"The Things Russians Say"

Yesterday Megan and I were chatting with Jenya in our usual Russlish. We'd somehow gotten on the topic of AK-47's, because Jenya didn't believe our translation of his Russian word to "machine gun" despite our repeated acting out of shooting a machine gun. So we looked them up on the wonderful world wide web.

Jenya then told us that he'd learned to shoot an AK-47 in high school, where he'd had a class on it. You had to be able to load it fast enough and then shoot it at a man-shaped target. Also in this class he learned how to properly throw grenades. If you didn't throw the grenade far enough, you failed the class. That's probably because if they had been live grenades (they weren't) and you didn't throw them far enough, you would have failed life.

He was really surprised that we didn't have classes like this in America. When he asked why, I just told him that Americans hate guns because they're afraid of them. This confused Jenya, because it's so easy to get a gun in America. You just go in a store and buy it. Here it's a lot harder. But should a Russian with a high school education ever happen to need a gun, he may or may not be prepared to use it... I still haven't quite figured out if Jenya was serious or not. 

A Typical Day in Russia

Ok, so today maybe wasn't typical. But it did feel very Russian.

I woke up this morning and Iuliia pointed out that it was snowing, just a little. During the night a nice white dusting had appeared. It always feels a little bit more Russian to me here when it snows. I spent the morning before I had to go to class doing some homework and looking out my window.

The first very Russian thing I saw was this: a group of boys who looked to be about 15 or so ran out of the building and started having a snowball fight. One of them had forgotten to put his coat on and just had a shirt. The other two were decked out in their jackets. Eventually one of them got a good shot and hit his friend in the neck. They chased each other up the walkway to school and out of sight of my window, where I'm presuming one tackled the other and they tired themselves out. They wandered back looking tired, formed a circle to chat, and pulled out their cigarettes. Classic Russia. I'm mostly used to people smoking now, but it still catches me by surprise every once in a while.

The second very Russian thing happened when I was downtown this afternoon on my way home from eating downtown. It was about 5:00 or so. As we walked through the central square two large fur-hatted policemen walked toward us toting a very drunk old Russian man. Between the two of them they were mostly just kind of lifting and dragging him out of the square. There was no yelling or fighting, just your average street drunk being carted off by policemen.

A note on the policemen: There are a couple different types of policemen around. They're more common to see standing on the street here and you see fewer cop cars. Mostly they just use the cars as roadblocks during rush hour traffic jams. But the great thing about the policemen is their outfits. They wear long coats and big furry stereotypical Russian hats and black gloves. They look so regal and old-fashioned. Especially since they all carry beatsticks, which freaks me out a little bit sometimes. But I've never seen one in action, which is good.

Anyways, I love seeing these odd sights that I know I would never really encounter in America. It's a different world here. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. It's just the way it is.

День Благодарения

Or, as we say in America... Thanksgiving!

As you might imagine, Thanksgiving's not really a thing in Russia... at all. But we Americans gave it our best shot and went out for family dinner last night. True, we had Georgian food and there was no turkey involved. But we did go around the table and say what we were all thankful for... good food, new friends, and the wacky opportunities we've had here in Russia!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving (whether or not you celebrate this holiday) filled with good food and better company.

An Afternoon Out

Yesterday after class Megan and I went galavanting about town with two of our Chinese classmates, Sveta and Tolya (yeah... those are just their Russian names). Here's a few photos...

First we got hot chocolate! Yum. Then we hopped on the bus downtown.

We were kind of hunting for souvenir stores, but I got distracted by this pretty little playground...

And park area with arches labeled with what I think might be Vladivostok's sister cities around the world.

Megan and Tolya played on the merry go round.

Here's Sveta and me. She's from Dalian, China, and I'm from... well, not Juneau exactly... but Alaska! Our arches happened to be right next to each other.

Борщ и Блини

I know I might have complained just a smidgeon about Russian food, but I feel the need to add that when done right, Russian food can be absolutely delicious. Today we had another "master class" like the ceramics class we took a couple weeks ago. This time, it was on Russian cooking! We watched as a master chef (who we later learned is one of the best chefs in Russia... I think he might even have a cooking show) prepared borsch and blini. 

You've probably already heard of these Russian foods - they're two of the most common. I had never actually eaten borsch before... and man, was it delicious! Borsch is soup made of (in the order that I saw them go in the pot) cabbage, potatoes, beets, tomatoes, carrots, fried onions, meat, and seasonings including pepper, red pepper, garlic, bay leaves, and dill (Russians love dill). Borsch is usually eaten with a dollop of сметана = smetana = sour cream. Above, you can see my delicious bowl of homemade borsch and dream of its deliciousness. I've had a sore throat for the past few days, and that soup felt mighty good going down.

We also had blini, which are the Russian version of crepes. We watched the masters make a few then we each tried our hand at it... The instructors made it look so easy! My blini was not entirely round but had only one little tear in it, so I considered it a success. At the end of the cooking lesson we were all served an early dinner of the borsch and some blini that had been made earlier and filled (then rolled). One was filled with rice and meat, one with barley and mushrooms, and one with творог = tvorog = kind of like Russian cottage cheese, but creamier. 

It was a fun time, and delicious! I'm still full from it. I dare you to have a better dinner than I did today! 

СНЕГ!

Сегодня шла снег! Снег был красивый и белый. Я очень люблю снег!!!

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Снег = sneg = snow and it's beautiful and white and I love it.

Город

 I know you're probably yearning to see more of what Vladivostok actually looks like. Well, yesterday I went гулять-ing (= gulyat = the Russian word for just wandering about for the sake of wandering. The Russians are quite fond of this.) with some friends who needed to get to the train station to buy tickets for their Trans-Siberian journey. I, however, just wandered about taking some lovely photos for you. Enjoy!

In the middle of downtown there's a little square of outside markets.

It's starting to get a bit too chilly for outdoor fruits and veggies!

The great thing about being in Russia is that you don't have to wait until after Thanksgiving to start decorating for Christmas! Or, the big winter holiday here, Новый Год.

Eventually we made it to the station. In my opinion, it's one of the pretties buildings in the city. Later after walking around in the chilly outside, we got to warm up with some toasty piroshki from a street vendor. Yum!