I'm sorry I haven't updated in so long; I've been busy here. We have an internet limit here on campus, too, so I try not to be online more than once a week.

It's freezing and windy; I love it.

I'm sitting right now on my windowsill (a nice big one, which I have turned into a window-seat) with a cup of french press coffee. (Russia doesn't really do real coffee, but I can get it from my RA). I'm listening to the sound of my laundry dripping onto the linoleum floor, and looking out into the snow. My view is very nice—just trees, an un-traveled road, and a sidewalk—on which, right now, a russian man is playing fetch with his dog.

My lifestyle here is pretty regulated, with classes, meetings, meals served at certain times, etc. I've had to give up a lot of independence, by nature of the program and also of the russian women who run the dormitory we stay in, but I'm adjusting well.

For our meals, we take our trays, walk up to a window into the kitchen, and are unceremoniously given a lot of food, whether we like it or not. We get a lot of porridge (“kasha”), bread (“klyeb”), soup (the borsh is delicious, but mostly we get some form of “shigh,” cabbage soup), pasta, and beef--not to mention the sugar-tea and chocolate we get with every meal. Needless to say, I eat a lot of carbs and protein. M-Th we have Russian language class from 9:30 – 12:30 with a half hour break for tea-time in the international office. The international office is full of Russian students who really just want to get to know American students—-they practice their English on us, and we practice our Russian on them (in theory—we're only now getting to the point now where we can begin to speak Russian to them). Some of the students also live in the dorm with us; the university puts us in the dorm they set aside for students with some kind of illness (haha), because it's the nicest dorm on campus (even so, the dorm conditions would never fly in America—but I like it) and the only one with a cafeteria. And since it's the nicest dorm, most of the students are not sick, but somehow or other get in because they want to live here.


Last Thursday I got to go hear a group of people who research and perform russian folklore, mainly music. The rural areas of Russia are still very superstitious and have a lot of traditions which come from the paganism of... forever ago. The group were SO cool. The music was expressive and most of the songs were sung in the same minor key—but not all sorrowful somehow; they reminded me of old negro spirituals.

Dorm life is good. The workload is going to be pretty heavy, but right now I'm not too stressed out. We mostly walk from room to room, reading, playing cards, having dance parties, trying to talk with the Russians. Last night we watched the Russian version of Winnie the Pooh--it was amazing! Either a lot of things get lost in translation, or the creators were on drugs. They love it though.

So far it's been too cold to do much exploring in the city, but the main Pedestrian Street is really nice. So far Nizhnii seems a lot like any other big city in the world; it's very different of course, but honestly, I'm surprised at how normal it is to be living here.

The other day we went to the Banya... the sauna. The Russians have their long-standing traditions about it... nakedness, birch branches, ice baths. It was amazing.

As always, I have so much more I could write, but russian homework calls.