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In short, I spent the past week: at a concert of gypsy music, in aleksandrovsky garden, at cafe bilingua, at home, watching the english patient, reading russian science fiction since it's easier than Gogol, reading Gogol's The Government Inspector, playing ping pong, dodging traffic, skirting assembled police officers, listening to old yiddish folk songs, drinking beer in front of statues, learning bass parts for the new band, aimlessly browsing the internet, christmas shopping at the enormous outdoor market at izmailovsky, cursing constant cloudy skies, grimacing at cigarette smoke, playing the ukulele, embracing sour cream, thinking of the U.S.A. in many different respects, trying not to fall into too binding of a schedule that would too closely resemble Davidson, dreaming again of a rural life.