День победы и т.д.

09.May

Victory day is one of the most widely celebrated holidays in Russia.  I tried to come up with a holiday that Americans are as excited about, but I couldn’t think of one.  Perhaps we just aren’t very patriotic.  Maybe if we had won WWII, like the Russians did, then we would have something to be proud of J In all intents and purposes, Victory day is celebrated in a similar fashion to July 4^th.  There are parades, and red white and blue flags.  Of course, the parades only include soldiers and cadets, and the flags are Russian instead of star-spangled banners.  In order to celebrate this important holiday, I went to the parade in Vladimir.  Most of the Vlad kids went to Moscow for the weekend.  I doubt they got anywhere close to red square to actually see the parade. 

The weather was perfect today, so those of us who remained in Vladimir, decided to go have a picnic in загородный парк.  We made a fire, cooked сосиски and enjoyed the weather. 

Then everyone learned how to twirl sticks, or I taught them how, and they were seemingly endlessly amused. 

Then we all tried to balance the sticks on our upper lips and then smile (without dropping the stick), it was practically impossible.

We found a tree that was very flexible, so if you sat on it and some one pushed it about, you could “ride it.”  A little girl was very fascinated by this group of adults climbing into and riding trees. 

It was quite an entertaining afternoon/evening.  People kept staring at us.  We knew they were only jealous because they couldn’t join our club. 

08.May

What a pleasant day.  We had our last excursion.  How sad.  Endings aren’t something I find very pleasing.  However, perhaps beginnings are worse.  I’m terrible at beginnings.  At least I get to calm myself with the thought that I will be back in Vladimir in just two and a half weeks.  This place feels like home.  I’ve decided to tell myself that I’m only going to the U.S. on a vacation (because really, I don’t want to go at all), and then I’m coming back home to Vladimir.  What a comforting thought.  I’m going to be a wreck in August.

Bogolubova was beautiful.  We went to a monastery, where Tom tolds us, “Don’t touch the monks!” Meanwhile he was making tickling motions with his fingers.  There is a church in Bogolubova located in the middle of a field, close to a lake. 

The water in the lake is clean enough to swim in, and there is plenty of grass to lie in and soak up the sunrays.  I foresee myself spending many an afternoon there during the summer.  It’s only about a ten-minute bus ride from my house (since I basically don’t live in Vladimir in the first place).

Post excursion, I took a walk around Доброе (the part of Vladimir I live in) and snacked on some ice cream.  When I got close to home, I wasn’t ready to go inside (the weather was far too beautiful today), so I sat down on a swing, enjoyed the feeling of the sun on my skin, and people watched.  I found this couple particularly intriguing.

Eventually I managed to coerce myself inside (or my stomach did).  After washing dishes and taking a brief nap, I went into the center of town.  I met up with Chelsea briefly before she headed to Moscow for the weekend.  Then I wandered about a bookstore waiting for Lilit.  We walked around a part of the city I hadn’t really seen, stopped to buy a drink at the продукты, walked to the main park of the city, sat on a bench and chatted.  Lilit gave me a wise piece of advice, “Never talk to drunk people, Madelyn.”  Then we caught sight of a man with a poodle and a stroller.  I wanted to know where the child was (or if the stroller was for the poodle).  Then we saw the mom carrying the screaming boy.  Both of the parents were laughing.  The mom put the boy down and he ran.  He just wanted to wander on his own.

Lilit said she wanted a child, and I said, “yea maybe in like ten years.”  She thought that in ten years she’d be too old to have a kid (she’ll only be 29 in ten years).  I mentioned that 29 is probably relatively close to the average age at which Americans begin to have children.  She agreed, and said, “For Russians it’s 11 or 12.”  I found this hilarious.  Lilit doesn’t always have the best opinion of Russians (because she’s Armenian & therefore would win a war against Russia solely due to the fact that Armenian food is far superior to Russian food).  Fun times.

This evening, my Russian mom and I made лапша (it’s basically pasta).  It’s quite a process.  I had a blast.  The product of our toils (before being boiled of course).

I didn’t know the word for rolling pin, and when I asked what it was called, she told me and then went into a story about how her grandmother used to hit them with a rolling pin.  She told me about one time when she was staying at her grandmother’s in the summer, she met a boy, and they went on a date.  While she was gone, her younger sister told the grandmother that Tatiana was with a boy.  Then the grandmother came running through the woods towards the lake after Tatiana with a rolling pin.  When they (boy & T) caught sight of the grandmother, the boy got on his bicycle and quickly rode away.  I adore when she tells me stories.  It was such a lovely day. 

6.May

I shouldn’t be allowed in bookstores.  They are dangerous places for me to be, especially Russian ones.  Chelsea asked me for some advice on what to read over the summer.  She wanted Russian literature suggestions.  We went to a bookstore where we proceeded to spend at least an hour, while I piled her arms full of books.  Good luck reading all of those this summer Chels J  I’m having a love affair with Russian literature.  It’s possible the only kind of love that can last a lifetime.

We had to do our OPI interviews on the phone at Tom’s apartment.  As usual things were moving behind schedule.  While we were waiting, I got Tom to bust out the wedding pictures.  It looked lovely.  Margarita’s dress was beautiful, and Tom looked dashing.  It seems to me (from this one set of wedding pics, which clearly makes me an expert), that Russian weddings are much more laid back than American ones. 

Upon arriving home I was met with a “salad.”  It was a plate of lettuce about the size of my head.  Luckily, the bitterness of the lettuce was masked by the sourness of the lemon, which had been squeezed on top of it.  Still, I couldn’t help but think I had been signed up for some kind of “how much lettuce can you eat” contest.

In other news: Team Vladimir’s favorite vegetable is – asparagus!

5.May

Russian mom – “This is called a hamburger.”

Me – “No, this is called a sandwich.”

Either way, I didn’t eat it.  Sausage, cucumbers, and cheese make much more sense on an individual slice of bread rather than in sandwich form.  I’m such a disappointment.  I never eat anything.  Poor хозяйка.

Sochi

04.May

I’ve come to realize that my most advantageous language learning has occurred through conversations with random strangers.  This evening, Chelsea and I were walking through Pushkin Park and speaking English.  I noticed that a middle-aged Russian man was looking at us with interest, thus I said hello (in Russian).  He said, “Guten tag,” so I said “Guten tag” back.  If he wanted to believe we were German, that was fine with me.  However, a minute later, he approached us to ask where we were from.  We answered honestly, which is a rarity, and said we were from America.  We proceeded to talk with this man for over an hour.  He was very interested in the differences between America and Russia.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t really remember what they were.  He would tell us how much money some profession earns in America verses Russia, and we would unknowingly shrug.  We also didn’t know what to say we he asked if Obama is a good president.  Luckily, we knew that he is the 44^th president.  I would’ve felt like an ass if the Russian knew that (which he did) and I didn’t.  When he asked how much drugs cost in America (I think he was referring to heroine) we also didn’t know.  Then he showed us his arms to prove he had no track marks and wasn’t asking due to desire, simply curiosity.  When I realized how long we’d been talking with him, I couldn’t stop laughing.  This is how I spend my free time, conversing with strangers in parks, or on trains, or while climbing through the letters of the Nizhny Novgorod sign.  Didn’t my parents teach me not to talk to strangers?

In other news, I just arrived back in Vladimir from Sochi yesterday.  I know most of you have never heard of Sochi.  It is a part of Russia with a sub-tropic climate, located on the Black sea.  It was beautiful.  I believe I posted nine facebook photo albums of pictures, so you can see for yourself.  However, it was warmer in Vladimir than in Sochi.  One of those freak things, you know, the kind Mother Nature decides would be hilarious.  While I was in Sochi where it was about 60-65 (F) it was between 70 and 80 in Vladimir.  Unbelievable.  It also rained quite often, which I didn’t find surprising (if it didn’t rain a lot, a sub-tropic climate/wildlife couldn’t be maintained).  The rain was rather pleasant.  The only down side was less time spent soaking up the rays on the shore of the Black sea and more time spent enjoying faux ice cream products in McDonald’s or along the embankment (board walk type thing?) of the sea. 

What is interesting about Sochi?  The mountains are beautiful.  You can get a nice view of Avkazia (one of the disputed territories of Georgia/Russia).  There is a lovely tea plantation, where you can pick your own tealeaves and learn how to make tea from them.  Honey is available in mass quantities and multiple varieties.  Homemade wine is widely available for purchase.  You can hike to a breathtaking waterfall and swim in the pool at the bottom (the only side effect being the freezing of your blood due to the icy coldness of the water).  You can spend hours searching for sea glass on the stone beach without approaching boredom.  There is Georgian food almost everywhere and it is fantastic!

Rather than delve into details about each day and excursion in Sochi, I’ve decided to simply post a few quotes from the trip, perhaps throwing in a bit of a story for the purposes of contextual understanding. 

“Can I dip my nut in your honey?” – Faye (holding an almond and coveting my jar [which after my bloody urine experience, I am convinced probably at one point contained a urine sample before my honey] of homemade honey)

“Smells fishy.” – Meagan (she was sniffing salted fish, of course it smelled fishy)

“Faye, make fire!” – Meagan (during a discussion about how we were going to trap the pigeons on our balcony and eat them for dinner, which occurred simultaneously with a conversation about how Faye was the least evolved of the four of us because her wisdom teeth all comfortably fit in her mouth)

“You have more personality than you know what to do with.” –Faye, in her you are ridiculous for even saying you lack personality Madelyn, voice.

“If war was always a cook off, Georgia would totally dominate Russia.” – Reese (we were eating fabulous Georgian cuisine after our hike to the waterfall)

“Yea, kudos for doing that with zero body fat.” –Reese (in reference to my swimming in the icy cold pool at the base of the waterfall/it is especially amusing because the next day he was the one who was sick and couldn’t attend the excursion to the tea plantation)

“I in general don’t like bird because they don’t have arms.  They’re like walking around like a double amputee.” – Kelsey (while we were sitting on the beach and she kept freaking out when a pigeon walked by/she also made me chase a pigeon out of her hotel room one day because she was so freaked out by it)

“I’m going to say a few words in English.” – Jon (hilarious because Jon, in my experiences, only speaks English and it is never just a few words)

“One stick, one lick, especially if you’re sick, but be quick cause there are a lot of people waiting for a taste of the honey.” – Jon (somehow context seems unnecessary)

“Becca, he’s making you look good,” – Kelsey (he – Jon, who was telling terrible pirate jokes over the microphone on the bus, after Becca had spent quite a while telling a few bad jokes about a donut)

“Vladimir group just… go to your rooms.” – Tom (before we got off the bus at the hotel & after the embarrassing amount of bad jokes we told on the bus in order to torture the Moscow group)

When Tom came knocking on our door after sentencing us to our rooms, I asked, “Babushka Tom, do you have our allowance (he was supposed to be giving us some rubles for dinner)?”  He responded, “It depends, have you been naughty or nice?”  Then Sarah came looking for us and Tom told her, “They can’t leave their room because they’ve been naughty.” 

“Cards usually go with drunkenness.” – Luke (we were trying to remember how to play card games, but realized we’d been taught most of them while drinking and thus couldn’t recall the rules)

“Ouch that hurts, oh my ovaries, I could use some more of that honey.” – Luke (after I insulted him in some way/he bought the kind of honey that is supposed to be good for female reproductive organs – apparently it was the only one he liked the taste of)

“Is that Masha?” – Luke (after hearing a loud noise outside of the train window at a stop/Masha followed me and Luke to the train when we were leaving Vladimir and wouldn’t go away until the train pulled away)

“It must have been you then.” – Tom (when Kyle asked, “What douche dealt these cards?”/Tom had been calling Kyle a douche throughout the entire game – apparently douche is on the approved list of words for ACTR RD’s to use in reference to their students, but dominatrix is not)

That’s all folks J

N.B. I am busy taking exams and preparing to head back to the states for a couple weeks, so this may be my last “Madelyn in Russia” blog entry until June.