]packing

I count as one of the greatest tragedies in my life the fact that this sweatshirt didn't make the cut when choosing what to take back to the States. I'm still not sure I understand why it was left behind.

some sisters of mine

Dina:

Emily and Carrie:

it still happens

Sometimes I see clouds hovering right above the horizon and for a second, think they are the snow-capped peaks of a mountain range.

Or I am startled by the sound of the people at the table next to me in a coffee shop speaking in English.

I catch myself reusing ziploc bags and scraping out peanut butter jars with a spatula. Those things are luxuries.

Last night I had my eyes closed and for a second thought I was on the bottom bunk and should be careful when I rolled over so the bed wouldn't wobble and creak and wake up Sister in the top bunk.

Sometimes I still wish for the six-month winter.

A lot of times I wish I didn't have to say now that I've been back in the States for three and a half years. That's a long time.

A lot of times there is a second in which I feel like I am seeing myself in third person and I think "what am I doing here??" Here in Oklahoma. In America. At OU. In this classroom. With these people. How did this happen. Do I belong here? How did I get here? Am I okay with this?

Yes. I guess.

Sleep

from Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions:

Blessed Creator, Thou hast promised your beloved sleep; Give me restoring rest needful of tomorrow's toil. If dreams be mine, let them not be tinged with evil. Let your Spirit make my time of repose a blessed temple of his holy presence. May my frequent lying down make me familiar with death, the bed I approach remind me of the grave, and the eyes I now close picture to me their final closing. Keep me always ready, waiting for admittance to your presence. Weaken my attachment to earthly things. May I hold life loosely in my hand, knowing that I receive it on condition of its surrender; as pain and suffering betoken transitory health, may I shrink from a death that introduces me to the freshness of eternal youth. I retire this night in full assurance of one day waking with you. All glory for this precious hope, for the gospel of grace, for your unspeakable gift of Jesus, for the fellowship of the Trinity. Withhold not your mercies in the night season; your hand never wearies, your power needs no rest, your eye never sleeps.

Help me when I helpless lie, when my conscience accuses me of sin, when my mind is harassed by foreboding thoughts, and when my eyes are held awake by personal anxieties.

Show yourself to me as the God of all grace, love and power; you have a balm for every wound, a solace for all anguish, a remedy for every pain, and a peace for every disquietude. Permit me to commit myself to you, awake or asleep. Amen.

Europe 2008

It looks like I'm going to be in St. Petersburg, Russia this fall. The plan is for me to spend the summer with my parents in southern Russia and then go up to Petersburg for school. Also I know probably three friends that will be in Europe that semester. We are meeting at some point (it's not an if, but a when, where and how) during the year. In Poland. Or Czech. Or Hungary. Who else will be in Europe? Can we get together? Contact me.

I'm getting excited. It's possible that after spending the summer with my parents I would have to leave the country to renew my visa before coming back and going to school. So I may be stuck somewhere in Europe for a couple weeks in August as well. Who wants to take a late-summer vacation and bum around Europe with me while I get my visa renewed? This is the best excuse ever, people. Let's plan a trip.

My head hurts.

more from #70

This is my class from Russian school. Second grade, which means...1995, I think. I am in the middle row, wearing the pink shirt. One of the only girls without a huge bow in her hair. To the left of me (your left, not mine) is my best friend Katya Ascheulova. She befriended me in first grade when I arrived and we remained friends through fifth when I left. I last saw her around 2002, still at #70. I wonder where she is now. She lived with her mother, mother's boyfriend (? they called him their uncle), half-sister, and occasionally cousin. They had a three-room house - meaning, kitchen, living room, bedroom. There was an outhouse around the back near the chicken coop and small garden, and they bathed at relatives' houses. Katya loved coming to our apartment and playing with my Barbies. She and her sister made their own Barbie clothes.

To the right of me is Polina. Two people over is another Katya. There were three, I think. This Katya was always sick and pale. Two people over is Pasha. He was tall. The second from the right in the front row is Dasha. Dasha was in my class every year I was at #70. She was teeny-tiny, and often the teachers' favorite. She and this kid Dima would sit in the front row. The girl in the top row with the white bow is Nastya.

I wish I remembered more names, and more about these faces. Russian school strongly influenced who I am today, but I hardly remember it. I concluded recently, in all seriousness, that I must have blocked a lot of it out of my memory.

My teacher, in the middle of the back row, is Inna Vladimirovna. She taught me and my sister for three years each. She was a great teacher. When we came to the States for six months and I forgot all my Russian, she tutored me after we got back and helped me relearn it. She is probably in her 70s now. I wonder if she's still alive. My dad saw her in 2003ish, but that's all I know.

The kid looking away, in the top row, just to the left of me, is Eldar Djangirov. Eldar is now a brilliant jazz pianist based out of New York City. He was always good at piano, and in 1998 (after I left for Kazakhstan), he was discovered by an American benefactor during a competition in Siberia, and was brought to the US to study. I forgot about Eldar until my sister heard he was playing at her school, and put two and two together. We rediscovered him, I found him on facebook, etc. I went to see him play in Tulsa in April and talked to him afterwards. Pretty crazy. His third album came out in June and was nominated for a Best Contemporary Jazz Album Grammy Award. He's really good. Check him out.

back in the day

Some old scanned pics.

Not at my most intelligent (1989ish):

first passport picture, 9 months old (1989):

Some shots from South Asia:
I was a weird-looking kid:

in a rickshaw with mom and sister:

cute family. fat kids. late 1989:

student of Shkola Gymnazia #70 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. This is probably 1995-ish:

Jesse made me get a blender

ice, frozen strawberries, yogurt, sugar, a few chocolate chips. Yum.

third time

The seventh (yesterday, technically) was my half-birthday. Nineteen and a half. I have six months, exactly, left to be a teenager. I like to take note of this day. It's Orthodox Christmas Day, incidentally.

To celebrate, Jesse and I went to the Red Cross to donate blood. Well, okay, it wasn't to celebrate, but I've been wanting to do it for a while, and today was as good as any day.

After reading the forms, answering the questions (no, I have not had a brain graft [at least not in the last 12 months], I am not HIV-positive, and I have not had recent contact with anyone born in Africa or afflicted with hepatitis), and getting my finger pricked for iron level testing, I was ready to go. Third time's a charm, I thought, as I settled in to the chair and challenged Jesse to see who could fill their pint faster. I'm B-positive. No trouble.

Here's Jesse, ready to roll for his first time:


So, anyway, I got the tube inserted and the blood started flowing. All is going as it should:


Here's the donation at about the 7-minute mark. I took 9 minutes. Jesse somehow pumped it out in a measly 7. I graciously cede the victory to him:


By the way, sorry if I'm grossing anyone out at this point. The yellow stuff on my arm is iodine to disinfect. It's not some skin disease. So anyway, after nine minutes I'm done and can get up and go eat food. I got off the bed, feeling a little strange, kind of like last time I donated, when I felt strange and nothing happened. As I'm sitting down at a chair, the nurse asks me if I'm okay. "I feel a little weird," I answered, and next thing I know I'm waking up in the middle of a fog as someone is yelling my name over and over again.

I had fainted. I was in a heap on the floor and two nurses were yelling and dragging me up onto my feet, then over to the bed where they laid me down and elevated my feet. Apparently I had not drunk enough water. I felt pretty terrible, actually, for a few minutes. My first thought on waking up, though, besides wishing they would stop shouting at me, was "dang it, I would faint." I saw Jesse sitting on the bed, still pumping blood double-time, laughing at me. The jerk.

So, yeah. I fainted after giving blood. I feel like a wimp, but the nurses saw me taking pictures and heard I was going to post them on the blog, so I had to promise to post all the other embarrassing details as well. And here they are. My third time to give blood, and my third time to faint (the first time included hitting my head on a marble floor, and the second, more yelling, this time by my sister). And all on the half-birthday, no less.

i am happy to report

that it is 1:30 am and I am really tired. I think my sleeping habits are finally changing for the better, for good! hopefully. I have a 9 am class this semester, so they'd better be.

morning and evening

Sister left this morning for NJ. I rolled out of bed at 5 am to take her to the airport. Reminds me of middle-of-the-night Central Asian airport runs. This was less eventful.

Brother and I got lost on the way to MidWest City to visit friends who pronounce Kazakhstan correctly, wear felt slippers in the house, and know about Tien Shan's building issues. We stopped at Phillips 66 for directions.


The sunset was beautiful and the evening quite enjoyable.

just some thoughts

Two things I've been thinking about in the last few weeks/months:

Left-handedness
Color Blindness

**The use of the links above is in no way an endorsement of Wikipedia as a legitimate research tool. I use it to get a quick synopsis of the subject of interest. I do not pretend to think that it is 100% correct, though I think it is often more correct than academics give it credit for.**

Anyway.

1) Left-handedness. I am right-handed. I want to be left-handed. Off and on throughout my life I have played with switching over, to the point that I could sort of write functionally with my left hand. I did this with writing backwards too, but that is a much more useless skill. So yeah, I recently picked this up again and have been writing with the left some. Results are still fairly shaky. I always thought left-handed people were cool, and wanted to be different like them. Also I'm wanting to learn a language whose script is right-to-left, and being left-handed is perfect for that. Some observations from the wikipedia article:
a) my autistic brother appears to be ambidextrous. That is apparently somewhat common. Interesting...
b) Scissors and many knives are apparently designed specifically for right-handed people, and thus are difficult for lefties to use. I think in this regard it would be dangerous for me to convert, as I'm already somewhat of a klutz and have fairly frequent unfortunate incidents with sharp edges.
c)It seems left-handedness is associated with greater creativity and intelligence, but also shorter life span. I wonder if this would extend to a mid-life convert. Maybe I could obtain some creativity. That would be good.

2) Color Blindness. This fascinates me. It's the whole idea of someone else seeing something different from me but calling it the same thing. Crazy. Some things:
a) I found this website a while back (it wasn't working for me just now but hopefully it still does) where you can upload a picture and view it the way a colorblind person sees it. That was pretty cool. It's a dull world for them, I must say.
b) I didn't read the whole wikipedia article. It gets really technical. Stuff about cones and absorption spectra, and pigments and retina and stuff. Whatever. But I think I ascertained that this is NOT acquirable later in life, so I'm good with my multi-colored world. And I'm thankful for that.
c) Because color blindness is hereditary, it can be geographically bound. For example, this slightly creepy story in the wikipedia article:
While normally rare, achromatopsia is very common on the island of Pingelap, a part of the Pohnpei state, Federated States of Micronesia, where it is called maskun: about 1/12 of the population there has it. The island was devastated by a storm in the 18th century, and one of the few male survivors carried a gene for achromatopsia; the population is now several thousand, of whom about 30% carry this gene.

I thought that was crazy. The end.

highlights

Happy New Year. In the former Soviet Union I stay up almost all night and watch the city-wide fireworks, often from rooftops in subzero temperatures. In Oklahoma I watch movies or sit around in a quiet house. It's whatever.

In the last week we made trips down to Dallas, TX and up to Tulsa, OK. Some photo highlights. First from Texas. We were visiting my roommate Amanda, at her house known as "Willis Ranch":


It has cows. I took the picture out the window. Jesse went out to help feed them. They even have a variety of cows - brown, black, maybe white:


Texas is a pretty interesting place. As much as I've been taught to associate a certain burnt shade of orange with Texas, and red (some call it crimson) with Oklahoma, my time in the Dallas area left me quite confused:

1) red WalMart?


2) this is just sick and unnatural:


3) They call this a Christmas ornament and then pay money for it:



But no, Texas was good and the Willis family were excellent hosts. We had a good time. Then we went to Tulsa. J and I got tired of waiting for R to come out to the car. So, as usual, we spent the time taking pictures. Here is one of the results:



We went to a thrift store in Tulsa. I found a leaf shirt. I didn't buy it:



We ate lunch at a place called DesiWok (if you're in Tulsa, you should go). It's a "casual Asian diner" that serves mostly Indian and Chinese food. It was so good. But I thought their kids' menu was interesting:


I mean, I guess yummy food is always a plus, right...?