The Sphinx is Made of Sand, and They Rebuild it Every Morning

Now that I've settled in to Russian life and the initial culture shocks have passed, it may be the case that I'm going to have to venture out beyond the walks of every day life in order to find things shocking, startling, or even generically humorous to entertain you, the Internet's slobbering masses/my closest friends. Luckily this shouldn't be too hard to motivate myself for seeing as I brought barely anything to entertain myself with and my only Internet access is in the public so I can't watch porn (although, it would certainly force me to exercise my Russian if I got caught) - in fact, it turns out I can't really watch anything, at least not legally; none of the major TV sites serve their videos in Russia (anyone know of a good US-based free proxy?).

Still, I do have a small list of interesting morsels which I will share with you today. Ration them wisely.

• Pelmeni. They're like meatballs wrapped in pasta. If you're ever offered them, just say no, because once you start eating them you're not going to want to stop but it turns out they kindof make your pee smell funny.
• About 20 meters from my dorm as I walked peacably along, believing in my naivete that pedestrian and locomoting machine could live in this world together in harmony, nay, melody, nay, sympatric symbiotic symphony based on an agreement of mutual respect and trust, a gigantic truck veered in front of me and proceeded to use the sidewalk as a third lane. I guess that's just how it's done here? I'm going to buy another head and install it at such an angle as to be permanently looking over my shoulder.
  
• A siren just went off and some sort of message I can't understand is repeating on the loudspeakers (which I didn't know we had). And I thought I had to go out to find interesting things to write about. TO BE CONTINUED.

CONTINUATION

Aha. Fire alarm. This is what I discovered after wandering out into the hall and finding Dirk. He knows some Russian, at least enough to understand that we were supposed to go to the first floor and to absolutely not take the elevator. But all the Russians were taking the elevator and the stairs were completely empty, so, when in Rome - we took the elevator down. After a minute or so of nobody telling us anything we took the elevator back up, and here I am, back on the Internet in a building that I am about 98% certain is not burning to the ground as I type. In a return to our scheduled programming, I had one more thing on my list:

• I don't watch a lot of Russian TV because, while flashy, it remains in a tongue in which I have made insufficient investments and I am still receiving poor returns from my fathoming portfolio. But the other day while I ate I was captivated briefly by what was essentially Russian Jeopardy with a minor change in wardrobe - everyone except the host was wearing sparkly silver robes, including the audience. If you end with negative money you're sacrificed to Alex Trebek.