What to do if there's an armed Communist uprising near your home when you're having a party

On second thought, maybe the blog isn't finished quite yet. A spot to share random things related to Russia, perhaps? Me thinks yes.

The end, for now.

I decided that since those Russian spies were recently caught it was a good time to write my last blog post. Here it goes.

My year of studying in the Motherland is over. ...rather, it's been over for the past month and a half and I'm just now getting around to writing this last post. Do da do.

The last weeks in Moscow couldn't have been more packed with things to do or have felt more surreal. We were all extremely busy working on our research projects, taking finals, and running frantically around the city trying to see things we had always wanted to but of course had put off.

The research project presentations went well and were not as intimidating as I had imagined. Although we each had 15 minute presentations all in Russian, it wasn't so scary - it was just the five of us, Irina, and a few other professors. There were also a few cakes, fruit, candy, tea, and champagne patiently waiting for us to finish. Once Thursday, the Day of the Presentations, was over, I only had four more days in the city I had grown to love.

Speaking of love and Moscow, why do I love it? Love is a strong word, I admit. But, guess what. I even love Russia. (No, I'm not a spy, and no, I wasn't brainwashed. I think.) Really, though, Russia for some reason captured my attention and I spent a nine months in this foreign land trying to figure out why. Did I succeed in solving this riddle? Ehh......not really.

It's a mystery! There are so many things wrong and weird and strange and backwards and different and and and about Russia, specifically Moscow, that I often times wanted to scream. The living standards aren't up to par with what I'm used to; the people seem rude and cold; the weather is horrible; there always seem to be creepy men staring at you; the bureaucracy makes everything painfully inefficient; there is no concept of a line, anywhere; six wrinkly jalapeños cost $15. So why put up with it all? How could I even enjoy living there?

Honestly, sometimes, I hated it. I was usually exhausted at the end of each day and, feeling grimy from a day in the city, would fall asleep to the blaring sounds of traffic or people yelling outside my window. Looking back, it actually was hard to get used to living in Moscow. I put on a good game face but it did take me a few months to really feel comfortable. I knew Moscow would be different but I also thought that since I had lived in Germany since I was 13, it would be a piece of cake to get used to another non-America. Silly girl; Moscow is so completely different. Moscow is so completely unique compared to any place. Aha! This, my friends, is one reason I love Moscow - its uniqueness.

Moscow is so unlike any other city I've seen. First of all, the buildings (yes, I'm going to talk about architecture for a bit) are all so different. Moscow is home to grand, beautiful Tsarist-era buildings; ugly, run-down apartment buildings from the Soviet years; trippy, 70s colored apartment buildings; new, modern and surprisingly not ugly apartment buildings; thousands of Orthodox churches with their own unique architectures; Stalinist style buildings with Soviet symbols all over; the Seven Sisters; you can see it all! There is one spot on what I believe is old Arbat street where you can literally see all the layers starting from the late 1800s to late 1900s. It's really cool and really beautiful in a quirky way. I didn't initially think Moscow to be all that pretty, but after living there and actually experiencing the city, I learned to look past the rough edges and truly appreciate it. I don't think this would have been possible if I were just a tourist.

Moving on, I really enjoy what I perceive to be the Russian sense of humor. It tends to be sarcastic, dry, and witty all while making fun of a situation which really should not be comical. Finding oneself laughing whilst in a non-comical situation also seems very Russian to me. After all, what else are you going to do? Sit there and cry? No, you laugh. Many Russian authors capture the comedy of Russia in quite satirical manners, and I often found myself feeling like I was trapped in one of Gogol's plays, trying to find the perfect coat or outwit the silly bureaucracy. While this should all be (and was) very frustrating, in the end it makes for a good story and makes you feel oh so very Russian.

I feel like I'm beginning to ramble and will stop here with the realization that I may never be able to explain why I fell for Russia. There's certainly plenty wrong with it, but isn't there something screwy about every country?

For now, I await senior year and my return to Dickinson. Much has changed over the last year, and I'm very excited to see what this year will bring. The blog is going dormant for a while but I would like to post some more pictures in a few weeks. ...I had issues with my computer but will soon have it back and be able to put up my final shots of Russia. Maybe the pictures will explain what I cannot?

Thanks for reading my posts and I hope you enjoyed them. Who knows, maybe another Russian adventure is waiting for me. I do still need to take the train to the east...

Kiev, or the city where everyone is happy but still speaks Russian

Four days after my return from Lithuania, the group set off for Kiev, Ukraine. Again traveling by train, this was to be our last group trip of the year.



The first day we had a little bus tour around the city, stopping at several points of interest along the way. Our guide was very talkative and seemed to know everything about every little street corner. He also was able to talk about Kiev without getting all political and anti-Russian, which was nice.

The People's Friendship arch. The statue below is a Russian and Ukrainian holding the Soviet Order of Friendship of Peoples.
Kiev is just so friendly.
(No, but really.)

On tour.

Our hostel is somewhere down there...

St. Andrew's church.

A historic area of Kiev, right by St. Andrew's. It was very quaint and crumbly.

After bidding farewell to our guide, we were free to roam the city. There were lots and lots of people out on the streets, enjoying the warm weather and festivities for the May holidays - May 1st, International Worker's day, and the upcoming Victory Day, May 9th. Aside: why does the U.S. have it's labor day in September instead of when the rest of the world does? Glad you asked, for it turns out the inspiration for International Labor Day on May 1st actually came from the U.S. but then things got a little silly (aka it was the Cold War) and in 1958 Congress declared May 1st "Loyalty Day." How lovely.
Anyways, the streets of Kiev were filled with people, and the group noted how happy everyone seemed. We also noticed that people weren't always in a rush to get somewhere, and in the metro one could even stand on the left side of the escalator without fear of getting plowed over by a Moskvichka (Moscow woman) rushing to work. It was very refreshing.

Group of free-style dancers near the McDonald's.

Khreschatyk Street, the main shopping street.

It seemed like there was music and people dancing everywhere we looked. Kim and I decided to join.

Day two from more excursions to the Kiev Pechersk Lavra (monastery of the caves) and the Great Patriotic War museum.

While walking to the monastery, we stopped by the monument to the Great Famine, also known as Holodomor ("death by hunger") of 1932-1930. Records are apparently still iffy, but estimates of the death toll have gone as high as 10 million.

This was one of my favorite monuments; it gave me the chills.

The group at the monastery.

The Great Lavra bell tower, which was the tallest free-standing bell tower when it was built in the 1700s.

Kiev from the monastery.


We went on a boat later that night: The monastery at sunset.

After the monastery we walked up what seemed like millions of stairs to Rodina Mat ("The Motherland") and the Great Patriotic War museum.

Rodina Mat, the protector of the Motherland.

"Their heroic deeds will live eternally, their names will be immortal."

Workers and farmers.

Inside the museum: the papers are fill-in-the-blank letters informing people that their loved ones had died. The table was lined up and down with them.

The last event of the day featured a boat ride in the sunset.

Our last day we went to the Chernobyl museum which was both interesting and slightly terrifying. We also had an excursion at Mikhail Bulgakov's (Soviet writer and playwright) apartment. I admit, my favorite part of this excursion was not the interesting details our guide told us of Bulgakov's life/books, but the tea we drank before the excursion. It was seriously the best tea I have ever ever had. The teas were actually Bulgakov's family recipies, and were served with deeeeeelicious varenya (fruit preserves) of pumpkin, berries, and my favorite, a varenya made of a fruit which is like an apple and a pear. Moral of the story: if you go to Kiev, go to Bulgakov's apartment and drink tea. ...and then you can think about touring his living quarters.

The Kiev trip was one of my favorite trips of the year: it was sunny and warm, the trees were freshly green and flowers were blooming, the people were all happy and relaxed, and the city was beautiful. I definitely want to go back to Kiev someday, and although I was only there for three days, I found myself wishing that I could have also studied in Kiev as well as Moscow.

Kaunas

After much ado, here is my post about the Lithuania trip (21 April – 26 April). Enjoy.

Remember hearing about that little volcano incident in Iceland? Along with being unpronounceable and messing up tons of other people's travels, it tried its hardest to mess up the aforementioned plan of awesomeness to go to Lithuania. In fact, both my flight and Braeden's (the aforementioned fellow Dickinsonian to be met in Lithuania) flight were canceled. Because of a volcano. In Iceland. A VOLCANO! I was a little dumbfounded and in shock and couldn't help but laugh (in that cynical kind of way) at the absurdity of the situation. Determined not to be outdone by the Voldemort-like volcano, we decided to fight back and venture to Lithuania by train.

If you look at a map of Eastern Europe, the train trip from Moscow to Kaunas, Lithuania, doesn't seem too horrible; it's basically a straight shot west. It would be really very easy, actually, if not for that pesky little country standing in between: Belarus. I have (or rather, had) nothing against Belarus, but they have this annoying little requirement of possessing a transit visa just to travel through the country, even if the traveler is just passing through and doesn't even give a lick about Belarus. I had an inkling of this transit visa business but set off to buy tickets anyways, convinced that I could just take trains around. After finally finding the correct line to buy tickets (after about two hours of standing in two other lines...), frazzled Kara asked the ticket lady for train tickets to Kaunas, but going through Riga, Latvia (so as to avoid Belarus). The befuddled ticket lady curtly responded: "What? How through Riga? Why?" I started to explain that I couldn't go through Belarus, but she said "No no no you can go directly to Vilnius" and assured me that Belarus wouldn't be a problem. This was convincing enough for me and I happily bought the tickets. (Keep in mind this was April 19th, the day before my train was to set off for Lithuania.)

I got home pretty excited that I defeated the volcano, when a random friend from class started talking to me and said something along the lines of "Um...you can't go through Belarus without a visa. Have fun being stuck at the border." This was at about 1 in the morning. I quickly freaked out to Jonathan who told me to calm down and then looked up Belarus on the travel.state.gov site (what a handy little website, by the way). There it was in black and white: travelers even just traveling through Belarus need a transit visa, and people have been kicked off trains in the past, fined, and even put in jail. Extremely worried and slightly seething with anger, I went to bed and got up in the wee hours of the morning (aka 8) to set off once again for the train station to attempt Plan C: taking a train to Riga and somehow finding a bus to Kaunas.

I got my money back for the cursed Belarusian tickets (which actually proved to be the easiest part of this whole process), and stood in yet another line, prepared to beg if necessary to buy tickets to Riga. It took the ticket lady a bit to figure out how to find the tickets to Riga, but find them she did. Finding tickets to come back to Moscow was a bit trickier for some reason, and she had to get up and go ask someone for help, giving ample time for impatient Russians to line up behind me and ask what in the world was going on and why our ticket lady had disappeared. She eventually came back after about 10 minutes, started clicking away at the keyboard, and announced that all my tickets were in order. Literally surrounded by Russians on all sides of me, I whipped out my documents and money, paid for the tickets, and then, finally, strutted away from the counter with an unbreakable smile on my face.

Later that evening the time finally came for me to get on my train and start my adventure to Lithuania. I may have mentioned this before: I love sleeper trains. They are the best thing since sliced black bread. I shared my area with a Latvian woman, Natasha, and her son, Igor, who had actually arrived in Moscow via the same exact train earlier that morning. For the first ten minutes of the journey I sat quietly and pretended to be focusing on a book, until finally a train worker guy (btw what's the equivalent of a flight attendant for a train?) came and asked if we would like tea. Once the tea arrived, Natasha promptly said to me, "Ok. Now it is time for you to explain why you are here." We talked for a few hours about my studies, why I was going to Lithuania, my family, etc., and I in turn asked them questions. It was really very cool, because we didn't have problems understanding each other. I can converse with everyday people about lots of subjects. Sweet. Natasha and Igor also have the best senses of humor; they would say something that could be serious but then ironically laugh about it. I loved it.

We were awoken around five in the morning for the border crossings. No big deal, just some Russian and Latvian border guards, dogs, and flashlights. About thirty minutes across the Latvian border I bid farewell to my new Latvian friends, and we even exchanged emails and telephone numbers. I now had basically the entire end of the train car to myself and sat anxiously until the arrival in Riga, Latvia. Once in Riga, I had an entire 30 minutes to find the bus station, buy tickets to Kaunas, Lithuania, and find my bus. Luckily they speak Russian in Latvia, and I easily got directions to the bus station, which happened to be about a five minute walk from the train station. I quickly bought bus tickets and was soon staring out the bus window as the Latvian countryside turned Lithuanian. It was lovely. I finally arrived in Kaunas six hours later, found Braeden and Evgeni (hostel man who picked us up to take us to the hostel), and epic adventures ensued.

Kaunas is a lovely little city and I really cannot describe how awesome our stay was. I won't even try. It. Was. Awesome. Also the fact that we successfully defeated the volcano added an extra little somethin' somethin'.

The trip back to Russia was not nearly as hectic. I had about four hours to spare in Riga while waiting for my train back to Moscow and thus decided to explore the old town and take millions of pictures. I've actually stayed in Riga before and it was really nice to walk around and be a little lost but still know how to get back to where I needed to be. It was also a beeeeautiful day and I didn't even need to wear a jacket. Scandalous.

On the trip back my train neighbors were an older woman on the bottom bunk across from me and two Belarusian men above us, who happened to be transporting a gagillion bags to Russia full of magazines which they claimed were for an “exhibit”. I’m pretty sure “magazines for an exhibit” is code for contraband. When we got to the Russian border crossing, the border patrol said to the men: “So, all these bags are yours? And you’re taking these magazines to hand out and not to sell, correct?” The men responded, “Oh yes, of course,” at which point the woman and I exchanged knowing glances. They did give us candy at the end of our trip, though. Sure it was probably smuggled candy, but beggars can’t be choosers.

I arrived in Moscow about 27 hours after leaving Kaunas (worry not, I am now a pro at sleeping on trains) and went into energizer bunny mode for my last three weeks of school.

Next post: about our group trip to Kiev, Ukraine.

a joke

Brezhnev has a meeting with Sophia Loren. He says to her "I am willing to grant you any wish."

"Please, allow anyone who wishes to leave the Soviet Union."

"Sophia, you sly little minx, you just want to be alone with me."

11

Sorry for lack of posts -- it's that lovely time of the semester where all the time is taken doing final projects.

I still have to tell you about Lithuania, Kiev, and life in general, but while you're waiting you should watch this:




You might have to somehow put it on repeat, though, because my next post could take longer than three minutes to appear.

make photo

Stairway leading to my apartment

My door!

Ze kitchen.

Which item does not belong?

Those two tubs are full of crushed egg shells. I was always rather curious as to why in the world my host mom would save egg shells and finally asked. She uses some of them as fertilizer in her dacha garden (seems relatively normal, yeah?) She also makes some of them into this powdery substance and puts a spoonful in her kasha (porridge) every morning...to keep her bones strong....yum.

Living room.

Picture of her dacha.

Books galore!


Old church across from my apartment building.

Street market near my apartment.



Lefortovo Park, about ten minutes from my apartment.



Just some morning exercises, is all.


Break time.



"Don't smoke, be different"




Izmailovo Park a few stations up from my metro stop.





Accident.


Accident II.



What do babushkas think about?

check please

And now a stream of consciousness:

Why must we always have classes in the spring, when it's all nice and warm and the birds are chirping and all you want to do is go play in a park and feel the warm sun on your face because it's been oh so long and the winter seemed to go on for.ev.er and you'd think in Russia of all places they'd understand that once spring hits there's NO WAY concentration could happen, wait what did the professor just say something about a final exam in a month woah hold the phone it's already time to think about final exams and leaving Russia but I just got used to everything and made Russian friends and now you're telling me I have to leave but on the other hand there is quiiiiiiite a lot to look forward to and I admit that I'm ready to get to the next step in my life aka senior year wait wait wait senior year?

End stream of consciousness.


Can someone please tell me how it's already April? Mmm? Any takers?
Life as of late has been zipping by. As my host mom constantly tells me, "when you're young you just want to grow up but once you're old like me it seems like it went so fast." By the way, my host mom just celebrated her 86th (yes, 86th) birthday at the end of March. She is one tough cookie. Phil and I have noticed something about our older hosts (in his case an 85-year old host grandma) - they often quite randomly start naming off all these people they used to know who have now died. I've also discovered that almost every question I ask ends in a story about so-and-so who is now dead and/or life during the Great Patriotic War (aka WWII). ....does everyone get that way as they grow older? If so, oy vey.

The past weeks have been full of the usual trips to museums, plays, ballets, etc. I do love all this readily available culture, but I admit I will be glad to go back to a slightly, shall we say, less-packed schedule. April is actually a fairly slow month as far as the Dickinson program goes; we're only going to the theatre three times! Last Saturday we took a bus to Veliki Rostov, another city on the Golden Ring, and at the end of the month we'll take a big trip to Kiev, Ukraine, for four days. The month of April also brings, for me, a very very very exciting trip which I have been looking forward to for oh so long: I'M GOING BACK TO LITHUANIA. I went a few summers ago for two weeks as part of a volunteer-teach-English-to-teenagers-at-a-camp thing. It was the coolest. This time, however, I'm meeting a friend from Dickinson and it will probably/definitely be more epic than my first Lithuanian adventure.

The semester's impending end also means research projects. After bouncing ideas around, I finally settled on researching monogoroda, or monotowns. This could very potentially turn into something I want to research further after college. Exciting.
My internship at the photography gallery is still going well. I've discovered that it's actually easier to translate things than just a month ago, which means my Russian has gotten better even though I can't really feel an improvement.
The little girl I tutor is also still as fabulous as ever, and I've come to the conclusion that she is me when I was younger, only Russian. One time we were playing the restaurant game (so as to teach her how to order food in English), and it was her turn to be the waitress. She rummaged through her closet, pulled out and opened an umbrella, and said (in cute Russian accent, of course): "Hello! This is the Rainy Restaurant! It's raining! What would you like?" She's also super cultured for a nine year old; she likes to go to the Tretyakov art gallery and asked me to bring her poetry. I feel like this is more normal for Russians, though. The arts are a very important part of education from day one. I approve.

In conclusion, I will write another post soon with pictures from my apartment, around my area, and a few parks I've been to.
In the mean time, go play outside. It's so nice out!

Happy ever after in the market place

Just a quick note in case anyone is worried about the metro bombings:

I'm ok, everyone from Dickinson is ok, we're all ok.
Our classes don't start that early, so no one was out at the time of the attacks.

Not gonna lie, I feel a little weird. I don't actually feel unsafe, it's just strange to be this close to it all. You hear about terrorist attacks and horrible things happening everyday, but I've never been so close to it.
Growing up isn't so fun sometimes.

It's funny (well "funny" might not be the best word here, but let's stick with it), I was thinking the other day: Moscow is so honest. It doesn't hide the bad. Old Soviet structures in need of repair are crumbling apart; homeless people are sleeping in the metro and on the streets, huddled together in underground passages; packs of stray dogs are running around, searching for anything to eat; thousands of people have come from provincial towns to somehow make enough money to survive; shady deals and corruption aren't uncommon. In spite of all that, maybe because of all of that, I really appreciate Moscow. I appreciate its often harsh honesty. Moscow isn't sugarcoated, and that's refreshing.
Of course when things aren't sugarcoated, they can be hard to handle.


But,
the Russians sill love the Beatles
and life still goes on.

I love you and will bring you goat's milk

This post will best be read while listening to this song, called "Good to live in the east" by Sergei Nikitin, a singer of the Russian author song genre. Author song is this nifty little Russian term for singers who write poetry and sing them to simple guitar melodies.
Anyways, this song talks about how good it is to live in the east, eating delicious food, laying in the sun's warmth, etc etc.



Our first big trip of the semester took us about 700 km east of Moscow to Kazan, the capital of the Tartarstan republic of Russia. Leaving on a Friday night, we once again took a sleeper train (which I am growing quite fond of) and 14 hours later arrived to a sunny (although cold), Saturday Kazanian morning. After making our way to our wonnnnderful hotel (the showers were nicer than my apartment in Moscow, sigh), we rested a little and then set off to explore Kazan.
First on the agenda was a tour of the kremlin. This kremlin is different from others we had been to and has a mosque! It was a very nice refreshing change from the orthodox churches, and we
even got to observe people doing prayers. All very interesting.
























After the Kremlin tour we walked down the main pedestrian street for a while, snapping pictures and being crazy tourists as per usual. The day ended with a lovely* little trip to the National museum of the Tatarstan republic.

Leaving the kremlin; the building to the right is the lovely little museum.

A lot of the buildings were slightly old and decrepit looking. I love it. Also it was cold and full of ice. Awesome.

Peter and Paul's cathedral through a gutted-out building on Bauman street.

Strolling down Bauman street.

Dancing on Bauman street.

Dome reflecting Bauman.

We awoke the next day after a fantastically relaxing night's sleep and headed down to breakfast in the hotel's cafe. The woman who gave us our food was the epitome of our host mothers/Russian women: bringing endless mounds of food and then forcing us to eat. It was glorious. After all the food, we set off to Sviyazhsk island, founded by Ivan the Terrible in 1551. Basically there are lot of old churches here, full of lots of icons and frescoes and so on and so forth. En route to the island, we drove by the Volga river. I'm pretty sure the Volga is to the Russians as the Mississippi is to Americans: epic. So, it was cool to see THE VOLGA (ooooh, ahhhh) in person, but, well, it was kind of all frozen over and covered in snow, slightly taking away from its epicness level. Alas.

On the island. See all the white stuff near the greenish trees? That's snow. On water.

The church is called "The Joy of all Sorrows."

It was built from 1898-1906.

And is crumbling.

However, it is under restoration.

Phil's triumphant return (from petting a kitty, I think).


The main attraction on this island is to be found in the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary:


This, my friends, is St. Christopher. St. Christopher was quite the stud, and it was decided that since he was so studly, his image would distract worshipers and therefore he had to be depicted as a horseman. I've definitely never seen anything like this in any other orthodox church; it was an unexpected and lovely** (in a non-distracting way, of course) surprise.

After our three hour tour it was high time to eat something and we set off along the oh so bumpy roads, at last finding ourselves in a cafe serving traditional Tartar food. For most of the trip I had the sense that Kazan wasn't used to having many foreigners; when we walked into this cafe, people couldn't stop staring. It could have been because we were all having horrible hair days, but I think our foreignness was the main cause. However, a little staring didn't stop me from devouring the best chicken noodles soup I've had (yeah, that's Tartar...) along with uchpuchmakh (pronounced "ooch-pooch-mahk"), a little triangle pastry thing filled with mystery meat and cabbage mixture. De.Li.Cious. Kelly also had the brilliant idea of ordering food to go for our impending 14 hour return trip to Moscow.

After a brief rest back at the hotel, we set off to the theatre to see a Tartar play, "Dilyafruz - remake". As is suggested by the name, Dilyafruz is a remake of a Soviet play/musical.
Also, it was hilarious.
Also, it was in Tartar.
However, we had headset translators.
In summary, Dilyafruz is the beauty of a provincial Tartar town but finds herself at the center of three suitor's attentions when they discover her picture in Playboy magazine. But, Dilyafruz actually loves a fourth man, Zhamil. Zhamil, of course, also loves Dilyafruz and hasn't even seen her Playboy picture but is too timid to tell her. In the end the three force Zhamil to look at Dilyafruz's picture, who promptly laughs and, calling the others idiots, exclaims "That's not her! Look at her face!" And they live happily ever after. Aww.
The best part? We now know how to say "I love you" in Tartar: "Meen seen-yay yah-rah-tam".





Mosque at night.





Monday brought the coldest day yet, complete with a lovely*** little snow storm. Monday was our day to decide what to do, but sadly most things were closed since it was also a holiday (International Women's day).

Nevertheless, we ventured into the cold and trekked to a craft market in pursuit of Tartar souvenirs.
Along the way to the market we ran into Lenin, who studied at the university in Kazan.

After vendors had fought over our business and souvenirs had been bought, we once again made our way outside and headed back to Bauman street, this time searching for Peter and Paul's Cathedral.

We found Bauman street but were temporarily distracted by the cold/music blasting through the speakers and decided it was time to just dance.


We finally reached our final destination, the uniquely Baroque-style Peter and Paul's Cathedral.



Oh, Kazan also has a metro. I'm afraid after Moscow I will forever be a metro snob, and every other metro system will just be kind of cute in comparison. Kazan's metro has six whole stations and two whole trains. It's very nice and pretty, though. In a word - cute. After riding the metro from the beginning to end and back again, it was time to eat. We returned to an Irish pub we had discovered the night before (another story for another time...) for a very very very very very yummy and much needed warm lunch.


Phil also broke out the presents he got for the girls for International Women's day. Thaaaanks, Phil. :)


After lingering as long as possible in the Irish pub, the time had come to say goodbye to Kazan and return to the real world of Moscow. Armed with our new Tartar language skills, we boarded the train and, of course, did lots of homework. We also talked a little to a Russian guy in a neighboring bunk, on his way to visit friends in Moscow. He didn't really speak Tartar but was able to add to our already impressive knowledge of "I love you": when you say "I love you", you're supposed to also say "kezhe set ashatam" - and so I will bring you goat's milk.


And there you have it, our slightly epic trip east. Oh, one more exciting bit of news: yesterday it rained for the first time since November. SPRING IS NEAR! Maybe?

In any case, I love you all and promise to bring goat's milk.
Until next time!






*Like, ok. I have to admit; I...well....I don't really like history museums. Sorry, mom. I just don't. But um...the museum was nicely arranged?

**This time I'm not being sarcastic in my use of the word "lovely." Just to clarify.

***Sarcasm.