With a little help from my friends

Last night Jason and I met up with Denis (right) and Denis (left, affectionately called Denis Dva, or 2) to listen to the Joe Cocker concert on Red Square. We didn’t have tickets, of course, but sat down at a local beer garden where we could hear the music clearly. As usual, our conversation over beers and vodka and Pepsi was a mix of Russian and English, my sentences in Russian usually peppered with English words. The nights here are already around 55 degrees, though the leaves haven’t turned colors, and it’s still a good time to hang out on the street and drink beers.

The strange combination of a bilingual conversation, Russian beer, and familiar English music made me feel content and lovingly nostalgic…I started to think about friends and memories from the last few years. Shots with Ransom, Liz, Devika, and Jen R. at my dad’s house, long, late-night walks with Joe, crawling into bed with Ben and Judd, hearing Jarrod belting out Speakerboxx tunes in the shower, tap dancing with Eli in Oberlin’s Tappan Square. My health hasn’t been so great in Russia and sometimes I get down, wanting to feel warm Grinnell sunshine or the stuffiness of Chicago bars or the noisy, smoky blast of walking up the stairs at the Feve. Russia is a beautiful country, its people extremely hospitable and friendly in the right contexts, but since I can’t speak Russian very well, I don’t always feel like I can understand everything around me, or feel comfortable in anonymity, like I used to in Chicago. Moscow seems like one big, pulsating movement, but I can’t help feeling outside.

Not all days, of course. Joe Cocker, good friends and lovely fall nights, help.