Blogging in the Dark

"At least four are dead and two million are without power Saturday, all as the Washington D.C. area contends with a record-breaking heat wave."

"Winds reached 80 miles per hour, and it's estimated that a full restoration of power could take up to five days."

"Temperatures hit 104 degrees in Washington D.C, breaking records on Friday. The forecast for the city shows temperatures continuing to reach the triple digits. There's also a possibility of even more thunderstorms for the region."

 - Slate.com

Yes, I am missing those cold Russian days right now. Last night one of the worst storms I've ever seen blew threw and knocked out our power. I had heard that it was supposed to rain last night but I didn't realize it was supposed to be that severe. It came on fast, too. I started hearing some distant thunder which quickly turned into gusting winds. I knew it was worse than usual when I heard a loud, harsh crash outside. The wind was blowing the metal chairs, tables, and umbrellas against the metal gate in our apartment complex's courtyard. Soon after our power went out. 

All of my prior experiences with power outages have been brief. A storm hits, power goes out, it comes back on within a few hours (if that). Well, as of right now, our power has been out for about 24 hours. If the news stories are to be believed, it's going to be a little while before we get it back. Since I've never dealt with this bad of an outage before, it didn't occur to me to go into survivalist mode and store my refrigerated goods in coolers of ice. That is, not until this morning when I wandered over to the store to get some breakfast and saw people purchasing bags and bags of ice. By the time we went back to the store this evening, the ice bags were long gone. 

I got some fruit and pastries to tide me over a little while. It looks like I'll be eating out for the next few days though. When you can't refrigerate, freeze, microwave, cook, or bake, you realize quickly how few nonperishable foods you have. You realize even quicker how those nonperishable foods are absolutely not going to constitute a full meal. I'm pretty ticked about that right now, since I was preparing to make a new salad dish over the weekend. I didn't have much in the fridge or freezer, but I did have fresh crab meat and a half carton of eggs that I had planned on using. I dread the thought of having to throw out a ton of previously perfectly fine food. 

Overnight, power returned to a few select places in our apartment. The building's generators keep the hallway lights on as well as a few outlets working in apartment's master bedrooms. So my roommate's outlets are working and one kitchen outlet is working. We managed to plug our Wireless modem into a working outlet so we have Internet, which is keeping me from going crazy. I think the generators are keeping air circulating in the building and my roommate has a fan plugged in in her room, which is keeping our apartment from being a total oven right now, but it's still stuffy as hell. The worst part of all of this is that we don't get hot water and only a small dribble of cold water. We're going to have to form a plan on where to go to take showers because it's basically impossible here.

Well, all in all it's been a pretty bad weekend. My plans of experimental cooking and filling out job applications today was destroyed. Most of my food supply has been rendered useless. But I won't let that get my spirits down, because next week WILL be better! On Tuesday, all of us Marshals interns have a field trip to the Drug Enforcement Administration's training academy at Quantico (same place as the FBI academy). I don't have concrete plans for Wednesday yet, but it's the 4th of July and I'm in DC - I'll find something awesome to do! Even if it's just sitting next to a monument and being proud to be an American having the time of my young life (cue cheesy, inspirational music). "I believe I can fly"? "Don't stop me now?" "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades"...? Yes, things are going great, and they're only getting better. (Or at least they would, if the darn power would come back on!)  

What I Miss About Russia (and What I Don't)

It took over a month, but I've finally started to miss Russia little. I was pretty homesick by the end of the semester, so all I could think about was my upcoming awesome summer back in America. Now that I'm back in the good old USA enjoying said awesome summer, I've had some time to reminisce. Here are some things that have been on my mind since I got back:

• My commute here in DC is about 40 minutes each way. After my hour journey in Petersburg, the commute here feels like nothing.
• Food is probably on the top of my list of Things I Miss About Russia. I'm trying to make some of the things I had there, but others are too weird or complicated for me to attempt. I'm not quite ready to try making my own Herring Under a Fur Coat yet. 
• "Step back, doors closing" doesn't have the same ring as "Осторожно, двери закрываются"
• I LOVE LOVE LOVE not having to pay for everything in cash. It's a big inconvenience having to run to the ATM all the time and plan out how much money you need for a week. 
• Dryers are still the best things on Earth. I know they aren't technically a necessity, but I'm an American and I hated having to hang my clothes to dry and the subsequent process of taking them down when they had turned to cardboard overnight. 
• On that note, everything is so soft! Tissues, toilet paper, clothes...it's just wonderful. 
• Every so often I do notice the "personal space barrier" people create on the metro here. The only time people pack onto the train cars like sardines is if it's rush hour and they absolutely have to. Even then, I find myself thinking we could fit more in a car than are there. It's funny, we all try to have our bubbles of space but we still say "excuse me" when navigating through the crowds on the metro cars. 
• I will never take cold drinks for granted again. I order a coke and it's ice cold and refreshing. I never did figure out how Russians (or at least Smolny) managed to buy refrigerators that don't refrigerate. And it's not like you could root around for a cold one since you had to get the cashier to buzz open the fridge door once you got to the front of the line.
• I love not feeling like a criminal when I enter stores. There's a security guard in the front and that's it. Going into Russian supermarkets always made me paranoid for the amount of security personnel they have.
• There are so many people jogging here! (Including девушки!) 
• After Russia, I feel like no one smokes here. And I love it.
• I know I'm crazy for saying this, but I sort of miss Russian weather. Summer has always been my least favorite season and DC can get really humid. Granted, Petersburg is probably very humid now too, but my memories of it are primarily cold ones. How long is it until autumn?
• The Petersburg metro system is absolutely wonderful. Here, I pay up to 5 times the amount I did in Russia for worse service. Trains here stop on their tracks because they're timed so terribly, there's constantly track maintenance somewhere, and escalators are often frozen (come on, they're short escalators! If Petersburg can keep theirs working, why can't DC? Probably because you can't tell people in Petersburg to just walk up and down those things. I can't even imagine it.) Just paying for my transportation every day is my biggest expenditure here. I've already re-filled my metro pass multiple times, whereas I can count on one hand the amount of times I re-filled it in Russia.