Баня!!! and Thanksgiving!!!

The banya is an important part of Russian culture, and this week, I got to take part. Every week, we(the students in my program) go on an excursion. Often we go to museums, or concerts. This week, we went to the banya. The banya is kind of like a sauna. We were divided into two rooms. One for the girls and one for the guys. In each room, there is a steam room where the temperature gets up to 190 degrees f, and a room with a very cold pool. In the steam room, you can sit around and talk, and after a few rounds of steaming and jumping into the fridged water, you hit one another with birch branches. The whole experience is very relaxing. It is supposed to be very healthy, but then again, i think everything in Russia is supposed to be healthy(according to Russians). Everything my host mom makes for us to eat is "ochen polezno!" (very healthy), and pretty much everything in russia is "ochen polezno". For a snack we eat curded cheese mixed with sour cream and a few tablespoons of sugar, and apparently it is very good for me... we'll see about that.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, and as you probably know, Russians do not celebrate this holiday. My American friends and I got together for a big feast that we all helped prepair. We were able to find/creatively create foods that resembled typical Thanksgiving dishes, and it was amazing! My job was the pumpkin pie. I went to the Vegetable market and found fresh pumpkins and all the seasonings i needed. The market is a really neat place because there are so many different people there selling their products and most of them are really friendly. Whenever I asked for a product, they wanted to learn all about me-where i study and why I study Russian. That is a very popular question that I still don't know how to answer- "why do you study Russian???" I just do...

The pumpkin pie turned out so well!! It might be the best I ever had. That may be because the sense of acomplishment having found all the ingredients, and maybe because it reminded me of family thanksgivings, but it was great! We also had an interesting version of green bean casarole, and some buttermilk biskuts, minus the buttermilk, stuffing, turkey, cranberries and cookies. A feast indeed.

So, I had something really interesting to share with you all, but my mind has gone blank as I am sitting in a cafe and the people across from me are hardcore making out, and i can here it!!! EEwwww!

Ok, well I have something to say I guess... This week my friend took me to a Cossack festival. I then gave a presentation to my class about Cossacks. They have a very interesting culture. I really enjoyed their dancing and acapella singing. They use really neat harmonies! Below is a clip of them dancing...dont mind the red banister in the way :)

Last week, my friend Losha took me with him to the Master Hitchhiker's Guild of St. Petersburg meeting. There I met tons of nice people who have hitchhiked around Russia and Europe. At their meetings, they discuss safe ways to hitchhike, how to do it properly, and talk about their adventures. All the people there were very friendly, and have offered to show me around St. Petersburg, and the surrounding areas. At the meeting I met a girl named Katya, and she invited me to a concert the next night. My friend and I went on an adventure to find the concert, which ended up being in a tiny library across the Neva. We had to cross the Neva on a very long bridge, that didn't seem the safest. The wind is very strong on the Neva, and whenever a tram drove accross the bridge it shook so hard i thought it was going to crumble into the river.

Last Friday I went to the opera Rusalka(the mermaid) by Dvorak. This might be the best opera I have been to. The cast was half ballarinas and half singers. It was beautiful to watch and to listen to! My friend and I bought cheap tickets, so we were in the back row, but luckily he still had his school bag with so I sat on his dictionary so I could see over the people in front of me. Our dictionaries are so useful! I used it to see the opera, and then durring the intermissions, we used the dictionary to translate the story line in our program.

Last night my group went to see the opera Traviat after I visited the doctor. Now I can say I have been to the hospital on three continents! what an achievment... The opera was nice. At intermission we bought overpriced, but delicious strawberries, and then enjoyed the second half of the opera. I think it is wonderful how much music and art there is in Petersburg.