wahoooo internetoooooo

sledding!
me and baba yaga
my room!
a lotta lexie
my head

February 12, 2010

I am currently not able to access the internet, so I haven’t been able to blog anything for a while! I’m worried that if I don’t write anything down now, then I won’t remember it – and so much has happened already!

First of all, I moved out of the dorm and into the apartment with my host family, which has been wonderful (despite the whole no internet thing)! I live with two young parents, Nadia and Nazim, and their two gorgeous daughters, Alina and Leila, 7 and 12. The apartment is tiny (ie. the shower is in the kitchen, the girls’ bedroom is also the living room, etc.), but comfortable. My bed takes up pretty much my entire room, but I have a desk and a dresser, so I have everything that I need.

One of the most difficult things that I had to deal with was the key to the apartment. It’s kind of an old fashioned key and you have to really jiggle it around in the keyhole until it fits – definitely took some practice, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve got it down. Nadia makes my breakfast and dinner, which have all been successes so far, even though I’m not always sure what kind of meat that I’m eating. Whenever I ask Nadia, she just kind of smiles as if she’s playing some kind of joke on me, but I feel healthy so far! What everyone’s been saying about Russian mothers liking to feed their kids is definitely true though! I have to tell her that I’m full a couple times every meal and she still brings me more food! For breakfast, I’ve been getting бутрбродs with an assortment of toppings (mystery meat, cheese, hotdogs) and this morning I got творог (kind of like cottage cheese) with pineapples! For dinner, I've always had borshch or some kind of soup, bread, and a meat & potatoes combo. And with everything, I always have tea – and she ALWAYS brings out the cookies to go with it! Oooh my, so much – at least, I have to walk everywhere to burn some of it off.

I walked to school all by myself today for the first time, so I was pretty proud. It's only about a 15 or 20 minute walk, but I was carrying my computer today so it was kind of tiring. I had to take my computer so that after school I could stop at the store where I bought my modem because when I tried to set it up, it didn't work. Actually, the story of how I bought my modem is a pretty good one in itself.

After school yesterday I had some time to kill before this Russian-American discussion group that I had decided to go to at 5:00, so I went to go buy a modem, so that I could use the internet. So when I asked the guy at the store about a particular brand that I wanted to buy, he told me that I should actually buy a different one because it was faster and also cheaper. I asked him why it was cheaper and he just kind of smiled and shrugged, so I decided to believe him anyway and just buy it. It ended up taking forever though because when he found out I was from America, he wanted to know all about what I was doing in Russia, why I was studying there, what America was like, etc. I even ended up giving him a penny because he had never had any American money. And when I was reading out my telephone number for him, he wanted to know if it was true that when Americans read out the number 'zero,' they sometimes read it as 'Oh,' which I guess I'd never really thought about. It was pretty entertaining talking to him actually, but I ended up being late to the discussion group because it took so long.

Even getting to the discussion group was kind of an adventure, because I was alone and only had a vague idea of what street it was on. It ended up being on the fourth floor of this library-like building behind a gate, so I was really proud to have found it, even if I was about 25 minutes late. The discussion group was really fun – the first half is always in English and the second half was in Russian and our topic this week was love, since Valentine's Day is coming up. I talked a bunch when we were speaking in English, but not as much in the Russian half. After the discussion was over though, I talked to a bunch of the Russians and even ended up exchanging numbers with a few of them – one of them even accompanied me all the way to my metro stop! So I definitely think that I will go back again next week.

Today was not as successful of a day. Like I said, I couldn't get my modem to work, so I went back to the store to see if the people there could help me install it. But the guy that sold it to me wasn't working today and the guys that were working tried and tried with no more success than I had. They ended up asking me to come back tomorrow when the guy that knew better how to install them would be working, so that is what I will have to do I suppose. After that, I went to the dormitory to Nathan's office hours to use his scanner and printer so that I can turn in my application to ACTR for the summer. I was going to print and scan my other grant apps for ND as well, but my computer battery died before I could email them to myself. Nonetheless, I at least got the ACTR form signed and scanned so as soon as I can get internet, I can send that off. After I had done that and was trying to leave, I ended up getting trapped in a hallway in the dorm and had to call Nathan to come and get me out. Somehow I have a knack for getting myself into situations like that.

But at least I made it home alive for some nom noms. And I did get that one thing accomplished. No plans for tonight yet. The other kids at school sounded like they might want to do something tonight, but noone's called me or anything yet so I don't know if we're doing anything. I know that Kaitlin and Lexie were going to be volunteering at this children's school until 9 though, so if they're doing something it won't be until after that.

Alina and Leila had judo training (that's right, judo - just like Putin) tonight, so the apartment's pretty quiet right now… I almost feel like I could fall asleep if I laid down, but it's only 8 o' clock so I probably should NOT do that.

Tomorrow night, I think I'm supposed to hang out with my tutor sometime after 5, but I'm not sure what we're doing yet. I really need to buy just a small mirror for my room though – there's only two really in the house, the one in the hall and the one in the kitchen/bathroom and I feel like I could take up a lot less time in the bathroom if I just had one in my room. I also need one of those big bottles of water, and, of course, my modem.

Nazim was asking my last night if I wanted to go ice skating this weekend, but I'm not sure if we will or not. He makes me laugh – he always gets really excited when he gets to try out the English that he knows. In general, I've had some pretty good conversations with all of them so far, I think. I attempted to help Leilah with her English homework yesterday (trying to explain what the Scotland highlands were in Russian was a challenge) and Alina tried to help me figure out how to get my SIM card in my modem yesterday – she is so adorable! Nadia has been really helpful with teaching me the ways of the house and the family (taking off my shoes and switching to slippers when I walk in, where/how I should clean off my dishes, etc.) and she usually sits and talks with me while I eat my meals. She really likes Patrick Swayze – she showed me a picture of him on her phone haha.

Fingers crossed that this will go up in the blogosphere soon!

Oh, wow I just remembered that I didn't even write about our awesome excursion to the Maslenitsa park on Wednesday! Basically we just played in the snow and went sledding (on tubes) on this huge slide/hill thing.. We also got to go to that exhibition after - it was all about mirrors! I took some pretty cool pics posted above…