Soul-searching between dishes

Monday. Quote of the day: “Wait, 1865? Is that when the Columbus thing actually happened?”

It’s the beginning of Maslenitsa today! I’m not sure what this week is called in any other culture, but it’s supposed to celebrate the end of winter, beginning of spring, that sort of thing. (We’re conveniently ignoring the fact that it’s still snowing every single day and predicted to be -15C tomorrow.) As far as I understand, the main cultural element of Maslenitsa is the pre-Lent celebration of eating blini every day. I had two for breakfast this morning (and could have easily eaten more, if not for the giant bowl of kasha that preceded them), and slathered with strawberry jam and a little bit of lemon juice, they’re absolutely fantastic. They’re also super easy, so I’ll do my best to make a couple hundred when I get back to the States! :D

Slow school day. Apparently there’s a banya club that normally meets on Mondays, but they didn’t end up going out today…it wasn’t well publicized, really. I think everyone else, at least in our language group, was slightly overwhelmed by the intensity of the lessons today. Three hours of Albina Vasilievna, our main language teacher, is a lot; we’ll all be thanking our lucky stars that we studied with her come next semester, but right now, she makes for a difficult three hours.

Lyudmila Afanasyevna has students this evening, so I’ve been keeping busy doing my grammar homework and (once I finished that) the dishes. She has several students, both from the university and from local high schools, who come by in the evenings for extra chemistry lessons. I’ve met four of them so far: Olga, Ksusha (not sure if this is a nickname), and this evening, Katya and Nastia (Anastasia). I’m sure this is a normal exchange student feeling, but meeting these students, for example…at the moment, it’s a real source of anxiety. I mean, they’re certainly nice enough, but my usual strategy of making small talk completely fails with my current command of the language. It’s going to take a while for me to forget that I’m studying what’s effectively first- or second-grade grammar in the language they’ve spoken all their lives.

Bah. Enough thinking. Time to go distract myself with a couple of pots to wash. Doing the dishes is turning out to be remarkably calming, actually. Mom, I’ll keep this in mind when I get back home. :)