Day 5 - July 11th

The third day of classes was quite trying. The 3rd and 4th graders were really good, helped on by a worksheet and a good lesson plan. The little kids went absolutely nuts, and the helper I was supposed to have never showed up. We ended up naming different animals, and drawing them on posters. I quickly found out that one kid, who is 8 years old, is a very talented artist. He is quite obsessed with Pirates of the Caribbean, and therefore draws pirates at pretty much any chance he gets. This time around he conveniently forgot he was supposed to be drawing something else, and instead drew a pirate.

Lunch was definitely an A today. Mashed potatoes and “kutleti,” which are essentially fried mini-meatloaves.

Class with the older kids was going well, until they told us (at 1:00) that class was ending early today, at 1:30. Given that now Christina and I actually had lesson plans, I was pretty pissed. Now I had to spill over the rest of the lesson into tomorrow’s lesson, then sell short another topic. I wouldn’t have cared if they had just said something, but come on.

After a shitty day, I really just wanted to sit at home and read, but we ended up doing something pretty fun. One of the administrators of the school, with whom my host mother is good friends, has parents who live in a village just outside the city. They were gone for the week, and so my family, their family, and Christina’s family all went out to their nice little house in the country. There, they had a house in addition to a small above-ground pool and most importantly, a banya.

You may have heard of banyas – Russian steam/bath houses. After a dinner of home-made pilmeni (like ravioli but smaller and not needing tomato sauce), we went outside to sit around while the bath-house warmed up. Eventually, it was ready, and I went inside with the dads of the families. I kind of knew what this was before I did it, but there were some interesting nuances I didn’t know about. No one was naked, thankfully. First, you have to wear a wool hat while you’re inside. This is strange because it gets very VERY hot, like 70-something in Celsius. I think that’s right, either that or their thermometer was very broken. The first time inside, it was absolutely stifling, but each subsequent time was not so bad.

Anyways, the other thing is that inside, you’re supposed to spread honey on yourself. Like a large number of things here, it’s supposed to be good for your health. With as many things Russians say are good for your health, one would expect them to be a lot healthier than they are (with fewer gold teeth, crazy scars, and weird skin deformities). And yes, just like we all saw in the movies or whatever, it is tradition to smack each other with tied-up bunches of birch tree branches. You’re supposed to sit in the banya for maybe 5 minutes, then afterwards go outside and jump in the pool (during the summer) or in the snow (during the winter).

We jumped in the pool, with the kids of the families. Ilya and Sasha (the little son of the family whose house we were at) were battling in the pool. Since Ilya kept getting the best of the little 5-year old, I evened things out by picking Ilya up out of the water and throwing him back in. I mean honestly, the kid was five and Ilya is thirteen.

Afterwards, we sat around and talked, finishing the bottle of vodka we had started at dinner. One of the dads wanted to know about the American civil war, so I tried to explain. I have limited vocabulary though, and that made it difficult. Furthermore, I don’t actually know a whole lot about the Civil War, since to me it’s not as interesting as other wars.

On the way back to the city, the road was completely covered with dense fog. We got home safely though, and before midnight.