The first thing I want to say is that my schedule is AMAZING. I pretty much am in love with it. So far I have no classes on Friday's and I can sleep in most days. My whole schedule is not done yet since I still have to get an internship and pick a class with Russian students. I plan to do that pretty soon, maybe. It felt so weird when I first came back to Moscow. I can't really describe it concretely. After a few days the feeling wore off and I realized that this semester is going to be much better since I got the hang of things and I have a much better understanding of the Russian language than last semester. Homegurl Eleonora is pretty much the same, still pretty ridiculous. Unfortunately, at the moment she's pretty sick, she has some sort of cough. So everything at the university and the home front is going pretty well. I have to talk about my trip to Vladmir and Suzdal now!
So our first trip outside of Moscow was a weekend trip to the Vladimir and Suzdal area. We went by train to Vladimir then took a bus to Suzdal. In Vladimir we did the educational thing and went around with Alina and saw several churches and went into a museum. When we got to Suzdal we went to.... THE BANYA! A banya is basically a Russian sauna and it was pretty amazing. We basically all were in this huge wooden room and we sweat it out and once in a while we ran outside and jumped in the snow. This is supposed to be traditional custom during the winter. We also got beat each other with birch branches hahaha My favorite experience was definitely the banya. The next day we went to a Russian festival called Maslenitsa. It's basically a reason to eat dairy products that aren't allowed during Lent for orthodox russians. The most traditional food during this festival is the bliny which is the Russian version of a pancake. They make the blyni because it represents the sun meaning that winter will soon be over(yea right...). I of course had my fare share of the bliny and had a fun time although it was FREEZING outside on the square. We also got to taste the famous Medovukha which is a traditional Russian honey liquor. Overall it was a pretty good time.
Within the next few days I will have to decide for reals what I need to do as an internship and the class with Russian students. The downside is that I will have less free time to do other things(such as write on my blog) but the upside is that I will gain lots of experience which will be helpful later. I hope to update all of you frequently though and I think I have the video posting almost figured out so hopefully with my next post there will also be a video :)
