Nothing like Anastasia....

Блог 9

                Well my days are getting longer, classes are coming to an end, and I can see my homecoming on the horizon- but none of that will happen before the rather interesting and busy month of May. As in America, the end of my semester is bringing papers, finals, and absolute senioritis. This last week was ok. I was pretty sick at the beginning (yes, I know- I'm always sick here…) but had a fun, if calm weekend.

                Thursday was spent at Kontakt with friends, and I managed to forget my keys at home. I got through the building door by being a creeper and sneaking in behind some woman, but then at the apartment I knocked, rang the bell, yelled, and talked to the dog through the door who was whining like crazy. I could hear my host mom yelling at him to be quiet on the other side and I yelled back but she never heard me. I 

My phonetics teacher, Neda, and Emma.

called her but she was on her phone, until finally I sent her a text and she opened up, but not without a lot of laughter and judgement... She was my saviour, but she punished me by feeding me brown kasha for dinner. I think I told you about kasha already- the oatmeal like gooey cement with a stick of butter melting on top that Russians eat for breakfast or when they are sick. Well brown kasha is a lot like brown rice, but not like brown rice at all. It tastes a lot like licking dirt, but with a worse after taste. She gave it to me once with warm milk, as kind of a hot cereal-  it tasted a lot like rice pudding but again, with that extra dirt flavor. Very unfortunate evening. Friday though- Friday was something completely different.

Lovely Russian friend, Pasha.

                Every semester our host program has a dance. Rather like high school (this program just causes college students to regress into high schoolers) we had a spring ball, which was basically prom without dates and with costumes. This year was a masquerade which kind of worked, but everyone took their masks off after about 20 minutes. We rented very ridiculous costumes from a rather grouchy Russian woman who kept exclaiming over our group of girls and how "big" we were and how she didn't have costumes that fit us. It was a magical experience overall. I ended up in a wedding cake and Alexa wound up in a Jane Austen inspired lacey wedding cake, both complete with hoops and bows. There were three brides at the ball, none of us terribly happy about the fact. They put the two pasty white redheads in all white… rough.

The not-so-blushing brides... 

                Anywho- the ball was very exciting. There was champagne, waltzing (terribly, on my part), a fortune teller, a murder, a duel in the rain… A very large game of musical chairs and, of course, the ball king and queen. Our king and queen were the ever adorable married couple in our program, Kristi and Jared, who also hosted the evening. Our choir sang some Russian songs, there was an attempt at a polka, and over all it was a pleasant evening.  Not really sure who won the duel but it was over a murder, or some such thing.

                That's about all my week was. Alexa and I tried a new restaurant on The Island last night. An Azerbaijani place whose main ingredient- unfortunately enough for me- was cilantro. Not my favorite thing on earth. May though, is full of wonderful holidays. This week will only be two days long and then a five day weekend spent mostly in the town of Pskov with the program. Then the week after that is Victory day and a 

My group, Group 4!!!

four day weekend. We are trying to get out of town for that, but so far we've been a bit lazy and haven't made any plans. I have a paper to write for my political culture course and a poem to rehearse for my phonetics final. I'm thinking of doing a poem by Anna Akhmatova called The Last Toast. It's always been one of my favorites, and I think I have a better chance of saying it all correctly if I am very familiar with it. Sorry for such a short post, but it was a very normal week, as Russia goes. The sun didn't go down until 10:30 tonight, so my schedule is a bit wonky. I'm not sure if there will be a post next weekend but I will try very hard to get one written.

                Thanks again for reading and don't forget to follow my blog!!!!