A letter home from study abroad
Wednesday October 9, 1996
Wednesday was once again excursion day. This time we took the
elektrichka (electric trains to the countryside) to Sergeev Passad. I
took a nap on the train. Sergeev Passad is a town, formerly known as
Zagorsk, which is the home of a famousish monastary. The monastary is
actually really cool. Our tour finished at about 1:30 and some of us
headed home. We missed our train (although we didn't know this at the
time) by about 3 minutes because I ended up having to go to the bathroom.
The next train didn't come for about 45 minutes so we just walked around
and checked out what gets sold at a provincial train station. The most
interesting thing is that a lot of products were labeled with their city
of origin. (Dumplings from C. or Chocalate from Moscow...) I bought a
Nestle bar that said it's recipe had been adapted from a tradition swiss
recipe. I hadn't realized how much I missed milk chocolate. Russians are
very into dark chocolate and consider milk chocolate to be children's
chocolate. Well, we made it home at about 5. I tried, to no avail, to get
in touch with my friend Nadia before calling my contact family to arrange
to meet them at the circus. (where they were taking me this week.)
The circus was cool...much better than the one on red square. My
contact-mom got us tickets in the third row...really great seats. One
curious feature of the building is that the floor of the ring drops out.
They have several floors, one for regular circus acts, a dirtlike floor
for some animal acts (might actually be the regular floor) and an ICE
floor for the circus on ice. The acts at the circus ranged from Clowns on
ice to Chechens on horses. At the circus, I bought a PEZ dispenser. I
read the sign and thought it said "20 T.R. for a pez dispenser." I was
wrong...what it said was "20 T.R. for a pez dispenser with clothing." The
babushka who sold me the dispenser called me back after I walked away and
asked me if I took two dispensers. "Of course not!" I replied. She then
explained the pez pricing structure to me. I thanked her and selected a
set of green pez-clothing to go with my purple pez dispenser. She told me
that I'd have to pick another color of clothing, as it didn't match that
of my dispenser. So, now I've got a Ducktales pez dispenser wearing a
purple dress.
jesse