All too quickly, 08:30 arrived, my alarm went off, [I hit snooze three times,] and for the last time I was rolling out of my cozy bed in the center of town in Vladimir. Lena had prepared a special breakfast for me--kasha (basically, oatmeal) with fresh fruit--plus a local yogurt and cup of coffee. I took some pictures whilst watching my morning episode of ГубкaБоб (Spongebob) and thinking about what the rest of our time in Russia would be like.
Lena called a cab, so I didn't have to roll my suitcase through the streets--it's been raining since yesterday afternoon--and off we went to the American Home. We had our final Russian lesson, which mainly consisted of me writing as much as I could think of in Russian and then giving it to Lena to correct. I keep writing one of the letters (э) backwards, and thereby creating my own letter of the alphabet. For three weeks of Russian, I'm pleasantly surprised with the amount of the language I've been able to pick up, even if my spelling is still not so good and my pronunciation is bad. I wrote more sentences than I thought I'd be able to write.
Before our lesson, I should mention that Lilly's host sister, Anastasia, who's 16, had come with her to say goodbye. Anastasia and I met the first night we were in Vladimir, when a "welcome" picnic was held at the American Home for us. Anastasia is so sweet, and we talked a lot and have kept in touch via Facebook since then, though we haven't seen each other. But today, we got a chance to talk for a few brief moments, and then it was time for lessons to begin. She's still in school for the year, so I guess she had to go to her lessons, too. She teared up saying bye, and we hugged several times. This was her first experience hosting/with Americans, she said, and she would miss us a lot. On Thursday evening, we'll have a goodbye party at the American Home, where I will have to say bye to Lena. Anastasia won't be able to make it, as she'll be out of town with her family, so this was the last time we will see each other--at least for now.
I've learned that I'm a more sensitive person than I previously recognized, and goodbyes of any sort are probably my biggest weakness; I'm absolutely horrible with goodbyes. But I managed to keep it together today, though I expect our whole group will have a tough time saying bye on Thursday; we've already talked about it and see it coming!
After our lesson, we joined together to sing a Russian folk song while Aleksey Leovich played guitar. Alternating stanzas were sung by us girls and then by the guys, and it was fun, but--again--sad. The melody wasn't particularly cheery, we were tired, and everything had that feeling of winding down.
We then had tea before heading to lunch at the Café Solyanka, where I had my favorite borsch in all of Vladimir a couple weeks back. They weren't serving borsch today, unfortunately, but I had a lot of other stuff, and it was all really good.
Following lunch, we walked to the bus station, directly across the street from the train station. We had about 45 minutes to burn before our bus boarded. Once we boarded the bus, it wasn't long until I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew it was about three hours later, and we were pulling into the driveway of the bus station at our destination. Just in time, I woke up to stumble out of the bus with my group, where we were greeted by three professors and a group of smiling students. We'd made it to Murom!
Here, we will spend through Thursday afternoon, helping out at the Murom Institute of Vladimir State University in the English department--working with students who study English and speaking about our experiences in Russia and our university back home.
My host is a really nice 18-year-old student named Emilia, and she uses Emily as her English name. :) Her mom is Irina, just like my host mom in Vladimir, her dad is Feodor, and her older brother is Vladim. Already, we have had many good conversations. Emilia's English is very good, and her brother studied English, German, and philology when he was in university, so his English is excellent as well, though he says he hasn't spoken English regularly in 6 or 7 years. Especially he talks a lot, which has been great, as we've already talked a lot about politics and society and stereotypes between Russians and Americans. I've learned a lot from Emilia and her family, and it's only been about 8 hours.
Also, after dinner, she and her family took me to their dacha out in the country about 20 minutes away. This "microplantation," as they called it, actually belongs to another family, I think, but here they plant all of the fruits and vegetables and flowers that they grow--which is a LOT! In Russia, we've learned that it's typical for every family to have or use a dacha. Food is home-grown, which explains why it's so much better and fresher than American food, which is filled with chemicals and often stays preserved on shelves for unnatural amounts of time. Emilia and her family took me to pick strawberries, which was so fun! I've never done this before, so I was taking pictures and running around, gleefully plucking berries. For them, this is just part of everyday life, so they found it amusing. Also, speaking of amusing, I don't know what it is, but both of my host moms have had the best laughs... maybe it's something about Russian women with the name "Irina," but they both have these amazing, hearty laughs that are impossible to hear without laughing, too--very jolly. :D
After picking a ton of strawberries, we loaded up the trunk, and Vladim drove us back home, where I got settled while the berries were washed. We then sat around eating a delicious dessert of fresh, crushed strawberries in condensed milk, which makes it sort of like a parfait, only not yogurty. Just sweet and really, really good. I can't describe it, and it was all gone before I could even think to take a picture. We then talked some more, laughed a bunch, and now it's time for bed. In the days to come, I'll try to take notes on some of the things that my host family says, particularly pertaining to politics and cultural differences and stuff, and then at a later time I can hopefully include these specific comments on my blog to share with anyone reading. After all, intercultural dialogue and greater understanding between people is the goal of this trip as well as one of the purposes of my personal blog.
It's off to bed for now, but one last thing--a teaser of sorts. I should mention that, when we were having a snack of tea and cookies right after I arrived here with my Murom host family, the regional news was on and, as part of the news program, my Vanderbilt group and the American Home were featured. This took place yesterday, and I'll wait until the clip is posted online before I say much more, but bottom line: we were on Russian TV! :D
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