November 28th

Well then, sorry for the delay with this post! No excuse really… It is an incredibly beautiful day today and as soon as I finish this post I’m definitely going to go outside and revel, maybe walk along the river or go to the grocery store. All the Americans in Voronezh (11 West Point and Air Force, 2 Baylor, 2 ex-pat students, assorted non-American girlfriends) are getting together today and celebrating Thanksgiving so I’ve got to do my part and grab some food from the store. It looks to be quite the feast, we somehow managed to find a turkey and there is talk of a pumpkin pie in the offing as well (I’m doubtful about the whipped cream though). Should be a good time!

Anyways, just kind of another short story about my home life here: I was in my room after school and Gina came in to my room with a basket of onions and asked me if I knew how to prepare them. Thinking he meant cook, I said no (plus I was curious to see where this took us, I’ve never been one to pass up opportunities for Gina to mock me or show me something interesting). But no, he didn’t mean cook. He meant peel, so like I do every time I open my mouth, I looked like an idiot. Who doesn’t know how to peel an onion? He took this moment of weakness to ask me if I knew how to operate matches… Thanks Gina. He then asked me if I’d ever been a “скают.” I’d understood everything he’d said up to this point, and I had to admit I had no idea what a “скают” was. He looked at me like I was a little slow and said, “Скают, you know the kids who run around in the woods and make fires.” Oh. Scout. Like Boy Scouts. Great, I managed to understand everything in the sentence except the English word. Hooray, me. It was all good though and I left that and our many exchanges recently with a warm fuzzy feeling which is nice for a change. Olga Arkeedevna is in the hospital with tuberculosis (I’m really worried about her) so it’s just the guys around the house and I think Gina is happy to have someone to talk to no matter how laughably poor their Russian might be. That’s it I think for today. I suppose I’ll deign to write some more tomorrow, but I’m burning daylight and it’s criminal to be inside on a day like today!