#10 ~ My College Years Continue

College courses were very easy for me. Now that I am going back in time, it's interesting that I not only remember dates and people and events, I also remember what I was thinking at that time! I remember my thoughts and dreams...One day our rowing team came back from competition in Poland. They brought some things that were not possible to buy in Kiev: lazor blades for men, make up, clothes. We were all admiring those items behind the Gym on the bench. And then I saw a sweater: beautiful sweater. I tried it on and it was a perfect fit. I could not resist. It was $50.00 rubles, my monthly stypend. I bought this sweater and later that night Felix scolded me that I lost my mind, that I am not thinking, etc. My answer was: "But it looks so good on me, it's my money and I am a girl!"

Marina Davidovich in front of Kiev State University of Physical Culture with teammates after practice.

My favorite subjects were anatomy and bio mechanics. But later that year we had a new professor who was teaching psychology. He was brilliant. He introduced us to the works of  Sigmund Freud, Joseph Breuer and many more. I loved his lectures, his presentations and experiments.
 At that point we, my roommate Tatyana and I, were renting a small room in the apartment building. We had a very limited access to the kitchen and bathroom. But it was very close to College and very convenient for us. We could even come home between the classes. Since we did not have refrigerator, we kept some of our food supply outside the window. One day we came home and as usual we were starving. The only thing we had was the container with sour cream. We ate it with a loaf of white bread. In about half an hour both of us were lying on the floor crying from intense (understatement !)pain. Obviously we had food poisoning! I don't remember how we got to the medical center in College, but the nurse was very quick to diagnose us and made us drink 3 gallons of special water with disinfectant. It was horrible, nasty and horrifying! But she was yelling at us:"Do you want to die??? Drink!!!" We recovered, but NEVER ate sour cream again.
Felix was a big part of my life. He lived with his mother, Ida and shared kitchen and bathroom with her ex-husband. He slept in a narrow and dark hallway. But their one room apartment was nice and bright and nicely decorated. I loved coming there. Felix introduced me to some of his friends and there was a lot of talking about people that left Soviet Union and moved to Israel, USA, Canada. Some stories were tragic, some happy. We read letters from people, listened to the BBC radio, which was forbidden, had a lot of discussions about what it would be like to leave Soviet Union. But I never thought that it could be a reality, at least for me.