Последние дни / Last few Days

               I decided to spend my last two weeks in Russia in our families dacha. In case you aren't aware, a dacha is a small house in a Russian village where Russians go to live on the weekends and during the summer.

              Someone told me, before leaving, that coming to Russia would be like walking into 1960. Before coming to the dacha for the first time, I thought she was crazy. Now I see the reason. When you walk down one of the 4 streets (yes, 4) in our village, it is hard to tell what time period you're in. If it weren't for the television satelites sticking out of a few of the houses it could totally be sixty years ago. The wooden houeses, kids playing in the street, old babushkas (grandmothers) sitting on their little benches and gossiping about the lives of the people they see walk by.

          The gossiping babushkas drive my host sister Yulya crazy. I can't blame her, seeing as according to their gossip, Yulya has been pregnant about three or four times and is currently planning to elope. Fortunately, the latest gossip has switched away from my sister, and onto the newest addition to our small village.

The american.

         Peoples reactions when they see me are really funny. The little kids don't understand what it means to be from another country, and ask why I speak strangely. An old woman thought I was lying to her, and actually got pretty angry. My favorite reaction of all though, is a friend of my sisters, who upon seeing me, asks my sister "Is this her? A real american! Can I touch her?!"

    Long story short, my last few weeks in Russia are good ones. My days are filled with working in the garden, swimming in the lake, and washing in the banya. My nights with cooking over bonfires, volleyball, and sunlight even at 11 o'clock.

When I arrived in Russia, the sun rose at 9:30, and set at 4:00. Now, as I'm getting ready to leave, it rises begins to get light at about 3 in the morning, and doesn't get dark again until a bit after 11. The drastic difference in the length of my days is cool to observe. It is something we totally don't have in the US.

Friends, fire in the wilderness, this is the way summer should be.

Probably the most awesome cup of tea I've had in all my time in Russia. Everything is from our garden.

РАДУГА!!! (I think its not hard to guess what that means)

Uh oh, can't cross the road right now. Too many cows.

                                            Summer in the village.

Кому: Будующим студентам обменов/ To all you future exchange students

I'm going home in 3 weeks. Seeing as that is the case, I've decided to make a post to all you potential exchange students out there reading this. I remember reading blogs myself, when deciding if I would go, and then again, where I would go. If you are feeling lazy, just read the points I put in bold, they sum up my advice.

          Firstly, I advise all you potential exchange students out there to think very carefully about your country choice. Think what you want to get out of your exchange, and pick accordingly. Russia for example, is not an easy place to live. The people are very hard to get to know. Most exchange students here go a whole year without making any Russian friends. If you would rather not face a challenge like that, it is better to go to a country where people are more immediately open.
        
         Say you don't get along with your host family. Say kids aren't so nice at school, or on the street. These are problems. If you have them, which you without a doubt will, my advice is to go to people in your host country for help. There is little your friends and family at home can do except worry, so with problems I'd turn first to friends, family or voulenteers in your host country. I would also give problems time, because they very quickly evolve, sometimes they even fix themselves. Even if they don't, a week or even a day later, you and everyone else tends to see them differently. Try to avoid frantic emails to parents or skype calls to friends. I had to learn the hard way just how very unhelpful they are.

           Being an exchange student, there are lots of times, especially in the beginning, where you want to do nothing but talk to your friends and family at home. While that is temporarily comforting, it is not the ideal thing to do. Firstly, if you talk to your folks at home while you have a bad mood, you'll worry them. Secondly, if you get in a habit of retreating to the computer it keeps you from fitting into the new culture. So, stay away from the computer, it'll be best for you in the long run. When feeling down on an exchange, I recommend finding a distraction, for example, I usually take a shower or play cards with my sister.  Although most exchange companies disagree with me, I advise you to bring a computer with you if at all possible. I didn't, thinking, that I'd be less likely to sit on it all day, but as it turns out, a large source of tension between my host family and I is my use of their computer. While I advise you to bring your own computer, I also advise you to use it as minimally as possible.

           Just because your host sister or brother studies in your class, that doesn't mean their friends have to be yours. Just because this one girl is really friendly to you the first few days, that doesn't mean you two have to be best friends for life. When making friends in your host country, pick people that you like. They may not necessarily be in the cool crowd, and they may not necessarily talk to you first. It takes some guts, but pick people you think you'd get along with, and start the conversation. I only started doing this now, during my last month. I wish I'd realized earlier.
    
           If you really want to learn the language, then do your school work. As tempting as it is to doodle, sleep, or read in class, try to stop yourself. The reading, writing, and speaking you do in school is unbelievably helpful in the learning of a new language. Of the exchange students I know in Russia, the ones who know the language best, do all their homework, and get graded on it.

            If there is one thing I could change about my experience, it would be the fact that I chose to go for only a semester. A year might seem overwelming, but almost everyone I've spoken to who choose to go for a semester regrets not choosing a year long option. Heres why: after five months in Russia, I finally feel confident with the language. I finally can understand my schoolwork. I finally have started to make close relationships with people. Just as I begin to realize what I've done wrong, and what to do better, just as I'm starting to fit in, its time to leave.  Of course, a semester is better than nothing, but if you can, go for a year.
           If you really want to learn the language, don't let people talk to you in english. Especially at the beginning. If you know someone who really wants to practice their english, make a deal with them. For example, Dasha, my host sister, wanted to practice her english, so I told her for the first 3 months we'd speak Russian, and once I'd learned Russian, we could speak english together. It worked pretty well. Now though, we almost always speak Russian anyways, because its easier to communicate.

If you are considering coming to Russia: Know what you're getting into. If I were to explain exactly how hard it is to live in Russia, you probably wouldn't want to come, and so I won't do that. I won't explain to you, because although it is incredibly hard, it is just as much worth it. You may not have fun here 100% of the time. Honestly, you probably won't have fun 75% of the time. Despite this, you will think and learn a whole lot, about everything.

To sum it all up, being an exchange student is not easy, but I don't know anyone who's regretted it. 

Один день в моей жизни / A day in the life

It's actually strange to write this, because school is already over, so this isn't what my days are like anymore. This is however, what it was like for about four months, so totally worth writing.

6:30-Hear my sisters alarm clock, she gets up, takes a shower and puts on makeup

My sisters alarm clock....

7:15- My sister comes into our room and says "Lindsay vstavay!" (Lindsay, wakeup!) and then I get out of bed.

7:45-After brushing my teeth, enjoying a breakfast of tea and an open faced sandwitch with cheese and kolbassa (not sure how that translates actually, its some sort of meat. It's strange because in the US I was a vegetarian and therefore I know the names of a lot of meats in Russian and not English), and getting my stuff together, this is when we leave for school. The walk is about 5 minutes, which is totally convenient.

7:50-Arrive at school, change shoes, and head off to my first class.

8-8:45-First lesson. Usually my first two lessons every day (except for saturday and monday) are with kids from the 2nd grade. I learn Russian and Reading with them. These are probably my favorite lessons of the day, because I understand what is going on and am able to do the work. They are adorable, and love talking to me.

2nd graders. In all honestly, I feel more comfortable their class than my own. Little kids are really awesome.

10-10:45- At this point, the third and fourth lesson, sometimes I go to study with the 10th grade, but sometimes I help out in English classes, or once a week, I study with the 5th grade. I go to a class called teknologia, which you'd think has something to do with technology, but in fact it is sort of a 'girls learn how to cook clean and sew' sort of thing. At the beginning I thought it was sexist, and I still do a little bit, but these necessary skills (cooking cleaning and sewing) are skills that I don't have, because my american school thinks that its sexist to teach me them. So in conclusion, maybe girls AND boys should take the class.

Yummy salad we made. Notice they all smile with their mouthes shut. People laugh at me when I don't.

11:45-12:00- This is where we have fifteen minutes to leave the fourth lesson, eat, and get to the fifth lesson. The food at school is not wonderful, it's edible, so no complaints.

12:00-1:45- The 5th and 6th lessons. I am all the time in the 10th class during these. The lessons in the 10th class for me are not so fun. I understand what the teacher is saying in Russian, but that doesn't mean I understand the material. The things they are learning in math and science are on a much more advanced level than what I learned in the US and on top of that, I came in half way through the year. Sometimes I listen and take notes, and others I write in my journal.

Heres my class. Funny story: When this picture was being taken, I smiled in my normal american 32 toothed way, and the camera man shouts "don't smile like this!" and immitated me. The whole class knew that only one person would do that. They all turned to me and were like "Lindsay!!"
2:00- By 2:00 I am home from school. It's a pretty short school day actually, but unlike in the US, literally all we do is study. Theres no chorus, or free block, or 40 minute lunch. Its one academic class followed by a 15 minute break, followed by the next academic class and so on. When I get home, it is usually my sister, my host mom, and I. My host mom, having gotten home from work at 6 in the morning, has just woken up at this point, and she eats breakfast while we eat a sort of second lunch sort of thing (you'll remember we ate at school). It is usually soup, followed by some other second dish. This could be kasha, or macarroni, or these balls of cabbage with meat inside them... but always something my host mom cooks, which is cool. Also, in Russia, almost ever meal is eaten with bread, usually brown. After eating, we drink tea and eat some sort of sweet food with it.

3:30-5:00- This is when my sister does her homework. I do mine too, but I don't do the homework that she does for reasons I previously explained. I do homework for the 5th class, and 2nd class, and also make presentations. I do a lot of presentations about america to the small kids in my school. Its lots of fun. It's crazy though, when I walk around the hallway where the 1st through 4th grades study I am almost always in the center of a cloud of little Russians asking me questions about my life and/or saying 'Hello! Hello!' one of the only english words they know.

6:00-9:00-During this time, I do one of three things.
1) Go out with the other exchange students in my city (if I'm going out with them, I actually leave home a bit earlier, probably around 3). We sit in cafe's and talk, or go to beautiful parks, or just sort of hang out in the city. Its really nice to be with them, because we are all going through the exact same experience.

This is Sofia (a girl from Austria also living in Nihzny) and I. Ironically we are in Moscow. Also in Nihzny there is Giacommo (Italy) and Quentin (France)

2) Go to visit my old host family. This is probably once or twice a week. When I go there, I usually drink tea and talk with Dasha (20 year old host sister) and my old host mom, and then go with Laura (9 year old host sister) and play set (the card game, I taught her) or dance. She loves choreographing extremely complicated dances, teaching them to me, and then getting very angry when I do one thing incorrectly. She reminds me very much of my youngest brother in the US in some ways. Afterwards, I usually eat dinner with them all together. "Family dinner" doesn't really happen in most Russian families (family time is usually drinking tea), but they like the tradition of eating dinner together, and afterwords, drinking tea and eating cake. By the time that is all over, it is usually 9:00, which means bed time for Laura and time to go home for me.

Guess who??

3) Go out to walk with my host sister (Yulya) and friends. In the winter, we would like stand in the staircases of apartment buildings because it was so cold, but now that the weather is nice, we can sit near school or at the playground near my house.

Yulya and I. Pretty much our relationship in a picture.

9:00-10:00- Yulya and I watch every week night, a russian tv schow called closed school. It's about a boarding school, but there is a secret facist regime sort of thing run by the director that is taking people and doing medical experiments on them. Its one of those so bad its good things.

10-10:15- Take a shower

10:30- Sometimes drink another cup of tea

10:45- Talk to Yulya for a little (we share a room) and then go to bed.

There's a small, frightened child stuck in the elevator!

I had a really cool idea to make a blog post of a tour of my home, but upon trying to upload it, I was told that with my internet connection, I'd have to wait 5 days before it was done.

So I guess I'll move on to plan b: Telling a few funny sories.

Being a foreigner who doesn't speak the language so well, you learn pretty quickly to laugh at yourself. Either that, or you have a pretty unpleasant time. So this is a post dedicated to the times I made a complete idiot out of myself (culturally).

1) Getting stuck in the elevator
   So I live on the seventh floor of a massive appartment building that was built a very long time ago. In order to go to and from to our appartment each and every day I get to take a ride on the lovely Soviet three by four foot elevator.
       Because its Russia, and the floor is dirty, you cannot walk around school in the same shoes you walked to school in. I however, forgot about this, and was sent home by our lovely director Svetlana (no she is actually lovely, just strict) to grab a second pair of shoes.
          As I got on the elevator to go up to our appartment, I heard it creak especially loudly, and got a little freaked out, but came to the conclusion that it would not be horrible if I got stuck on the elevator, because this was a Wednesday, and on Wednesdays I have Physics followed immediately by two blocks of Algebra.
            The problems didn't really begin until the way back. I get on the elevator, and realize, that at home I changed shoes, and am currently wearing the shoes that are only supposed to be worn inside school. I make the incredibly smart decision to change shoes in the elevator, and slipped a little just as it made its usual creek around the fifth floor. There was a loud bang and the elevator stopped moving.
        I'm usually not claustrophobic, but a three by foot elevator that you suddenly have no way of getting out of really set me off. I had to close my eyes, take deep breaths and imagine I was in a very large field of wheat until I calmed down enough to assess the situation. Just as I did so, the lights turned off. This actually helped me be calm, because I was unaware of the small space. I decided, that having no phone, my best option was to scream and bang on the door.
            After a few seconds I heard the voice of a grumpy old babushka living in my building. (Babushka literally beans grandmother, but you can call any old woman that and it isn't offensive).
Babushka: What are you banging on the elevator for?!
Me: It's broken.
Babushka: Why'd you break it?
Me: I didn't on purpose.
         After a bit more yelling at me and asking questions I didn't understand she called another woman and tells her "There is a little kid stuck in the elevator," She must have taken my incorrect speech and partial comprehension to mean that I was three. So then the other women starts saying: Don't be afraid, it's okay sweetie, I'm going to call the repair man to get you out, don't be afriad!"
          I figured it'd be really awkward to tell her I was actually not a child, and therefore just said nothing.
         So after about an hour the mechanic came, and he was also informed that there was a very scared little child stuck all alone in the dark elevator.
Then after about ten minutes, the door opens, I'm between the fourth and fifth floors, and I have to climb out.
Mechanic: That is not a small child.
            
2) The Playing Cards
        So my mom sent me a package full of souveniers from the US to give people as parting gifts. In the package was a pack of playing cards with pictures of Philadelphia on them.  So yesterday, as I was surveying the souveniers, I see the cards are still there, and decide, to give them as a gift to my Russian teacher, who helped me a lot preparing for my final exams.
       So today, I go to her with the cards, and a nice note with a picture I made for her, and beaming present her with the goods. She looks at me very strangely and after a few seconds says thank you, quickly puts the cards in her bag and tells me to leave.
       I retell my host sister what happened. She shakes her head and calls me 'durochka'. Its a sort of cutesy way to say 'you're an idiot'. She then informs me that in Russia playing cards have a very strong association with gambling, and that they are forbidden in schools.
I guess I'll have to explain myself tomorrow.

Now, since this has been a fairly photo-less post, and seeing I recently learned that my dad in the US treats my blog as a picture book, I guess I'll add a few pictures, fairly unrelated to the post.

Today was the graduation ceremony for the kids in 11th class which was actually quite cool. It is called the last bell, (as in school bell). The boy you see is in the 11th class, and the girl is in the first class. They are ringing the last bell to symbolize the end of her first year of school, and his last.

Needs no explanation. If only I had a shot of the inside...

                                        Some people from my class and I sitting near school.
   

С днём победы: The great patriotic war.

             World War II was a very long time ago.... Why should it deserve a post?

Thats a fairly logical line of thinking for someone who has never been to Russia.

             If you have been though, you'll know and understand that World War II. or as they call it here, the great patriotic war, always deserves a post by Russian standards. Even today, the country is filled with memorials, museams, and even has a holiday dedicated to the war, and the determination of the Russian people not to forget it.
           I find everyone's dedication to the memory of such a war incredibly admirable. The only thing that worries me slightly is that there is a bit too much of a focus in my opinion on the remembrance of Soviet victory as apposed to remembing those who died, or the attrocities commited. The holiday after all is called victory day.
           I had the privledge of visiting arguably the biggest and most extreme (you'll see what I mean by extreme in a moment) memorial of all in Volgograd when I was there about a month ago. It is almost like a city within its self. I will now give you all a virtual tour.

             The memorial starts out on the street, where there gigantic are red flags each symbolizing a city, that like Volgograd, was heavily affected by the war. The woman you see here is named Elena Ivanovna, she is one of our lovely voulenteers.

After walking by the flags, you come to these steps. Translation: For our soviet homeland, the USSR!

Then you come to the first square. It is filled with more flags and at the end a statue (which you see a bit of) and a pool (which you can't see).

After you walk past the pool in the fist square, which by the way, is symbolic of the Volga, a river which begins close to Yaroslavl (north of Moscow) and ends in Astrahan. It runs through Volgograd, and also, Nizny Novgorod, where I live. Anyways, after the pool, you walk up more steps, which are flanked by these incredibly cool stone sort of collages. They are covered with quotes from soldiers, pictures, and other symbols of war. From unseen speakers music from the war plays 24/7.

              We now arrive at the second square, which has an even bigger pool, also symbolic of the Volga. On the sides there are lots of statues, and at the other end.....

there are these walls. Which have carvings like the one you see now. Translation: Facist soldiers wanted to see the Volga. The red army gave them that opportunity. See what I mean by the focus on victory being unsettling?

There is a small opening in the carved walls at the entrance of which stands a guard, who is there 24/7 (not the same one, but you know what I mean). Then you walk through this tunnel which opens up into this underground memorial. On the walls are close to a million names of dead soldiers, and the fire never goes out. You can't see them, but in this place there are six soldiers, also on constant guard. No one speaks. There is no official rule, but when you're in the room, you can't really.

Then looming above it all is the gigantic stone statue of родина мать (mother of the homeland), who is a sort of Russian uncle sam. She is 87 meters tall, which makes the statue of liberty at 46 meters seem like a baby. This is a detail I'm sure the Soviet government took into account when they built it.

            The entire thing is unbelievable. Unbelievable that they'd build such a thing, unbelivable what it looks like, unbelievable how much the people respect it (there is no trash, and no graffiti in sight, but now that I think of it, this could also be due to frequent cleaning).

And this memorial isn't the only way they show their dedication. There are other, slightly smaller ones all over the country. Even in Nihzny, which was hardly touched by the war, there is a large memorial and also a fire which never goes out.

In addition to the memorials there is also a holiday, Victory day. This means
no school, and a parade and fireworks in every big city. The streets of both Nihzny and Moscow (where I went to see the parade), were both covered in banners and signs. Almost everyone wears orange and black ribbons, a symbol of the day. Even the bread we bought at the supermarket had a special wrapping that celebrated.

It is strange though, because a lot of people I've talked to seemed to only know about the Russian losses in the war. I was talking with a girl from my school, and she even didn't know that the United States took part. A lot of people have misconceptions about it actually, Russian and American. Still though, how could she think that? 300,000 American soldiers died in the war. This seems like a very large number. 300,000. How could she be ignorant of such a tradgedy?

I'll tell you how. Because 23 million Russians died, men women and children. When you think of it like that, it is quite understandable how someone could believe that the US took little to know part in the war, and its quite understandable how badly they want to remember.

Путешествие на Юг/Trip to the South

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. It is because I was on a wonderful 2 week long trip to the south of Russia! Our time was spent in the following way: 2 days on the train there, 4 days in Astrahan, 4 days in Akthubinsk, 1 day in Volgograd, and 2 more days on the train home. I was there with 17 other exchange students (out of the 100 total in Russia), from Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Thailand and America (it was surprising how nice it is to talk to another american after months and months of only Russians and other well, not american people). I could write everything we did, but it might bore you, and I also don't such an abundance of time on the internet (this is my host sisters computer, and the most common source of conflict between us is how often I use it). I decided that rather than write a short summary of every single thing I did, I would pick 5 highlights and describe them to you.


1) The train

In Russia they say that there are only three things to do on the train, sleep, talk, and eat. This is absolutely correct. For 34 hours both ways, that is absolutely all we did.Fhe train in Russia isn't like any train I've been on in america, though admittedly, I've never been on a night train there. What we had in Russia is basically one big cart, and there are subsections (there is no door, just a little dividing wall) with four beds on one side of the hallway which goes through the middle of the cart, and two beds on the other. This will become clear with pictures, don't worry. The cool thing is that since there is no separation, you find yourself in very close quarters with strangers and nothing to do. Basically you make lots of friends. For example, I woke up one morning to find that Giacommo, an Italian exchange student, had befriended this group of rather large middle aged russian men, and was eating some sort of seafood with them.

Eat, sleep and talk. In the photo Cecelia (Italy), Paige (US), Me (US), Jo (Thailand), Sofia (Austria), Giacommo (Italy), and Meike (Germany).

2) Salt-Lake: Did you know that the dead sea isn't only in Israel? I really didn't. Who would have any idea, that in the middle of nowhere (literally, it is an hour away from the small town of Ahtubinsk in South western Russia), there exists a lake with condions to the dead sea. The floor of the lake is almost all salt, just hardened, which means that if you decide to go swimming spontaneously, as we did, you will be in a lot of pain.
             They told us that it was going to be too cold to swim in the lake, so no one brought bathing suits. Turns out, when we get there, it is actually incredibly hot. So we all decide to just wade in a little. But, of course, wading in a little leads to splashing, which leads to full out swimming in your clothes (although I lost a pair of jeans, and still have cuts on my feet, I do not regret this decision). It was really cool, because, you don't sink. If you try for exapmle to stand on two feet or touch the bottom you will have a very hard time doing so and also probably hurt yourself (salt in eyes, salt in mouth, sharm salty lake bottom). Our problem however was when we had to get out of the lake, because in some parts, it is too shallow to swim, and like I said, it hurts your feet--a lot. It was a cool bonding experience though. We were singing the AFS theme song as a joke because it says "walk together, talk together all your people of the earth" and we were literally walking together (and wincing with each step). Like I said though, no regrets.

                                                 The lake, pre-swim. Note the feet, there are no shoes on them. Note the jeans, you will never see them again.

3 Jo figures out why hes in Russia
When we were on the trip we stayed in 2 temporary host families, one in Astrahan, one in Ahtubinsk. It was cool to see the sort of inside life of another russian family, because I figured out that although there are lots of similarities, different families live differently. It was cool to realize what things are "russian" and which things are more typical to my host family in Nizhny. Anyways, my host sister in Ahtubinsk, was really awesome. Her name is Vlada and shes about my age (a year older). She is totally not the usual russian teenager, because she is absolutely obsessed with Korea and Japan. When I first met her, she warned me not to freak out when I saw her bedroom, the walls of which are not visible because there are so many posters of korean popstars and anime, some of which she painted her self and with friends. It was really cool to see self expression like that, because most other russian bedrooms that I've seen are quite without presonality.
            So Vlada... Remember her, and now I'm going to tell about someone else I met on the trip, and then explain how they are connected. So on the trip with us there was a Thai boy named Jo (also an exchange student). He at first was really shy, but after a while completely opened up. When we were in Astrahan, we all had to presentations about our home country in a school there, and when Jo did his, it was visible that the students for some reason didn't seem to care. He was clearly sort of hurt by this. In Russia, it seems to me that there are two types of foreigners (actually in the US too). There are people like me, from the US or from Europe, and because we are from these richer countries we are considered cool and interesting. Then there are the people from Uzbekistan and Azerbajan who a lot of Russian people (not all Russian people but a lot) look down upon and are openly racist to. This is actually very comprable to the US, if you think about the difference between meeting someone from France versus Mexico. It is interesting that that never ocurred to me before. I had to come to Russia to realize such a thing about my own country. So for some reason, the kids at the school put Jo into the less fondly reguarded group of foreigners and were totally rude to him. He told me "I think they want to learn about Europe not Asia". I got the feeling by the way that he said it that this happens to him a lot.
          So I'm guessing you already in your head have some idea of how Vlada and Jo's stories connect, but I'll tell you the details. One night in Ahtubinsk, we were just all sitting in the park (Russian host siblings and exchange students). Vlada was there with some of her friends, who also happen to share her obsession with east asain pop culture. (This is a note to my broadway/glee/harry potter obsessed friends in Philly, it was really funny, how much Vlada and her friends reminded me of you guys, sure the obsession is different, but the things they do are quite the same). So we are sitting there, and Vlada flips on her phone to check the time, and the background is her absolute favorite korean singer. Jo happens to see the phone and points to it saying in russian "That's Jong Hyun!" which in fact is the name of the singer. Turns out, that although he is Thai, Jo is also quite obsessed with Korea and Japan. As you may guess, a conversation began there, and they became instant best friends. By the end of the night Jo, Vlada and her friends were doing the dances from Korean music videos that they'd both memorized. It was one of the coolest things I've seen in Russia, and made me realize why being a exchange student is worthwhile.

          At the end of the night, before we went home, Jo was jumping up and down saying "Ya nashol! Ya nashol!" Which means, I found, I found. Then he said something in Thai, which Ploy (another Thai exchange student, a girl) translated as "this is why I'm in Russia,".

                                          Vlada and I. This photo was taken by Jo, who showed us how to correctly do the peace sign.

The awesome thing(s) about Russian Language

I just got back from an AMAZING trip to the south of russia. But I don't really have time to make a long post about that right now, so that will come later. Please now enjoy this post about Russian language I wrote about a month ago but forgot to post.

         
  One of my favorite parts about Russia is a language. To people who don't speak it it probably sounds severe and awkward, but the more I listen to it the more I seem to find it to actually be quite a beautiful language. Its not surprising some of the world's most famous literature and poetry comes from Russia.

                  The first awesome thing about Russian: The creativity. With english we just have words and thats it, but in Russian, I'm not sure how to explain it, but you can mix and match, turn adjectives into nouns and nouns into verbs. The creativity of Russian is immediately visible when you look at Russian names. For example, lets take the name Анастасия (Anastasia)**. It is quite a common name, but the cool thing is, for every Russian name, there are an unbelievably large amount of nicknames. Look:
Настя (Nastya), Настинка (Nastinka), Настуля (Nastyoulya), Настюша (Nastyousha), Насть (Nast), Настюлка (Nastyoulka), Настка  (Nastka)
           and that's all I can list, but a russian person could probably supply you with a few more. Also you should know that it isn't just Anastasia, it is every single Russian name that does stuff like this. Another example would be Laura (my old host sister), who depending on the situation can be called Laurochka, Laurka, Lya-lya, Llyaloulka, Lyalousha, Lyalinka, Laurochoshka,  or Lyalka.

and Russian is even more awesome because this doesn't just apply to names, but also to pretty much every noun out there.
For example in clean correct Russian you would say
Ya hochy koosok torta. (I want a piece of cake) but Russians like to fondly adress their cake, and so rather than saying koosok torta (peice of cake) they say koosochka tortochki. Or if they really have a thing for the cake they could take it to the next level and say koosochishka tortitochki. It minorly resembles the spanish adding 'ito' to things to show they are tiny, but in Russian it doesn't really mean tiny, it just means that you feel affectionately about the object (in this case the cake and also the piece).


             You probably don't really believe that Russian is a beautiful language. I'll agree with you that it doesn't really sound graceful like french or spanish, but I think that what makes it beautiful is not really the way the words sound by themselves, but their meaning, and the meaning combined with the sound. I'll post a Russian poem, and a translation, and also a link to a youtube video so you can hear it, and when you hear it, sort of imagine the meaning in your head. It may not really click, but if you want to see what I mean, try.

Белый снег, пушистый          White snow, fluffy and soft
В воздухе кружится            Spins around in the air
И на землю тихо               And onto the silent winter
Падает, ложится.             It falls and lays still
И под утро снегом              And in the morning with snow
Поле побелело,               The feild is shrouded
Точно пеленою                Tightly embraced           
Все его одело.              by the snow, which is its clothing
Темный лес что шапкой       The dark forest with its snow-hat
Принакрылся чудной           is wonderfly covered
И заснул под нею            and it (the forest) sleeps under its clothes
Крепко, непробудно...       tightly embraced, it seems it will never wake up

Translating that for school a few weeks ago made me realize how weird Russian sounds in english.

 I also didn't totally literally translate, I went more for the feeling rather than 

the actual meaning of the words. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tilkivtE4fs (the actual poem starts at :30 seconds, sorry 

the video is strange, it was the only I could find.) 

The last reason (or at least the last reason I'll explain) why I like Russian Language is

the way that people phrase things. For example, in english, we have the phrase "haste makes

waste" right? The russian equivalent, which I heard a few days ago, is "If you do not work 

hard, you will not be able to get fish out of river". Another one that is really a pleasure

is "your elbow is close, but you can't bite it" this would probably be something along the 

lines of "so close but so far" in english. 

Well, Thats all for now, signing out from a very warm Nihzny Novgorod! 

**in case you were wondering, yes, like the princess.