Happy New Year!!!
So, I realize I'm a bit (well, actually a lot) late for New Years, but here it is anyways. XD I guess I'll just kind of talk about the holidays, but first: New Years!
So, for anyone who doesn't know, New Years here is kinda like Christmas+New Years+ Steroids. But really. Everyone here stays up all night (of course) and the president does a speech right before midnight that everyone watches (I missed it... I'm so sad... But I heard that he said (and I quote) "Warm words" hahahaha), and then people everywhere set off fireworks!!! And I mean, just like normal people. So, we just looked out our window as the fireworks went off for sooo long. We stopped watching after... maybe 20 minutes? But they continued for literally hours! Here's the link for a video my friend took. It's a little long, but you can get the gist... Oh, and she's from Thailand, hence the Thai. ;)))
http://www.facebook.com/?sk=messages#!/video/video.php?v=171394022902671 (I don't know how well this link will work, since it goes to facebook)
http://www.facebook.com/?sk=messages#!/video/video.php?v=171394022902671 (I don't know how well this link will work, since it goes to facebook)
Anyways. So, I spent theholiday with fellow AFSers, Ploy (from Thailand) and Laura (from Germany) and it was great!! The day started in much the same way a lot of holidays start: with cleaning... **Groan** Ploy had been stayingalready, but we kind of ordered her to sit and relax. Which was very difficult for her. ;D But, anyways. In the afternoon, I went to the bus station and met Laura (who came into Yaroslavl from a nearby town, Uglich) and then we headed back to Brageena (the district where I live) and came back to find that Dinara and Ploy had blown up little balloons to put on the floor!!
Then, Ploy, Laura and I went to the store to get snacks and such for the night (a very bad idea... ;) which of course included the oh-so-healthy treats of ice cream, M&Ms, assorted candies, apple juice, and tangerines! A note: tangerines are actually a Russian tradition for New Years. I'm not totally sure how that happened, but I guess since tangerines don't grow in Russia, they only get them in the winter (from southern countries with the reversed winter thing) and they are soo yummy here. Don't know how they do that....
Sadly, Inna and Dinara both left for the night (Dinara to spend the holiday with her boyfriend, and Inna to work), which left us foreigners to try our best to create a Russian New Years (mixed with a little bit of Thai/German/American of course) which, if you can imagine, dissolved into complete AWESOME. Many of our Russian traditions had to be gleaned from things we'd heard (or seen in movies....) and we ended up:
-watching Mulan in Russian (Amaazzing, by the way),
-playing spin-the-bottle: Nailpolish style,
-skyping with people around the world in four languages,
-writing our New Years' resolutions on little pieces of paper, burning them (harder than it sounds...), and drinking them in our juice!!! (You're supposed to drink it with champagne... doing it with juice was not one of our brightest ideas)
-watching fireworks!
-exchanging gifts!
-going outside (in jackets and pajama pants, haha) and playing with sparklers!
-baking cookies
....I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of any more, and I shouldn't be allowed to do lists (they go on too long for me, tehe). All in all, it turned out to be one of the best New Years in memory! We ended up actually celebrating New Years at four different times (1st Thailand, then Russia, then Germany, then California)!
And that was our crazy Russian New Year!
So, now to backtrack a little, I'll go to Christmas. AFS put together a little Christmas celebration for us, which was fun (and very, very odd). We went to a school on the other side of the Volga where we watched a play (I am still confused about what happened there) and then they sang some songs, we sang some songs (we all sang Jingle Bells, but in all our languages: French, Italian, Thai, Portuguese, and English) and some of the highschoolers put on a play for us in English! ....Sleepy Hallow? I'm not totally sure who told them that that was Christmas themed... or why every character needed a banjo musical introduction... But okay. I can work with that.... Then we commandeered an empty classroom and had cake and candies! From AFS, we all got little ornament hearts to hangon our trees, and then the girl from Brazil gave us all a really cool gift: They are bracelets that you tie twice around your wrist and then knot three times, each knot with a wish. When the bracelet falls off, your wish will come true! My bracelet fell off, my wish came true, and I tied it on again because I think it looks so cool! ;)))
On the actual day of Christmas, I skipped school (Saturday and Christmas... just... no.) and exchanged gifts with Inna and Dinara-- they Loovved their gifts from Cali! And I got a set of really, really cute bracelets from Inna's sister, a pair of purple tights, body spray, and mittens that Inna knitted for me! They're soo great!
In the evening, I went to a friend's house and we had a feast... I was soo amazingly full--but it was so yummy!! Then we played a game that Dasha had gotten for Christmas on her Playstation calledRed Dead Redemption, which is like a cowboy game... But I'm not totally clear on the premise of that. Neither was Dasha. And it's in English. It was hilarious!
And that's about it. Went to a mall on the other side of town with Ploy over the holidays, wrote a bunch, was completely lazzy.... It was a good holiday.
Happy Belated Holidays to anyone I didn't say it to before!!
Bettina <3>
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