Я не понимаю!

I’ve now been in Russia nearly a month. I have learned three of the six cases in the Russian language (barely) and probably a hundred or so vocab words. I often confuse English tenses both in writing and in speaking. And seriously, why do we have so many articles in English? In Russian there are NO articles. There are, however, an absurd amount of endings for EVERYTHING, including proper nouns. Yes, names change in some cases, which makes things interesting, although the name Crystal does not change and neither does Idaho, for which I am grateful. Oh, and double negatives are a must. Weird. не может бытъ! (It is impossible!) Я не понимаю Русскии зяык! (I don’t understand Russian!) Yes, I have been changing settings on my laptop. Now I can use the Cyrillic alphabet whenever I want.

Classes are going well though. I have a paper to write this week but I’ve been neglecting it in favor of hours of drinking чай (tea), eating  шоколадъ (chocolate), and slowly getting to know Nizhni. This last weekend I went ice skating one night with a large group of American and Russian students and then experienced a classic Russian snowboarding adventure. Sasha, who lives across the hall from us and does not speak much English, wanted to take some of us snowboarding. To make a long, crazy story short, I have now snowboarded in Russia in nothing but a peacoat and jeans. Hardcore. Also, there are not chairlifts in Russia…these are not exactly developed mountains and there are little kids on sleds, skiers, snowboarders, garbage, home-made rails, everything. At the base was the frozen Oka river (which I stood on). It took about 5 minutes to get down the mountain and 30 to climb back up. Sasha insisted on carrying every girls’ snowboard and strutted up the mountain in his jeans and windbreaker. As we Americans have become fond of saying, TIR (This Is Russia)!

Oh, and last weekend we went to a баня (banya) and hit each other’s naked, sweating bodies with birch branches before diving in to the pool of ice cold water. This, of course, was repeated half a dozen times until my skin was blotchy and red and my body was tingling and probably the cleanest it has ever been. Glorious.

This Friday we will be going to tour the cities of Vladimir and Suzdal, where there are important historical sites and touristy things. Should be back Sunday night. Then next Friday I will start teaching English culture and language one day a week at either the university here or a nearby high school. This is exciting but sort of terrifying at the same time. 

Now I have a few random observations for you:

Russians do NOT speak on buses or metros. It is rude. They also do not smile when meeting or looking at people and find it odd when Americans smile for no reason. And they love staring, it's not rude for them. They never sit on the floor. Some of us have gotten yelled at for doing this, particularly by babushkas, who insist that our ovaries will freeze. Oh, and public restrooms usually do not have toilet paper. If you want it, bring it, but never flush it. Russians do not shower as much, neither do they change their clothes as much, but they generally wear much more formal clothes: boots, heels, dress shoes, lots and lots of fur. They don't drink with their meals, they drink when they are done eating. They eat meat with bones in it and drink this boiled fruit and nut drink that can either be really good or taste like liquid smoke. Two words: pickle soup. Two more words: yes, please! 

Welp, hope everything in the states is going okay. I heard about the freak snow storm and those Idaho Baptists in Haiti...