A letter home from study abroad
Monday's classes proceeded without incident. After class...gosh...what
did I do on monday...oh, yeah, Catherine (one of the brits) and I went off
in search of Tolstoy's estate...which happens to be located about a block
from our dorm...well, I now know that it's closed on mondays...and it's
closed after four pm...so we were doubly out of luck. Afterward, I had
tea with a bunch of the Brits. One of them was going on about how he was
"going to see a man about a dog." He's apparently decided to take the
plunge into the wonderful world of Russian drugs. It's not the brightest
thing I've ever heard, but if that's what he wants to do, he's welcome to.
At about 9 pm, I got hungry again...but, since the stolovaya
closes at about 6:30. (When they run out of "food" is another matter
entirely) So, I ran out to one of the kiosks on the street and bought a
box of frozen "pilmeni" (russian dumplings) They are sold with names like
"russian pilmeni" and "georgian pilmeni" I asked for russian pilmeni as
they were featured prominently in the list. "We don't have russian
pilmeni today...but we've got..." and then a torrent of the names of
various types of pilemeni ensued. I had no idea what to choose...so i
made the shopkeeper pick for me. I believe I got "Pilmeni for putting on
the table" which had beef, pork, several meats I'd never heard of and
"bird meat." They were tasty and filling...I'm not really going to ponder
what's in them any more.