Sorry I've gone a while without posting...I should start by saying:
For reasons it wouldn't be right to go into in such a public setting, I have had to move to a new host family. It wasn't something I wanted to do, nor was it something something my host family wanted, but it had do happen.
The good news is my new host family is also pretty great. I have a dad, Lyosha, mom, Irina, a 24 year old brother, Tyoma, and a 17 year old sister, Yulya. She's in my class at school, which is quite convenient, because now I have someone who can explain physics to me. None of them speak a word of english, so there is a lot of going back and forth with a dictionary, but I'm sort of happy about it, because what better way could there be to learn Russian? The other good news is they live in the same appartment building as my old family, so I can visit them as often as I'd like.
So now to the main subject of this post. Remember protector of the homeland day? Well today was another lovely (and entirely religionless I might add) national holiday. It was womens day. It isn't like mothers day though, where you sort of kind of give your mom flowers and maybe call grandma... It's quite the legitamate day. Yulya about every five minutes was getting texts from every boy she knew wishing her a happy womens day. Tyoma got Yulya and I roses, and our parents got us chocolate.
Yesterday there was a celebration at school too. We only had four lessons rather than six, and for the rest of the day we had a concert, which was one of the most russian things I've seen. It began with kids from the 2nd grade dressed as mushrooms doing a dance to a folsky song about grandma, continued with the girls in 11th grade reciting poems about being a woman, and ended with our middle aged male PE teacher playing the guitar and singing about how lovely women are. Only Russia.
After our concert just the 10th class went to the classroom of our advisor and which all the boys in our class had decorated for us. They also bought us cake. So we drank tea, which they served to us, and ate cake. It was sweet, literally and figuratively. Then they recited a poem for us, along the lines of 'beautiful, wonderful girls of the 10b class, we love you, and on this special day we want to give you gifts to show how glad we are to have you in our lives'. Then all the boys went and got gifts, and each one of them presented a gift to a different girl in our class. I got an apron and a spoon decorated with traditional russian patterns. "For to cooking!" a boy in my class enthusiastically explained. The whole thing seemed a little sexist to me, but the good kind of sexist, if that makes any sense. Its not like they are saying 'you are a woman you belong in the home' they are saying 'you are a woman and thats wonderful, we love you'.
He is singing about how wonderful women are. And this isn't creepy at all. Only Russia. I might add that this is the same PE teacher that forced us to run in circles for a half an hour and if we didn't go fast enough (or sometimes just because) he threw volleyballs at us.
Part of the concert
For reasons it wouldn't be right to go into in such a public setting, I have had to move to a new host family. It wasn't something I wanted to do, nor was it something something my host family wanted, but it had do happen.
The good news is my new host family is also pretty great. I have a dad, Lyosha, mom, Irina, a 24 year old brother, Tyoma, and a 17 year old sister, Yulya. She's in my class at school, which is quite convenient, because now I have someone who can explain physics to me. None of them speak a word of english, so there is a lot of going back and forth with a dictionary, but I'm sort of happy about it, because what better way could there be to learn Russian? The other good news is they live in the same appartment building as my old family, so I can visit them as often as I'd like.
So now to the main subject of this post. Remember protector of the homeland day? Well today was another lovely (and entirely religionless I might add) national holiday. It was womens day. It isn't like mothers day though, where you sort of kind of give your mom flowers and maybe call grandma... It's quite the legitamate day. Yulya about every five minutes was getting texts from every boy she knew wishing her a happy womens day. Tyoma got Yulya and I roses, and our parents got us chocolate.
Yesterday there was a celebration at school too. We only had four lessons rather than six, and for the rest of the day we had a concert, which was one of the most russian things I've seen. It began with kids from the 2nd grade dressed as mushrooms doing a dance to a folsky song about grandma, continued with the girls in 11th grade reciting poems about being a woman, and ended with our middle aged male PE teacher playing the guitar and singing about how lovely women are. Only Russia.
After our concert just the 10th class went to the classroom of our advisor and which all the boys in our class had decorated for us. They also bought us cake. So we drank tea, which they served to us, and ate cake. It was sweet, literally and figuratively. Then they recited a poem for us, along the lines of 'beautiful, wonderful girls of the 10b class, we love you, and on this special day we want to give you gifts to show how glad we are to have you in our lives'. Then all the boys went and got gifts, and each one of them presented a gift to a different girl in our class. I got an apron and a spoon decorated with traditional russian patterns. "For to cooking!" a boy in my class enthusiastically explained. The whole thing seemed a little sexist to me, but the good kind of sexist, if that makes any sense. Its not like they are saying 'you are a woman you belong in the home' they are saying 'you are a woman and thats wonderful, we love you'.
Part of the concert
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