The Virginity Monologues

When I was logging into blogger just now, instead of typing 'chloe' (cause that's my fake blog name), I wrote 'chocolate'. Clearly, I have a problem.

2.5 miles. That's how many I ran last night! BOO-YEAH.

So, even though I went to Russia about 10 years ago, I've recently found my journal from when I was there and I've been reading it, so all those fun snow-filled months are fresh in my memory these days, so you might be hearing about it more often. Hope y'all don't mind.

I have two favorite stories from Russia, one of them is about spraining my ankle and the SUPER FUN experience that I had in the Russian hospital. The only funny part about that story is where they wheeled me into the x-ray room, only to find a LARGE dead man on the x-ray table, to which they said "OY!" and promptly wheeled me back out into the hall, where I was treated to the Look of Death from everyone that had been standing in line for the x-ray, a line that I had been allowed to cut straight to the front of simply because I am a cute American. Hot Dog. While I withered under the hairy Russian eye-balls, the dead man was wheeled out with sheet draped over him and then I was wheeled back in and placed on the exact same table, that I'm sure had NOT been disinfected in the meantime. I had a hard time finding the humor at the time, in between my deep gulping sobs of misery, but this part of the Hospital story never fails to send people into gails of laughter. It's also funny when I tell about how as my doctor was telling me how many days I had to stay in bed, he had to count it out on his fingers. And after he got to 10, asked me what came next.

My other favorite story is hilarious- but without the accompanying hand motions, may not come across as funny as it truly is.

Because there is SO MUCH snow in Russia, the government workers in charge of keeping sidewalks clear (actually such people may not have even existed, they could very well be figments of my imagination) just stopped trying in the months of January and February, because there is not a chance in hell that they could have ever kept up. It just snowed that much. And so, people just walked on top of the snow as it fell, creating paths (that didn't necessarily correspond with sidewalks) through the multiple feet of snow. One day, I was crossing what I believe was a park (hard to tell under all that snow), so it was a big open field of snow, with a few paths carved through it for walking. There was a man doing some work on the path (chipping away at something? I can't remember), and some people were approaching me and based on trajectory and speed, we were all going to meet on the path at the same place. And these paths are not particularly wide, we generally walked single file on them. As the people approached me, I moved to the side a little to give them room to get past me and the man with the strange tool.

I took one step off the path with my right leg and before I had any idea what was happening, my right leg sunk into the snow all the way up to my hip.

Left leg- still on the path.

Arms- flailing wildly. (This is the part where hand motions help).

So, there I was- one leg sunken in snow, the other still on solid ground. The man with the tool laughed. The other people laughed. My friend, Lana, laughed.

I couldn't get out.

It took all 4 witnesses to help pull me out of the snow and back onto the solid path. Then I proceeded to burn with humiliation for hours afterward. Of all my Embarrassing Russia stories (all of them involve ice, snow and falling), this one probably tops them all for sheer entertainment value.

God, I miss Russia.

Today's Title from: Pop Goes the World by Men Without Hats