But even with this privileged access, I spent several fruitless days looking for the electric kettle that we were allowed to have in our student hotel room. In the course of my search, I was literally chased out of the famous GUM department store on Red Square by an irate saleswoman. I couldn’t figure out what the problem was until I checked my earnestly rehearsed request in the dictionary. I had somehow mixed up the word for teapot or kettle, chaynik, with chayka, seagull, and had been on a futile quest for an electric seagull.
