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.
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