A letter home from study abroad
yep...i've been bad again...it's the 15th and the last time I wrote was
the fourth...well, i've only got a month left...let's see if i can be good
and not skip any more entries.
Since you last read, my mom has come and gone....she took me to
petersburg and treated me to lots of expensive things....but that's in the
past and i'm just going to write about today (or yesterday....it's already
12:30)
Class today was horrible.....nobody could speak russian...and
about 1/3 of the program ditched class.
this evening, emily and i were supposed to make cookies, so I
spent the afternoon combing the western and western-style supermarkets for
baking-soda, eggs, sugar, chocolate, flour and so on. (My mom brought the
brown sugar...which is the hard part...they simply don't have it here)
Emily called at about 6 and said "why don't we make them at my
house rather than in your dorm....it'll be more comfortable" more
comfortable for her, sure....she also mentioned that she was inviting
sara. So, sara and I headed over to emily's house....i ended up leaving
the eggs and my cookie sheet at home...i didn't really want to risk
another ride on the metro with them.
Emily's host mom is something else...a truely sweet lady...with a
very warped world view......basically, she thinks that men should be men
and women should be women....she can't really cope with the fact that I
like to cook or the fact that emily "acts like a boy." She keeps telling
emily that it's no wonder she doesn't have a boyfriend.....(For those of
you who don't know emily: she likes girls but doesn't really want to
tell her old russian host mom that..) We're pretty sure that she thinks
that emily and I would make a good couple....
Emily's host mom spent the evening spouting words of wisdom about
gender relations. The cookies came out great....even if there wasn't
enough chocolate.
On the metro home, sara and I sat next to 3 skinheads...really
scary looking people...they were putting up stickers. I decided to be
bold and get up to read one of them...it read something about the
"...church of the white race Meetings at suchandsuch a Metro Station.
Saturday at 8:30 pm" I was utterly incredulous...so I asked them for one
of the stickers....well, now I've got one of these scary stickers....and
I've got absolutely no idea what to do with it.
jesse