just call me anastasia

My life has taken on a dramatic change in the last few days. I moved in with a Russian family.

I live in a building 30 minutes (with no traffic) from the university, which makes me wonder just how big this city really is and how much I’m going to miss. My family’s apartment has two bedrooms, one the size of a normal child’s room in the U.S. and the other the size of a comfortable office (which is shared by my mom, Tzveta, and my sister, Yula), a living room, a kitchen, and the typical ‘bathroom’, which is actually a sink/shower room (with it’s own door on the hall) and a toilet room (again with it’s own door to the hall).

I have three keys to get inside- one circle that looks like a magnet, one 5-inch long gold ‘clootch’ with a square inch of teeth at the end, and a third, identical in shape to the second but much shorter, only about three or so inches. Shoes are never worn into the apartment (btw, most Russians live in apartments if they live in a city, not in houses). You take them off in the entryway.

My mom, Tzveta, is going to help me gain a ‘winter layer’, otherwise known as 20 lbs. So far dinner is soup, salad, meat and potatoes. Which might sound like it’s not much, but it is. Dinner is served as a three course meal (this is typical of Russian meals), and there is always chai and/or coffee with crackers, cookies, chocolate and bread with cheese and meat. It’s typical to eat dessert with breakfast. This might be a useful practice to adopt in the U.S.

My bedroom is twice the size of the room that my family sleeps in. However, I suspect that my bed is twice as hard. It is a couch. Which is great, it’s just really, really hard. So I kind of feel like I’m sleeping on a park bench, complete with morning dew (because no matter what I always sweat at night in Russian beds). But considering that my family (which is really made up of three people, not just two, because Yula’s best friend Leila is practically part of the family) is so kind and welcoming, and waits on me hand and foot, I can’t really complain. I found a way to feel less awkward about my mom and sister making me meals and washing my dishes- I can wash all the breakfast dishes! Yula leaves for school right after breakfast, and Tzveta uses that time to get ready herself, and I still have 30 minutes before I need to meet my bus. Perfect! When Tzveta discovered me washing dishes this morning, she kissed me, so I know it’s okay.

On my first day of moving in, and waking up, I feared that I’d be really lonely since I need to head home when it gets dark, because a) I’m female and it’s not safe for me to be out on my own at night and b) the buses are really unreliable after 9 PM. And, being winter and Russia, it’s dark early, and the sun gets up late (it doesn’t have to be at school on time), so I’m going to spend tons of time at home. I thought this might translate into getting a lot of homework done (which might be true), but one of my friends, Leah, lives in my building and Andrew lives in the next building, so I’m not stranded on the east side of the city, hours away from everyone, like I thought I was! Hurray! Not only that, but I get to ride the bus with Andrew to school every morning, and you can’t beat that, can you? Nope.

It’s really nice having a readily accessible toilet seat, a private shower and a mom and a sister. I miss my family! The food at home is delicious, the cat is fun, so I can’t complain. My family and their friends are helping me with my Russian (and are a huge motivation to learn the language).

Other recent stories include discovering a litter of puppies behind the university and going to visit them in the afternoons with Andrew, climbing all over an abandoned water-tunnel place with Russian friends, hiking up the Kremlin hill with my Russian sisters and Andrew because we took the wring bus and couldn't figure out how to get to the top of the hill the right way, and visiting Maxim Gorky's preserved (-ish) house. Life is interesting and busy!

For whatever reason I’ve been exhausted all the time lately, and even now don’t want to muster the energy to get out of my blogging inertia. Until later, poka (bye)!