Интересная

Good morning from Panera Café. Besides me, there are only four other people here on a rainy Sunday morning. Interestingly (the title says "interesting" (interesnaya) in Cyrillic), they are all Russian. I wonder how these terms will affect my AdSense ads.

One is a little four year old girl who occassionally punctuates the anglo-russian conversation with her father with dolphin-like squeals of delight. My Russian professor pointed out to me that Russian girls always have a ribbon in their hair, and that is true in this case. I have never seen one, in life or in art, without a ribbon. However, I never noticed if this is true for Yankee kids as well.

The woman next to me is having a web phone conversation and at one point seemed to be contorting to point her cam in my direction. Probably showing her Muscovite cousin what a simple Southerner looks like.

I just watched a movie with a kind of Russian theme, the Namesake. It is a sweeping epic of a family that emigrates from India to Boston. The son is given the name Gogol, after the mad Russian genius. It is a charming movie, but a long one.

I'd like to say something witty to embarrass the webspy lady next to me but I can't remember enough of the language. I don't want to sound like I'm eavesdropping either, but I only understand maybe two percent of the noise anyway. I'll probably just sit here like an ass. You can't talk to people about their kids either these days because they'll think you're some kind of pedo. And if you say anything wrong, it's hard to undo it due to language barriers and the difficulty of translating humor.