In memoriam, etc.

Let's have a moment of silence for my long hair (may it rest in peace on the floor of the big barbershop in the sky). Yes, it's the anniversary of my most drastic and worst haircut ever; those of you who were reading my blog last year might remember this haircut. If you reread that old post, ignore the part where I said I liked it. I was just being optimistic. It was a TERRIBLE haircut, and I spent the better part of the year growing it out. Fortunately, the true low point of the style came in late November, when I was unable to walk and didn't care what I looked like.

But by now, I can look back on it all with amusement (the haircut, not the broken leg), and I celebrated the anniversary yesterday by getting a trim. Perhaps fittingly, this trim was basically a version of the haircut Laura suggested I get on that fateful day last year, when I didn't listen to her and instead asked the stylist to copy a cut I had seen on a model in a knitting magazine (lesson learned: get knitting patterns, not haircuts, from knitting magazines). So now my hair is as short as possible in the back without resorting to razors (I articulated this desire at the salon by saying "as short as possible without bzzz bzzz" – not fluent, but effective communication), angling down to chin length in the front. Nice.

On to other things: the Moldovan wine last night was good. It was homemade, and I don't know if it wasn't fully fermented, or just weaker than regular wine, but it tasted like more of a grape juice/wine hybrid than straight-up wine. Good thing, too, since they kept pouring me more and more.

Finally: Amara's visit was wonderful! It's hard to say what the best part was, but I think the part that I was most surprised about was our trip to Tanais. It's a really interesting little dig/museum, we got to interact with a drunk old guy who thought we were Russian (I brought out my Ukrainian alter-ego, Olesya, again; Amara became Tamara→Toma→Tomochka, although not by choice), the sun finally came out after hiding all week, we met some friendly stray puppies at the train station, and the train ride back to the city along the coast was beautiful.



The dig site. Excavated walls from the Greek settlement 3rd century BCE – 5th century CE (this part being from the 2nd or 3rd century CE).




Not an excavated tower – just a reconstruction – but it shows how nice the weather got.


Some impressions of the rest of the week:
Rostov: Georgian food and Updike read-alongs!
Azov: Rain. Cold. Mammoth skeleton! Misbehaving Russian child. Drunk women stealing begonias from city gardens! Old fort walls!
Taganrog: Chekhov-palooza! Silly seaside photo shoot, discovery of a delicious Chinese restaurant.
Boris Moiseev: Is this guy for real? Heart-shaped Russian flags. "Live sound" that clearly was not live. His parting benediction: "May you always be happy and loved during this short, beautiful word: life. And as for me, I will continue to get down on my knees and pray to God that not one bitch (!) ever keep us from living, loving, singing and dancing." Umm? ...Definitely worth the price of admission, though.