My Russian Birfday

Day Six was 12 July, which, as some of you might know, is my birthday. We were horribly late getting to school because of the ridiculously inefficient system we use to get there. Our host families do not like to have us walking around by ourselves, but they also try to minimize the number of people who have to walk us to school. So, what’s become the norm at this point is having Yelena Viktorovna walk with me to meet Christina by her family’s house, then take the bus to the Gimnasiya. The whole process takes a little more than a half-an-hour, when the walk from my host family’s house to the Gimnasiya takes about 10 minutes.

Anyhow, upon arriving at the school, the younger students were all waiting at the gate, and lined up to scream “Happy birthday!” at me. Inside, I discovered that they had made a bunch of decorations for me, balloons and a big flower with little wishes written on the petals. Examples include “David- We wish you to find your perfect girlfriend!” and “We wish you to learn Russian perfectly!” They had also covered the chalkboard with paper flowers, which made teaching an ordeal for the rest of the day. Luckily, they spent most of the time making me birthday cards, at the direction of the other teachers at the school.

The kid I may have mentioned before, Yegor, is 8 years old and draws like a champ. He drew for me a picture of a pirate (of course) and presented it to me proudly. I got a whole bunch of little birthday cards from my students. Strangely, one of the cards had nothing more than a Christmas Tree on it, but I guess the thought was still there. I got a lot of presents, from paintings by the little students to stacking dolls, to a bottle of… I shit you not… tonic infused with deer blood.

There was some teaching to be had too. The older kids had apparently told one of the other teachers that they wanted to do something harder. This was good news, since I was kind of tired of “I like bananas,” “I don’t like kiwi,” and the students’ consistent inability to remember the word “cucumber” (our first two lessons were fruits and vegetables). So I started something new which turned out to be completely over their heads. I guess it’s back to the drawing board in finding something a little bit more challenging.

Hot Lunch Review was a B- today, given that there was chicken noodle soup (a familiar taste, albeit with far too much dill) and then some sort of cabbage pie, which smelled like a big egg roll, but tasted far less satisfying.

After lunch I was lead into my classroom with my eyes closed, and all the older students sang the Russian happy birthday song to me. They also had sparklers which left my room with a nice gunpowder smell for the rest of the day.

After school, we went home on what was a very hot day and I relaxed watching TV and reading more of Atlas Shrugged. One of the shows I noticed was a Russian version of that annoying as hell TV show “The Nanny,” with the exact same characters and setting, except with Russian actors and such. After that, we had some soup in the kitchen. Ilya told me that he likes to eat soup when he is angry. Interesting… I thought. He then explained himself a little later saying something like he can still eat dinner afterwards if he eats soup in the afternoon. “Ohhhh,” I said. “You mean you like to eat soup when you’re HUNGRY.” “Yes,” he replied, “sorry.” I explained that eating soup when you’re angry would be a very peculiar habit.

In the evening, we had my birthday dinner. Since Russian apartments are generally too small to hold a lot of people, we had a dinner in the cafeteria of the Gimnasia. Here, my family and the two other families (the one with the bath-house and Christina’s host family) assembled and we all ate (and drank) together. I can proudly say I did shots of vodka in a school cafeteria. We had a pretty good dinner, made by the lunchlady, Natalya Viktorovna, who put in some overtime to make a big dinner for us.

Presents-wise, I got a wooden shot-glass/snack plate set. I think the cups might actually be for eggs, but we definitely used them for shot glasses. I also got my own woolen banya-hat, complete with red star and hammer-and-sickle of the front. Finally, I got a bottle of vodka, courtesy of Christina’s host family. Cards and stuff were also given, which was very nice. All in all, I drank only about 8.3% as much vodka at my 22^nd birthday as I did for my 21^st. I guess that’s for the better, though.

After the dinner, Christina’s host father brought me to his pharmacy (he’s an anesthesiologist and also owns his own pharmacy as a side project) and here I used the internet. 34 emails later, and I was back home for the night.