The night before last I got about 2 or 3 hours of real sleep. The bedroom I'm in faces the alley/courtyard between apartment buildings, and through the open window, I could hear young people sitting on the playground equipment laughing and singing (in fact, the girls-- teenagers, I'm sure-- were singing a song, the lyrics and subject of which would have made their mothers blush) and, inevitably, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. This was from about 12:30am until almost 2:30am (why no one else in the building I live in complained, I don't know). To make matters worse, Katya had changed the bedding and when I came home that afternoon, the curtains were pulled back. So I had to deal with the one mosquito that got in that I could hear, but could never see...
The next morning, Katya set out a breakfast for me that could have been for a family of four: 3 types of kolbasa-like sausage, 2 types of bread, kasha (hot barley cereal), 2 hot dogs, small croissants with chocolate inside, 2 containers of yogurt, unrefrigerated juice (Russians don't drink cold juice), and boiled coffee (I'm used to it...when I get to where I can see the silt in the bottom of the cup, I stop drinking it). So there I sat, half-awake from the night before, looking at all of this food; Katya was looking at it, too, because she watches me eat (not unlike a hawk, but more like a server in a restaurant)... Oh, but I DID catch sight of that mosquito on the wall before breakfast. Problem solved.
By the time we were released from prison (sidebar... When we returned to the American Home yesterday, I sent the following text message to my wife: "We were just released from prison." The quick response was "What?") and sat through the last lecture, I was dog-tired by the time I go back to Katya's apartment-- hot, sweaty, and about ready for the rack (as we used to say in the Navy). But the rack would have to wait.
Katya is a lawyer of some sort at a big bank down the street. Her boss took us to dinner last night (which was really good and VERY nice of him). His name is Sergei and we met him at 7pm in front of Katya's building, then we got on a bus to go to the popular Azerbaizhanski restaurant in town (where we had already eaten as a group a few days before). Russian meals are a social event and last much longer than American meals. Russians, as a rule, aren't very expediant (however, after being disgorged from whatever mode of public transportaion they were on, they tend to move pretty quickly to whereever it is they go). By the time Sergei finished arguing with the hostess about his reservation, it was 7:45pm by the time we were seated. Through the various courses, I had more than enough opportunity to practice Russian! But around 9pm, some guy named Igor showed up (they told me he had just returned from a business trip) and for an hour the three of them talked about business while I nursed a beer and tried to keep from lapsing into a sleep-deprived coma. (A quick aside-- Katya and Sergei, and Igor, are Russian business people not unlike those in America who have cellphones that go off every 5 minutes.)
We finally finished up around 10:30pm. When we hit the street, Sergei asked if we wanted to go for a walk. I didn't, but when in Rome... So, we meandered back to Katya's (about 3 miles or so), chatting about this and that, though I was so tired I'm not sure what we were talking about, really-- it was mostly smalltalk). 11:30pm now. I finally got into bed and at 2am two cats outside were fighting for what seemed like an hour. But I did get some sleep... Amen.
Today we're off to (I'm not making any of this up): "a Turkish-built factory that produces household appliances, a dirigible-producer, and a brick-producer in the small town of Kirzach..." Of course, I should have the pictures to prove it. :)
