October 28th

Well, I just returned from a wonderful evening with some of our Cadet friends. Myself and three other Americans were invited to have dinner and drinks with a Cadet we met in our military class and his girlfriend in their dorm. I’m not going to lie, that isn’t exactly my cup of tea, especially because neither of the Russians spoke any English. But I decided to go, and man was that a good decision. Our Cadet friend, Viktor, brought his girlfriend and her two roommates, Kristina and Katya (from Moldovia). No one spoke each others language, but we managed to make small talk. It was incredible, keeping up conversation amongst strangers is difficult when everyone understands each other, but we managed. It was incredible, practicing good manners, opening wine bottles, making toasts to the host, all things that I didn’t see myself doing for another three years at least. Anyways, the dorm was quite nice, about your average American college dorm (size wise, etc.). We had homemade borsch, salad, and some sort of “pasta” that was spread on black bread. It was all delicious and it just made the atmosphere all the more pleasant. As soon as we’d polished off the wine, we started toasting (something of a Russian obsession, it’s a ritual I go through here almost every night I go out, but this was the first time I’d ever been a guest in someone’s place). We were drinking samogan, or homemade vodka from an unlabled former water bottle. It was 60% alcohol and sure tasted like it. Vitka’s first advice was to not breathe after drinking until the chaser (pickles or juice) had gone down otherwise you’d burn your throat. It was potent stuff, but I stayed well within my limit. I can’t even recall talking about anything legitimate all night, but I think we just told stories in our broken Russian (trust me; between us we have plenty of stories). After dinner (and finishing the bottle of samogan) we headed to another Russian Cadet’s place in the center of town. He’s from Voronezh, so he lives with his parents. He lives in your average Soviet looking apartment, but when you walk inside, it’s like a different world. I’ve seen nice apartments here, but this place was certainly bigger and better furnished in every sense than our house back home. It was incredible. So we played cherades well into the night and then meandered home around 4 AMish. All in all, a wonderful night and a great way to spend an evening!

Almost forgot: We played Russian Twister (can we say good vocab practice? I'll never mix up right hand red and left foot blue ever again...) and danced well into the night. Goodness me...