Why I'm Sleeping on a Chair

This is a picture of my bedroom here in Vladimir, Russia. I know what you're thinking. That's not a bedroom, it's a living room, isn't it? Wait, is one of those chairs folded out to make a bed? Doesn't that feel oddly like sleeping in a very tight coffin so that in the middle of the night you wake up screaming because for a split second you think you've been put in a coffin?

The answer to all of those question is: yes. Yes, I am sleeping in someone's living room. Yes, that is a fold out arm chair. And yes it does feel like I'm sleeping in a coffin which I've now named Coffin-A-Go-Go (I started calling it Baby Coffin, but that's too morbid even for me).

So this is the story of how I learned that they even make fold out arm chairs:

A week or so ago my contact at the American House in Vladimir, Russia emailed me a questionnaire about what type of host mom I would like to have. The questions were pretty standard.

1. Did I have a smoking preference? Yes, I'd prefer a non smoker since smoking is vile.
2. Did I have any allergies? Mangoes (although they're hardly part of the standard Russian cuisine) and preservatives as in MSG (preservatif in Russian means condoms. Had to clarify because it would otherwise lead to an uncomfortable conversation about why Americans cook with condoms*).
3. Did I have any preferences as to what type of host mom I'd like? No, I'm pretty easy going on host moms. My last host mom in St. Petersburg was a prostitute. So long as she doesn't pimp me out, I'm pretty easy going about who I live with (My St. Petes host mom thankfully did not pimp me out, and even told one of her gentleman callers to leave me alone when he asked what the girl in the next room did. Infinitely grateful for that.)

A few days later my contact in Vladimir sent me an email saying she had the perfect host mom for me, but would I mind it if there was another American girl staying there too? I responded that no I didn't mind so long as we each had our own room. My contact wrote back that we'd each have our own room. No problem.

Do you see the mistake I made in my question?

Yeah, I asked if I'd have my own room. I didn't say bedroom. Oops.

So you can imagine my surprise as my host mom deposited me in the living room and showed me how to work Coffin-A-Go-Go. I was sleep deprived and I think I may have squawked a little bit. It seemed squawk worthy at the time. Once I had a shower, I realized there was pretty much nothing I could do about the situation at that time, so I'd have to give sleeping like the Crypt Keeper a shot for the time being.

To my surprise, Coffin-A-Go-Go is pretty comfortable considering that like a coffin it is made of a pine box, and a cushion (definitely no mattresses here). I can sleep pretty well on it if you discount the once a night crippling panic attack when I wake up staring at the side of the chair & think I've been buried alive. Plus, I've learned from my American roommate that our host mom was paralyzed last year, and still paying off massive medical bills from that time. So at least the money from hosting me is going to someone who really needs it. And as you can see from the picture, I pretty much have my own little forest going on by the window. That's kind of cool too.

Plus, this is one of my roommates.

He love sleeping on my computer, which is pretty much where I find him every day when I come home. He's one of her two cats, and they're both very sweet. This one has crazy eyes because he has glaucoma. When I sit across from him to do homework, I like to swing my pen in his face and let him try to catch it with his paws. I call it Kitty Physical Therapy since in my mind I'm helping him improve his eyesight, but really I just like poking the cat with my pen.

*This is also grounds for a really awesome joke to play on someone in Russia who is uptight and just learning Russian. Ask them to go to the store for you to buy jam. Tell them the word for jam is preservatif, like in preserves. Watch the hilarity.

Away We Go

It's probably a sign that I've been traveling too much in the past three years that the flight to Finland (a total of 8hrs 45 mins) felt like nothing at all. This could also be because I was awake the entire flight and grossly overstimulated. FinnAir was a dream to fly, but provided way too many forms of entertainment for me. You cannot take someone who has self professed Adult ADD and give them a personal television that has 25 movies to choose from and about 15 different television shows with 5 episodes of each show. On top of this I had my iphone for music and my Kindle and the woman sitting next to me had her PhD in Baltic Linguistics, so I was overstimulated beyond belief. I spent a good hour flicking between reading, talking to the poor woman, and rapidly changing the channels from Glee to How I Met Your Mother, and trying not to scream "ARGH!" every thirty seconds like my nephew did the time I gave him too much sugar.

Once I calmed down thanks to dinner and Finnish beer, I settled on watching Alice in Wonderland (not as good as I hoped it would be), every episode of Glee they had and then every episode of How I Met Your Mother. By that time we were just approaching the Helsinki airport.

Ahh, the Helsinki airport. I love the Scandinavians-they gave us such things as Pippi Longstocking, IKEA and delicious little meatballs, but I have some issues with the Helsinki airport & their methods of security. First, our plane got in late (not their fault, but it plays into my story) which meant that I had 25 minutes to get from my gate to the gate to Moscow, but to get from the gate that we landed at to the gate my flight was leaving out of (both in the same terminal) I had to go through a security checkpoint again. There were only 4 people in front of me so it should have been a breeze, and yet somehow it took 45 minutes. They scanned every person's belongings at least 3 times, sometimes 4 times. This meant that your things all went through together, but then my shoe would look dangerous so they'd have to rescan my shoe. And then my bag would look dangerous so that would get scanned for a third time, and then they'd notice that I was wearing a money belt, so I had to be rescanned. At one point there were 5 of us standing on the exit side of the metal detector-each with one shoe and about a third of our belongings. It was so funny looking, I would have taken a picture, but my camera was being scanned for the fourth time.

Overall I was twenty minutes late for my connecting flight, which I was certain I had missed, but so many people were held up with security that they held the flight for an additional twenty minutes even after I boarded. I did conk out on this flight because they were smart enough not to give me a personal television. I also forced myself to sleep after I discovered the plane was an Aeroflot plane, and the wing of the plane had a crack on it that looked as though it was held together by what appeared to be duct tape. I figured it was better to sleep and ignore said feeling rather than have an anxiety attack.

The plane landed with the duct tape still intact, and I was thrilled to find myself at the new terminal at the Moscow Airport. I can barely describe how awesome this new airport terminal is. There's free wifi, for starters. And the time it took me to get off the plane until I got my luggage was 11 minutes. 11 minutes. That's including passport control. The first time I flew into Saint Petersburg it took nearly two hours. At this terminal there are roped off places to queue up, and a smartly dressed woman directing you to the proper line. It was incredible.

After passing through passport control, I was greeted by Yuriy, my assigned driver. It was his job to take me from Moscow to Vladimir-a ride that should have been just about two hours, but ended up taking 4 and a half due to traffic. Yuriy was friendly enough to chat with me for a bit, and to not mind when I fell asleep about an hour into the journey. He didn't complain once about my snoring or drooling.

I was awake for the last hour of the journey which turned out to be a very scenic drive. There were birch trees everywhere, some so skinny they looked as though I could snap them in half with one hand. I also discovered that I probably should have forced myself to stay awake the entire ride, because the route we took was pretty much the exact route that the narrator of Moskva-Petushki took on his train ride. Moskva-Petushki is a book I mapped out on Google Earth for a Travel Literature course I took in the spring. Had I stayed awake, I would have lived out my project. At least I'll get to do that on the way to Moscow in a few weeks.

That's the long and short of my journey here. No pictures from the way here because adding another form of distraction on the plane would have probably made the lady change her seat.

A Wedding to Remember

I wish I had the right words to properly describe how much my sister and I adored my cousins Rebecca and Rachel when we were younger. Our Chicago cousins, as we called them, only came to New Jersey for Thanksgiving so visits with them were few and far between. While some kids counted down the days until Christmas, we counted down the days until Rebecca and Rachel came to visit.

From the day after Halloween through the rest of November, we pestered my mom with, “How many more days until we see Becky and Rachel?” and “What time are we leaving our house on Thanksgiving morning?” followed by my mom insisting that while Aunt Ann and Uncle Doc wanted to see us, they certainly would mind us getting there at 8am.

Thanksgivings with them were filled with arts and crafts and elaborate (and probably plot-less) plays and musicals that we tortured older family members with. I’m pretty sure we’re all grateful that videos of these performances do not exist. As we got older Becky and Rachel were allowed to sleep over our house, which meant going to the movies or ice skating the next day. As the years went by Michelle and Anthony, their younger sister and brother, came along and we adored them just as much too. The rare summers that the Chicago cousins came out for a longer visit meant week long sleepovers at Aunt Ann’s and Uncle Doc’s that were filled with trips to the boardwalk, pretending to be gymnasts, mint chocolate chip ice cream and cheeseburgers.

As we all got older our visits became fewer and fewer as family obligations pulled us in different directions. Years that I went to Thanksgivings were sometimes Thanksgivings that they had to miss and vice versa. Their summer visits clashed with my summer study in Russia. In other words-we grew up.

Somehow the fates magically aligned. I found myself in Charlottesville as Rebecca found herself in Washington, DC. With her move came a fiancé, Will, who immediately impressed me with his kindness when I watched him help the woman who was struggling down the staircases on UVA’s campus. He ran forward and grabbed her overstuffed suitcase and carried it down all three flights of stairs. Right then and there I decided he was a guy worthy of the cousin we adore so much.



A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to watch Rebecca and Will get married and the ceremony (and bride, of course) were just as beautiful and lovely as I expected. I made this video of the ceremony for family members and friends that couldn’t be there so they could experience a little of the magic that was June 19, 2010.

Rebecca & Will from jillybean on Vimeo.

Years ago, when I was just a young bean and my imagination was even more vivid than it is now, I would try to imagine what we would all be like growing up. In my mind I was convinced that we would all grow up to be cool people who did amazing things, and still enjoyed being with each other. I think we’re all well on are way, aren’t we?