Back in Vlad

“Home is where the heart is.”  I’ve never quite understood this phrase.  My heart is in my chest everywhere I go.  Is everywhere home?  I get that it is supposed to be taken less literally.  Home is supposed to be where your loved ones are?  What if they aren’t all in one place?  Because, assuming you love your family (at least your parents and siblings), of course they aren’t.  Each of us grows up and leaves “home.”  Then we are supposed to create our own homes.  For quite a while now, I’ve felt homeless.  However, I’ve begun to think that home can be transitory.  It doesn’t have to be tied to one distinct location.  Right now, Vladimir is home and I’m ever so grateful to be back here, if only for a flicker of life.  I’d like to reinterpret the idiom with which I began this paragraph.  Home is where your heart is at peace.  I’m home.

Every Sunday there is a show on TV called “Едим Дома.”  It’s a cooking show.  Tatiana always watches it, but that’s not all - she also writes down the recipes.  I’ve never noticed this before.  How is that possible?  Perhaps because I tend to travel on weekends and thus am rarely home on a Sunday morning?  I watched with her this morning and had to stifle my giggles at the frequency with which the camera zoomed in on some product (blatant advertising), while the woman continued to describe how to prepare the dish.  She made gazpacho today, which made me wonder the origins of it.  The best part – the instrumental version of “Here Comes the Sun” that continuously played throughout the latter part of the show.  Everyone loves the Beatles.

Although I enjoyed the opportunity to analyze the cooking show, I remember why I usually travel.  I don’t like to watch television.  I’d much rather spend the weekend wandering a new city, or spending time in a familiar city at a theatre or museum.  However, I did enjoy accompanying the new students on the tour of Vladimir yesterday.  Tom was ill.  His replacements – Larisa Viktorovna and Tatiana Mikhailovna.  Fabulous.  The tour was in Russian instead of English, and I learned a few new things about the city.  For instance, did you know that the KGB used our monastery during the 1930s (under Stalin) for executions?  I didn’t. 

In other news, the “new Faye” doesn’t speak any Russian.  He is part of the ROTC program (it’s a group of four students from the University of Utah).  They are all complete beginners.  I’m loving it (perhaps even more than McDonald’s).  I taught him the alphabet, and I’ve been serving as a translator between his host family and him (in case you don’t remember, or for some reason are joining us on my blog for the first time, Faye lived immediately next door to me – so much so that we actually shared one of our doors).  Now I share a door with Daniel.  Instead of his host mom taking him to meet the group yesterday, I did.  And when everyone’s hosts came to pick them up, Larisa Viktorovna noted that I picked up Daniel.  Haha.  Weird.

I’d also like to mention that when I arrived home after a ten-hour flight, Tatiana asked me why I wasn’t wearing any makeup.  Geeze, what was I thinking not plastering my face with eyeliner for my overseas journey?  The next morning I made sure to paint my nails, and my face before leaving the apartment.  But, I wasn’t wearing heels, which concerned Katya when I went to pick up Daniel.  I’m just not Russian enough J