Ending

Wilson's One Act Festival closed today. Ivan Vassilevitch has officially finished for the year, and Natalia Stepanova and Stepan Stepanovitch have quietly drifted off into their own small corners of history. Overall, things went extraordinarily well for me and for everyone else. Considering that everything was cobbled together in a mere two weeks, it was all the more impressive.

I'm not out of the woods yet. Although half of my classes effectively end on Wednesday as the seniors leave, I still have to do a semester worth of C++, and few other things... like getting fat on indian and thai food. I think I lost about 7 pounds during APs, so I need to gain some back.

Mom and Erin returned from Paris the other day. Contrary to popular belief, the city is still standing and surprisingly hasn't yet been leveled by an errant protest or general strike.

My train of thought is seeming a bit vague and fractured right now, but I had this realization. No matter what my intentions are, I seem to always return in some way to Russia and its culture. This appears from the outset to be a quizzically random observation, but it's really true. Two years ago, it was the history of the Soviet economy. This year it was Russian foreign policy with Model UN. I even teleconferenced with Russian students and local officials in a Siberian city, and I crammed facts about Russian government and politics into my cerebrum for the Comparative examination. Now I'm performing obscure farces by Chekhov and reading Dostoevsky's The Idiot. It's inescapable. Russia is somewhat of a fundamental fascination for me. It is the one culture for which depression and irony are the core components of a "national persona": a recipe for perplexing, failed brilliance.