Anniversary of Yaroslavl

So I realized that I completely forgot to talk about the anniversary celebration. I will be having dinner soon, so I will try and make this quick (I apologize if it is too short!). So, like I mentioned before, the city of Yaroslavl celebrated it's 1000 year anniversary. For the celebration, the city beautified the center of town, repainting and fixing up old buildings, repaving roads, and just generally making everything prettier.
<--The Volga

The Volga embankment pathways has been redone and although I did not see it before, it is beautiful now! Also on
the embankment of the Volga, they built an entirely new pavilion with a large bear topiary type thing as well as three fountains which dance to music and light up at night. They also built a new monument reminiscent of a famous monument in St. Petersburg. Maybe you'll recognize it! I was able to walk around town with some friends on the weekend of the anniversary and it was crazy busy with tourists as well as locals. Also, we ran into a parade of marching bands, and that was cool (although we only caught the tail end of it). And finally there were fireworks right on the Volga, over the new pavilion. It was beautiful.

Anyways. I'm going to put up a bunch of pictures now:

<--The new monument over the pavilion

















The Pavilion:




The marching band:









The fountain at night with the newly rebuilt church silhouetted.


Ploy and I at the fountains...


Completely random picture of our clothes hanging out to dry on the balcony. It's just really pretty (those are my pajamas... ;)

Dacha

Hello!!!

So, we went to my family's dacha in the village to pick apples and mushrooms, and OMG I swear I just about died. (So I'm going to be buying a dacha in like a year or two, just fyi.) If you don't know what that is, by the way, it's like a country home here in Russia. But they aren't like a rich people thing. They're these little houses in the villages (which are tiny--the villages, not the houses. The houses are not that small.) and they often don't have running water or toilets and they apparently cost like a few thousand dollars. So yes, I was actually being really literal when I said a couple of years. I seriously think I need to get one.

But I'm talking out of order here. I'll start from the beginning. As I think you know, we have no car. So to get to the village, we took a taxi to the train station, then a train, then a bus from the train to the village. In the morning, very early, it was so foggy that we actually could barely see out of the windows of the bus! So I did not even see the village until much later. When we got to the dacha, we set up a sort of camp outside, because the house itself is actually falling down. It is about 100 years old and it was badly vandalized a few years ago so it's not actually totally safe in there. But despite all that, it is still beautiful. But anyways, we made a fire and brought a table outside from the house, and then had breakfast. It was so awesome! I found a stick and then put the chicken on it and stuck it in the fire, and then Dinara and I were trading off the stick because we both wanted hot food! Hahaha.
After breakfast, we started to pick apples. It was soo fun! It was pretty cold out, and really really wet from the rain the day before and also the fog was pretty thick late into the morning. So my hands were freezing, but it was still great. XD

Later, we had a bit of lunch, and then my host aunt and grandpa and I went into the forest to get mushrooms!!! We found a ton, and we filled up our baskets. Now at my flat, we have a ton of now jarred mushrooms to go with our boxes and boxes of apples. But it was great, because the forest was beautiful and the mushrooms were soo cool looking (can you believe I've never seen any besides the ones that grow on our lawns and the canned ones??).

Then, later, a lady from the village came to visit with Inna (my host mom) and we got to go into her house. It is this old, traditional style russian house with this giant stone oven in the kitchen which is what heats the entire house! And I'm pretty sure she has not toilet, but I didn't ask about that. Anyways. She has bee house things in her yard where she makes her own honey (we bought some from her, and omg, I'm like a мёд addict (myode=honey)) and she also has chickens and roosters and her own apple trees.

Finally, Dinara and I lounged out front for a little bit, sunbathed while the sun was out, climbed the big yellow tree in front, and then Dinara left with her dad (with our apples in the back of his truck). Inna, Anya (Inna's sister) and I all went back by bus, then train, then bus and when we got home, Dinara made dinner. We were exhausted, but it was so amazing. The next day of school, I swear I almost passed out. But it was more than worth it.

So, I will be buying a dacha and spending my summers in my Russian village from now on.... ;D

School...And stuff.

Okay!! So I've been in Russia like two weeks now (or something) and I'm really loving it. Adjusting has admittedly been rather hard, but I'm feeling better all the time. I think I'm learning quickly, though not because it feels like it to me.... Everyone keeps being shocked by how much I know and my pronunciation. So I think that's good (or they just have low expectations....) ;D

Anyways. So my host family, Inna and Dinara, are so awesome. As it turns out, Inna speaks lots of English and Dinara speaks almost none. We live in a small flat on the 6th floor. With no elevator... (If I don't have amazing thighs at the end of the year....) It's really cute. I'll put up pictures, or a video or something, soon.

School! So, I go to School no. 80 (школа но. 80) which is an English specialty school. That means that a lot of the students speak lots of English. Which is cool, but bad since I'm not supposed to speak English (tehe). Luckily, they mostly prefer Russian, and I get to talk with them alot. I mostly hang out with 11th form-ers and they're cool, although apparrently I'm going to start taking lots of classes with primary school-ers (great...) which should be very very good for my language learning because while they are learning English, they must speak lots of Russian and so it should be very helpful to me (did that make any sense...?)

Also. I had my first individual Russian class and OMG, it was amazing!!! My teacher, David (pronounced like Dah-veed) is really cool. We had a small conversation (I'm getting better at understanding little sentences by picking out words I know, tehe) and looked at places on the map we had been. Then we did some exercises in my exercise book, and that was cool. I'm getting better at reading, and he says my accent is very good (which is really cool, cuz I didn't think so..) but I want to get better anyways. I want to have no accent someday! (I don't actually know if that's possible.... but hey, humour me) Anyways. And then we were talking about what I do after school (which currently is very very little...) and he suggested I participate in like a sport or something. He mentioned how he does lots of martial arts at some place and told me about this girls Aikido class, which sounds cool and I think I might do it (maybe with another AFSer from Thailand, a girl named Ploy (she pronounces it like Proy though)). Also, I mentioned that I like swimming and he suggested I do that too. I know that in the US the swim season is in the spring, but I wonder if it is here too? Also, I don't even know if they have like school swim teams or what. But anyways, I digress.

Oh, I have to make a presentation (like a ppt) for some event thing, on America and where I live. Any suggestions? That'd be helpful, thanks. ;D

Yaroslavl will be celebrating it's 1000 year anniversary next weekend, so we will have school off on Saturday (did I mention I go to school six days a week?) and there will be a big celebration all over town. I can't wait!! Inna, my host mom, told me that people will buy fireworks and that they will prolly big going off in the sky everywhere (heck, someone did that just yesterday, it was so cool). And yeah, buying and shooting off fireworks is totally legal and normal here. And we're talking full fledged fireworks too. It's kinda cool (and a little worrisome... haha).

So yeah. Things are pretty cool. I will put up like a zillion pics, asap. My camera died and I don't have a converter yet, but I promise I will have one before next week! (I hope...) If I don't, well then there will be lots of videos instead of pictures. Tehe.

Okay, I'm going to go.

Lots of love, all.

беттина